The mood in our metamodern age can be hard to pin down. On one hand we can’t unsee postmodernism and its knowing, wink-wink irony. But on the other hand we yearn for the modernism that came before, with its endearing earnestness and more straightforward narratives. The dueling pulls of these oft-contradictory extremes take the form of “oscillation,” a constant toggling between sincerity and irony, hope and cynicism, immersion within a story and critical detachment from it.

James Gunn’s Superman, which I reviewed for TGC, strikes me as a mildly metamodern movie. It’s metamodern because it clearly embraces an old-school sincerity—from its happy-go-lucky color palette to its “gosh, golly” vernacular—while also containing elements of postmodern self-awareness and genre reflexivity (much of the film’s convoluted sci-fi plot feels like it’s making fun of the last decade of MCU multiverse shenanigans).

I say mildly metamodern, however, because Superman seems to lean modern. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. The film’s outlook is almost disarmingly optimistic. Gunn wants to immerse audiences in a fantastical world we need not understand to enjoy. The movie’s tagline (“Look Up!“) is a thesis statement for its aims—to move audiences beyond cynicism and into a mode of sincere, unapologetic, old-fashioned hope.

I, for one, am here for this optimistic vibe shift. And I hope subsequent DC Universe films keep it up.