'It's Superman Summer': Cleveland Relishes Opening Weekend of the Blockbuster and the City's Turn in the Spotlight

Cleveland made sure to celebrate the release of James Gunn’s Superman on Friday, with parties at Tower City Center, to a packed house at the Capitol Theatre in Gordon Square. Credit: Michael Collier

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Cleveland finally getting recognition for nearly a century of cultural export!

At least that’s how viewers of Superman, the latest cinematic rendition of the world’s most popular superhero, felt this past weekend, when thousands across Northeast Ohio watched the Man of Steel represent his birthplace and show that he can very well fight aliens in it, too.

Filmmaker James Gunn last summer took over several parts of Cleveland’s city center, from Public Square to the Arcade and Progressive Field, to film the movie amid local landmarks.

Months of post-production and $224 million later, Cleveland looked pretty good. And to the collectors and diehards, Cleveland looked really, really damn good.

“I mean, quite literally, we become Metropolis,” Valentino Zullo, a comic book academic and board member of the Siegel & Shuster Society, told Scene in the lobby of the Capitol Theatre on Friday.

“We’re no longer the Mistake on the Lake,” he said. “We’re Metropolis. It’s over now. Truly, we can call ourselves the home of Superman.”

This may be the summer to do that.

Besides an easy-to-miss exhibit on the second floor of the Cleveland Public Library, a commemorative sign at the childhood home of Jerry Siegel on Kimberly Avenue, and a small display at Hopkins Airport, Cleveland has long struggled to design and pay for a fitting homage for the most famous and ubiquitous superhero in the world.

That changed last week, when celebrations of Superman-as-prodigal-son popped up across the city. At Tower City Center, fans posed with red capes in front of green screens and played games at the Super Fun Arcade. At the CPL, they did hero-themed comic workshops or scavenger hunts. They saw Lex Luthor’s Humvee parked at the Cleveland History Center.

And come August 2, they’ll see the long-awaited Superman statue unveiled at the southwest corner of the Huntington Convention Center.

Valentino Zullo, a comic book academic and board member of the Siegel & Shuster Society, at Superman’s release at the Capitol Theatre on Friday. Credit: Mark Oprea

“It’s required quite a bit of money to be raised—we still have money to raise,” Gary Kaplan, president of the Siegel & Shuster Society, the main advocacy backer of the statue, said at a premiere in Gordon Square on Friday.

Kaplan didn’t say how much, as he handed out signed posters or cards advertising the August 2 unveiling and the fundraising left to do. It was, after all, a night for positivity and glass-is-half-full type of thinking.

“Everybody in the world knows who Superman is. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in, what continent you’re in. Everybody knows who Superman is,” Kaplan said. He look around the theater lobby, then said, “And it all started in Cleveland, Ohio, with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.”

The movie itself centers on Corenset’s Superman/Clark Kent enmeshed in a world of social media and geopolitical conflict.

Lex Luthor, played by an acerbic Nicholas Hoult, is Metropolis’ Jeff Bezos, if Bezos trafficked in ultra-grade defense tech and portals to other planets. Superman must navigate a war led by the fictional Boravia, while he and his Daily Planet staffers figure what part Luthor plays. Throw in a stolen video message from Superman’s birth parents—either fake news or not—and a social media firestorm ensues. Even Superman, it turns out, isn’t immune to being cancelled.

Especially by right-wing media. As director Gunn pointed out in an interview with The Times, Corenset’s Superman is aware, almost in a metafictional kind of way, of the implication of him falling to earth and, with his base on Antarctica, being in violation of a plethora of international treaties. Superman’s an immigrant. He’s an immigrant that—gah!—wants to make the world a better place, even if that means roughing up a dictator ready to bomb innocent civilians.

An outsider, as many remind us throughout the movie.

“You are an alien,” Lois Lane tells Superman during a set-up interview in her apartment. “You illegally entered a country and threatened to murder their head of state.”

“Yes, I come from a planet called Krypton,” Superman tells Lane. “They sent me here to serve humanity and help the world become a better place. That message is why I do what I do: I cherish that more than anything.”

At the Capitol Theatre on Friday, where all of its 422 seats were sold out, many in attendance cheered at both Superman’s moral uprightness and Cleveland’s cameos with an equal kind of fervor. It was if, as a monster marched around Public Square or Progressive Field advertised “The Metropolis Meteors,” the city itself took a leading role after decades of being out of commission.

And there the city was. The nighttime skyline from the Flats East Bank. Superman catching a falling building (and saving a woman) on the Veterans Memorial Bridge. Superman and Mister Terrific swapping banter in front of the CPL. Superman and Lane twirling in romantic crescendo in the golden hour light of the Arcade.

“I’m almost teared up when I saw it. It’s beautiful,” a woman in her forties said after the showing, where others lined up to buy Metropolis Iced Teas or nab a poster with the Terminal Tower in the background.

“I mean, they shot scenes where me and my husband go on dates,” she said, “where we watch fireworks, where we’re just walking down the street—I loved it.”

As did Zullo, who seemed after the showing both overjoyed by the film and equally exhausted from the months of preparation.

“It’s the summer of Superman,” Zullo said. “Just a moment for the city to recognize: we bring culture to the world.”

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.