Spoilers for the film Brightburn follow below. Proceed with caution.

My wife and I recently watched Brightburn, a 2019 horror movie produced by James Gunn, written by his brother Brian and his cousin Mark, and directed by David Yarovesky. The movie is an obvious and intentional parody of the Superman mythos: a family of farmers in Kansas that finds a boy in a mysterious spacecraft that crashes on their property. They decide to take him in and raise him as their own son, but as the boy, named Brandon Breyer, grows into adolescence, he begins displaying strange behaviors and extraordinary abilities, such as invulnerability, super strength, flight, and heat vision. However, the twist to this concept, as should be obvious since I mentioned this is a horror movie, is that Brandon, unlike Clark Kent, doesn’t try to use his powers to help people and save them from harm. Instead, he begins using his powers to hurt and kill people.

Superman is a complicated superhero — at least, as far as superheroes can be complicated. He’s one of the most powerful heroes in DC comics, but also one of the most moral. On the one hand, that balance is important. With so much power, it would be easy for Superman to utterly annihilate any threat and rule with an iron fist — as the premise for Brightburn posits. On the other hand, I’ve heard it repeated for years that it makes Superman boring. Folks say he’s too powerful to create relatable threats. To match his strength, you have to introduce something cosmic, godly, or supernatural. And he’s too moral for people to identify with “a big blue boyscout.”

It probably doesn’t help that the most successful and iconic adaptation of Superman was from the 1970s and was intentionally presented in an extremely wholesome, Norman Rockwell-esque manner. That film series was so iconic that when they finally made a new Superman movie in 2006, they tried to copy the tone and aesthetic of those old movies…to mixed results at best. But how do you do Superman without them? That’s why Man of Steel initially presented so much buzz and ended up so controversial. By the trailers, it looked like they were creating a more grounded Superman, like they were going to do for Superman what Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy did for Batman — recontextualize the world to make a slightly more grounded, believable version. Instead it was a light deconstructionist take, toying with Ayn Randian Objectivist ideals if possibly not wholly embracing them.

Early on, Brightburn is filled with stylistic pastiche of Man of Steel, going so far as to mimic the shots, the color palette, even the score. As the traditional narrative that we expect, even from Man of Steel, begins to dissolve as Brandon displays more violent and vindictive behaviors, the palette adopts a more aggressive and sinister red, contrasted with the more calming blue of most Superman movies. It’s also no accident that the symbol that Brandon Breyer adopts has a stylistic similarity to the SS symbol — an angular, stylized BB jutting from the same stem.

The themes of colonialism and white supremacy really jumped out to me as I watched this movie. It’s not clear how long Brandon has known about his abilities, whether it’s something he’s suspected for a while, or whether he only starts discovering them when the movie starts. Regardless, from the moment Brandon realizes he is so powerful because he’s from another world, his entire perspective of everyone shifts. At one point, when talking with a counselor, he literally calls himself not only special, but superior. Where Clark is given the “super” label by the media and only accepts it begrudgingly, Brandon takes it for himself unprompted and without question.

Superman is often read as an immigrant’s story. He’s a refugee from a dying world, sent away from his home by his parents in a desperate plea for survival. He’s here “illegally”, and he and his family know that if he’s found out, he will be taken in by the authorities. Therefore, he has to navigate being true to himself, acknowledging and even embracing elements of his native culture, but also incorporating elements of his new culture so that he can assimilate for survival. (Read Superman Smashes the Klan for a fantastic example.)

In light of the above, I saw a few folks position Brightburn as an anti-immigrant narrative. If Brightburn is using the same template as Superman, but instead of a good person that tries to help everyone, our other-wordly arrival is a monster that exploits the system to his benefit and hurts anyone that gets in his way…isn’t that basically making the same argument that Trump currently makes? Yes. IF that were how Brightburn positioned things, yes, I would absolutely say that reading the film as an anti-immigrant narrative holds up. However, there are some hugely important differences between Clark Kent and Brandon Breyer that turn this from a story of immigration to a story of colonization.

As I mentioned, Clark is a refugee from a dying world sent away to save his life. Conversely, we never learn exactly why Brandon was sent to earth. We don’t know whether Earth was his intended destination, or if his craft got went off course, or if it even mattered where he landed. We never learn where Brandon is from nor what became of his birth parents nor the people of his native parents. Brandon and Clark’s pods do both contain messages for them from their homeworld, however. Clark’s is basic information: who his parents are, who the Kryptonians are and what happened to them, and why he was sent to Earth. A message from Clark’s father — in many versions at least — does mention that his parents new Clark would gain special abilities from Earth’s yellow, sun, but much like the Kent’s, Jor-El suggests that Clark use these abilities to help people.

In Richard Donner’s Superman, Jor-El poses a series of questions to Clark: “How does a good man live? What is virtue? When does a man’s obligation to those around him supersede his obligation to himself?” He then goes on to explain that there is no exact science to determine that, but that he can only tell Clark what he believes.

“It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history. Rather, let your leadership stir others to.”

“Live as one of them, Kal-El, and discover where your strength and your power are needed. And always hold in your heart pride in your special heritage.”

“They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you…my only son.”

These are not the words of a conqueror. These are instructions for what Clark should do himself — be good, lead a good life, help people when and where you can, and let your example inspire others. While not a perfect one-to-one mapping to immigrants (because it’s superhero comics, so of course it won’t), there’s still talk of holding his own heritage in his heart with pride. Not inflicting it on others, just remembering his roots.

Brandon’s pod in Brightburn also contains a message, but it is not a message of peace, helpfulness, and personal pride and responsibility. Instead, it’s only a single sentence that slowly reveals itself over the film: “Take the world.” With that message, we learn that Brandon isn’t an immigrant. He’s not a refugee. He’s a colonist sent to claim and usurp this world for himself. In this way, he actually lines up much closer to Zack Snyder’s interpretation of Superman. In Man of Steel, when Jor-El speaks to Clark, he explains that the Kryptonians were colonists:

“In an era of expansion, our race spread out through the stars seeking new worlds to settle upon.”

“We built outposts on other planets, using great machines to reshape environments to our needs.”

“For 100,000 years our civilization flourished, accomplishing wonders.”

Of course, immigration isn’t the only metaphor that can be read into Superman. Clark’s natural born power gives him the ability, should he choose, to not just influence, but control the direction of humanity’s progression. As I mentioned above, Jor-El explicitly forbids this kind of thing, instead advising he be mindful of his power and privilege and look for places where he can provide aid. Superman doesn’t use his power to bend others on Earth to his will. Instead, he uses it to speak truth to power — such as taking on powerful billionaires and politicians, or helping to avert or mitigate natural disasters.

As Brandon develops and explores his powers further, he begins using them to exploit others for his own gain, gaslighting everyone into thinking that anything he could be tied to is an unfortunately accident, and using any opportunity, including throwing girls and minorities under the bus to make himself look better. He develops an interest in a classmate named Caitlyn and proceeds to stalk and spy on her, literally hovering outside her window. At school, when Caitlyn lets Brandon fall in a trust exercise because she’s uncomfortable acting normal around him, Brandon gets his revenge by crushing her hand and snapping her wrist in a violent outburst. However, the school and the cops both take Brandon’s side, mandating counseling for him, but not giving him any other punishment, which bears a striking similarity to real world sexual assault allegations.

As Brandon grows in power, his gaslighting only worsens. When Brandon tries terrorizing his aunt and uncle, his uncle tries to warn Brandon’s parents. Brandon then kills him, crashing his Jeep and making it look like a drunk driving accident. Then, when he gets home, he tries to scapegoat minorities, explaining that some kids that pick on him in class (who are black and brown students) caught up with him after school and beat him up.

The more he gets away with, the more bold he becomes in displaying his power, egged on by his mother who refuses to believe that her son could be the person behind all of these tragedies — even lying to the cops about evidence — until Brandon kills his dad. It’s only when Brandon’s supremacist views affect her that she finally realizes the danger, but by then it’s too late, much the way privileged folks will ignore the quiet creep of fascism and white supremacy until it’s taken root.

I do think that the kid goes from seemingly wholesome to sociopath a bit too quickly, but the movie implies that he may have been this way all along — or at least for longer than it first appears in the movie. At one point, early in the film, his parents find pre-teen porn — women’s lingerie catalogs, and inter-mixed among those catalogs are graphic pictures of dissected animals.

I was ultimately really impressed with Brightburn and surprised by the low ratings it received from critics. To me, it managed to thread a delicate needle — it was an interesting meditation on colonialism, power, and privilege, while also being a fun, gory exploitation movie about an evil Superman. If you haven’t checked it out, I do recommend it, especially if you like Superman, horror movies, or both.