‘Superman’ director James Gunn on ‘Superwoke’ discourse, Justice League, Ultraman reveal

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Superman.

James Gunn is still basking in the glow of Superman, the first movie of the new DC Universe. After opening in theaters last weekend, the Warner Bros. release jockeyed the “superhero fatigue” discourse to rake in a cumulative total of $177.7 million domestically (as of Friday morning), which also means it now crosses $300 million globally.

However, the writer and director of the film, who’s also the co-head of DC Studios with Peter Safran, is admittedly “basking in the euphoria that has been finishing the press tour.”

On Wednesday of this week, Gunn finished a month-long continent-hopping tour with his Superman stars, including David Corenswet (Clark Kent/Kal-El), Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), and Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor). Sitting over Zoom in a plain black t-shirt, he’s now at home in Atlanta with his wife, Peacemaker star Jennifer Holland, and their pets, including Ozu, their rescue dog who inspired the character of Krypto in the movie. “It is pretty nice to have not had to put makeup on this morning,” he admits.

For one of his final interviews on Superman, Gunn speaks with Entertainment Weekly for an open conversation about some of the movie’s biggest spoilers, some of the discourse, and what the film means for future DCU properties.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The first thing I want to ask you about is this Ultraman reveal. Knowing that the same actor who was going to play Superman would be playing Ultraman, did it make you want to look out for certain things in the audition process?

JAMES GUNN: It didn’t really. Just thought the guy needed to be a good actor, but I knew what I was looking for in Superman was so much more varied and nuanced than what had often been looked for in somebody to play Superman. He had to be funny, he had to be emotional, he had to do all this different acting stuff. He had to do that scene with Rachel — the long interview scene — and anybody that could do that could be this goofy idiot that is Ultraman.

It felt like part Bizarro from the comics, but also it made me think of Nuclear Man from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace [1987]. Is it fair to say that you had a lot of different inspirations for this particular incarnation of Ultraman? 

Yeah, for sure. It’s funny, [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige wrote me yesterday, He says he hopes his old pal Bizarro… [Laughs] He wants to see Bizarro. Yeah, I think he’s all those things, but also just kind of this f—ed-up version of Clark. There used to be some sadder stuff in there at some point that I got from the script that I really liked. I didn’t have time for everything. You don’t have time for everything.

Sadder stuff for Ultraman?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don’t know if you noticed…David’s got prosthetics on [as Ultraman]. He’s got a chin that’s jutting out, his ears poke out, he’s got one eye kind of going in a little direction. [Luthor] took him out of the oven a little too quickly or something.

I also got a really fun kick out of the image of Ultraman tumbling back into the pocket universe. It reminded me very much of General Zod and his cronies at the end of Superman II [1980]. Was that a direct influence for that moment? 

I can see where you would see it. I didn’t think of it, but who knows? Those things all affect you. You don’t know where things come from, but, yeah, I like to think about where he’s going and what he’s going to do next.

When we’re thinking about this pocket universe, you said in previous interviews that this is similar technology as the Peacemaker QUC [Quantum Unfolding Chamber].

That’s right.

So is it fair to say that this particular element, this idea of a pocket universe, is instrumental to this larger story you’re telling across the DCU?

Yes, absolutely it is. You’ll see in Peacemaker [season 2], too… It’s just Lex’s version is much jankier than the one in Peacemaker. The one in Peacemaker works better. What the whole season of Peacemaker revolves around is that.

Where did you get the idea to hone in on this pocket universe concept? Was it from Peacemaker season 1, or was it other comic book elements?

No, it’s just about the fact that it’s possible to make a pocket universe theoretically, and that it seemed like a good place for Lex to do his dirty work that was not really under any laws. He could do whatever he wanted in that pocket universe. I liked the idea of Lex being able to do all these things that are so incredibly scientifically progressive that they almost seem like magic. I think that’s true about the early Silver Age versions of Lex — I like that aspect of him — but he’s just so incredibly intelligent beyond anybody else on this planet.

One thing we see in the trailer for Peacemaker season 2 is this Peacemaker doppelgänger of sorts. Is it fair to make a connection to the multiverse when fans think about the idea of the pocket universe and the QUC?

Yeah, but in Peacemaker, it’s done in a much different way. Traditionally, when we’re dealing with multiverses, we’re dealing with…I mean, not traditionally. [Laughs] Over the past four or five years, they’ve suddenly been everywhere. I think of Peacemaker as more of a high-concept story about one other world. It’s more akin to Philip Roth’s The Counterlife than it is to the third Spider-Man movie [2021’s No Way Home], which I love that movie, but it isn’t about that. It isn’t Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s really a very simple, simple story about his relationship to this one other world.

Is this connection between Superman and Peacemaker the main reason you got John Cena in there for a quick cameo? 

Oh, no, no, no. He would’ve been in there no matter what. I like the idea that he’s going on this incendiary talk show, and he’s one of these assholes that would be on that show. Cleavis Thornwaite [Michael Ian Black]. I haven’t heard many shoutouts, but to me, he’s perfect in the movie. He’s perfect. He shows up again, Cleavis Thornwaite, in Peacemaker. 

This next one is a deep cut…At the end of the film, everyone is released from the pocket universe, including Luthor’s smart monkeys. Did we just low-key get the origin story for Gorilla Grodd in the DCU?

No, no, no. Because I know exactly what that is. I love Gorilla Grodd, so got other plans for that guy. He’s not a monkey, he’s an ape!

Fair.

What am I, some plebeian? [Laughs] But I do like the idea of the monkey-bots forever infesting metropolis in the same way that we have the parrots here in Los Angeles. We have those big flocks of parrots that have supposedly descended from parrots that were let loose from a pet store or something. Now there’s going to be these f—ing monkey bots all over in Metropolis, and you’re going to just see ’em creating mischief in the background. 

When we got to that scene in Luthor’s pocket universe with the monkeys…Because you have been vocal about your own experience dealing with online trolls and the online rumor mill, I was curious if this was a direct commentary on a lot of what you experienced online over the years.

When you say commentary, I don’t think I ever put anything in a story that I didn’t just think was fun for the story. So when I thought of the monkey bots, I thought of the foreign governments that are enlisting bots to try to sway public opinion in the United States. I’m thinking more about that type of thing. But, yeah, at the end of the day, does it reflect all the angry…? I was looking at somebody who was writing something really nasty online the other day. I don’t really see too much anywhere anymore, but this one guy said something, just going off on the movie, but in an especially mean-spirited and weird way. The comic writer Mitch Gerads posted a little keyboard and a monkey next to it, and that’s been something I’ve been seeing a lot lately, which is funny.

This leads me to another point…I found myself laughing a lot about the Fox News and the ultra-right coming out to label Superman as “Superwoke.” It was not lost on me that scene where Lois is interviewing Superman. The phrase “Superwoke” sounds exactly like the in-world critics of Superman. I was curious what you made of that.

I’ve heard people say it was woke, and then I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not. I am curious as to what in the movie is considered woke. I think people took something I said…The guy for the London newspaper [Jonathan Dean of The Times]. Originally, he said that [Superman comic creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants, and they wrote Superman as an immigrant story. And I said, yeah, it’s a story about an immigrant, but mostly it’s a story to me about kindness, which it is. That’s the center of the movie for me.

That’s the thing we can all act upon, is kindness. And so what does that lead to? Well, does that lead to the way you vote? Sure. Does that lead to everything? Yeah. Does it lead to how many people are dying from road rage? Yes. All those things are affected if people just start to value kindness. I mean, people did value kindness in the past. That was an American value, was kindness, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to be that way to me anymore. So that was always the center of the movie for me, and it wasn’t about anything other than that.

It was just so funny to me that you constructed this whole scene with Lois interviewing Superman and “#Supersh–,” hashtag all these things, and then it was almost like the real world feels stranger than fiction.

Well, I think those things are always coming from…the question I ask myself when I’m putting the movie together is, what if Superman was real? I still have that kid in me that wants to believe in Superman. If I go to a movie where I believe Superman is acting in a way that Superman would be, but still has all the comic book crazy s— that I love of robots and giant monsters, but I believe him as a real human being with thoughts and feelings and beliefs and morals and flaws, I believe what he is. So in that scene, I’m just like, what if these two people were real? What would their real conversations be about?

For me, that was the most fun scene to write and in a lot of ways to direct. What’s the engine in each of them? What are their psychologies? How would they be the same, and how would they be different? If they’re reacting to a real world, what would it be like in a world with Superman, where he’s just trying to do good, but he doesn’t think that much about it? He just does what’s good. But there are governments that are trying politically to handle things in a certain way, and there’s no doubt that he would come up to clash with that at some point. 

Changing the subject, you have so many awesome cameos in this movie, but especially voice cameos, which feel like the James Gunn extended family back together. You have Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker from Guardians of the Galaxy voicing Superman robots. You have Michael Rosenbaum playing a Raptor. For those fans who keep going back to the theater to see which new voice they can decipher, are there subtle cameos that people still haven’t caught?

You notice Bradley Cooper was in the film? [Laughs] Honest to God, I don’t think so.

You shared previously that you have a specific philosophy about post-credit scenes. Did you have a specific philosophy about cameos in the context of this film? 

Yes, I do have a philosophy about cameos. A cameo is fine as a cameo, where somebody appears for two seconds, and it’s fun, like with Peacemaker, or how Stan Lee would appear in the Marvel movies. I don’t like cameos when it has nothing to do with the story or the plot, and is anything more than a line or seeing them for two seconds. There seems to be, in some superhero movies, cramming other people in because people like seeing these characters together. I don’t really love that new tradition. They need to have a story reason for being in the movie. I wouldn’t have put Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific and Guy Gardner in there if they were representing something different than to what Superman represented, and if they didn’t have the role in the story that they did, where they too are inspired by Superman. 

One of my personal favorite cameos was Supergirl because, to your point, it was short and sweet, but at the same time, you used that time so wisely to give us a perfect encapsulation of who Kara is in the DCU.

But for me, the main reason for Kara showing up is to show that Superman not only risked his life to go save a dog that was his dog, that so many of us would do, he was watching the dog for somebody else. The dog’s a pain in his ass. He didn’t want to take that dog. She’s off being irresponsible. He doesn’t want to have to watch a dog. He’s having to save the world every two seconds. And even still, he goes to the ends of the earth for that dog.

To me, that’s one of the most touching things in the movie. Earlier, when Lois says, “It’s just a dog,” and he says, “Yeah, not even a very good one, but it’s probably scared,” it just shows you the depths of his empathy. I find that so touching. Then, when you find out at the end, it’s not even his dog; she just left it with him.

Last topic…Justice League. The Justice Gang, their home base is the Hall of Justice. By the end of the movie, they feel inspired by what Superman has motivated them to do in Jarhanpur. Metamorpho seems to be joining their ranks.

No, he is. He joins them at the end of the movie, for sure. I mean, Guy says he’s in, so he is in. He probably has to get a rubber stamp by Maxwell Lord, but I think he’ll be fine with that. 

Are these really the first kernels of the Justice League for you in the DCU?

Yeah, I think you could say that. I don’t know why not, but I wouldn’t jump the gun with thinking that’s going to happen tomorrow.

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.

Superman is playing now in theaters.