Make superheroes great again: Superman can fly, but still can't escape the algorithm
In 1938, Superman leapt onto the pages of Action Comics #1 in red trunks and righteous fury. He stopped locomotives, lifted green Buicks over his head - and he stood for something. Now, in 2025, Superman is back in cinemas next month in James Gunn's eponymous movie with a new actor (David Corenswet).But this time around, Superman's biggest villain isn't Lex Luthor, or General Zod. It's the feed. The Man of Steel's up against TikTok thirst traps, AI-generated Keanu Reeves romcoms, and 11-sec clips of pandas falling off slides. Somewhere in between doomscrolling and watching a makeup tutorial that turns into a philosophy lecture, a trailer for the new Superman movie dropped this week. We nod. We move on.
Superheroes aren't just competing for attention. They're auditioning for it. Superheroes are now metadata. The industry doesn't ask: what does this hero mean right now? It asks: how many quadrants can we hit? Is there synergy with the gaming division? Will this trend on social media?And that's how we end up with content that's been audience-tested within an inch of its soul. Every scene exists so it can be screen-grabbed. Every emotion is framed with just enough room for a reaction video. Look, everyone likes a surprise. A good plot twist, a clever reference, even a cheeky cameo. But Easter eggs used to be exactly that - eggs. Now they're the whole omelette.It's no longer enough to tell a story. You have to tease 10 others. A throwaway line about 'the multiverse collapsing' gets picked apart in 300 Reddit threads. Half the audience is watching the movie. The other half is watching for clues. Yes, fans love decoding things. But when every film is a trailer for another film, it stops being storytelling and starts being strategy.The golden age of superhero films wasn't 'golden' because they were bigger. It was because they were grounded. Arguably, most of them were all franchise films. Batman was already on his 6th outing, Iron Man kicked off a whole cinematic universe. And Spider-Man had a cereal deal before the trailer dropped. But, back then, the films still knew how to stay grounded.The Dark Knight wasn't juggling timelines. Iron Man was just trying not to get blown up in a cave. Even Spider-Man 2 (yes, the Tobey Maguire one) spent a good 20 mins exploring the emotional fallout of missing rent. Now we get shared universes, cross-promotional world-building, and plotlines with all the narrative weight of a dry PowerPoint transition. The foundation has cracked. It's all scaffolding now.If you strip away the X-ray vision and the flying, Superman is a guy trying to figure out how to do the right thing in a complicated world. He's an alien who's spent his entire life trying to be more human. That's not just good material - it's timeless. The problem is, we've stopped treating it like it is.Every reboot wants to 'modernise' Superman. Update the costume. Grayscale the colour palette. Make him question everything. Give him a brooding backstory, and a long stare into the rain. We don't need more reinvention. We need recollection. Superman doesn't need to be made edgier. He needs to be made clear.It's worth asking: why does a lo-fi 15-sec video of someone making butter chicken from scratch get more love than a $200 mn superhero film? Because one feels like it means something. The other feels like it means something else is coming in 2027.There was a time when superheroes weren't trying to be viral. They weren't teasing spinoffs. They weren't selling NFTs. They were about values, sure. But they were also weird. They were unpredictable. They were occasionally absurd. A kid bitten by a radioactive spider? A man with a magic hammer? A guy who literally talks to fish? And, yet, it worked.Because the stories were honest. Not perfect, not polished, not algorithm-proof. Just honest.Imagine this: the new Superman film ends. And that's it. No setup for Superman: Epoch. No holographic tease of Brainiac. No slow pan to a glowing green rock in a government bunker. Just the story. Fully told. Curtains down. People might walk out of the theatre... satisfied. When was the last time that happened?Superheroes won't be great again because of better CGI, or cleverer scripts, or tighter multiverse logic. They'll be great again when we stop trying to turn them into streaming architecture. Give us stories. Not strategies. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.) Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Warren Buffett-fan Pabrai is betting big on Edelweiss' Rashesh Shah. Will it pay off?
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