Superman movie is 'good', Twitter/X concludes, because Ben Shapiro didn't like it | indy100

Ben Shapiro/YouTube

As Guardians of the Galaxy director and DC Studios’ co-CEO James Gunn’s Superman faces criticism over being “woke”, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has shared his original take (not) that the film - starring David Corenswet as Clark Kent - is “not good”.

We’d be lying if we said we didn’t see that coming…

Gunn’s reboot of the kryptonite-averse superhero had already attracted criticism in the run-up to its release, after the director told The Times that the story is about “an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country”.

“For me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and something we have lost … Yes, it plays differently, but it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them,” he said.

David Cain, who played Superman in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, spoke to TMZ about the film and asked: “How woke is Hollywood going to make this character?”

Shapiro responded to Gunn’s comments in a video uploaded to YouTube on Monday, telling his subscribers that Hollywood is “so far to the left that they cannot take a core piece of America and just say it’s about America”.

“They just refuse to acknowledge that the American way is good, that the American way is unique, and this lies at the root of a leftist worldview. That worldview is astonishingly anti-American,” he fumes.

Then, after watching the film in the cinema, Shapiro took to Twitter/X on Friday to share that he thought that Superman was “not good”, prompting social media users to conclude that the film actually is good:

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“This is how you know the movie is good,” wrote one account (and they weren’t the only one):

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Another mocked Shapiro for not liking a movie “about being a good person, judging people based on who they are as a person … and not invading other countries”:

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And a third remarked that their “favourite thing ever” was seeing right-wingers “contend with the fact that superhero stories are the antithesis to everything they stand for”:

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There was also one account which brought up Shapiro’s failed screenwriting career, arguing that he is therefore “not qualified to review Superman”:

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Despite criticising Gunn’s comments about the immigration allegory of Superman prior to watching the film, Shapiro’s review on Saturday saw him brand the movie as “super meh” and argue that critics of the film’s politics “are overestimating how much politics is in this”.

“I think they are deliberately misinterpreting some of the politics that are in there. It’s not a movie about illegal immigration, it’s not a movie about ICE, Russia/Ukraine, Israel, the Palestinians.

“There may be politics there if you have politics with the brain, but other than that, I really don’t think that there’s that much of this here,” he said, later saying that if a viewer has “poison left brain” then they may interpret the movie’s plot as being a reference to Russia/Ukraine or Israel/Palestine.

Instead, in explaining the “overall problem” which prompts him to give the movie a two-star rating, Shapiro said Gunn is “determined to debunk” anything “you think you know about the Superman universe” in the first 30 minutes, calling this a “betrayal of the original IP and mildly upsetting”.

He said: “Overall, here is my problem: James Gunn is the wrong director, writer, creator for this thing. He’s just wrong for it – it’s Guardians of the Galaxy with Superman in it. And so that means it’s all kind of a mess.

“It’s an overstuffed movie in every way. It’s visually overstuffed. In terms of plot, the plot holes are big enough to drive a truck through them, there are character problems, and all of it is just kind of wrapped around this gauzy, fast-paced jokey tone, that doesn’t mesh with Superman as [a] central part of Americana.”

Shapiro getting roasted for his take on Superman isn’t the first time that he’s been ridiculed over his review of a blockbuster film, as his opinion on The Batman also backfired hilariously.

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