SSP Thinks Film

It’s good to have Superman acting like Superman again. On the big screen at least, it’s been a while. Following writer-director James Gunn’s hugely successful  shepherding of the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY for Marvel and his memorable SUICIDE SQUAD do-over for DC, he has been tasked by Warner Bros to launch a brand new DC cinematic universe beginning with his take on the Big Blue Boyscout. 

SUPERMAN eschews an origin story, beginning very much in media res, dropping you in the middle of a world of heroes. Three centuries after humanity first encountered metahumans and three years since Superman (David Corenswet) revealed himself to the world, the Man of Steel finds himself fighting other superpowered individuals and the turning tide of public opinion, all manipulated by genius tech billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).

When starting a brand new cinematic universe, there’s a lot to be said for only explaining what the audience might not know and letting the rest be understood from context clues and general cultural osmosis. Everyone knows who Superman is and how he got here, but non-fans might not know he gains his powers and heals using the power of our yellow sun. The other already established heroes and villains in this universe don’t get origin stories, power explanations or stated motivations, but their actions establish these early on. Show don’t tell.

Gunn has always worn his heart on his sleeve and infused his work with his passions and beliefs. He’s an animal lover who owns a rescue dog so of course Krypto the (adorable but badly behaved) Superdog is prominent in this, an unexpected highlight of the movie who is equally help and hindrance to Superman. He’s dealt with his fair share of online harassment particularly in response to his vocal anti-Trump views so the worst kinds of perpetually online people become a key part of Lex Luthor’s master plan. He’s outspoken in his sense of justice and the importance of showing kindness and humanity to everyone, so Superman is driven by those same ideals (as he always should be). 

One of Gunn’s great skills is in casting, and the ensemble here are incredibly well dialled-in to who their characters fundamentally are and what they represent. David Corenswet radiates decency and old-fashioned charm while simultaneously taking the Last Son of Krypton into a more human, fallible direction than ever before, Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane perhaps doesn’t get to share enough screentime with him, but she’s refreshingly a very active character and her chemistry with Corenswet borders on the obscene. Nicholas Hoult isn’t scared of playing to the back row with his repulsive tech bro Lex Luthor and the colourful supporting cast (notably Sara Sampaio’s excitable Eve Teschmacher, Edi Gathegi’s prodigious Mister Terrific and Nathan Fillion’s buffoonish Guy Gardner/Green Lantern) all make their mark with, in some cases, only a handful of scenes. 

The action is big and colourful and very comic book-y, and crucially, unafraid to lean into the silliness of adapting from that medium. Superman fights a fire-breathing Kaiju stomping through metropolis and attempts to limit collateral damage to any human or animal while the privately-backed vigilantes the Justice Gang wail on it with little concern for their civilian-packed surroundings. With the help of the ridiculous shapeshifter Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Superman later has to escape Lex’s pocket universe prison via an antimatter river, which looks like a deadly maelstrom of every known particle effect, and Krypto’s bad dog behaviour is key to not one but two action scenes in the final act.

This is an alternate history with startling similarities to our own. Xenophobia, genocide and the dangers of technology are the big themes of 2025 and appropriately enough also drive the latest take on Superman. The warring nations of Boravia and Jarhanpur at the heart of this may be fictional, but it’s explicitly a stand-in for both the Russia-Ukraine and the Israel-Palestine wars. In possibly the film’s standout scene, Superman shows a rare loss of composure during an interview with Lois, who is grilling him for irresponsibly traveling to see the warmongering president of Boravia (Zlatko Buric) to threaten him to stop the conflict. Lois doing her journalistic duty reels off the raft of international laws and diplomatic precedent he has broken, to which Clark explodes “People were going to die!”.

Gunn hasn’t completely left his time with the MCU behind it seems, as much as he does things differently with this collection of DC superheroes, there are sequences that appear to reference, intentionally or not, moments from Marvel movies, namely Yondu’s big cheerily scored action scene in GUARDIANS Vol 2 and Loki’s iconic thrashing at the hands of Hulk in THE AVENGERS. It’s more a sign that he’s got a natural instinct for what makes such superhero imagery so arresting than that he’s out of new ideas, but fans of his work in the MCU will find a lot to like here. 

Superman 2025 doesn’t quite hit the instantly iconic heights of the original Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve film as it under-serves a couple of characters and still manages to end on a bog-standard punch-up between superpowered beings. Gunn and Co.’s real achievement here is making the aw-shucks corny boyscout aspect of Superman be his strongest trait, the straight-arrow, morally incorruptible hero his world needs, and the kind of saviour we could all do with in ours. Come to see the Last Son of Krypton doing what he should do scored by a very familiar theme, stay for surprisingly nuanced performances and the indication that this particular DC universe, inspired by groundbreaking comic writers like Grant Morrison, will be very much about confronting the evils of real world via mass entertainment. SSP