James Gunn Clears the Air on if Jor-El’s Message to Superman Was Real

James Gunn recently addressed Jor-El’s message to Kal-El in his new Superman movie and revealed whether it was real or fake. Gunn’s flagship DCU movie, featuring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult, dropped in theaters on July 11, 2025, and quickly found critical and commercial success. At the time of writing, the movie has grossed over $400 million globally.

James Gunn confirms Jor-El sent Superman to conquer Earth

Superman director James Gunn recently sat down with Josh Horowitz on his Happy, Sad, Confused podcast and was asked whether Jor-El’s message in the movie was doctored.

In Superman, it’s revealed that Kal-El possesses a recording of a message from his father, Jor-El (Bradley Cooper), and mother Lara (Angela Sarafyan), which he believed was about them directing him to help the people of Earth. However, the last part of the message was corrupted and was later recovered by the Engineer. In the recovered message, Kal-El’s birth parents actually encourage Superman to rule humanity. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) then later releases it to the world to try and turn public opinion against Superman.

While speaking with Horowitz, Gunn expressed his surprise over people assuming that the message was doctored by Luthor.

He further explained, “In the movie, Mr. Terrific says, ‘I know those computer forensics guys. There’s no way.’ That’s Mr. Terrific. Smart as Lex Luthor. Then I have my Secretary of Defense say, ‘Think whatever you think about Luthor, but it’s real.’ And then the clincher is that Gurkos and Lex are walking together, and you know, Gurkos says, ‘Ah, you doctored the message. This is great.’ And Lex says, ‘It’s not a message.’ You know, ‘It’s not doctored. It’s real.'”

Gunn has previously talked about changes he made to Superman’s origins and stated, “I’m a huge Superman fan, so first of all I had to trust myself that I was going to honor the pieces of Superman that we needed to keep the same and also allow myself to make changes where changes might work and wouldn’t go against the integrity of who the character is.” (via IGN)

Originally reported by Ishita Verma on SuperHeroHype.

Source: Comingsoon.net