This Summer’s Superhero Movies Want Us to Feel Nostalgic for the Past

 

By Stacy Lee Kong

 
 

Image: Disney

 

This week’s newsletter is not based on something I noticed myself, tbh. Instead, it was inspired by a conversation with a friend, who pointed out a connection he’d noticed about the summer’s two biggest superhero movies, James Gunn’s Superman reboot and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. As he pointed out, they both share retro-futuristic visual styles that communicate a sense of fun and optimism, a marked change from the era of gritty superhero movies that have dominated theatres for about two decades, and even a noticeable shift from the lighter, funnier flicks of the past few years (think, Guardians of the Galaxy). Visually, this is fun and makes for a smart marketing strategy—but also, it feels kind of weird to lean into optimism at this particular moment in time, right? 

We’re not the only ones who noticed this dichotomy. Vulture’s review of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is in theatres today, explicitly references the movie’s aesthetic—and the potential pitfalls of this visual style: “By far the cleverest thing about Marvel’s newest Fantastic Four film is the retro-futurist sensibility found both in its look and overall mood. The flying-saucer building motifs, the curved edges, the robot assistants and jet cars that populate the colorful Fantastic Four: First Steps aren’t just neat little design elements; they also reflect the easygoing air of utopian consensus that’s been built into the plot. In this world, when a scientist tells the planet’s citizens to immediately start conserving energy, they do so. In this world, humanity unites instantly against existential threats. In this world, the age of space exploration never ended. The setting is ‘Earth-828,’ but it really looks more like a nostalgic vision of the ’60s without any of the inconveniences of the real ’60s (and certainly none of those of our current era). Both the right and the left should love it; some in the audience will probably mistake it for the real thing” (emphasis mine). 

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of a shiny, happy, well-lit summer blockbuster. For the past two decades, superhero movies on the whole have been, well, darker—and I mean that literally, aesthetically and thematically. Consider the chokehold cyberpunk and dystopia have had on all manner of popular media since approximately… um, 1984? Looking specifically at superhero movies, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the 2005 reboot of Warner Bros.’ Batman franchise, ushered in an era of gritty realism in the genre, which Zack Snyder really leaned into with his superhero hallmarks: morally ambiguous protagonists, philosophically nuanced story lines and a visually stark aesthetic. Popular and influential as both those directors are, it makes sense that their peers and audiences alike would be really familiar with this style of superhero storytelling… and perhaps feel ready for something different. But, I keep returning to the weirdness of romanticizing the past, and how that might feed into the perpetual tension between escapism and political awareness. So, let’s talk about it.

What exactly is retro-futurism?

Even if you haven’t heard the term retro-futurism before, you’ve likely seen examples of this style, especially in the past five or so years. Movies like Don’t Worry Darling and Megalopolis and TV shows like Fallout are all set in a ‘50s-inspired retrofuture. It has also shown up in fashion, design—even concept cars. But I admit, retro-futurism as a concept has been interesting to think about (and, okay, a little challenging to wrap my head around), both because it’s a bit recursive and because the meaning has shifted. Briefly, the term refers to a creative movement that leans into depictions of the future that were created in the past—and specifically those created pre-1960. Aesthetically, this often looks like mid-century modern-meets-The Jetsons, a Space Age and/or Atomic Age visual style that combines a bright and colourful palette, curvy silhouettes and ‘60s design hallmarks with fantastical ideas of the future (think, flying cars, floating cities and well-dressed robots going about their business), all of which sends a message of optimism and hopefulness. As writer Sofia Oaks noted in a 2022 article for Countere magazine, “a stark difference between sci-fi and the retrofuture aesthetic is that sci-fi tends to be dystopian, bleak or depressing; meanwhile retrofuturism features hopeful utopias with cool gadgets and happy people. Perhaps this optimistic view of the future is why we still gravitate towards the Retrofuturistic aesthetic–a reminder of what we wanted the future to look like.”

Image: Disney

Interestingly, the roots of retro-futurism are not optimistic. In fact, early on, the movement was kind of… suspicious about the promise of technology. According to academics Elizabeth Guffey and Kate C. Lemay, who explored the concept (and particularly how it relates to steampunk, which is a related but distinct creative movement) in 2014’s The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, “retrofuturism can be defined as an ambivalent fascination for a future that never came to pass… By engaging the popular strain of Futurism that thrived from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, the term is usually applied to an array of pop-culture ephemera from the early to mid-twentieth century, from robot toys to shark-finned hovercrafts, pulp magazine covers to architectural utopias… [It] builds on futurists’ fevered visions of space colonies with flying cars, robotic servants, and interstellar travel on display there; where futurists took their promise for granted, retro-futurism emerged as a more skeptical reaction to these dreams.” Which makes sense when you consider that it was developing at a time of rapid technological advancement, and new and dramatic examples of how that advancement could go wrong. (I.e., the Vietnam War; pesticides, and especially DDT; the Cold War and specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) 

As time passes and our notions of past, present and future necessarily shift, retro-futurism similarly evolves, which is why depictions of the ‘80s and ‘90s are creeping in, too. (A lot of articles about the concept give the self-lacing sneakers in Back to the Future as an example.) But there’s another shift that I find even more fascinating, which is that the skepticism Guffey and Lemay characterize as fundamental to the concept of retro-futurism now seems less important. In contemporary usage, and especially in this summer’s superhero films, the aesthetic doesn’t communicate skepticism at all. What’s more, it’s not just nostalgic for a time when we were more hopeful about science, technology and the future itself—it’s also nostalgic for a more collectivist, optimistic version of ourselves. 

It makes sense to want stories that give us hope

That’s what Vulture’s Fantastic Four review was getting at when it described not just the movie’s visual style, but its internal logic: “In this world, when a scientist tells the planet’s citizens to immediately start conserving energy, they do so. In this world, humanity unites instantly against existential threats” (emphasis mine). 

Image: Disney

And listen, it makes a lot of sense to want this, right? Especially if you have seen it play out in real life. I’m an elder millennial, so I remember a time when international investment in protecting the environment was, well, an actual thing. Like, scientists sounded the alarm about the hole in the ozone layer, we all agreed that this was bad, and everyone mobilized to ban ozone-depleting chemicals. (Literally, it has been adopted by every country in the world, the first and only time this has happened. And, btw, that type of cooperation works; recovery is on-track and it looks like the hole will be totally repaired by 2066.) But it wasn’t just policies; there was a whole culture of environmentalism. As a kid, I watched Captain Planet and The Smoggies on TV, joined the Earth Keepers club and internalized every single piece of anti-littering propaganda I saw. I still think about a clip about water conversation that I watched on Sesame Street almost four decades ago! The idea that it was our collective responsibility to care for the world and one another was just… really common. Similarly, I’d argue, there was a global response to South African apartheid. The country had been subject to ad hoc cultural, sporting and political boycotts from people, companies and institutions for decades, but it’s generally accepted that what really forced the end of apartheid was the increasing impact of economic sanctions; by the 1980s, 25 countries were banning the import of South African goods, pulling their banks out of the country, refusing to trade, etc. 

2025 offers a very stark contrast. We know that generative AI tools are putting massive strain on the U.S. energy grid, literally poisoning a Black community in Tennessee, exploiting workers in the Global South and harming our cognitive abilities, and yet we cannot manage to stop asking grok if the stupid shit we see on X is true. We are on day 656 of Israel’s most recent genocidal campaign against Palestinians, and thus far, the response from international leaders has mostly been to look away, while Western media has focused on hypothetical violence and platformed moral outrage while excusing and normalizing the very real violence enacted on innocent people every day. In addition to the horrors we’ve seen unfold over the past year and a half—the horrific injuries, the shocking rates of child amputation, the death toll, the orphaned children, the consistent strategy of bombing hospitals, the targeting of journalists—Israel is now deliberately starving Gazans, and killing people as they line up for food. Last week, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif reported that 85% of Gaza’s population have entered the fifth stage of malnutrition, and Western governments have largely responded by releasing strongly worded statements that, sure, now identify Israel as the perpetrator of this violence, but otherwise accomplish very little. Or looking closer to home: our governments criminalize homelessness, but refuse to build affordable housing. They skimp on investment in social services. We even keep seeing proposed cuts to public health initiatives that would benefit literally everyone, which feels incredibly short-sighted considering the whole pandemic that just disrupted—and continues to affect—our entire lives. Of course we want stories that tell us a better way is possible.

I mean—that’s definitely what’s behind the idea that Superman is an allegory for Gaza, despite director James Gunn’s insistence that the movie is not about the Middle East at all. As Faisal Kutty pointed out in Newsweek,  “the movie's central dynamic—a powerful, U.S.-backed aggressor invading a poor, largely defenseless neighbor—is all too familiar. Boravia, with its military might, international impunity, and stated mission to ‘liberate’ Jarhanpur from supposed tyranny, mirrors in disturbing ways Israel's ongoing bombardment and occupation of Gaza. The imagery is searing: tanks and drones lining up at a border fence, a young boy clutching a national flag as civilians scatter in fear, and a so-called ‘just war’ increasingly exposed as a campaign of domination. That such scenes resonated so strongly with viewers is not the fault of the audience's ‘left-wing brain,’ as Ben Shapiro dismissively put it—it is a reflection of the moral clarity that emerges when oppression is laid bare, even in fictional form… Whether or not the film was meant to be about Israel and Palestine, it functioned as a kind of cinematic Rorschach test.” 

I’d argue that what this ‘cinematic Rorschach test’ is also a show of hopefulness, because it indicates a desire to believe that our cultural institutions (or, okay, our entertainment conglomerates) can recognize right from wrong and will reflect that back to us.

We do need to think critically about this type of nostalgia, though

But, this brings up a few things for me. First, there’s a danger in romanticizing historical examples of collectivism. On the environmentalism front, yes, there were all sorts of cartoons and campaigns that encouraged us to reduce, reuse and recycle, but there was still plenty of corporate pushback against actual policies—oil companies famously conducted, then hid, research on global warming and there have always been conservatives talking shit about tree-hugging hippies. As for those economic sanctions against South Africa; today, the West agrees—in a quite self-congratulatory way, I think—that by imposing them, it sparked the end of apartheid. It’s a classic white saviour story (which, if we’re being very honest, offers another compelling parallel to superhero movies). But the truth is, Jamaica was the first country to impose economic sanctions on South Africa in 1959. It took two more decades before so-called superpowers, including the U.S. and the U.K. did the same. And, they did so reluctantly! (All of this being said, I will credit South Africa for being among the first and loudest to criticize and sanction Israel today, though.)

Also, collectivism has always had limits depending on who the dominant culture sees as deserving of intervention—and that largely depends on who it sees as human. 

And then there’s the capitalism of it all. As these entertainment conglomerates shutter their DEI divisions, pull back on diversity in front of and behind the camera, shift away from diverse storytelling, lose executives from marginalized communities and basically genuflect to Trump and the white supremacist, patriarchal, classist and violent New World Order he’s successfully implementing, how should we interpret their cultural output, and the implied message that we can find comfort in the past? Especially if we know that Western storytelling, and particularly superhero movies, have always supported the military industrial complex, and therefore helping make the case not just for neo-imperialism, but even for genocide. And… I don’t think any of that really changes just because movies have a new visual style.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t enjoy superhero movies, particularly these ones! They’re fun, and entertaining, and well-made. Plus, there’s no real way to sustainably engage in liberation work without also making space for joy. I just always think we have a responsibility to actively engage with the stories we’re being told. Which leaves us at: Yes, we need a hopeful vision of the future. We just simultaneously have to be on guard against the idea that simply wanting it is enough to get us there. 

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TV and MoviesStacy Lee KongMarvel, DC, Superman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, James Gunn, Zack Snyder, retro-futurism