Super (2010)
Directed by James Gunn
No — Super is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
James Gunn's Super arrives as a black comedy about a short-order cook who, after his recovering-addict wife leaves him for a drug lord, receives what he believes is the finger of God and becomes the Crimson Bolt, a pipe-wrench-wielding vigilante with no powers and no plan.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly white, with Andre Royo in a minor supporting role as a detective. No deliberate diversity casting agenda is evident.
Libby is a female sidekick, but she is portrayed as a violent psychopath who commits rape, and Sarah functions as a damsel to be rescued. The film offers no feminist critique.
The film is deliberately un-PC, subversive, and morally ambiguous, actively resisting didactic messaging. It preaches nothing.
No LGBTQ+ themes or characters appear in the film; the central relationship dynamics are heterosexual.
Race is not a theme in the film; no commentary on racial injustice or identity is present.
No environmental or climate themes appear anywhere in the film.
The film's violence is moralistic and religious rather than economic; there is no critique of capitalism or wealth.
No body positivity themes or messaging are present.
Frank's delusions and Libby's psychopathy are framed as mental instability and violence, not as neurodivergence to be celebrated or accommodated.
The film is a fictional original story with no historical revisionism.
Why it received this score
James Gunn's Super arrives as a black comedy about a short-order cook who, after his recovering-addict wife leaves him for a drug lord, receives what he believes is the finger of God and becomes the Crimson Bolt, a pipe-wrench-wielding vigilante with no powers and no plan. The film is a study in discomfort, shifting without warning between slapstick, genuine pathos, and violence so graphic it curdles the laughter in your throat. Rainn Wilson plays Frank with a mournful sincerity that keeps the whole enterprise from collapsing into mere provocation, and Elliot Page's Libby is a genuine shock, a comic-shop clerk whose enthusiasm for sidekickdom curdles into something far more disturbing than Frank's own delusions. The picture resists every opportunity to tell us what to think, which is its chief virtue and its commercial undoing.
On the matter of social consciousness, the film is a desert. Its cast is white to a person save for Andre Royo's brief turn as a detective, and no casting agenda announces itself. There are no queer themes, no racial reckoning, no environmental sermon, no economic grievance dressed as heroism. The women fare poorly by any contemporary standard: Libby is a rapist and a psychopath, Sarah is a damsel passed between men like a relay baton, and the screenplay offers no corrective lens through which to view either. Frank's visions and Libby's instability are treated as madness and menace, not as conditions deserving accommodation. This is a film that predates the current appetite for instruction and seems almost defiantly unaware of it.
Which leaves us with a curious artifact: a superhero picture with no interest in moral instruction whatsoever. It preaches nothing, endorses nothing, and punishes its own protagonist with loneliness and a pet rabbit. For a certain temperament, that refusal is the whole point. For the rest, it is simply a nasty little film that knows exactly what it is doing and declines to apologize. We score it accordingly, with the grim satisfaction of a sommelier presented a bottle that has turned to vinegar on purpose.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
After his wife falls under the influence of a drug dealer, an everyday guy transforms himself into Crimson Bolt, a superhero with the best intentions, though he lacks for heroic skills.
Questions about Super
Is Super woke?
No — Super is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Super 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 15.
How does Super compare to other 2010 movies?
It ranks #138 of the 238 films from 2010 we've scored; their average is 11. The wokest is My Name Is Khan (84).
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.