Superman is suddenly #1 on Prime Video. Here's why.

With that in mind, it's no huge surprise that James Gunn's Superman is suddenly a streaming hit just ahead of the DC Universe's second major movie, Supergirl. It also doesn't hurt that the 2025 superhero movie just made the leap from HBO Max to Prime Video on June 22, opening the film up to a new audience. As a result, Superman raced to the top of Amazon's streaming charts faster than, well, you know.

But while, at first glance, it might be easy to figure out why Superman is suddenly a streaming hit, there's something to be said for a lack of irony in the movie's renewed relevance in 2026.

At time of writing, we're coming off the last season of The Boys, Invincible is still a big part of the cultural conversation, and the summer movie season for 2026 has been largely defined by a couple of horror movies and some gory martial-arts action. Even Supergirl isn't anyone's idea of a feel-good hit of the summer, as it features a half-drunk Kara on an interstellar journey for revenge.

Against that backdrop, Gunn's Superman can't help but come off like a reaction to modern superhero media. His Clark Kent (David Corenswet) is young, often frustrated, but with a strong moral core. Superman always wants to do the right thing, even if he doesn't exactly know how.

That stakes out an interesting middle ground among depictions of Superman. Many versions of the character depict him as a saintly do-gooder without any real flaws. Richard Donner's Superman, for example, is arguably what introduced the concept of Superman as a Christ metaphor.

Darker takes on Superman, such as Frank Miller's in The Dark Knight Returns, often treat him as a thoughtless enforcer of the status quo. This is Superman as a cop, the Big Blue Boy Scout, and it's where you get most of the criticism of the character as "boring." (Zack Snyder's take on Kal El in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League essentially split the difference between the two.)

Miller's take on Superman tends to be the starting point for most of his evil knockoffs: Homelander, Omni-Man, Mark Waid's Plutonian, etc. Nobody's that good, the argument seems to go. If someone's pretending to be, it's only to mask some greater darkness.

Gunn's answer to that is, instead, to give Superman doubts. He's still young (Gunn has said his Superman is about 25), without much experience in the world. Superman's easily seen as naive, but when in doubt, he always tries to minimize harm. Maybe he doesn't succeed, and he begins the movie by actively making a complicated situation worse, but he keeps trying.

That's an ambitious conflict to put at the center of a movie about a man who can do almost anything, and Gunn just about pulls it off. It's a useful thought to carry with you as you leave the theater: you're going to make mistakes, but as long as your heart's in the right place, you can learn and do better next time. More importantly, Gunn's Superman isn't a cynical movie, and in what's shaping up to be a cynical season at the movies (and a cynical summer in America), maybe that's a refreshing and necessary change of pace.