The Simplistic Moral Lessons of "Superman"

The world may be going to hell, but the writer and director James Gunn has graced it with a sunshine "Superman." The most recent installments in the franchise--Zack Snyder's diptych "Man of Steel" (2013) and "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016)--had a hectic, howling, near-apocalyptic sense of tragedy, but Gunn's vision is bright, chipper, and sentimental. A title card announces that Superman has endured his first defeat, and the hero (played by David Corenswet) is shown tumbling from the sky and slamming with a sickening thud onto the surface of a frozen wasteland, where he lies prostrate, spitting red blood on the snow. Fear not: no sooner does the wounded combatant put his lips together and whistle for Krypto than his faithful and frisky canine companion arrives and drags his master back to the Fortress of Solitude. There, loyal robots examine the patient and, by exposing him to sunlight, begin to heal him.