Dissecting The Alleged James Gunn’s Superman Leaks

James Gunn’s DC Movieverse is really not off to a good start, is it?

The above behind the scenes, released for Superman Day, focuses more on James Gunn and an overview of his plans than on Superman or the plot of the former Superman: Legacy. Some critics are even speculating that he dropped “Legacy” from the title just so we have to call it “James Gunn’s Superman” to tell it apart from every other Superman project. The serials are technically the only other project called Superman (or at least the first serial) while the 1988 cartoon from Ruby-Spears gets called Ruby Spears Superman for the same reason. Given that he put himself into the intro for Creature Commandos, replaced Krypto’s breed with that of his own dog, and the backstage video for Superman Day not really being about Superman or the movie directly, then throw in the news that test screenings haven’t done well and led to reshoots–a concept Marvel Studios has ruined by overusing what used to be a minor problem with movies in the past–and there is already low expectations.

However, I haven’t seen any real optimism killers, not even the altered costume, until a supposed leak by X-Twitter leak dropper My Time To Shine Hello, who put his latest leak about the movie’s plot behind subscription and I’m not spending money on that. So I’ll grab both Cosmic Book News and Bounding Into Comics and get the transcript that way. It’s not good news. It also might not be real. I’m not aware of his reputation with these leaks and the whole thing sounds really silly…but this is a guy with a strange sense of humor and we already got incel remakes of the Sons Of Themyscira in Creature Commandos so it could be accurate. I just don’t want to treat a rumor as fact, but since everyone else is buzzing about this I might as well add my two cents, if only as a warning not to do stuff like Superman versus cancel culture! Which might sound good until you remember a bit of Gunn’s past.

So let’s look at this transcript:

“In the movie, Superman is frustrated by social media backlash, with the hashtag #Super@#$% being mentioned several times as really getting under his skin. Meanwhile, in Lex’s interdimensional world, hundreds of mutant monkeys are shown typing furiously at keyboards, flooding social media with hate against Superman.”

As someone else mentioned, if this movie is terrible, the hashtag is already made for them, and unlike She-Hulk: Attorney At Law showrunner’s claims that this is on purpose, predicting what people would say about that show (maybe don’t prove them right, genius) won’t work here. Nobody would have said it if not for this plot, if it’s accurate.

Why are the monkey’s mutant? Because this would be Gunn pushing back against his own cancelation attempt after old tweets making light of pedophilia and similar distasteful “comedy” got him temporarily fired from the last Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. So he’s putting himself in Clark’s position, equating whatever situation Lex is using to attack Superman to making fun of sexual assault of children when Hollywood has that accusation hanging over its head even before the revelations of the recent special on the treatment of child stars at Nickelodeon, which included Josh Bell admitting he was assaulted by a staffer the system protected because he was gay. (The staffer, not Bell.) That’s years after Coreys Feldman and Haim (RIP), made similar claims about their time as child actors. The only reason Hollywood doesn’t get the same scorn as the Catholic Church is Hollywood has defenders who hate the Church. So Gunn is not exactly complaining against cancel culture, just responding to his own attempt admittedly by the same people who push back against the far-left cancel culture. Calling him out for being that disgusting I’m on the side of, though.

Gunn has refutes past rumors by this same leaker, but that prove nothing. I don’t know if those leaks were proven right, but I’ve seen directors and showrunners insist a leak was false only for it to be proven true. Remember Kevin Smith and Masters Of The Universe: Revelations? Everything Clownfish TV reported turned out to be true. That doesn’t mean the leaker is right, either. We’ve seen false leaks for The Rings Of Power just to mess with people, another way to keep things under wraps. We’ve also heard a similar rumor that Superman: James Gunn’s Legacy would also be an All-Star Superman style series of short adventures tied to a theme or event, and we don’t know if that’s true, either. (The comic maxiseries is one of his muses. Sadly, so is Tom Taylor’s Supergirl.) The rumor is easy to believe given Hollywood’s history and how many directors and creators will go after critics like this as far back as Shakespeare, at least. That means it predates Hollywood. It never ends well, but that doesn’t stop them.

All I know is the more I hear the less I like. Creature Commandos already wasn’t what I wanted from DC, but it didn’t have to be as long as it felt like DC in some form. I expect them to kick kids out–again, despite kids loving superheroes and kid readers being what made DC Comics–but Superman is a different thing. Kids love Superman and kids have at best gotten a Superman in name only anime tribute that ultimately wasn’t even released when kids could watch it. If this is the plot I want nothing to do with it, and if it isn’t the plot it’s not like the rest of what I’ve seen and heard is convincing me of anything positive. Superman is my favorite superhero, and nobody wants to see their favorite anything dragged through the trash like this. I guess we’ll see when the movie comes out, but I’ll wait for the reviewers I trust to tell me about it…or warn me about it.