The Best Superhero Stories Were Always Christian. DC’s New Boss Knows It.

When the new head of DC Studios, Jeremy Latcham, was helping make some of the first Marvel superhero movies nearly two decades ago, he had a unique compass that guided his creative decisions. In an interview recorded this past summer with CBN News, Latcham shared how he was usually the lone voice in the room to ask a strange but simple question: Would my grandma like this if she watched it? That question became a guiding light in his movie-making decisions.

The “granny test” was never actually about positive test screenings with geriatric female demographics. It was a hyperbolic reminder to writers, producers, and other Hollywood executives. Would this movie work with the values of the average American outside the bubble of Hollywood? Could it bring American families together, across generations, and offer them a positive story of hope and redemption?

When “Iron Man” came out in 2008, Latcham’s grandmother called him. Her pastor had talked about the movie in a sermon that Sunday at church about redemption. Latcham considered this a sign of a job well done. For Latcham, the hero stories we tell — super or otherwise — should be redemptive, hopeful, and virtuous instead of cynical, depressing, and raunchy.

On Monday, Latcham was named president and chief creative officer of DC Studios — the film and television home to some of the most iconic characters in American pop culture such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. The change, which included the ousting of former heads of DC Studios James Gunn and Peter Safran, is part of a larger shake-up in vision and leadership under the CEO of the new Skydance media conglomerate, David Ellison.

Jeremy Latcham is unashamed in his Christian convictions for the values and moral norms that he believes not only bring American families together but also call us toward a vision of life that maximizes human flourishing and civilizational good. When over 60% of Americans still identify as Christian, superhero movies that celebrate Christian virtues shouldn’t be controversial. Despite our numerous religious differences, most Americans are united in a belief that to become more Christlike is a positive aspiration that makes our world a better place. 

But the viral interviews unveiling Jeremy Latcham’s Christian convictions this past week have sparked plenty of online controversy. Some have expressed disdain over the idea of a studio head with Christian values wanting to tell superhero stories that celebrate those values. Questions and challenges abound: Why do they have to be Christian values and not just “universal” values? Will the next Batman movie become a Sunday school lesson? Is this religious “indoctrination”?

While these questions are understandable, they reveal just how unaware many in the West have become of the reality that, whether we’ve been aware of it or not, the best superhero stories already contain Christian values. 

As one comic book artist posted in a thread on X in response to the controversy: “You’re not ready to understand how everything you love is actually Christianity.” He then went on to highlight the ways that Iron Man, Captain America, and even the Norse god of thunder Thor go through Christian redemption arcs in each of their heroes’ journeys in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But aren’t these just “universal values”?

This distinction between “Christian values” and “universal values” becomes apparent the moment you begin to compare the values and moral norms of many of the mythological heroes of the pre-Christian past with the Supermans and Captain Americas of our day and age. 

Take the ancient Greek heroes of Achilles and Odysseus as examples. To honor Patroclus, Achilles kills 12 noble Trojan sons with his bronze blade after flinging Hector’s corpse face down in the dust near Patroclus’ funeral pyre. Homer’s original epic gives us a very different Odysseus from Christopher Nolan’s penitent big-screen iteration. Homer’s Odysseus not only kills the suitors, but has 12 of the female servants hanged for sleeping with the suitors. Or consider the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh, whose heroic deeds include claiming a “lord’s right” to newly married brides on their wedding night.

If you can’t imagine Spider-Man or Superman behaving this way, it is because the values and morals we celebrate in these modern superheroes are, in fact, not “universal values.” When we witnessed a Superman kill even a psychopathic tyrant, as was the case in “Man of Steel” (2013), most experienced an immediate sense of moral outrage. “Superman doesn’t do that!” Our ancient pre-Christian predecessors in the West would feel no such qualms. 

While James Gunn’s “Superman” gave us a hopeful, sincere, and almost Ted Lasso-like version of America’s most iconic superhero, DC Studios followed that fairly family-friendly film with a raunchy, TV-MA “Peacemaker,” a jaded and cynical take on Green Lantern in another R-rated “Lanterns” series, and a “Supergirl” movie whose only glimmer of hope was the few scenes in which David Corenswet’s Superman showed up on screen.

One need not be a prude to believe that cynicism, sadomasochistic violence, or graphic nudity aren’t necessary preconditions for good storytelling or an enjoyable cinema and television experience. We’ve seen big-budget sci-fi and superhero films pass the “granny test” and be both critical and commercial successes in this past year. “Project Hail Mary” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are two examples of that, with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” raking in $2.5 billion in box office receipts. Latcham himself was executive producer for some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most enjoyable films, including not only “Iron Man,” but also the original “The Avengers” (2012) and “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014). 

But why should anyone care about the values and morals of these “make-believe” characters? Isn’t this just entertainment? There is plenty of evidence that the stories we consume and even the fictional heroes we look up to do something to us — including impacts on our own character and values.

One study done by psychologists Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby found that when people are immersed in a story, they can subtly substitute a fictional character’s identity for their own. They called the phenomenon “experience-taking” as they found that participants temporarily adopted the character’s thoughts, emotional states, and even goals. They also found that the effects of inhabiting even a fictional character’s values and motivations translated to real-world impacts on the participants long after the story was done.

The hero stories we tell matter, and the best ones are already brimming with Christian values. If Jeremy Latcham can help DC Studios tell stories of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League that celebrate hope, moral fortitude in the face of evil, sacrificial love, and redemption, most Americans will flock to the movie theaters and streaming platforms with their parents and their children to take in those kinds of stories.

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Paul Anleitner is a cultural theologian whose work focuses on the role of culture and story in our quest for meaning. He is the author of “Based on a True Story: Vibe Shifts, the End of Deconstruction, and the Reboot of Meaning.”

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