The New ‘Superman’ Movie Recreates a Classic ‘Simpsons’ Joke
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Superman.
James Gunn’s Superman is a decidedly strange movie full of Kaiju-like creatures, evil clones and a corporate Green Lantern who, for some reason, sports the “Simple Jack” haircut. Oh, and there’s a scene in which Bradley Cooper instructs Superman to have sex with as many human women as possible.
In the midst of all of this big-budget wackiness, the film also managed to squeeze in what appears to be a reference to a classic episode of The Simpsons.
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In Season Four’s “Last Exit to Springfield,” newly-elected union president Homer is given a tour of Mr. Burns’ home, which includes the “largest TV in the free world” and a drab basement. We also see that Burns has a room full of “1,000 monkeys working at a 1,000 type writers,” who will one day churn out the “greatest novel known to man.”
Unfortunately, all they managed to come up with was, “It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.”
Mr. Burns’ plan was seemingly inspired by the infinite monkey theorem, which posits that “if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.”
Sadly, this may not actually be the case.
At any rate, midway through the new Superman movie, the Man of Steel is captured by Lex Luthor and stashed away in a gloomy pocket universe. We also see that this extradimensional prison is where the supervillain has been secretly hiding a troll farm tasked with manufacturing online rage targeted at Superman.
While a lot could be said about the fact that Gunn of all people just made a movie in which Superman gets canceled by disingenuous internet trolls, a number of Simpsons fans were particularly interested in the fact that these angry social media posts were being hammered out by superintelligent monkeys, who may or may not have proclaimed that Superman is the “blurst.”
Yes, Luthor’s scheme is distinctly similar to Mr. Burns’ experiment. And while this could just be a coincidence, Gunn is a big fan of The Simpsons, once describing himself as a “longtime lover” of the show.
Fans have previously pointed out that Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may have similarly featured a deep-cut reference to a Simpsons joke. In one scene, Gamora mistakenly states that David Hasselhoff was the star of a show about a “magic boat,” only to be corrected by Star-Lord, who informs her that he was actually in Knight Rider, the show about a “talking car.”
But of course, a Hasselhoff-like actor was the star of Knightboat — the “crime-solving boat” — as seen in the Simpsons episode “And Maggie Makes Three.”
If they end up making a Superman II, hopefully Gunn won’t subject the actors to real acid after giving them safety goggles that do nothing.
