James Gunn’s Superman centers on a few key moments. One of the biggest is the message Kal-El, played by David Corenswet, was left with from his Kryptonian parents. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how it plays out. (And, if you haven’t, it’s a pretty big spoiler, so proceed with caution.) Either way, it’s a bombshell revelation that changes not just the character but the entire trajectory of the movie, and so we had to talk to the people most directly affected by it.
Recently io9 sat down with both writer-director James Gunn and Superman himself, David Corenswet, to discuss not just the shocking contents of the Kryptonian message but, more specifically, if those revelations could have an impact moving ahead in the DC Universe.
First, some context. At the start of Supermanwe see Superman’s biological parents (played by Bradley Cooper and Angela Sarafyan) reciting a message they included with his ship as he was sent from Krypton. The message seemed to be they sent him to Earth because he could be most helpful there, and that has since inspired Superman to become the hero he is. The problem is, it’s only part of the message. The rest was damaged in the crash, so he’s never seen it all the way through.
Later, Lex Luthor invades the Fortress of Solitude, and with the help of the Engineer, they recover the full message. It’s just the thing Luthor was looking for to turn everyone against Superman because it reveals he was sent to Earth not to save it, but to enslave it. His parents tell him he should take over the planet and spread his abilities by taking as many wives as possible. Humanity doesn’t like that one bit.
Of course, by the end of the movie, Superman proves that despite what his parents wanted, he’s not that person. He’s the hero he’s chosen to be. And yet, his parents still wanted and hoped for him to have a harem of women on Earth who would carry his super babies, who’d then take over the planet. That can’t be an easy thing to digest and live with. So, will that be something we see him deal with in the future?
“Well, it’s interesting,” Corenswet told io9. “I feel like anybody who has lost a parent has probably had that experience of discovering something of theirs after the fact that changes their idea of what their parent thought about themselves or about their life. And it can be quite a destabilizing experience to have this pristine image of a person who you love and who loved you and be even just subtly undermined. It kind of opens the door for like, ‘Well, what else am I believing that isn’t true?’ or ‘What else am I taking on faith that might get pulled out from under me?’ I think the thing that Superman becomes clear about at the end of this film is that he needs to rely on the people who he has around him ultimately, on Lois and on his parents and on Krypto and on his friends, Mr. Terrific, and not rely so much on his ideas of who he is or who he should be, but more on who his friends think he is and need him to be. And that’s, I think, a great lesson to learn. But it also leaves open as he goes on, like, there are other things to be discovered and other assumptions to be shook in.”
So, yes, the star thinks it’s something that’ll be important in the future. But he doesn’t have any say on it. What does the person writing and directing the movie think? “I wanted to tell a story about Superman that wasn’t only a huge spectacle with the action and pyrotechnics but that was also a personal story,” Gunn told io9. “We’ve seen a lot of Superman. It’s less often that we’ve seen Superman with a struggle and an identity crisis. And that’s what this movie is about. And, at the end, he finds his path to his faith about himself. That’s what the movie is about. So I think he’s dealt with that, with his main issue, at an elemental level. But there are always residual problems. There are always residual feelings. And just because you’ve dealt with something logically doesn’t mean emotionally you’ve fully dealt with it. So I think that’s where he’s at.”
Seems like Gunn too thinks that, while Superman has sort of come to terms with what his parents wanted and figured out a way to deal with it, he may just run up against it again in the future.
Superman is now in theaters.
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