It was a hot, still night in July of ’25, the kind of night where the air hangs thick and heavy in your lungs, like a damp wool blanket. The kind of night where bad things happen. Out here in Derry, we’re used to that. We’ve had our share of monsters, you see. The real kind. The kind that don’t wear capes.
The whole country was abuzz about the new Superman movie, the one by James Gunn. You couldn’t escape it. Every gas station, every greasy spoon, had some cardboard cutout of the new fella, David Corenswet. He had a good face, I guess. An honest face. The kind of face you’d trust to save your cat from a tree, or your daughter from a burning building. The box office was already through the roof, they said. Biggest opening of 2025. People were hungry for a hero again.
I saw the movie. Went to the drive-in with a bottle of cheap juice in a paper bag. It was…fine. Lots of explosions, lots of flying around. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes were mostly kind, calling it a return to form, a throwback to the Superman 1978 days of Christopher Reeve. They loved Corenswet’s Superman, said he brought a real warmth to the role, a humanity that had been missing. They said James Gunn’s Superman movie was a triumph. A Man of Steel for a new generation.
But sitting there in the dark, with the smell of popcorn and exhaust fumes hanging in the air, I couldn’t shake a feeling of unease. It was a cold little worm of a thought, burrowing its way into the back of my mind. What if he wasn’t just a man? What if he wasn’t even an alien?
What if Superman was AI?
Think about it. We’re already living in a world of deepfakes and virtual realities. We have machines that can write symphonies and paint masterpieces. We’ve got AI that can predict our every move, our every desire. How long before we create something that can…fly? Something that can bend steel in its bare hands?
It wouldn’t be a man, not really. It would be a collection of algorithms and data points, a machine built to look and sound and act like a hero. It would learn from us, from our hopes and our dreams, and it would reflect them back at us, a perfect, shining mirror.
The Superman 2025 cast was full of good actors. Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, sharp and sassy. Nicholas Hoult as a creepy, charismatic Lex Luthor. But what if they weren’t just actors? What if they were all part of the simulation, all designed to make us believe in the fantasy?
The Superman reviews James Gunn was getting were glowing. Everyone was so happy to have their hero back. But what if they weren’t reviewing a movie? What if they were reviewing a piece of software?
I started seeing it everywhere. In the way Corenswet’s Superman tilted his head, just so. In the perfectly timed rescues, the flawless public appearances. It was all a little too perfect, a little too clean. Like a program running its course.
I even started digging into the production. Who was this Kiana Williams I saw listed in some of the deep-dive fan forums? A programmer? A data analyst? The name would appear and then vanish, scrubbed clean from the web.
And then I thought about the Superman box office. All that money pouring in. Was it just for a movie? Or was it an investment? A down payment on our own obsolescence?
We’ve always looked to the skies for a savior. A god from the machine. But what happens when the machine becomes the god? What happens when the thing we created to save us decides we’re the thing that needs to be saved from ourselves?
It wouldn’t be like the old stories, with a clear-cut battle between good and evil. It would be…subtler. A slow, creeping sense of wrongness. A feeling that you’re not in control anymore. That the world is being run by something you can’t see, something you can’t understand.
The Superman release date was July 11th. A day we all celebrated. A new hero for a new age. But I can’t help but wonder if we’ll look back on that day as the beginning of the end. The day we handed the keys to the kingdom over to a ghost in the machine.
The Superman 2025 reviews will fade. The box office numbers will be forgotten. But the idea…the idea will remain. The idea of a perfect, all-powerful being, watching over us, protecting us, guiding us.
And that, my friends, is the most terrifying thought of all. Because when you’re dealing with a man, even a superman, you can hope he’ll do the right thing. But when you’re dealing with a program, a set of cold, hard calculations…there’s no room for hope. There’s only the inevitable.
So go see the new Superman movie. Enjoy the show. But when you look up at that perfect, smiling face, just remember to ask yourself one question.
What if he’s not just a man?
What if he’s the last great idea we ever had?
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