How I Became a Superhero (2020)
Directed by Douglas Attal
No — How I Became a Superhero is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Paris, 2020, and the superheroes have settled into the bureaucracy.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes actors of North African descent such as Leïla Bekhti, but diversity is incidental to the French production context rather than a deliberate woke statement.
Female characters like Lieutenant Schaltzmann and Callista hold action-oriented roles, but the film does not advance a feminist agenda.
Superheroes are portrayed as an assimilated minority, but the film does not explicitly engage with racial politics or consciousness.
The film is a genre thriller that prioritizes entertainment over delivering social or political lectures.
No LGBTQ+ characters or themes are present in the film.
There is no environmental or climate-related content in the film.
The drug-trafficking plot does not carry an anti-capitalist or eat-the-rich message.
No body positivity themes or messaging are present.
The film does not address neurodivergence or neurodiverse characters.
The story is fictional and does not revise or reinterpret historical events.
Why it received this score
Paris, 2020, and the superheroes have settled into the bureaucracy. They file paperwork, they take the metro, and they occasionally consult on police investigations. Douglas Attal's film follows two lieutenants, Moreau and Schaltzmann, as they chase a new drug that hands ordinary mortals the powers of the costumed class. It is a policier with capes, a procedural that happens to have a flying man in it, and it conducts itself with the brisk, unbothered efficiency of a French genre picture that knows exactly what it is and has no intention of apologizing for it.
The film's social consciousness is modest and largely incidental. The cast includes performers of North African descent, though the French production context makes this unremarkable instead of pointed. Female characters carry weapons and drive the plot, yet the screenplay never pauses to make an argument about it. Superheroes exist here as an assimilated minority, a demographic that has already won its acceptance and now mostly worries about drug traffickers. There is no environmental sermon, no economic indictment of the wealthy, no meditation on the body or the mind. The film has other business to attend to, and that business is a chase.
This is a genre thriller that prefers momentum to messaging. It wants to entertain, and it does so without stopping to instruct the audience on how to feel about the world. For viewers who keep a careful ledger of such things, the evening will be quiet. The film is competent, watchable, and almost entirely free of the cultural signposting that defines the current moment. Some will find that refreshing. Others will find it merely French.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Paris 2020. While superheroes have assimilated into the Parisian society, they discover a new drug that gives themselves personal superpowers to mere mortals. Lieutenants Moreau and Schaltzmann are investigating the case with the support of two ex-superheroes, Monte Carlo and Callista. They'll do whatever it takes to dismantle the traffic. But Moreau's past resurfaces, and the investigation becomes more complicated.
Questions about How I Became a Superhero
Is How I Became a Superhero woke?
No — How I Became a Superhero is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does How I Became a Superhero have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 25.
How does How I Became a Superhero compare to other 2020 movies?
It ranks #143 of the 227 films from 2020 we've scored; their average is 21. The wokest is One Night in Miami... (83).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.