Eddington Is the Highly Political Movie People Thought Superman Would Be

Social media has been ablaze with discourse about James Gunn’s Superman and its not-so-subtle political tones, but A24’s recently released Eddington, which is out now, is really the political movie of the summer.

Eddington is a highly political film that’s flying under the radar

The latest movie from Ari Aster features Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as a small-town sheriff and mayor at odds with how to deal with the recently instituted COVID-19 lockdown, respectively. While the film features some outlandish and wild moments, at its core, the movie is very much about the state of America amidst an ever-shifting political landscape.

The movie features (at times) extremely overt tones of neighbor vs. neighbor struggles, extreme ideologies, and leans heavily on satire when it comes to skewing both the left and right sides of the political aisle. Although the film is centered on a small town in New Mexico during the pandemic, Eddington has a lot to say about the state of the country as a whole.

Surprisingly, though, there seems to be very little to no discussion of the movie at large on social media. While this could be chalked up to the movie not being a blockbuster on the scale of Superman, it does underscore another issue, in how more casual audiences absorb messages in movies.

Moviegoers continue to have surface-level reactions to political messaging in movies

Although Superman was not billed as a political movie, social media has taken to finding some very striking similarities between several parts of the movie and the ongoing struggles taking part in society today. James Gunn’s comments on Superman’s history as an immigrant (in this case, a literal alien) also sparked outrage and led to many believing the film would have stronger, more overt political tones.

In the end, the core message of Superman is simply the message of being a good person in the face of a world that seems to have forgotten that. Although I do believe there are several political undertones throughout, it seems surprising that Superman has generated such a strong buzz online when a movie set squarely during one of the most divisive and politically-charged times in recent history is met with little to no discussion.

Source: Comingsoon.net