superman (2025), cm punk, and the corporate effort to define punk rock’s spirit
The biggest movie in the world asserts itself as a punk movie and uses its platform to define what it really means to be punk rock.
[Spoilers.]
Lois Lane is thinking about the past. She was a punk rock kid, she says. Superman responds that he likes punk, citing the Mighty Crabjoys [fictional]. Lois scoffs because that’s mainstream radio shit. They begin to measure their integrity against each other. (Bickering journalists in love??? Get off James L. Brooks’ jock!) She questions endlessly, he trusts implicitly. “You think everything and everyone is beautiful,” says Lois. With a significant look, Superman responds, “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.”
As the movie continued, it became clear that this scene was the emotional centerpiece of the film. The movie ends with both main characters pursuing their individual visions of the punk rock spirit. Lois outs Luthor as a criminal with the power of journalism (and the world instantly turns on him!) while Superman asks his defeated foe to seek his better angels. (Earlier in the movie, Lex shot a man in the head, tortured his social and political opponents, and attempted at least two genocides. But hey, find Christ and keep steppin’, my man!)
With the emotional weight of a giant corporate summer blockbuster contingent on that scene, Superman (2025) demands to be viewed as a punk movie. I don’t make the rules. Lois and Clark have a flirtatious punk credibility debate and Iggy Pop sings “I’m a punkrocker, yes I am” over the credits. My dad, who raised me on comic books, looked over and laughed at how audibly I was biting my tongue during every punk invocation. It is deeply fucking bewildering when corporations pay to mass-produce fiction that attempts to define the spirit of punk rock with the asterisk “remember that rich murderers are people, too.”
James Gunn is a former musician, and now he’s in a seat of power. “Superman will attempt to vouch for his punk bonafides,” he decided. “I’m going to co-write a pop punk end credits theme by Superman’s favorite fictional band,” and so it was. In an interview with Den of Geek, Gunn made a case for his line of logic here:
“Punk rock is going against the grain. We live in an age where everything is so mean and so ugly. Everyone is screaming at one another. Right now the most punk rock thing you can do is be kind, be raw, be open, look out for the person who needs looking out for, be unapologetically earnest. I think those are the things that are most rebellious. Being a goodie-goodie is what’s punk rock about him. He is those things, he is Pollyanna. He is old-fashioned, and aren’t we a little thirsty for people like that [because] there aren’t any anymore? They’ve all become mean.”
Gunn’s opening argument is that at punk’s defining root, it’s an opposite reaction to the most common action. This isn’t an uncommon portrayal of punk’s motivations, but challenging society’s norms alone is a straw man when it doesn’t exist in the correct context. On its own, “punk rock is going against the grain” is the premise of the Ian Rubbish sketch and a blog titled “How the MAGA movement became the new punk rock.”
The broader piece of Gunn’s argument, of course, holds water. Being kind, staying earnest, and building community are crucial to punk scenes across the world. That shit is real. Look out for each other. Brake for birds. Tip the punk house, buy the touring band’s merch, offer a floor to crash, and volunteer at the community-run spots.
But holy shit, compassion and empathy’s limits do not extend to billionaires and heads of state behind human rights atrocities. It was especially fucked to have “punk means compassion above all else” telegraphed to me by a media corporation’s mass-produced fiction for the second time in two weeks.
At the end of June, the trans and abortion and workers’ rights wrestling iconoclast CM Punk apologized to everyone (and that means everyone) in Saudi Arabia. He was there working a show for WWE. Here’s the short version of this whole thing: He’d written a tweet some years back talking shit about WWE’s absurdly lucrative “blood money” shows in Saudi. He also promised he’d never work one of those shows. Well, he works for WWE now and adores money.
I haven’t been in the tank for this guy in quite a while, but in CM Punk (2025) we again see the dual tenets of “go against the grain” and “be broadly kind.” He’s the self-proclaimed voice of the voiceless, a Chicago kid outcast who loved wrestling, comic books, and punk. He champions the right causes. On TV, he was given an ultimatum to agree to a match in Saudi Arabia. That’s the fiction presented by WWE: He wears the right shirts, he’s got fighting words for his scripted enemies, and he must apologize to Mohammed Bin Salman. Punk savored the boot and lost the match. His boss was incredibly proud.
When people in power are doing active harm, sacrificing your empathy and integrity to the demonstrably evil is a mistake. Point that shit where it matters.
Anyway, back to the No. 1 Movie in America: Lois Lane is a punk, journalism is important, and the Krypto scenes are extremely good.
