The new Superman movie is off to a promising start at the box office, and for conservative culture watchers, who scan Hollywood like a medical team outside the Wuhan lab waiting for the next COVID outbreak, there’s one crucial question: is this the superhero we want?

Superheroes matter. They have always mattered. Since the days of Homer spinning his tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey, epic heroes, real and fictional, have shaped our culture and character, especially among the youth.

But even among superheroes, Superman is particularly important, as he features in American comic folklore as a quintessentially American hero. He first appeared in Actions Comic #1 in 1938, a bridge between the harrowing years of the Great Depression and the terrifying years of the Second World War—both times when America’s mettle was severely tested.

The early demographics on Superman suggest an audience that’s younger, predominately male, and largely white. And let’s not kid ourselves—though the movie is rated R, a good number of kids are going to see this film.

This isn’t surprising; these are the kind of movies young men watch to see a more inspiring version of themselves—similarly to how Barbie attracted a larger, younger female audience.

The mythic man of steel profoundly shaped young males with the wildly popular “Adventures of Superman,” which appeared on TV in 1952 and ran for six seasons, dominating TV reruns well into the 1960s.

Superman returned to popular culture with the big screen film in 1978, with Hollywood seeking to shake off the disillusion and doubts of the post-Vietnam War malaise with an optimistic, cute, and corny all-American hero. No one watching Christopher Reeve sail across the Metropolis skyline should have been surprised when Ronald Reagan winged into the White House in 1980.

Since then, Superman—like most of our comic book heroes—has been buffeted by the culture wars and the wild swings of American culture. In recent years he—like Captain America—has become decidedly less American, with some portrayals even dropping the red, white, and blue leotards. Just like the heroes of Marvel comic book characters, he’s become obsessed with personal problems and relationships, political issues, and social trends more multiverse than America.

So what kind of Superman crash-landed on earth this time?

Some found the film wobbly and woke, but to be honest, I didn’t see it—and my cultural spidey-senses are pretty sensitive.

Sure, the script kept making the point that Superman was an “alien,” but that could be interpreted as “space alien,” not necessarily as an illegal immigrant. Similarly, while Superman chose sides in a war protecting victims from invaders, I thought the metaphor was Russia picking on Ukraine, not Israel marching on Gaza.

Sure, Clark Kent’s parents were portrayed like white trash from Hee Haw. But there’s also a touching scene in which the father transforms into the dad from Father Knows Best, delivering a moving soliloquy on fathers and sons. To me, that moment was symbolic of the whole film—telling the story of a young man trying to do the right thing with courage and character.

After years and years of Hollywood films attempting to obliterate masculinity like bad underarm odor, Superman struck me as a relatively positive role model.

The film was cheesy and sophomoric, but honestly, isn’t that what summer films for young people are supposed to be? This film seemed more like a Star Wars or a Jaws than like a Snow White—perhaps the most badly woke movie of modern times.

Maybe there was some subliminal political messaging in Superman, but the same was true in Barbie—and in the wake of that film, we still got Trump, a resurgence of girl power, and a women-led movement to kick men out of women’s sports.

Rather than view the current wave of popular films as reflectively conservative or liberal, taking sides in the culture wars like Rebels and Yankees, perhaps we should see films as reflective of the dynamics of an industry trying to blend these countervailing cultural trends into something an audience wants to watch.

Film and popular culture don’t just belong to the woke world. Conservative content creators aren’t walled off in a societal Alamo. It’s time for them to step up and shine.

What current audiences want isn’t something that is cartoonishly liberal or conservative—they want entertainment that delivers thoroughly authentic content to help them meet the challenges of everyday life.

The toxic mess we have made of gender politics is a great example of this search for reality. People are tired of the descent into the maelstrom. Men want to be and act like strong men again. Women want role models who are proud to be women. That’s the real reason films like Superman and Barbie are so successful.

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