Former Superman Dean Cain complains about 'woke' Hollywood making character too pro-immigration

We used to have a Superman, before all this woke.

Dean Cain, who played the Kid from Krypton on the series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997, confessed in a Wednesday video interview with TMZ that he has some reservations over James Gunn's new vision for the hero.

"How woke is Hollywood going to make this character? How much is Disney going to change their Snow White? Why are they going to change these characters [to] exist for the times?" he asked.

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Cain was spurred to this line of questioning after Gunn, who directed the upcoming Superman, likened the near-century old comic book character's story to "the story of America." Gunn summed up his Superman as "an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country," and his Superman as "a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost."

Cain said, "Superman's inherent weakness [is] his goodness," a quality he described as emblematic of the character's "great values." He even insisted, "We know Superman is an immigrant — he's a freaking alien." But Gunn has crossed a bridge too far, Cain believes.

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Superman's traditional motto of "Truth, justice, and the American way" has changed several times over the years (most recently landing on, "Truth, justice and a better tomorrow"), but Cain harkened back to the original phrase when explaining his reservations, saying, "The 'American way' is immigrant friendly, tremendously immigrant friendly. But there are rules."

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Cain continued, "You can't come in saying, 'I want to get rid of all the rules in America, because I want it to be more like Somalia.' Well that doesn't work, because you had to leave Somalia to come here... There have to be limits, because we cant have everybody in the United States. We can't have everybody, society will fail. So there have to be limits."

Jessica Miglio

James Gunn and David Corenswet on the set of 'Superman'

Since his re-election in January, President Donald Trump, whose campaign Cain supported, has made opposition to immigrants a centerpiece of his domestic policy. Trump has ordered raids on immigrant communities to comply with a 3,000 arrests-per-day quota — tripled from the previous number — has moved to strip naturalized citizens of their legal status, and has begun deporting detained immigrants to war-torn countries they didn't even emigrate from.

In this landscape, Gunn's statement of fact that Superman indeed immigrated to Smallville from across the galaxy has inflamed right-wing commentators like Fox News host Jesse Waters, who joked that "Superman is fighting for truth, justice, and your preferred pronouns," and suggested the Man of Tomorrow should sport the symbol of the gang MS-13 on his cape.

When asked about the pushback to his comments on Monday, Gunn noted he's "not here to judge people." Nathan Fillion, who plays Green Lantern in the new film, advocated that people see the movie for what it is: "Just a movie."

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But Sean Gunn, James' brother, who also appears in the film as the billionaire Maxwell Lord, took the original baton from his sibling and ran with it, stating, "We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don't like that, you're not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way."

Gunn's Superman opens in numerous international markets this week and on Friday, July 11 in U.S. theaters.

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