At this point, in the Year of Our Lord 2025, everyone can recite the origin story of Superman. Born Kal-El on the planet Krypton. Sent to Earth by his parents before that world goes boom. Grew up in a typical middle-American small town named [checks notes] Smallville. Moves to Metropolis and, thanks to a simple pair of glasses, keeps his secret identity as Clark Kent, journalist for the Daily Planet, separate from his gig as the guy with the “S” on his chest. Keeps a vacation pad way, way up north. Loves his beautiful co-worker Lois Lane. Dislikes include supervillains and Kryptonite.
It’s been told, retold, rehashed, and revived — yet never revised — a million times over. We know all of this. What’s more, James Gunn knows we know all of this. So the writer and director of Superman, the latest big-screen adventure to feature the the Rosetta stone of superheroes, quickly dispenses with narrative redundancies. A series of intertitles set the scene: Three centuries ago, “metahumans” appeared. Three decades ago, baby Kal-El came crashing into Kansas. Three years ago, the now-grown extraterrestrial with the strong jawline starts rocking a cape. Three hours ago, he fought a bad guy named the Hammer of Boravia in downtown Metropolis. Three minutes ago, our man got his ass handed to him and, when we meet him, he’s fled the scene and lies bloodied and battered somewhere in the Arctic Circle.
Superman (David Corenswet) calls his faithful companion Krypto the Superdog. The pooch drags his master back to the Fortress of Solitude. Robots tend to his wounds, and strap him into a magnifying-glass doohickey so the “yellow sun” can restore him quickly. While he’s being rejuvenated, he watches the partial message that his parents included in his escape pod years ago. (We won’t say who plays his father, though we will note this actor has worked with Gunn in a previous capacity.) Then Superman flies off, heading back to Metropolis to hopefully bring the Hammer down.
Fewer than five minutes of screen time have passed, and Gunn’s already laid out both the backstory and the basics of the tale he’s about to tell in the most economic manner possible. What’s more, he’s also given us exposition, humor, pathos, intrigue, conflict, whimsy, and spectacle. A few minutes after that, we’re in the middle of Round Two, as Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), her Daily Planet colleagues, and enemies — notably Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), arch-nemesis of both Superman and the Hair Club for Men — watch the good guy battle the bad guy. All of this is rendered in what feels like a series of splash pages that have somehow leapt from sketches to screen without losing an ounce of action or verve. It’s faint praise, even in the post-MCU era of the genre, to say that Superman is a solid superhero film; the caveat is hiding in plain sight. What Gunn has pulled off is something more complicated, more interesting, and far tougher: He’s given us a Superman movie that actually feels like a living, breathing comic book.
Popcorn-addled cinephiles will pick up a strong, retro whiff of Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman, the ground zero for today’s bonanza of superhero blockbusters, as well as its more pulpy, lively 1980 sequel. Comic readers, however, will realize that this movie’s real roots go back much farther than the Seventies. Gunn — who’s not just a member of DC Studios, he’s the co-CEO — no longer has to make audiences believe that a man can fly. He’s now got to pitch them a version of Superman that retains the character’s lore and longstanding decency yet tempers his Boy Scout sincerity, reinvents him for modern audiences weaned on multipart sagas and dark, revisionist takes, and firmly establishes him as one key part of a potentially sprawling bigger picture. The goal is to channel the character dynamics of the Donner-era Superman movies minus their attempts at “realism,” while also restoring a sense of awe to the idea of an alien guardian with immense power, fighting otherworldly creatures of equally unreal measure.
To do that, he’s reached back to the Superman of the literary medium’s beloved Silver Age. Those stories, spanning roughly the late Fifties through the Sixties, tended to lean toward the fantastical, the sci-fi far-out, and the phantom zone that exists between the ridiculous and the sublime, i.e. a superpowered dog in a cape. The enormous kaiju that Superman fights in midtown Metropolis, the “cosmic imp” that several other metahumans (we’ll get to them in a second) take on, the “pocket universe” concept that becomes a big part of the movie’s second act, the robots that mind the house at Chez Solitude, Krypto the agent of canine chaos — these are all more or less Silver Age elements, which Gunn dips into with gusto. He’s not afraid to be outlandish, nor to aim high in terms of selling a surprisingly vulnerable Man of Steel who’s still, in no uncertain terms, close to godlike.
The movie’s also brought in a host of supporting characters who live in a building familiar to Saturday-morning cartoon viewers, and who go by the temporary name of “the Justice Gang.” The crew’s Green Lantern is not Hal Jordan but Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion, having a field day), the comics’ resident douchebag of the Green Lantern Corps. Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) can fly, squawk, and wield a mean Thanagarian mace. Mister Terrific (For All Mankind‘s Edi Gathegi) is a genius who rides around as if on an invisible throne, and has oodles of bleeding-edge tech at his disposal. Later, a hero known as Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), who can turn his body into any element imaginable, helps out in a jam. Daily Planet alums from Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) to Perry White (Wendell Pierce) are present and accounted for. On the bad guys side, there is the Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría), who’s like a human computer server with fighting skills; Ultraman, a mysterious masked henchman and no relation to this guy; and, of course, Mr. Luthor.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
Lex is one third of a longstanding triangle that’s dominated Superman narratives in the public’s collective consciousness, along with Lois and Clark. (And yes, there’s a canon-friendly explanation for the whole glasses thing.) The movie benefits from having a well-chosen cast that’s all on the same page, even if many of the characters, including ol’ Supes himself, have a nagging tendency to speak in Gunn’s particular, semi-snarky voice; it gives the same sensation you had watching the first few Avengers movies, where everyone occasionally talked and acted like they were in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.
But the core trio is where Superman helps lay the foundation for the film’s more down-to-Earth qualities. Hoult’s Luthor is a recognizable take on the books’ version of the villain as an evil corporate CEO and string-puller, complete with a gang of lackeys working surveillance systems, data-crunching, and giving off big DOGE energy. He’s slightly more calculating and casually reptilian than previous screen interpretations, but equally as bitter that his brains aren’t as recognized as his rival’s brawn. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Brosnahan stays in her Lane beautifully, and is blessed with being handed a Lois who already knows Clark has an alter-ego. Early on, she requests an on-the-record interview with her boyfriend, but as Superman. He gamely agrees. The whole thing turns into a contentious debate about great powers equaling greater moral responsibilities, recognizing government checks and balances versus going rogue, saving political face versus saving lives, and whether Superman is “punk” or not. It’s nearly 12 minutes of intelligent discussion in a blockbuster adventure that’s still filled with a lotta traditional sound and fury, and it’s as thrilling as any of the shaky-cam flying scenes or pow-bang set pieces.
And then there’s Corenswet, who somehow, against all odds, takes an iconic figure well-etched into everyone’s memory and makes the character his own. Corenswet is not a complete unknown — you may recall his sneering tornado hunter from last year’s Twisters — but the actor doesn’t come with much previous baggage, and does exude an excess of presence and charm. He doesn’t ignore the dozens of other takes on the Man of Steel; he just sticks to Gunn’s script and complements the film’s sensibility. He’s got a great rapport with Brosnahan, which sells DC Comics‘ first couple as an actual couple. You don’t see him as Clark enough to gauge how he views the “square” side of the equation. Yet you do see how Corenswet imbues Superman with fortitude, a bit of wit, a good deal of inner conflict, and a respect for truth, justice, and the American way, before that phrase became a contradiction in terms. It’s not a showy performance, given that movie itself is one large show-off designed to set up not just a super-dude but a whole world of heroes, a whole universe of future connected stories and endless sagas. He’s simply holding the whole Megillah up, with the same amount of dedication and effort with which his character props up collapsing skyscrapers in order to shield innocents from harm.
Is Superman both just enough and too much? It certainly hits every mark you want it to, except possibly knowing which deep cuts from the comics are strictly nerd-bait instead of being narratively useful, and when several climactic showdowns have overstayed their welcome. Yet Gunn’s stamp on this mythology, and his use of it as a statement of intent for where he wants to take things in this larger intellectual-property universe, is largely a blast. It’s a lot of fun, which you can’t always say about superhero movies these days.
So much fun, in fact, you may not notice some of the things Gunn has embedded into his summer movie. Created by two Jewish artists in the 1930s, Superman has always been an outsider, an “other,” an immigrant. This is a fact, and given how facts have become Kryptonite to the political right, it’s not surprising that MAGA-affiliated blowhards and other shit-stirrers have taken issue with this notion being part of the new movie. What’s more interesting is how that aspect is used. Luthor, a man who sponsors dictators and “wants to be a king,” grounds this idea of the guardian being from a different place within a smear campaign. He manipulates the public into fearing and hating Superman, as well as using political capital to try to have him sidelined. All of this is done for Luthor’s own benefit and in an attempt to consolidate power. Pop art may or may not be political. But despite the lies being spread and truth being warped, you’re never in doubt as to which side Superman is on. The same goes for Gunn. Hopefully, the same goes for you.
From Rolling Stone US
