Look up! In the sky... it's a bird... it's a plane... nah, it's some dude flying around in his red underwear.
Although the classic Superman's red trunks are canon, designed by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938, fans have been clamoring for James Gunn to put Superman back in them. Zack Snyder, lauded for his illustrious vision in film, decided to remove the red trunks for Henry Cavill's Man of Steel.
His reason was sound. Snyder has said that he tried “a billion different versions” but could never make the classic design work. Although the trunks were an iconic facet of Superman's suit, Snyder thought they didn't fit the tone of a Kryptonian suit designed for functionality and practicality.
And so, Cavill didn't have trunks. Then, James Gunn takes the helm of DC Studios, and Superman is back in red trunks. The director of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is revered for his geek-savant attention to detail. If it's canon, it will be in a Gunn adaptation. Yet, he has been maligned for bringing the scarlet underwear back to the mythos of Superman.
Turns out it wasn't his process. David Corenswet convinced him to do it, according to a recent podcast.
Based on the online conversation, it would be easy to deduce that Zack Snyder and James Gunn were mortal foes. However, it's quite the opposite. The two CBM visionaries have been friends for decades. Snyder, first to the Superman family, famously dropped Superman's red trunks in Man of Steel (easily one of the most prolific CBM origin movies of all time).
In the Fandango Big Ticket interview, the cast of James Gunn's Superman, soaring into theaters on July 11, sat down together to hype the film's premiere. And the heart of the underwear debate came up in question.
The New 52-inspired Superman suit (seen in "Flashpoint") was thought to be more Kryptonian and, in Snyder's words, through Gunn, it just wasn't the right aesthetic. There were no red trunks throughout the DCEU. Sure, the entire suit becomes a spandex onesie, but fans didn't seem to miss them so much.
"One of the biggest questions was were we going to have trunks or not have trunks? I talked to Zack Snyder who was like ‘I tried a billion different versions with the trunks and at the end of the day I tried it but I just couldn’t get there.’,” Gunn said. “I was feeling exactly the same way, and [Costume Designer] Judianna [Makovsky] and I talked and she said ‘Alright, we’ll do one version where we try both trunks and no trunks.’ I went in with David and he tried it no trunks and trunks. And I still was going to go with not trunks."
There it is. James Gunn wasn't bringing back the trunks. Then, the man who would be Kal-El shared his insight.
“The problem is they look kind of silly. You were looking for a way to make them look cool. Or you were looking for a function, or an explanation for having them that would justify them. And my thing was just maybe they’re supposed to look a little silly. Maybe the reason he wears them is to look a little silly. Basically, to undermine how powerful he really is,”
So, there's that. Superman is, ostensibly, an alien. In a juvenile way, a grown man flying around in his underwear makes him less scary and foreign. "He wants kids not to be afraid of him," Gunn later said. "So that was the thing that made me decide to keep the trunks."
Superman opens July 11, 2025.