Probably.

The new Superman movie started development in 2022. That’s only a few years after the high point of BLM and peak wokeness. Movies made prior to that were so woke that they were radioactive. (Case in point, Sleeping Beauty.) Movies made after that point are not completely hopeless mostly because studios were pulling belated course corrections. If Superman 2025 had begun production a year earlier, it would have been written by Ta-Nehisi Coates (whom WB brought on board to write a black Superman movie) and directed by Jordan Peele and consisted of Superman fighting cops.

So on that scale, it’s probably not that woke. Instead it’s got a post-Trump liberal appeal to “kindness”.

James Gunn Says ‘Superman’ Is About an ‘Immigrant That Came From Other Places’ and How We’ve ‘Lost’ the Value of ‘Basic Human Kindness’: ‘Yes, it’s About Politics’- Variety

Everything we need to learn about human kindness ought to come from an industry best known for its sexual abuses and abusive work environments.

But, to state the obvious, the Superman reboot isn’t ‘Superman’. James Gunn, a Marvel vet, rebooted the classic character as a Marvel figure complete with constant quips.

The politics is also obviously front and center with Lex Luthor using social media bot farms to try and start wars for profit. I’m sure he’s not intended as a hackneyed commentary on Elon Musk.

On the other hand, Gunn in the Times of London interview which Variety just remixed (but which hardly anyone commenting on this actually read) resists every attempt to tie him explictly to current events from his own cancellation, to the Iran-Israel war to Trump. Now that may just be because he’s an industry pro fronting a movie probably targeted (in WB’s dreams) of earning $1 billion worldwide at a time when there’s an anti-woke backlash, but I suspect the politics of this are nebulous at best.

Something vaguely liberal about the value of immigrants, not fighting wars and not being mean to each other that millionaire liberals will congratulate themselves as a courage statement. Not something I’ll be paying to see, but also not what we could have gotten two years ago.