Over the years, several brave actors have donned it red and blue costume like Supermanoften paying homage to what came before. For director James Gunn, however, his focus wasn't on making the Kryptonian he had in mind conform to the rest.

During a special launch of the brand new Superman trailer attended by the film's own Bill Brea, Gunn admitted that the legacy of what came before was on his mind, but it wasn't part of his agenda. "Because the truth for me is, I didn't come here to write a Superman movie and say, 'Oh, I want to honor this and honor that, and also be new and open to the fans.' These are the thoughts I had on the way of writing the script originally and on the way of shooting the film", as the director said and co-architect of the DC Universe reboot reminded. "But for me, I wanted to tell a story that excited me and moved me and felt authentic."

Even so, Gunn is still a fan of previous live-action iterations of Kal-El and hasn't completely ignored the hero's on-screen history. "Some of it was, and some of the things you see in the trailer here. But I knew I wanted to have a Superman that stayed true to his origins of being the ultimate good guy," Gunn said. That might sound like an old-fashioned description of the Man of Tomorrow, but in Gunn's eyes, he's much needed in our present.

As Jor-El says to Marlon Brando in Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman, “They can be great people, Kal-El; they want to be. They lack only light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them to you...my only son.' As central as that idea is to Man of Steel, however, there are certain Superman films that have skipped over it significantly. However, when it came to David Korensvet's iteration of the Big Blue Boy ScoutGunn made sure that this element was fundamental to the superhero and the film around him. “And I think it was a movie about kindness. It was a movie about being good," Gunn assured reporters at the press event.

He was also not alone in this way of thinking. According to the Guardians of the Galaxy director, he and the Superman cast discussed (and agreed to) this over dinner before filming began. "And at the end of the day, the world doesn't always seem to have so much good in it, and this movie should really be that." And for it to be real, that means we had to be good to each other," Gunn explained. "We had to be good with the team and it had to be so authentic." And so, for me, the film is about that more than anything else. You can find out just how good Superman really is when the movie hits theaters on July 11, 2025.