Superman’s ending is dividing fans — here’s why

James Gunn’s Superman kicks off a new era of DC movies, under the guardianship of Gunn and DC Studios co-chairman and CEO Peter Safran. It isn’t the first project of Gunn and Safran’s new DC media universe — that honor went to Creature Commandos — but it is a tone-setter and mission statement, with both a lighter overall tone than DC’s Zack Snyderverse, and a lighter hand on the controls. Gunn and Safran have both created a single narrative continuity for some projects, like Superman, the upcoming Supergirl, and Gunn’s second season of Peacemaker, and allowed for Elseworlds one-offs outside that continuity, like Matt Reeves’ eventual The Batman sequel.

But the success of DC’s big reboot hinges heavily on Superman, and how audiences take Gunn’s reimagining of one of DC’s biggest and most central characters — and arguably the one who’s hardest to write. Superman’s invulnerability and tremendous powers are sometimes limiting for creators, who have to figure out how to challenge him and make his struggles relatable. Gunn does that both by matching Superman (David Corenswet) with a smarter, better-prepared enemy — his old nemesis Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) — and by piling on the conflicts, making it clear that even Superman can’t be everywhere at once.

But that leads to an odd beat at the end of the movie, where Superman can’t help the people who need him most. Two of our writers had radically different reactions to that story development. And as we’ve done so often before — debating Titanic’s alternate ending, Spider in Avatar: The Way of Water, the song cut from The Muppet Christmas Carol, the races-vs.-chases question in the Fast and Furious movies, and many more topics — we took the matter to Polygon Court.

[Ed. note: Significant spoilers ahead for James Gunn’s 2025 Superman.]

Opening statements: Superman’s Boravia ending, explained

Tasha: Let’s start with the particulars of this case: Superman in James Gunn’s reboot movie is dealing with a lot of problems by the time the climax arrives. They all stem from Lex Luthor’s scheming, but fighting off the ferocious Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría) and Luthor’s lead metahuman warrior is one issue, sealing a gigantic dimensional rift is another, and stopping the predatory country of Boravia from invading its neighbor Jarhanpur, and murdering the crowd of hapless civilians gathered at its border, is a third. In the end, Superman tells Luthor that he’s getting some help from his friends, and the “Justice Gang” (seemingly the Justice League to be, if they ever get over Guy Gardner’s preference for that terrible name) steps up to stop the invasion and repel the Boravian army.

That’s a significant development, since the proto Justice League (Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, and Edi Gathegi in a standout role as Mr. Terrific) previously refused to intervene in another country’s conflict, and faulted Superman for crossing national lines and messing around with politics. Their group stepping up is meant as a rousing, consciousness-raising finale beat where Superman’s supposed friends finally back him up. But does that emotional moment actually land?

Jesse: Specifically, the movie’s climax sets this up as a set of dire, conflicting priorities for Superman. Earlier in the movie, he explains that he intervened in Boravia because people were going to die during the invasion, and he strong-armed the country’s leader into backing off. But with Luthor’s help, the Borvavian government has returned to restart the invasion, just as the dimensional rift tears an evacuated Metropolis apart (and heads for another city). I haven’t seen Superman try to simultaneously deal with two conflicting disasters since he had to chase down two nukes at once in the original 1978 Superman movie. But the conflicting crisis points in this Superman wind up competing for screen time and emotional energy.

Jesse, the case against Superman’s Boravia finale: I’m not sure Gunn pays enough attention to the moral dilemma he hands to Superman here. While I love that this Superman lives in a world that already has plenty of metahumans, and appreciate the idea that the Justice Gang is inspired to step away from their apparent corporate confines to protect people in Superman’s stead, this moment also feels like a failure of a payoff. Gunn stages a scene where several children in Jarhanpur have put together a makeshift Superman flag, and as the invaders approach, they raise that flag and start chanting for Superman. The adults soon join in.

I found that faith in this character really moving. But it has almost no payoff, because Superman never arrives on the scene. He’s made an implicit promise to these people, but he’s held up by various fights in Metropolis. When the Justice Gang shows up to repel the invaders, the scene plays more comedic than emotional. It’s a fun moment, but focusing on those kids with the Superman flag, then not giving them Superman (or even, to my recollection, showing their reaction to the heroes who do show up) feels to me like a mystifying cop-out.

Tasha, the case for Superman’s Boravia finale: I could see calling this scene a cop-out in different ways, because it’s such a reversal from the Justice Gang’s previous stance, and we don’t ever really get a moment of vindication where the corporate heroes admit Superman was right, and clarify their motives. Which is only an issue because there are so many possible motives there! You could say they had a change of heart, given that telling shot of Hawkgirl emotionally reacting to the TV footage of the Jarhanpurians raising wooden rakes and fists against tanks and automatic weapons. You could just as easily infer that the Daily Planet’s scoop proving that Lex Luthor is behind the invasion gave the heroes freedom to act, since they’re just undoing an American citizen’s interference in international politics.

You could also suspect, given the little smirky end-sequence cameo from James Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn as Luthor rival Maxwell Lord, that Maxwell ordered the Gang to go bust up Luthor’s plans. Maxwell seems to be the organizer and financier behind the Justice Gang, though I’m curious how that came to encompass a Green Lantern, who got his powers from an intergalactic organization. Regardless, the Boravia scene is frustrating to me because we whisk by it so quickly that we don’t get any sense for what it means, either to the heroes taking their apparent first steps into international politics, or to Superman.

But I think the intended read here is that for whatever reason, Superman’s goodness and determination has inspired these heroes to step up and take a stand on behalf of the underdogs and the innocent of the world, or that he’s freed them from their own doubts about where they should intervene. They’re there on his behalf, certainly, and in his stead. Sure, that isn’t as clean symbolically as the kid with the Superman flag being saved by Superman himself, but does the idea that Supes’ beliefs have finally inspired other people to save lives have no resonance for you here?

Jesse: I do like the idea that Superman isn’t the only superhero in this world, as he’s so often been depicted in past movies, but rather the standard-bearer who can inspire other metahumans. (This also relieves some of the burden placed on regular humanity, who are often entreated to follow Superman’s example without, you know, being literally bulletproof.) And I agree that the Justice Gang’s turnabout, while handled incredibly quickly, scans well enough. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. Heck, in practice, Guy Gardner smacking down military aggressors and giving them the giant green finger made me grin.

But over on the Superman side, his dilemma is one aspect of an objectively packed movie that actually feels overstuffed to me. As a result, Boravia gets the short shrift. Gunn sets up a ticking clock on Superman’s decision to attend to the Metropolis problem first, knowing that people halfway across the globe are also counting on him. Then he lets time run down as our guy does some mega-punching in an environment that’s clearly supposed to be safe from collateral damage in a way that Man of Steel wasn’t. Again, some elements that are fine on paper.

But by having Superman practice intervention, then prioritize saving an evacuated Metropolis from a threat he doesn’t seem to know how to actually stop, Gunn threatens to make Superman’s stance feel more capricious than it did when Lois grilled him about it early on.

Maybe it’s because the big dimensional rift he’s supposedly needed to stop winds up looking more like an earthquake. Obviously, it’s supposed to be bigger than that, as one of Luthor’s minions vocally worries about destroying the whole Earth. But Gunn’s (thankful) aversion to apocalyptic Snyderisms means that the threat level never fully registers. Why is Superman punching his clone in a deserted city, except because that’s where Lex Luthor is, and Lex Luthor is the movie’s “real” bad guy? For the climax of a big superhero movie, that all feels a little arbitrary.

Did you feel at all manipulated by that flag business (a major image in the teaser trailer, too) when the movie abandons those kids even in subsequent Boravia? Or am I Helen Lovejoying here, asking why no one will think of the children?

Tasha: Hm, you definitely read the finale differently than I did, in terms of Superman’s priorities — I never saw him as making a choice to prioritize empty Metropolis over children’s lives in Jarhanpur. I saw him pretty continuously on the ropes against both the Engineer and the Superman clone, barely surviving and stuck mostly in reaction mode, until he figures out how to take Luthor out of the clone-fight. To the degree that I thought he chose that battle over Boravia, I felt it was because he was the only one who stood a chance against the clone, who would have gone through this version of the Justice Gang like a knife through tissue paper.

(I mean, probably except Metamorpho, with his Kryptonite powers, which Superman could have used against the clone if he’d known that was what he was fighting — but he didn’t figure that out until close to the end. And by that time, Metamorpho was off helping the Jarhanpurians, which seems like the priority Superman would have set.)

And enlisting the other metahumans to handle Boravia seems like a small master-stroke against Luthor, who’s usually three steps ahead, but apparently couldn’t foresee Superman seeking (and/or actually getting) help — not in escaping the pocket dimension, not in uncovering and exposing all Luthor’s schemes, and not in saving Jarhanpur. It’s allllmost as if Gunn is suggesting that the Achilles’ heel for powerful greedheads is that they can’t imagine other people acting out of altruism, loyalty, kindness, or mercy. This plays into the movie’s big political metaphors, which among other things, pointedly lampoon the short-sightedness and limitations of powerful men, and suggest that one person taking a stand can make a difference. (The S on Superman’s chest means “hope,” after all.) Though it sure helps if the one person taking a stand is a nigh-invulnerable superpowered alien with some extremely powerful friends.

Jesse: Maybe my reaction is more emotional than reasonable, because you’re right, Superman isn’t necessarily acting illogically, and I like the read that Luthor just doesn’t understand people aligning themselves with Superman for the greater good, rather than as a power move. (That even provides a decent explanation of why Superman’s triumphs throughout the movie feel a little obvious to us in the audience, yet still satisfying.)

Maybe it’s more that the Superman flag, and those kids rallying around it, hit me as such a strong image; a little shameless, maybe, but also like a lighter, more inspiring version of the bombastic imagery Snyder often employed when depicting the Man of Steel. With so many images of invasion and genocide flooding through social media, it’s maybe even in questionable taste to have kids in a victimized country calling out for Superman to save them, yet I completely fell for that what-if scenario.

That left me looking for a matching image, something that resolves that flag flapping in the wind, even if it’s not the expected descent of Superman from the heavens. What I got instead was Guy Gardner flipping the bird and Hawkgirl killing a guy. Fun, but it also made me feel in retrospect like that image was more of a temporary feint than I first realized – something Gunn couldn’t afford to slow down his zig-zagging narrative to actually address. Superman gets super-attached to the guy who gave him some falafel one time, so I just thought he might directly interact with the Boravians again.

Tasha: I think it’s fair to be disappointed that the kid who put his faith in Superman doesn’t get to hang out with Superman. At the same time, I feel like part of what Gunn is going for here is a message that no one should rely on one single godlike hero to swoop out of the sky and save them, and that collective action is more meaningful and important than depending on a single savior. That metaphorical message is muddied a little by the fact that the “collective action” also comes from folks with tremendous superpowers, capable of literally waving off tanks with a gesture, but I like the spirit of the idea here: One hero can’t be everywhere, so the fence-sitters should get off their butts and do something about the problems they see in the world.

Jesse: Your argument is fair and, in a world full of metahumans, quite pragmatic. “Pragmatic” is also not necessarily what I’m looking for in a Superman movie! But if I can imagine that at least Hawkgirl did some cool aerial stunts for those kids after she murdered the president of Boravia, maybe I can make my peace with this.

Tasha: Oof, the defense is going to recuse itself on this one. That is admittedly a pretty massive problem with the “Justice Gang, inspired by Superman, saves people in his name” framing — I’m positive the guy who wants to save a clumsy, brainless, destructive kaiju wouldn’t approve of metahumans casually murdering a world leader on his behalf. At least we don’t get a comedic reaction shot of the kid with the Superman flag watching that killing, wide-eyed, and pulling down his flag to scribble Superman’s symbol off it, and draw a Hawkgirl icon in its place.