James Gunn just can’t catch a break with Superman fans. First, he tells them they’re “sh*t out of luck” when they complain about his Jor-El twist, then quietly tweaks the story in the digital release like none of this ever happened. And people noticed. Of course they did.
The controversy started with a viral Comicodigy post that asked the question a lot of fans had on their minds: “Clark spent his life believing his parents sent him to protect Earth and that Kryptonians were protectors. Shouldn’t Kara have told him the truth at some point since she is traditionally older than Clark and would have remembered Krypton?” Fair point. Except Gunn’s version tossed all that in the Phantom Zone.
Fans fired back online with theories. One argued that Gunn was pulling from the Golden Age, where Kara grew up on a surviving chunk of Krypton, so she wouldn’t even know Clark’s parents. Another said Lex Luthor could’ve staged the whole thing—after all, Lex has pulled fake Kryptonian invasions before. Both ideas were more popular than what Gunn actually went with. Even Kevin Smith, who famously likes everything, didn’t care for Gunn’s rewrite.
At Comic-Con, the scene bombed harder than the film’s international box office. According to Cosmicbook News, no one in the crowd liked the hologram twist. Gunn still doubled down, telling angry fans, “They’re sh*t out of luck!” Nice pep talk from the head of DC Studios.
Then came Friday’s digital release. Eagle-eyed viewers spotted something different. DC Film News pointed out a scene from The Daily Planet that read: “Luthor was behind the false images of Superman’s parents’ message claiming that…” Basically, the message that told Clark to kill anyone who opposed him and take multiple wives might have been doctored after all.
The internet ran with it. One user wrote, “Guess the backlash was too much that Gunn had to add that little detail in the digital media.” Another pointed out how absurd the message sounded in the first place: “‘We love you, son. Do good. Kill anyone who opposes you.’ Yeah, those don’t exactly flow together.”
So did Gunn really change his mind, or is this another one of his narrative misdirections? Some fans believe he’s gaslighting them. Others think he’s just buying time for future films. And then there are those who are simply asking: why make Jor-El sound like the villain in the first place?
Gunn insists the twist is part of Clark’s emotional journey. “That’s the whole point of the movie,” he said. “Superman thinks he is doing something because it is his destiny and his Kryptonian parents have set him out to do this thing, and along the way he discovers through the love of the people who are actually his parents that he’s doing these things not because of someone else, but because of himself.”
Except a lot of fans aren’t convinced. Clark Kent spent thirty years under the care of the Kents. Are we really supposed to believe a garbled hologram means more to his morality than the two people who actually raised him?
To add fuel to the fire, Gunn also described Kryptonians as elitists who see humans as “sea turtles” and confirmed Supergirl’s backstory will be harsher, based on Tom King’s Woman of Tomorrow. That means Kara watched her entire community die on a drifting piece of Krypton before making it to Earth, by sheer coincidence, on the same planet as her cousin. Sure.
The backlash isn’t slowing down. Gunn’s blunt “tough luck” approach hasn’t won anyone over. Maybe Superman doesn’t need a morally twisted Jor-El. Maybe the holograms should’ve stayed with Marlon Brando or Russell Crowe.
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