An amateur film critic named Evan gave the new “Superman” movie five out of five stars. Writing on the Letterboxd platform, they praised the film’s “unique visual identity” and called director and screenwriter James Gunn “the best comic director.” And they added, “Very anti Israel which is awesome to see from a major studio blockbuster.”

When Evan’s capsule review was shared by at least one user on X, it garnered more than 11 million views and 36,000 likes.

Evan isn’t the only one to suggest that the new blockbuster carries an implicit — or even explicit — anti-Israel message. Social media has been buzzing with theories that one of the film’s major plot points — Superman’s mission to stop an invasion of a fictional impoverished country named Jahranpur by the U.S.-backed “Boravia” — is an allegory for the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“Feels like a major cultural moment that Israel is quite clearly the bad guy villain country in a big budget Hollywood movie,” wrote the political commentator and frequent Israel critic Krystal Ball on X. “Going in I thought it was subtle but it was not subtle at all.” Such messages were amplified in Arab and progressive media.

On Reddit, some supporters of Israel are critical of Gunn and D.C. Studios for seeding the film with an anti-Israel message. “I find it so disrespectful and distressing that a superhero created by two Jewish artists, is now being used to promote anti-Israeli messages to the world,” wrote a poster on r/Israel, a “subreddit” for supporters of Israel. What followed was a lengthy discussion of Gunn’s........

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