Could James Gunn’s Superman Finally Get Lois Lane Right?

Even after a recent sneak peak that revealed five minutes of new footage, we still don’t know much about how James Gunn‘s Superman will handle the famed romance between Clark Kent and Lois Lane. In Superman: The Movie and in Man of Steel, we saw the beginning of this courtship, with Lois and Clark meeting and beginning to fall for each other. This is also how most television and animated adaptations approach the characters.

But in promotional material for the upcoming Superman, we see the Clark (David Corenswet) and Lois (Rachel Brosnahan) exchanging knowing looks to one another, and even embracing before Superman leaves to battle some looming threat. That’s a quick courtship, even by Hollywood standards.

Yet in a recent interview with Collider, Brosnahan provided some further information, explaining that Lois and Clark have been together for several months by the time of the movie’s opening. But the real compelling bit is when Brosnahan said, “They’re not sure if this is something that was just a really great fling or something that could be forever, and they have really opposite worldviews, and they bump up against each other that way.”

This idea of Lois and Clark holding opposite worldviews and bumping up against one another suggests that we’re going to see a different depiction of Lois Lane, one more in line with the brave and principled person from the comics.

Lois Takes Action

Midway through the very first Superman story in 1938, meek Clark Kent gets a chance to dance with his beautiful co-worker Lois Lane. No sooner do they begin than a tough called Butch decides to butt in, pushing Clark aside. “Clark! Are you going to stand for this?” Lois asks in disgust. She then turns that anger toward Butch, slapping him in the face when he refuses to let her leave.

“Good for you, Lois,” whispers Clark, even if he more openly chides her. Of course Butch and his pals don’t accept Lois’s refusal and choose to rebuild their crumbling masculinity by kidnapping the reporter. Yet their masculinity still completely collapses when they drive their car into Superman, who then smashes the vehicle in a panel reused for the iconic cover to Action Comics #1 (Butch is the guy with hands on his face in the lower left-hand corner).

Although much more impressed by the imposing, active Superman, Lois doesn’t bow to him either. “I’d advise you not to print this little episode,” he tells her at the end of the night. In the very next panel, Lois leans over her editor’s desk and declares, “But I tell you I saw Superman last night!”

In that short interlude, not even five full pages long, Superman and Lois Lane creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster establish everything we need to know about Lois Lane. She’s smart, she does her job, and she holds to her convictions.

To be sure, that characterization didn’t always manifest in the same way. A lot of stories from Lois’ longest-running solo book, Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane reduced her to the hapless heroine of a standard Silver Age romance story. Examples include Lois using her significant intelligence and cunning to trick Superman into marrying her, Superman using his significant power to trick her back, and the hero then often winking at the reader as she storms away.

But even these stories imagined Lois as someone with agency and wits, someone who took the title “Superman’s Girlfriend” for herself. It wasn’t hoisted upon her. The same hasn’t always been true in movie adaptations.

Lois Lane Off the Case

“What’s the ‘S’ stand for,” Lois asks in Man of Steel.

“It’s not an ‘S,'” Superman (Henry Cavill) responds. “On my world it means hope.”

Though still smiling in wonder at the amazing person across from her, Lois can’t help but allow a little snark. “Well, here it’s an ‘S’.”

That exchange is about as close to the standard Lois Lane that Amy Adams gets to play in any of the Zack Snyder movies. Adams certainly has the chops to play moxie (just look at her turn as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which reportedly got her the part), but she largely exists to confirm Superman’s power and mourn his death.

For all of the shortcomings in Snyder’s take on Superman, though, his do-nothing Lois isn’t that unique. Before that reboot, Superman Returns told us in 2006 that Lois (Kate Bosworth) was her own person, someone who lived her own life in Superman’s absence. She even won a Pulitzer for her op-ed “We Don’t Need a Superman.” But Superman’s (Brandon Routh) actions seem bent on proving her wrong, diminishing her to a damsel in distress.

It’s easy to point out problems in Superman Returns and Man of Steel, but even the best Superman adaptations often sell Lois short. Joan Alexander, Noel Neill, and Bitsie Tulloch in radio and TV shows, Margot Kidder in the movies, Dana Delany and Alice Lee in animated shows all gave us brassy and independent Lois’s who insisted on being full people. But the very nature of being a supporting character meant that they were often subordinate to Superman, the main attraction. Only the uneven 1990s series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman gave its star Teri Hatcher room to distinguish the character, because she and Clark were both the leads. There Superman was supporting.

As great as most of these performances are, they only offer glimpses of what Lois Lane could be, the person whose morals and perspective influences Superman. And every time the franchise reboots, so also does Lois’ characterization. She becomes, as always, a girl who has to fall in love with Superman first, and a woman with her own beliefs second.

His Hero

It’s that chance to break the reboot cycle that makes Brosnahan’s comments so intriguing. Certainly there will be romantic elements to the movie. But if the impetus isn’t about Lois figuring out that Clark and Superman are the same person, if it isn’t about her reconciling her feelings, then there’s space for her story to be about what she believes.

Because that’s ultimately why Superman needs Lois Lane. As demonstrated way back in 1938 when he watched in admiration as she stood up to a bully, Superman is inspired by Lois. She gives him hope, hope that humanity doesn’t need to rely on him, hope that he would be just as brave and strong even if he couldn’t pick up a car. Lois Lane is Superman’s hero. Hopefully, the James Gunn movie will let us see that dynamic in action.

Lois Lane appears in Superman, releasing on July 11, 2025.

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