miguel santiago flores

Thanks, Superman! And thanks to everyone who made this movie for seeing you in the most thoroughly humane way possible.

P.S. Shoutout for being the first movie I ever bought a collectible popcorn bucket for!

But Superman can't save us. He should be the guy that shows us we can save ourselves. And I think it's powerful that we see even the most powerful human on planet earth can get bruises along the path to making the world a better place.

A lot of people will complain that this iteration of Superman isn't invincible, that he isn't the bullet-chewing man of steel we've come to expect to save us. But that's not what he should be. Superman is Jesus; every critic in the past thirty years has said so.

Being kind is hard. It takes a lot of f*cking work. And as I've written about often over the years, it doesn't always pay off. But you still do it. You still put in the work. You can always choose to be better than the other guy, and hope the other guy one day chooses to be kind too.

And though it is a very theatrical tale, as all Superman stories must be due to their intrinsic nature, this Superman is ultimately grounded in what makes him different from all the other heroes. Kindness isn't boring, kids. In fact kindness might just be what saves your soul!

What I'm really trying to say is I'm glad that this movie connects so many of the ingredients which make a good superhero story. Focusing on the humanity more than the powers, the heart more than the theatrics.

But a lot of people will have a lot of things to say about this movie, about immigration, symbolism in America, the language of "alienation", the meta-culture around the creators of this movie, parasocial narrative, and more. I don't need to add to all that.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about how Lex's goons are a hilarious depiction of a young men enamored with the power of a rich person who thinks he's smarter than he is, or how Lois is the real center-point for her audacious desire to find the truth despite her lack of trust.

And for every little kid, that message is deeply important. Sometimes you really can just be a weird kid from the middle of nowhere, adopted by a couple farmers, who wants to make the world a better place. Regardless of your power, or lack thereof.

For a while, the supers were getting jaded. Gritty. Cynical. The world was changing, and we convinced ourselves that our heroes had to change with them. But Superman's power is that he doesn't rely on his power to be a good person. He doesn't need to change.

We live in an over-saturated culture of stories about supers. And while the kid in me is still elated to see so many of my favorite characters come to life, it's not been without trepidation as I've seen many movie depictions feel like a betrayal of those characters' first ideals.

As a kid, I always enjoyed the DC comics. Even though my true loyalty lay with Spider-Man and the X-Men, my grandfather instilled in me a particular appreciation for the Green Lantern, whose vow he often recited to me when telling stories of his time in WW2.

I've long said that the Guardians trilogy was my favorite superhero trilogy to come out in the past ten years, and while some of that is due to an extremely tight soundtrack, a lot of it has to do with Gunn's willingness to depict extremely messy humans as extremely lovable and capable of love.

From one Kansas boy to another, one of Superman's best traits is knowing which people deserve a hug, and which ones deserve a non-aryan sock on the jaw. Immigrants, they get the job done.

Disclaimer: I don't care if structure- or plot- or even character-wise if this is a perfect movie or not. It's a good superhero story, and a fun movie, and a damn good superhero movie. So that's what I'll be talking about.

This #Superman movie is exactly the film some people need in our current moment in history. The original comics came out when antisemitism and racism were at an all-time high and they had a measurable positive impact on American society. I hope this movie follows a similar trajectory.

An easy way to tell whether someone is in community with non-white organizers is listening to the way they say the word "woke."

White conservatives mostly learn this word from white liberals. And white liberals don't remember where they learned it from to begin with. A Black woman? God forbid.

The richest man on earth now has access to your social security number. This is exactly why I didn't give a single damn about the price of eggs.

I am consumed with thoughts of terror and awe not at men, but at the all-encompassing display of mountains—unpossessed, impossible to tame. I have stood at their peaks to watch the blue sky darken, seen thunder knead clouds into angry shapes, and have sat on outcrops so high the only creature next to me was the hyrax and the falcon. why do your let your fear of smallness dictate the tempo of your fingers? look down at the violent pen quivering beneath you—you scratch ink into dead trees. the veil over your eyes can only be pierced by looking straight at the fire. witness brother Moses, blinded by snow. offer your addictions to the bush, put down your knife at the foot of the moss.

we do not care what you call it; it does not care if you exist at all. what is a crown to the birds? I, likewise, cannot be changed by whatever a cuckoo calls me. my obligations to the earth are present-minded. whatever you do, leave no trace. the mountain cannot be moved, the heart cannot be displaced. let me stand-under its care. woe to those who live on sacred lands, brood parasites in stick houses. to whom will you point next? the Missouri River? the Niagara Falls? will you ask the earth to discover herself? would you tell a whale shark to stay within borders? a fruitfly to respect private property? violence is your native tongue. must I translate to become known?

name it whatever you like—after a dead king, ruler of dead things. carve your name into stone with stolen alms, bleed the earth for her gold, or oil, or whatever else she cares after. the truth remains: you can never have or be enough to escape the brow of its bright head. the mountain stood over you at birth. it will eclipse you in the days to come.

today I was asked to help locate resources in case someone lost contact to their own children, so I guess you could say I'm not particularly excited for the next 4 years

MLK Day: when non-white "essential" workers keep the gears of this violent machine turning so their white coworkers can take a floating holiday and HR can pacify the words of a black preacher killed for his audacity to speak against a country obsessed with lust for war, poverty, and hegemony