In most versions of Superman — on screen and off — the Man of Steel is torn between two worlds. On the one hand, he’s loyal to his adoptive home of Earth. On the other hand, in the pages of the comics and various onscreen incarnations, he often thinks wistfully of a life he could have led on Krypton had his birth parents, Jor-El and Lara, not perished in the cataclysm that engulfed his home planet forever. And now, with the new James Gunn-directed Superman, there’s a new wrinkle to Jor-El and Lara, one only suggested by previous comics canon. In fact, the most jarring moment in the new Superman is the one thing most of us take for granted about the character’s origin.
Here’s what the new Superman has changed about the Man of Steel’s famous origins and why director James Gunn tells Inverse it had to happen.
