When I was a kid, I read “Superman” comics at the corner drugstore and watched reruns of the 1950s TV show starring George Reeves as the Man of Steel. Even now, I recall the intro to the show announcing Superman fought for “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

How could I not, then, head to the local multiplex and catch the latest screen version of “Superman,” this summer’s top blockbuster? The criticism of the movie from the MAGA folks made it even more of a must-see.

In regard to the film, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway declared, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us.” Fox News labeled the movie “Superwoke,” and its host Laura Ingraham pledged this was “another film we won’t be seeing.”

My verdict on the movie? Enjoyable enough with its high-res color and flash-bang special effects, but it really couldn’t capture the simple magic of those comic books and black-and-white TV episodes. I did watch intently, though, wondering the whole 129 minutes what Conway and her band were criticizing.

Was it a hero who stands for truth? Last year their own hero, President Donald J. Trump, was found guilty on 34 counts of corruptly falsifying business records and, in another case, liable for $83 million for lying about journalist E. Jean Carroll. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column found Trump had made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his first term as president. By contrast, the only deception made by Superman in his latest multiplex adventure was disguising himself as Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet.

Perhaps MAGA’s problem with the movie was a hero who advocates justice, who resists uncalled for aggression and brutal arrests. The current Trump administration has deported American citizens, legal residents and undocumented immigrants alike without even a pretense of due process. Career lawyers who actually work for a government department with Justice in its name are fired for doing their jobs prosecuting insurrectionists and enforcing ethics guidelines.

Could it be that Trump and MAGA stand against the American Way? The Superman film’s writer/director James Gunn said it’s the story of “an immigrant that came from other places.” So are Trump and his allies against the movie because Superman himself is not a native-born American, but an immigrant from Krypton?

Really? Could a president whose mother was born in Scotland, whose wife was born in Slovenia, whose biggest campaign contributor was born in South Africa and whose secretary of state’s parents were born in Cuba stand against an immigrant seeking the American dream? Do he and his MAGA followers reject the underlying premise of what President Ronald Reagan called “this land of opportunity” for new arrivals?

Apparently. Fox News host Jesse Watters snidely suggested that “MS-13,” the name of a criminal gang most powerful in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, was emblazoned on Superman’s cape.

And what can be a more integral part of the American Way than loyalty to a pet dog? Comic relief is provided throughout the Superman film by the superdog Krypto who ignores Superman’s commands and bowls him over at every opportunity. In contrast, when the 14-month-old dog belonging to Kristi Noem, Trump’s current secretary of homeland security, displayed an “aggressive personality,” she shot Cricket dead. Perhaps she should have shipped the pooch to a dog pound in El Salvador instead.

With the release of the blockbuster movie, the White House tweeted a poster of Trump in a Superman costume with the slogan “Truth, Justice and the American Way” inscribed across the bottom. Yeah, right. They might as well have posted him dressed as Mother Teresa.

In another poster, from way back in 1949, Superman tells a bunch of kids that if they “hear anybody talk against a schoolmate or anyone else because of his race, religion, or national origin, don’t wait: tell him that kind of talk is un-American.” What does that make Trump? He has claimed that Mexico is sending rapists across the borders, that the United States’s first Black president was not born in this country, that a white supremacist rally contained “very fine people,” that Muslims should be banned from entering the United States, that “thousands and thousands” of Arab Americans in New Jersey celebrated on 9/11 and that any Jew who votes for a Democrat shows “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

At the “Superman” premiere, Gunn said, “I think this is a movie about kindness and I think that’s something everyone can relate to.” No, not everyone, Mr. Gunn.

Keith Raffel is a Creators Syndicate writer.