The new Superman film is pro-immigrant, but it definitely isn't woke.

Sorry, culture warriors.

In 1939, William Patrick Hitler—Adolf Hitler’s estranged British-American nephew—published an article in Look magazine titled “Why I Hate My Uncle.” After the war, he quietly moved to Long Island and changed his name. He had four sons. And, reportedly, the four of them made a pact: none would have children. The Hitler bloodline would end with them.

It’s a strange, dark little story—one that sticks in the brain. A tale not just about history, but about inheritance. And more specifically: about rejecting it. What do you do when the legacy you're born into is one of domination, cruelty, or conquest? How far do you go to cut yourself off from it?

I thought of that story while watching James Gunn’s new Superman.

Before it even hit theaters, the film had set off the usual conservative warning flares. Gunn called it a political movie about immigration, and the right wing culture warriors dutifully freaked out: here come the woke liberals injecting their politics into our movies!

But here’s the twist: the movie isn’t woke at all. In fact, what it says about immigration is so un-woke that only one writer even seemed to notice. As Sonny Bunch put it in The Bulwark, it’s pro-immigration, yes, but it’s pro-immigration in a way that the modern left should find deeply problematic—because it doesn’t just welcome Superman. It asks him to become American. To reject his culture of origin. To assimilate completely. That’s not the left’s idea of inclusion. It’s something rarer, older, and—for most people—more intuitive.

We all know the story of Superman, right? Last son of Krypton, sent to Earth in a rocket ship by his parents before their planet explodes, lands in a cornfield in Kansas, et cetera? Jor-El, traditionally, has been a wise and just figure; he believes Clark can do the people of his new planet good, that he can help them find their way, serve as a symbol, and so on. And that is, at first, how he is portrayed in this film: The message to Kal-El was corrupted when his ship crashed, so Kal/Superman/Clark only had the first half or so, and that was the gist. Survive, thrive, do good, the usual.

Lex breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and one of his minions recovers the rest of the message; in it, we learn that Jor-El wanted to tell his son to conquer Earth, to kill as many people as it takes, to form breeding pools of Earth women and impregnate them so his invader seed can replace the Earthborn stock. The Great Kryptonian Replacement, if you will. I need to be absolutely clear: I am not exaggerating at all. This is literally the plot of the movie. I initially thought we were going to find out that this is a lie by Lex, that he mistranslated the message to slander Superman, but no. This is what Jor-El actually believes, leading to Lex ranting about Superman “grooming” humanity. Luckily for us, Clark Kent was raised by Ma and Pa Kent to be a good, decent, American boy, the sort who says things like “golly” and rescues squirrels from being crushed by giant monsters. So no laser-eyed grooming gangs here.

The movie doesn’t just welcome immigrants. It makes a case for what used to be called the melting pot—the idea that people can come from anywhere, but in order to truly belong, they have to melt. They have to be changed by the encounter. They have to become something new. The stew changes, too. It’s made better. But the new ingredients aren’t tungsten.

This version of Superman isn’t the last son of a noble utopia. He’s the accidental escapee of a dying, supremacist civilization. When the truth is finally revealed, we learn that his father, Jor-El, didn’t just send him to Earth to save him. He sent him with a mission: enslave all us pesky humans and make Krypton 2 on Earth!

In the other movies, Jor-El is good. Marlon Brando in the Donner films and Russel Crowe in the Snyderverse are good folks. Not in this one. In this one, Jor-El is a monster, and he deserves to die. Normally, this is a position given to the character of Zod, a Kryptonian who wanted very naughty things so Jor-El banished him to the Phantom Zone. But in this one, Superman’s dad wasn’t on the right side. He was basically Zod.

The only reason his evil plot didn’t work is that the message was garbled in transit—and the Kents got to Superman first.

Superman isn’t good because he’s Kryptonian. He’s good because he’s not Kryptonian. Because he was raised in Kansas, not Kandor. Because he grew up as Clark Kent, not Kal-El. In this version of the story, he isn’t pretending to be human. He is human. Or rather—he’s American. Not by blood, but by choice.

And that’s the core message that once animated the liberal identity in this country: that you can come from anywhere, be anyone, and still join the experiment. Because America wasn’t supposed to be a nation of blood. It was supposed to be a nation of belief.

It’s true that the word “assimilation” has fallen out of fashion, especially on the academic and activist left. Since the 1970s, critics have argued that the melting pot metaphor was coercive—that it demanded people erase their cultural identity in exchange for inclusion. But in modern times, this is a caricature. Yes, we did some deeply wrong things in the past, like forcing native americans to go to Christian boarding schools, but that isn’t the form of assimilation anyone has advocated for for decades.

It confuses cultural confidence with cultural cruelty. Asking immigrants to adopt our civic norms isn’t a hate crime—it’s how multiethnic societies hold together. The alternative isn’t liberation. It’s balkanization.

The best version of assimilation never demanded people abandon their food, their language, or their god. It asked only that they adopt a set of civic values: pluralism, individual rights, and equality under the law.

In other words: you can bring your spices. But you leave your caste system at the door.

And that principle isn’t just mythic—it’s written into federal law.

According to 8 US Code § 1401(f), any infant of unknown parentage found in the United States under the age of five is presumed to be a US citizen, unless proven otherwise before they turn 21. It’s a legal default that embodies the same moral default: we assume you belong—unless someone can prove otherwise.

Superman falls from the sky in a metal pod. No papers. No passport. No known origin. But he’s raised here, by Americans. And under US law, that makes him—a foundling—one of us. You don’t get more assimilationist than that.

And what’s more American than telling your fascist dad from the old world to go to hell?

That’s basically what Superman does. He discovers the truth of his Kryptonian legacy—and discards it! Not out of shame, but out of moral clarity. The people who raised him gave him better values. They gave him kindness. Self-restraint. A belief in helping people instead of ruling them. He chooses to identify not with his heritage, but with the people who actually showed up and raised him.

That’s the twist: he isn’t Kal-El pretending to be Clark Kent. He’s Clark Kent, rejecting Kal-El.

That’s not just a character note. It’s a philosophical position. It’s the opposite of blood essentialism. It’s nurture over nature. It’s moral agency over genetic determinism.

There’s a famous monologue in Kill Bill Vol. 2 where Bill says that Clark Kent is Superman’s critique of humanity—that Superman is the real identity, and Clark is the mask. This movie flips that entirely. Kal-El is the mask. Clark Kent is the truth.

Because in America—at least in theory—you are not defined by the sins of your father. You don’t have to be a shoemaker because your father was a shoemaker. You don’t have to be a supremacist because your father was a supremacist. You don’t have to carry forward the violence, or the ideology, or the bloodline. You can walk away from it. You can choose something else.

And that’s the most radical promise of the American experiment: You can be free—not just in speech, or in worship, or in trade. You can be free from your inheritance.

Superman doesn’t need to make a pact to end his bloodline. He just needs to believe in something better. And raise the next generation with those values.

That’s not assimilation as erasure. That’s assimilation as liberation.

That’s what makes the themes of this Superman story very American, pro-immigrant, and utterly unfashionable.

We’ve lost the ability to distinguish between confidence and cruelty. Expecting immigrants to adopt liberal civic norms used to be seen as a sign of belief in the system. Now it’s treated like an act of violence. But civic assimilation isn’t oppression. It’s how pluralistic societies function without falling apart.

At the emotional peak of the film, Superman shouts, “I am human! And that’s my greatest strength.” It’s a slightly confusing line if taken literally—he’s not human. (And his greatest strength is probably his ability to juggle meteors and stuff). He’s a humanoid alien from another galaxy. But it makes perfect sense when you hear it as subtext: “I am American.”

He’s not claiming biology. He’s claiming identity. And he’s doing it in exactly the way that defines the American idea at its best: not as a bloodline, but as a choice. He is saying, in effect: I was sent here to conquer you. But I chose to join you instead. I chose to become one of you. And that’s what makes me strong—not the planet I’m from, but the people I grew up with.

That line becomes even sharper when you remember an earlier moment in the film. After Superman voluntarily turns himself in to the government, believing in law and due process, he says, “I have rights.” The reply? “The court has determined those rights do not extend to extraterrestrial organisms.”

It’s a chilling moment—one that effectively denies him personhood. So when he later declares “I am human,” it’s not just a moment of emotional resolve. It’s a moral reversal. He’s reclaiming the very civic standing that was denied him. He’s saying: I earned my place here, not through blood, but through belief.

The film also makes it clear that not all aliens are created equal. At one point, Green Lantern confronts Superman and says, “You sound like exactly the kind of alien I’m supposed to protect this planet from.” And the movie doesn’t dispute that. It just shows that Superman passed the test. Which means: there’s a test. And not everyone passes it.

That’s what makes the movie so quietly out of step with elite discourse. The modern progressive left increasingly flirts with ideas like open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. Assimilation is treated as a dirty word, and even the concept of national belonging is viewed as a colonial imposition. But this film doesn’t just disagree with that worldview—it quietly obliterates it. It says, clearly: not all aliens are welcome. Some are threats. Belonging is conditional. And assimilation isn’t violence—it’s the thing that saves us from it.

He could’ve been a tyrant. But he melted. He believed. He passed the test. The rest is just paperwork.