Drew Pavlou's Unhinged Superman Review Dissected
He reveals himself to be an Antisemitic, deranged, unethical genocide apologist in his embarrassing long-form rant.
Despite being a casual fan of DC Comics, I’ve never really been big on Superman. I thought, “it’s easy to go out there and save the world when you can lift a building over your head, try doing that with no powers.” My tastes drifted more towards the powerless heroes, those reliant on their brains and martial arts skills like Batman and Mr. Terrific. Last week I finally got around to seeing the new Superman movie, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
You can tell director James Gunn is a fan of the comics. He keeps the characters very true to form while adding just enough of his own spice to make it interesting. His decision to feature the underutilized Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific really panned out. Audiences are tired of seeing the same faces over and over again. Featuring some of the deep cuts is appealing to both dedicated comic readers and the everyday moviegoer. A friend of mine in the industry commented that Gunn uses a bright, vivid style that mirrors the color and feel of the comics. I agree. The jokes are well timed and wisely laugh with the audience rather than mocking the source material.
The cast is fantastic. David Corenswet imbues the Man of Steel with the kind of big lug charm and sincerity needed to make such an overpowered hero both lovable and relatable. Nicholas Hoult is excellent as the Silicon Valley style oligarch Lex Luthor. He manages a good balance between menacing and immature, brilliant and needy, powerful and reckless. This is the best tech-bro villain since Oscar Isaac’s Nathan Bateman in Ex Machina.
Gunn is open that the movie is political. Indeed, it has progressive themes and allegories. This of course has led to it being torn up by anti-woke YouTube grifters and internet forums. Among this flotsam there was a review that stuck out. One so absolutely batshit that it demands a response. It comes from an interesting character, anti-CCP activist, irritating internet personality, and as of recently fascistic hasbarist Drew Pavlou. His deluded ravings are so wild and inane that it took me hours to meander through them. This pseudo-journalistic shit swamp can only generously be termed writing.
A warning, major spoilers for the plot of Superman ahead.
In the true style of a troll, Pavlou begins his misspelled rant with a flurry of uncalled for insults and wild accusations.
I just finished watching the new Superman movie and I was legitimately stunned by just how anti-Semitic it is.
I went into the film with low expectations because I saw various mentally ill leftist figures on social media crow about the film as a total cultural war victory against Israel, America, the West.
Shaun King wrote on Substack that ‘‘Outside of literally calling the two nations Israel and Palestine, it couldn’t be any clearer.’’
Hasan Piker called it ‘‘two hours and ten minutes of ‘‘FUCK ISRAEL.’’
So I bought a ticket with all this in mind and took a notepad to the screening so that I could write down my observations. These are detailed below.
One can imagine it. Let me set the scene. An Australian movie theatre, magic hour. Crowds have flocked to see the latest blockbuster. The place is filled to capacity and all are excited. We pan across a row of seats. Children’s eyes widen, lovers lean their heads on their partner’s shoulder, people lean back in their seats as they’re swept up in the action. At the end of the row there’s Drew, teeth clenched, pen nearly breaking as he furiously scribbles in his notebook. The bitterest moviegoer in his nation’s history.
There is nothing Antisemitic about this film. It is a wholesome adventure that takes aim at tyranny above all else. It takes a seriously internet poisoned brain to take such a harmless movie and turn it into some kind of hate manifesto, but Pavlou manages.
The primary villain in the new Superman film is Vasil Ghurkos, the leader of the fictional country of Boravia, which is very clearly supposed to represent Israel. Vasil Ghurkos happens to look almost exactly like David Ben-Gurion, the primary national founder and first prime minister of the State of Israel. He also happens to have the exact same accent as Benjamin Netanyahu. We first see him shrieking on American television, demanding American support for Boravia-Israel. He tells us that the ‘‘streets must be flooded with the blood of every Jarhanpuran-Palestinian.’’
Ghurkos-Netanyahu and Boravia-Israel want to invade the neighbouring country of Jarhanpur, which is very clearly supposed to represent Gaza. We are told in the film that Superman previously showed up during a previous bout of fighting between Boravia-Israel and Gaza-Jarhanpur to intervene on the side of the Palestinians, and that this drew the ire of the American and Israeli governments. Indeed, Superman tells his love interest Lois Lane that he flew the Netanyahu character out to the desert where he tortured him with a cactus to stop threatening the Palestinians, which I suppose represents a nice power fantasy for lefties.
Let’s be clear here. The primary villain of this movie is, you guessed it, Lex Luthor. In a Superman movie? Shocking, I know. Ghurkos is a secondary figure in the plot. We only see him in a few scenes. His character draws from many different authoritarian leaders, but Pavlou is obsessed with the idea that he is a representation of Israel.
Now, we are told in the film that Boravia and Jarhanpur are in Eastern Europe. But when we see footage of evil Boravian troops massing on the border with Jarhanpur, it is very clearly a desert setting. The civilians of Jarhanpur are very clearly Arab Muslims with the women all wearing hijabs. They hold sticks and stones against the might of the Boravian forces who are depicted as an all white colonial force. We later see a map of Jarhanpur in the film and the outlines of the state of Jarhanpur look very similar to Gaza.
My guess, for what its worth, is that the script probably originally called for Boravia to represent Russia, with Boravia’s leader representing Vladimir Putin. We see hints of this previous incarnation of the film buried beneath the final cut. For example, Ghurkos speaks a Slavic language and when he’s finally killed in the film’s triumphant final moments we see him dropped from a great height over a very clearly Slavic capital city that looks like Moscow, complete with the onion domes of Russian Orthodox architecture. So there are indeed some half-arsed references to Eastern Europe for plausible deniability, even though these references very clearly don’t make sense within the film’s universe.
The overall narrative of the film is so clearly related to the Israel-Palestine conflict that these references just end up feeling like a pentimento, ‘‘the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over by an artist.’’
That is because the film spends so much time trying to present Boravia-Israel as a parasitic ally lording over the United States. This is not a state hostile to America like Putin’s Russia, but instead an ally that corrupts and defiles America from within.
It’s true that there are shades of Putin here. Yes, Boravia is Slavicly coded. Their military uniforms have a Russian feel to them. Ghurkos’ false assertion that he is freeing Jarhanpur mirrors some of the Russian strongman’s lies about Ukraine. You can also see aspects of Trump; the profound narcissism, junk food indulgence, and the trail of toadies following him around. There are also elements of Netanyahu. I fail to see how this is a problem. The Israeli Prime Minister has overseen a genocide, and Ghurkos’ incitement against Jarhanpur mirrors the rhetoric of Israeli leadership. Netanyahu himself has repeatedly invoked the biblical Amalek, a show of genocidal intent. This is a man overseeing a state and military variously engaged in the suppression of free speech, imprisonment of dissidents, imposition of apartheid, construction of illegal settlements, and outright murder of children. All the while we’ve seen continuous excuses and obfuscations aired on cable news. If China did this Pavlou would have no problem condemning it. The fact he characterizes even mild criticism as Antisemitism shows the depths of his contempt for Palestinian life.
When Superman stuck Ghurkos up against a cactus it was hardly an act of torture. He scared him, roughed him up a bit sure. He was making a point without imposing serious physical or mental injury. The scene where he recounts this to Lois is an interesting one. She urges caution, consideration, geopolitical analysis. He has no capacity for that kind of bullshit. What Boravia was doing was wrong, so he acted. This is character development, it shows his inherent goodness and inability to tolerate injustice. It’s also a condemnation of the fence sitters who do nothing if they feel it’s unpopular and the mealy-mouthed enablers like Pavlou who try and claim the mantle of nuance and peace while justifying atrocity. I’m sure he felt very called out by this.
The scene where Boravia crosses over into Jarhanpur is the movie’s clearest analogy for Palestine. It invokes The Great March of Return that took place in 2018-19. That massive protest demanded the end of the siege of Gaza and the right for Palestinians to return to the homes that were taken from them in the Nakba. Hundreds were killed and thousands wounded after Israelis fired live rounds at unarmed demonstrators. Their Snipers were cruel enough to brag about blowing the knees off of demonstrators. Despite the massive violence inflicted upon them, Palestinians continued to demand their rights and stand firm in the face of oppression. The film captures that bravery and indominable spirit.
Pavlou is angry that the movie makes Israel out to be a colonizer. He should consult foundational Zionists Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Theodor Herzl who both characterized their project as a colonial one. That is the reality in The Levant today and is reflected in the film’s narrative. The movie does a good job of displaying the mismatch in armaments we currently see in Gaza. Israel, like Boravia, has heavy armor and modern weapons where Gaza and its analogue Jarhanpur does not. Gunn is reflecting on the power dynamics in a way that shows rather than tells. This is also an excellent commentary on something Zionists never want to discuss, the cowardly, bullying behavior of the Israeli state and its military.
I’ll give it to Pavlou and Hasan Piker that Ghurkos does look a bit like David Ben-Gurion. He also bears some resemblance to Mikhail Gorbachev. Even if he is somewhat modeled on the first Israeli Prime Minister, that’s completely legitimate. Ben-Gurion played a crucial role in the Nakba and was fine with wiping out villages in certain circumstances.
According to Al Jazeera,
Documents of Operation Dani unearthed from Israeli state and local kibbutz archives, and the writings of Israeli military commanders in al-Ramla and Lydda in July 1948, demonstrate beyond doubt that the expulsions from the two towns were part of a military plan, in part to remove the “obstacle” of an Arab population on the main route between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
(Zionist leaders had long spoken of securing the road from attacks from on Jewish convoys.)
Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister who was an army major during Operation Dani, wrote that David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist leader and first Israeli prime minister, ordered the expulsions.
Rabin’s commander, Yigal Allon, described the military advantages of those expulsions in a 1948 Israeli military journal. And a Na’an kibbutz leader, Israel Galili B, who, like some other early Israelis had opposed the expulsions, wrote that Ben-Gurion had ordered the Israeli soldiers to “evacuate al-Ramla”.
For someone who styles himself as a human rights advocate Pavlou seems suspiciously unwilling to criticize leaders who engaged in ethnic cleansing.
He continues,
Their behavior in the film mirrors all the most vicious anti-Semitic caricatures and conspiracy theories about the Israeli-American alliance. Boravia-Israel basically dominates and lords over America, wantonly slaughtering random American civilians and blowing up New York City skyscrapers with constant false flag terrorist attacks.
So the thesis of the film is essentially that America is dominated by Z.O.G. (Zionist Occupied Government). There is a hidden cabal of cackling Jews who run the government and control the country through the military industrial complex and a corrupt network of media oligarchs who propagandise and brainwash the American population into submission to Boravia-Israel.
And it is not enough for the film that Boravia/Israel simply lords over the Americans. The Boravian-Israeli government actually operates Z.O.G. across multiple different dimensions. They operate ‘‘pocket dimensions’’ where they hold and torture their enemies in chains while plotting to control the entire cosmos. These ‘‘pocket dimensions’’ create black holes that threaten the stability of the entire cosmos and indeed the very space-time continuum. So the film portrays Z.O.G. as a cosmic, supernatural force that threatens all living things in the universe.
We may be able to forgive Pavlou his misspellings, but not his lies. This is a deliberate distortion of the plot of the film. The big bad is Luthor. He is clearly modeled on the tech-bro, Silicon Valley fascist archetype. His Yarvinesque goal, become a king. For all his money and power, Lex craves affection and despises anyone who gets it instead of him. He’s an ultimate narcissist who thinks he’s entitled to rule while his flunkies believe he’ll create some kind of techno-utopia. Shaun King correctly points out that there are shades of Musk and Thiel here. Ultimately, Lex is the one in control not Ghurkos.
This is emphasized time and again. Superman’s rival, The Boravian Hammer, is actually a clone of Clark Kent created by Luthor. The pocket universe is his creation and domain as well. Ghurkos has access through his office, but he’s clearly a guest there. At one point Lex condescendingly offers him a donut which the bumbling dictator gladly accepts. You know he’s the junior partner, a mere cat’s paw for the real bad guy. Luthor is in no way explicitly or implicitly Jewish, and while Ghurkos has some similarities to Netanyahu and Ben-Gurion, he is likewise not made out to be Jewish. How then does this model a Z.O.G conspiracy where Jews are in control of the United States? It doesn’t.
As the film reaches its climax, Lex Luthor and Z.O.G. are willing to legitimately exterminate humanity and the entire universe with a black hole purely so as to stop Superman from resisting the Boravian-Israeli invasion of Burhanpur-Gaza.
This is where the film devolves into frankly Goebbels-tier racism, where the Yahudi/Jews/Zionists threaten the entire universe as a kind of interdimensional, supernatural pestilence. I suppose that it is probably relevant here that the director James Gunn once joked about Jews and ovens.
The very first scene, for example, depicts a Boravian-Israeli super-villain blowing up skyscrapers in Manhattan. Throughout the film, the Boravian-Israelis just constantly blow up and incinerate dozens of towering skyscrapers across New York City. A very clear wink and nod to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting the Jews as the real perpetrators of the September 11 attacks.
Luthor, not Ghurkos, activates the dimensional rift/black hole to try and coax Superman out of hiding after he escapes the pocket universe. Yes, Luthor wants his kingdom, but he equally wants to destroy Superman who he sees as a lesser, foreign being taking the admiration that is rightfully his. Luthor’s reckless use of the rift mirrors the real-world rush to develop dangerous technologies, like AI, without proper oversight or due consideration for the consequences.
Who, pray tell, serves as this “supernatural pestilence” Pavlou invokes. The people of Boravia aren’t set up for criticism. Their leader is, but criticizing a dictator is a far cry from portraying a people as a contagion. Pavlou’s logic would lead us to believe the entire supervillain trope is Antisemitic as apparently portraying a powerful bad actor as malevolent is “Goebbels-tier racism.”
Keep in mind It’s Lex controlling The Boravian Hammer, not Ghurkos. How then does a U.S. based evil CEO controlling a metahuman antagonist mirror Antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories? Even given Pavlou’s assumptions that makes no sense. There is no scene that invokes the Twin Towers, no visuals which remind one of that day. Buildings fall sideways like dominos not straight down. There is no fire or skyscraper evacuation which one could say with any honesty reminds them of the terrorist attack. Superman fights in Metropolis three times (again, shocking). Such city fights are a common trope in the genre. They have featured in so many movies that you’d be hard pressed to name them all. Are they all invoking 9/11? It’s such a standard thing that the film parodies it in a scene where Clark and Lois talk in a dark apartment against the beautiful colors of an apparently routine battle between a giant monster and The Justice Gang off in the distance.
Pavlou’s constant attempts to paint Luthor as Jewish are incredibly problematic to say the least. He is literally pointing at a rich villain and with no evidence going, “look, a Jew!” This is overtly Antisemitic and given his recent veneration of a strongman dictator, anti-Communist crackdowns, and right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see old Drew say the 14 words.
And the blood libel does not stop there. At one point the evil stand-in for Ben-Gurion/Netanyahu abducts a random Arab street car vendor named Malik from the streets of New York City and has Luther execute him as punishment for giving Superman some Halal food.
I think Malik is actually the very first human character we are introduced to in the film, depicted helping a battered and severely injured Superman up from a crater. He tells Superman ‘’I gave you free falafel.’’ What a nice man, we all think.
This is a pure lie. Ghurkos doesn’t abduct Malik, Luthor does. He’s also from Metropolis, a stand in for New York of course, but at least be accurate. He isn’t executed as punishment for giving Superman food. Malik is brought in because Luthor knows he showed Superman kindness on at least two occasions. Lex demands Superman confess to being an evil alien invader and shoots Malik when he refuses to comply. This was meant to torture Superman by exploiting his kindness and inherent decency. Clark Kent is devastated by this, for he is the inverse of Luthor. Despite all his power, he sees everyone as having value. He likes and respects the people around him. We see Malik, kind and brave, as Superman sees him. He empathizes so strongly with Malik for the same reason he wouldn’t sit back and watch Jarhanpur get invaded. He’s a hero and a good man.
Over and over again we are bombarded with the message that BORAVIA-ISRAEL and the Z.O.G. AMERIKKKAN MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX are EVIL. We watch the Secretary of Defence plot with Lex Luthor to kill Superman for Israel. We are pressed over and over again with the message that these ties are CORRUPT and sealed in blood.
The all caps is telling. Pavlou is trying to scream through the screen. He is so enraged and acidic that properly crafted sentences just won’t do. He is angry and wants you to be too. There is something to be gleaned from this. Pavlou is a creature of social media. Particularly that Nazi hellscape Twitter (now X). His terminally online lifestyle has bled into his prose. On a site like that it’s all about getting attention. You want to be the loudest, rudest provocatuer you can be. It’s all about hyperbole and pissing people off. He thinks he’s satirizing anti-imperialists by putting the three k’s in American, but he’s just showing us all how badly he needs to touch grass.
For the record, this is another lie about the plot. The Secretary of Defense, while not a big Superman fan, is initially skeptical of Luthor as well. He only takes Lex’s side when the billionaire finds the second, evil half of the message that Superman’s Kryptonian parents sent with him to Earth. The SecDef doesn’t want to take Superman out for Boravia, but because he sees him as a national security threat.
For example, reporters tell us in the film that Boravia has purchased $80 billion in arms from Luther Corp and that Luther Corp in turn lobbies for Boravia.
We are then told that Boravia-Israel had only paid for $1.5 billion of the $80 billion in arms, promising Luther half of Gaza in return for the rest.
‘‘Why does he need a desert?’’ one character asks. ‘‘Because it has great resource deposits,’’ comes the reply. A direct mirror of infantile leftist materialist analyst claims that Israel and America are only in Gaza for the desert strip’s plentiful sand deposits or something.
Luther actually details his evil Z.O.G. plans very extensively for Superman, and by extension, the viewer. He boasts of his interdimensional bot farms where literal monkeys work on treadmills 24/7 to smear Superman with evil Hasbara propaganda.
Boravia has a very comfortable relationship with corporate America and the defense sector. This is analogous to companies and dictatorships throughout the Cold War, from United Fruit in Guatemala to the massive military support American corporations provide Israel today. Gunn is spot on here.
Pavlou is incredibly unethical in his review. He continually takes the dialogue out of context. In the scene where the reporters figure out Luthor’s motives they immediately make clear that his main goal is not resource deposits but having his own kingdom. Besides, almost all leftists will tell you the Gaza Genocide is not about obtaining resources, although both Trump and prominent Israelis have hinted at exploiting Gaza as beachfront real estate. It’s in actuality a vengeance infused, racist campaign of slaughter. The latest chapter in a decades long project of settler colonialism whose end goal is the destruction of the Palestinian People and their aspirations for statehood.
As for the monkeys, Gunn has openly said he’s not a fan of online discourse. Information warfare, troll farms, and other forms of politically motivated internet manipulation are common nowadays. Bad actors in Israel use it, so do those in Russia, China, and India. Gunn is commenting on the modern state of the web, not engaging in thinly disguised Antisemitism.
As Shaun King correctly notes in his mentally ill Substack post about the movie, their cartoonishly evil propaganda smears against Superman are supposed to mirror contemporary right wing racist Islamophobic rhetoric today. Ben-Gurion/Netanyahu accuses Superman of wanting to start a harem of women to ‘‘outbreed’’ Americans and subjugate them: ‘‘WHO KNOWS HOW LARGE HIS HAREM IS ALREADY?’’1
Lex Luthor accuses Superman of ‘‘'GROOMING US’’ to secretly take over America. The allusion to an Oriental style harem and the focus on ‘‘GROOMING’’ and ‘‘OUTBREEDING’’ is supposed to present a caricature of anybody critical of Islamic extremism in Europe. I mean the reference to ‘‘GROOMING’’ is extremely on the nose in light of the incendiary debate over grooming gangs in Britain.
We watch as he is dehumanised. ‘‘Superman is not a man, he’s an it, an alien,’’ Luther pronounces. “I’ve sacrificed my own humanity to help get rid of it.”
Their evil is just blatantly cartoonish and stupid.
Far from being stupid, this is actually very insightful. An obsession of the modern far-right is demographics. They hold a near apocalyptic fear of white people becoming a demographic minority. This is the basis of the white replacement conspiracy theories that have led to multiple mass shootings. These ideas are so common in reactionary circles that high ranking Trump Administration official Stephen Miller encouraged people to read The Camp of the Saints, a seminal text among adherents.
The “grooming” stuff mirrors the right-wing fearmongering that Muslim immigrant men in Europe are dangerous perverts as well as the constant rhetorical assault on Transgender Rights. The current, false assertions that Trans people are manipulating children are the latest iteration of the old, homophobic accusation that LGBTQ people “converting” kids.
Luthor’s derision of Superman as, “an it, an alien,” is right out of the current anti-immigrant influencer playbook. Trump’s first campaign started with him stereotyping immigrants as rapists and criminals. Today there are open assertions from prominent figures that immigrants do not have broad based rights like others do. This line of thinking has led to the current moment where the U.S. Government is operating concentration camps and practicing rendition under the banner of hardcore, nativist politics. The film’s inclusion of the word “it” is interesting. This is a common insult used to mock Transgender people and pronouns. I think Gunn is making an intelligent connection here. Systems and ideologies of oppression are interlinked. The idea that some people are lesser leads to the notion that many are. Think of all the groups persecuted under the Nazis, colonialism, and over the course of American history. Gunn is pointing out that an injustice towards one is an injustice towards all. Fascism and hate are cancers, they spread and consume. This is a very egalitarian movie, and I’m not surprised that pisses Pavlou off.
I mean, just compare this buffoonery to the fascinating villains of the Nolan Batman series. Heath Ledger’s Joker, Tom Hardy’s Bane. These were genuinely fascinating characters with fascinating backstories and tortured motivations. Remember Joker’s explanation of his scars?
Heath Ledger’s Joker offers two completely contradictory stories - one relating to an abusive father, ‘‘a drinker, a fiend’’ who mutilates his own child, another relating to a beautiful wife who ‘‘gambles and gets in deep with the sharks.’’ They carve her face and drive him to insanity.
Decades have passed since Heath Ledger’s Joker. People are still fascinated by him. They still debate his motivations and the source of his downfall into insanity and evil.
Compare this to the cartoon retarded clowns of this new Superhero film. What are their motivations? UMMM, SO WE ARE WHITE, AND UMMM WE ARE WHITE COLONISERS, AND UMMM WE HATE BROWN PEOPLE AND MUSLIMS, AND UMMM WE’RE EVIL, YEAH. You don’t exactly have to be a detective, for fuck sake. It’s just twelve year old shit.
This is all supposed to present a caricature of Israeli hasbara and thereby mock anybody in the real world who is critical of Hamas or Islamic extremism more generally.
The film basically seems to revel in ramming this leftist messaging down our throats.
Ledger’s joker is a fascinating villain, but he’s an apolitical one. He’s more a force of pure human evil, a tornado of psychotic destruction. Alfred, Batman’s trusted butler, hits the nail on the head when he says, “some people just want to watch the world burn.” Ledger gives a grand performance bringing this non-ideological villain to life.
The lesser, third installment of Nolan’s Batman Series brings rich oligarchs and Occupy style revolutionaries in for near equal criticism. The police and a Batman who is guardian of the system serve as the good guys. They protect a flawed but ultimately best of all possible worlds Gotham. This is centrist, capitalistic, and deferential to violent institutions of power. No wonder Pavlou likes it.
Superman is unapologetically critical of the military-industrial complex, ICE, white supremacy, nativism, imperialism, Islamophobia, the Gaza Genocide, and Silicon Valley. It does so in a way that doesn’t sacrifice character development or snappy pacing. An exercise in good writing and directing which has translated into financial and critical success. Pavlou is apoplectic such a politically left-of-center film has taken off while getting its message out. This is where he drops the facade.
He pivots to that lodestar of angry, reactionary online culture commentators, the politics of white aggrievement. The fact he sees an anti-white screed in this movie that has a white, heterosexual, traditionally handsome Kansas farm boy as its lead makes me think he is to dim to be trusted with a pack of matches. Superman’s white, rural family is portrayed as a loving source of his pristine morality. The supporting cast, while featuring prominent Black and Latinx characters, is still majority white. Still, we are subjected to his all caps, profanity laced, ableism infused rant. One can see him typing that and punching a hole through his drywall. Somehow, he jumps from this to the notion that the ideas of the film are an endorsement of Hamas. It’s among the most asinine things I’ve ever had the displeasure of slogging through.
Luther attacks Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in an assault that basically inverts October 7. They behead and decapitate Superman’s friendly robots and try to murder his dog, which inverts the actual history of October 7 where Hamas fighters filmed themselves executing family pets and attempting to behead Thai migrant workers while screaming ‘’YAHUD! YAHUD! YAHUD!’’
They then have Superman arrested by ICE on false grounds and thrown into a heavily militarised private prison that looks a lot like El Salvador’s CECOT. We are told that governments around the world farm out their political prisoners to this black site. A media report helpfully clarifies for us viewers that the government can only do this because Superman was stripped of all legal and human rights by a Supreme Court decision that denied human rights to illegal aliens. WOW! It is just like Le Real Life™️.
Here Pavlou manages the strange feat of turning a small cohort of supervillains attacking an ice fortress full of robots and a flying dog into a reenactment of Oct. 7. It is impossible for a good faith person to see this scene as anything other than a run of the mill, if well executed, superhero action sequence. Why does this man keep insisting a tech overlord, a LatinX special forces operative turned metahuman villain, and a supe clone are somehow representative of the Jewish people. If Pavlou sees power and evil on screen and his mind goes right to “Jews!” than he may be on the same wavelength as the tiki torch carrying swastika set. Given his recent tweets about murdering German Communists, accusations of fascism are not misplaced.
Yes, the prison clearly represents CECOT. Again, bravo James Gunn. That sore on the face of this planet is a human rights catastrophe run by a right-wing dictator. The U.S. has renditioned people there in one of the greatest domestic violations of civil and human rights of the past 50 years. No one deserves to have their human rights violated even if they are a criminal, but the fact is many sent there are not. Private companies are financially benefitting from this crackdown on immigrants just as Lex benefits from the interdimensional prison. Private prisons have a long and ignoble record of abuse, as do private immigration detention facilities. The Supreme Court recently allowed the Federal Government to deport immigrants to third countries with which they have no connection. A stunning violation of rights that lays bare the courts anti-immigrant nature. How then is Gunn off base to show similar dynamics at play in the DC Cinematic Universe?
Given Pavlou’s staunch Zionism, I can see why he wouldn’t want to bring this up, but Lex’s interdimensional prison also mirrors those the Israeli’s have for Palestinians. These facilities house political prisoners and children tried illegally before military courts. At the notorious Sde Teiman, prisoners regular face torture, beatings, and rape. When video emerged of an Israeli guard sexually assaulting a prisoner, he became a media star and was vociferously defended by a pro-rape member of the Knesset.
Luthor’s prison could represent so many places, the jails in Russia where dissidents are kept, reeducation camps for the Uyghurs in China, Assad’s torture chambers and the notorious prisons of the Myanmar Junta. If Pavlou was sincere in his commitment to anti-authoritarian, rights centered politics he’d applaud the film. His sarcastic, Twitter style dismissal shows he is a fraud who cares about human dignity only in so far as it serves his pet political projects.
Honestly the movie actually has really funny Third Worldist themes.
Superman wants to help the Palestinians-Jarhanpurans because he sees himself as an anti-imperialist survivor of genocide and colonisation - he talks about the destruction of his home planet, his history, his culture. He denounces Boravia-Israel’s attempts at ‘‘regime change,’’ mocks their claims of bringing freedom to the Burhanpurans. He literally says: ‘‘Jarhanpur is not perfect, but that doesn’t given Boravia the right to invade … Boravia is not well intentioned, they aren’t freeing the Jarhanpurans.’’ Why do we need to base Superman off fucking Noam Chomsky? I don’t know. All art and creative endevour must be subordinated to the Omnicause for some unclear reason.
I don’t think he knows what “Third Worldist” means. I assume he’s referencing the leftist idea that anti-imperialism is critical to revolutionary struggle and the populace of the Third world forms the global proletariat where those living in the imperial core all or mostly make up a labor aristocracy. Obviously, this is not what the film is getting at despite its sympathy for Gaza. If it were, it wouldn’t show so many middle-class Americans in such a positive light. Pavlou’s contempt for anyone outside the First World just drips off him. He said Third World here with a hard R.
Superman’s hard background likely inspires his sympathy for oppressed people. That isn’t the whole story though. His ultimate goodness just doesn’t allow him to tolerate any injustice or backfill inaction with intellectual justifications. He knows Boravia is in the wrong and he does what he needs to do to stop them. His denunciations of that nation could work equally well for Putin’s invasion Ukraine, the U.S. in the Cold War, Britain’s colonial ventures, and yes Israel today. Apparently portraying large, powerful colonizers as aggressive and dishonest is pure Chomsky? What is he on about? It’s history. How this forms some kind of “Omnicause” in a U.S. entertainment sector thick with pro-Israel sentiment and U.S. military propaganda is beyond me.
Superman ultimately breaks out of CECOT in the film. The final boss fight takes place inside a baseball stadium, an implicit stand for American identity against the insidious forces of the Yahudi.
Luther and the AmeriKKKan military industrial complex work in conjunction with the Yahud to try and defeat Superman inside this baseball stadium by covering him with a scary black goo substance that seeps over his blue Aryan eyes and steals them away from him.
Perhaps director James Gunn was inspired by Zahra's Blue Eyes, the Iranian state television series which centers on a Jewish plot to steal the eyes of Palestinian children in the West Bank. Honestly, thank you James for giving voice to the oppressed peoples of the Global South and letting the subaltern speak. We all know that the perfidious Yahudi are always trying to steal the blue eyes of their racial superiors, and it is important we emphasise this to the world in top-tier Hollywood AAA productions.
The final fight takes place all over Metropolis. The climax happens in the crack in the Earth opened by the interdimensional rift not the sports field. The audience knows Superman represents all that is good about Metropolis and of his traditional role upholding, “truth, justice, and the American way.” This is where we find the symbolism of the confrontation in the baseball stadium. It is America and Metropolis at war with their own worst elements, not Jews, but hateful, oligarchical power. It also makes for good visuals, and that’s a big part of propulsive action blockbusters.
Although Luthor’s henchmen are contracted to the military after Lex turned the government against Superman, they are pretty much his instrument alone. I suppose Drew is so Twitter addled that he can’t help but mocking the bombast of twitter feuds with the three k’s again. No man has ever needed to go on a phone free hike so badly.
This section of his screed is some of his most overtly fascistic and Antisemitic. The Engineer is attacking Superman’s eyes so she can blind him and kill him by filling his lungs with nanites. Drew’s crypto-fascistic, Antisemitic gaze only allows him to see a Jewish villain blinding an Aryan. Gunn has openly said he’s inspired by Star Wars. This scene probably took a bit from Han Solo shooting blind in Return of the Jedi and certainly has nothing to do with Pavlou’s weird, outlandish theories. His ravings about this mirroring an Iranian television series are baseless, QAnonesque conspiracy nonsense. In his rush to mock the Global South he’s just shown what a bigoted fool he is. I can only speculate his internet addiction is what keeps him from feeling the natural shame publishing such a humiliating piece should bring.
The movie ends with Netanyahu killed and Luther arrested and paraded before television cameras as an agent of ZOG, a ‘‘traitor,’’ a ‘‘foreign agent.’’ Leftist power fantasies fulfilled. We see a figure on the television declare that the one thing both liberals and conservatives can agree on is that Lex Luther is the devil. Tucker-DSA red-brown alliance against Israel COMPLETE.
Gunn includes like one single throwaway line near the end of the film to try refute allegations that he basically made a groyper movie. Lex Luther, the stand in for the American military industrial complex, says - “I’m not controlled by Israel, I actually made the conflict to distract everyone.’’ But again this doesn’t make sense against the backdrop of the entire rest of the film which consistently portrays him and AmeriKKKa as slaves to the Yahudi.
I guess I should conclude by noting that the Superman character is played by a Jewish guy, but who even really cares considering the entire movie is basically a groyper fantasy about Z.O.G. and the interdimensional Zionist threat.
Seriously, what a psychotic clown show. Don’t people want to be treated like adults? Who actually wants this slop?
Was Pavlou not expecting Luthor to be defeated? Was he not expecting the public to turn on him? Again, Luthor is the central figure in all the film’s evil plots, and he isn’t coded as Jewish or Israeli. The Boravian government and Ghurkos are his lackeys. This in no way resembles a Z.O.G theory, something an observant Twitter user pointed out. Pavlou just waives it off by doubling down on his foolishness. His entire Z.OG. theory of the movie is explicitly debunked by the dialogue, but he dismisses it with the absurd notion that Luthor and the U.S. are, “slaves to the Yahudi.”
Pavlou seems to think holding supervillains accountable at the end is a “leftist power” fantasy and a “red-brown alliance,” despite the fact it is just basic morality and storytelling.
Superman is getting fantastic reviews as it rakes in cash at the box office. You can tell this just boils Pavlou’s blood. Far from a “groyper movie,” it is a well made popcorn flick with a decent message. The only one mirroring the groypers here is Pavlou with his nonsensical conspiracy theories, deliberate misreadings, white resentment, Islamophobia, and bizarre Antisemitism. His piece has to be one of the worst film reviews in recent memory, a testament to the intellectually bankruptcy of moderates and the brain-frying powers of social media. I highly recommend you go see the film. Don’t be like Drew Pavlou, experience it with joy, not incoherent, stupefied rage.