The new Superman trailer gave me all the super feels. Call me the Man of Feel. I don’t know what the final product is going to be like… but my goodness that trailer. It hit every manipulative note possible and I don’t care. Give me my popcorn. I’m all in.

The modernized, guitar-driven take on John Williams’s 1878 score, the Man of Steel cocooning a young child to protect her from crashing debris, people raising a tattered “S” flag à la Iwo Jima, KRYPTO coming to save the day… I’m not crying, you’re crying.

A quick aside: Krypto barreling through the snow like a trailblazing locomotive… chills.

The trailer awakened an S-sized hole in my heart and I’m here for it.

Maybe it’s because I feel in need of Superman right now. I need a completely uncynical figure of goodness to come and vanquish the forces of evil that have descended upon our collective Metropolis.

Now that Lex Luthor Elon Musk is shadow-president-elect, now that the inmates of Arkham (I know, I know… different title, still DC universe) are running the show, we need some super-alien with a massively empathetic heart pounding behind a garish emblem. I’d welcome a Kryptonian savior at this moment to save us from the crypto-kleptoligarchs who are hell-bent on sticking it to anyone not privileged enough to be in their circle of billionaires.

Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump have declared war on anyone who works for a living. They’re so out of touch they don’t even know how out of touch they are. And America stands by dumbfounded. We’re Lois Lane hanging on the edge while Lex Luthor makes a deal with General Zod, Ursa, and Non.

Hell, the mainstream media is such a joke at this point, I’d take good old Clark Kent. Democracy is dying in the olidarchness of the Washington Post. Maybe the Daily Planet can do us one better…

On the one hand there are the brainwashed followers who idolize these villains through a combination of Stockholm syndrome, aspiration, and sycophantism. On the other hand there’s the rest of us quietly whispering, _{Superman, help us.}

Might as well. Nobody else seems to be coming. Luigi tried to be Batman. The NYPD perp-walked him to make an example of him and all Adams et al did was demonstrate how clueless they are. They wanted to march him in bright orange to send a message to anyone else who would dare act against the owners of this nation. Instead he’s a dayglow badass in a sea of paramilitary stormtroopers with Adams looming behind doing his best Darth Vader photo op. It’s like Christopher Nolan meets that scene in The Empire Strikes Back when they’re marching the carbonite-casketed Han Solo to Slave 1. Cue John Williams (again).

It’s been said that old Eric hasn’t met a camera he doesn’t like and his lack of self-awareness is astonishing. Perp-walking a vigilante killer of a mass murdering bureaucrat in the style of Adolf Eichmann near Wall Street really isn’t a good look right about now. I thought I was watching The Dark Knight Rises until I saw Eric “Camera” Adams in tow. Evil really is quite banal.

The irony, of course, the cold, steely irony, is that it’s a huge, big-budget, blockbuster, $ummer film that’s giving me all these hopeful, classist feels. But hell, this current climate is my kryptonite and I’m desperate.

July 11th is a long way away. A lot can, and will, happen. By then, the United States of Lexcorp Tesla Trump America will be almost half a year into the oligarchic regime. Hopefully democracy will still be a thing by then.

Will there be truth, justice, and the American way? We have a lot of issues to contend with before this film drops. Stay tuned.