How Director James Gunn Snuck Around The Most Common Superman Fan Complaint

James Gunn doesn't want Superman to be unbeatable. The writer-director of next year's massive DC reboot (who also happens to be the Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of DC Studios) said as much at a Warner Bros. event attended by /Film's Bill Bria ahead of the public release of the first "Superman" trailer. More specifically, Gunn explained that he "didn't want to make a Superman that could punch planets," a position that's made abundantly clear by the uncharacteristically wounded, down-and-out Clark Kent (David Corenswet) we see at the beginning of the new preview.

When asked about the task of "calibrating the threat that [Superman] has to face" to match the hero's own ample abilities in the film, Gunn said he found that his take on Superman's infallibility is actually pretty common. "I find most people actually say, 'I don't find Superman relatable because he can't be beaten,'" Gunn noted before countering that some "other people who love Superman, love Superman because he can punch a planet." To side-step the issue of the hero's sometimes endless-seeming well of strength, Gunn said it all came down to "finding the right threat, and also making him the right strength."

Much of the highly anticipated (and pre-scrutinized) "Superman" is still under wraps, but Gunn was thankfully clear on this point, describing Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor in a way that makes it apparent he will be the film's central threat. The hero-villain match-up, Gunn noted, also came down to "making Lex as powerful as Lex can be, mentally." The filmmaker called the new iteration of Luther "the most powerful Lex we've seen on screen by far, because of his smarts." That may seem like an ambitious promise, but it's true that Clark Kent's longtime nemesis isn't always as nefarious as he's cut out to be, especially given the by-the-numbers hero-beats-villain arcs "Superman" filmmakers have often played into in the past.

Gunn specifically singled out Richard Donner's 1978 film "Superman: The Movie," in which Gene Hackman plays Luthor, not to speak derisively of it, but to note that even in what many still consider the best "Superman" movie ever, some of the Lex parts don't quite work. As he put it:

"I do feel like, watching the [new] movie, Superman's got his work cut out for him with Lex. And I don't feel that in the other movies. I don't even feel that in Donner's movie. I feel like he was a goofus, you know? Yeah, so that was a big part of it. So Lex is really important."

In terms of shaping the script and story, Gunn explained, "it was about getting [Kent] to the place where he was Superman, could lift up a skyscraper, but was not unable to be defeated." There apparently wasn't much pushback to this decision either, which makes sense, seeing as Gunn is basically his own boss at DC Studios. "It wasn't hard," he added, regarding decision to make the Man of Steel a little less indestructible than we might expect. "I kind of did what I wanted to do."

"Superman" soars into theaters on July 11, 2025.