'Superman' briefing

1 ½ (out of 4)

            It’s a turd, it’s a shame!

Please don’t make me defend Zack Snyder and for the love of GOD please don’t make me defend Bryan Singer! Especially when the new horizons for DC in film and their recently reset universe bring most immediately Supergirl, uh, Clayface, then more of THIS in Man of Tomorrow, it’s ok just stop I’m already pooped. Yeah my disappointment at James Gunn’s latest is deep, despite some past success — I don’t think he’s focused enough to be the show-running Feige-esque grandmaster of Warner Brothers/DC’s most desperate hour.

Where to even begin besides the start — Christopher Reeves’ incredible zeal is more untouchable for a classic character than Sean Connery as James Bond or someone even more ludicrously iconic than that. The original major movie is a deliberate and often mystifying origin story, it’s a shame Reeves only gets half the time to bounce between his clumsy Jerry Lewis-ish Clark Kent antics and his notoriously noble portrait as the Man of Steel in Tights. Richard Donner’s soft-focused pop classic, even for the most expensive effects the late 70s could buy, is nonetheless dated, as is its sister sequel, a Part Two in Superman II, largely directed by Donner who dropped out and eventual Superman III director Richard Lester swooped in to finish. Both the '78 Superman and II boast charm, big performances and an inspiring, patriotic attitude to shore them up as enduring, corny cornerstone’s of a genre that had barely been tapped by Hollywood for technological limitations.

Subsequently, Superman III sucks bad, and even though The Quest for Peace was a steep downgrade in VFX quality, at least there’s a villain (a returning Gene Hackman), no stupid slapstick with Richard Pryor fooling around, and the appropriate themes are more firmly in place. 20 years later, X-Men series steward/pedo Bryan Singer directs an homage sequel even if it’s really some proto-legacyquel — by ignoring the ‘bad’ ones (III and IV) like some horror reboot, Superman Returns is essentially a moody, almost funereal sort of Superman movie starring Baby Supes (Brandon Routh, not a bad dude just miscast) and Baby Lois (Kate Bosworth, miscast and can’t act) that coasts on an early, astonishing plane rescue sequence but mostly functions as the cheesiest take the mid-2000s ‘gritty’ reboot era would allow the character, an odd oil and water combo that would’ve gotten us there with better casting, especially when Kevin Spacey’s Luthor is little more than a fun mime of Hackman’s worst day. The progressively sluggish movie, in spite of the reverence for Donner and some great moments (the bullet bouncing off his eye is one for the books, or heck that Atlas shot is pretty neat), wouldn’t generate enough cash to justify any follow-ups. Thus, the DCEU was necessitated and Zack Snyder (I suppose Watchmen impressed someone at WB?) stepped in for another chance to make Superman relevant again to a ‘modern’ audience.

And he did, in bringing to mind 9/11 while folding it all together alongside David S. Goyer for Nolan/Batman seriousness — minimal jokes and barely any smiling allowed. It’s the only Superman redo to actually go back to the beginning even in crappy flashback/flash-forward style, doesn’t have fucking Lex (who could forget Jesse Eisenberg from Batman v Superman!) and instead has some staggering stills, one of Hans Zimmer’s most mature scores, impressive digital effects not to mention honest to goodness strong performance work from Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, and hell throw Diane Lane and Kevin Costner in there. The third act does become punishing, and perhaps Man of Steel is the least comic accurate if most concerned with Superman’s struggles… Another mixed bag, another moderate “ya almost had it!” kind of fumble.

So in 2025, with Marvel weirdo James Gunn at the helm, it was time for REDEMPTION! BEGONE SNYDERBROS! A new era begins, and it’s going to be colorful and SUPERMAN’S GOING TO SAVE PEOPLE THIS TIME (*STICKS TONGUE OUT*)! Oh wait except he doesn’t really, except the occasional alien baby during the visual vomit of rainbow river or whatever the hell was happening midway through this mess... once again Superman is too busy punching someone equal to his strength for 15 minutes straight while skyscraper after Metropolitan skyscraper topples by the second… If Returns was dark and old-fashioned and Man of Steel was dark and more contemporary and grounded, Gunn’s Superman is just, uh, James Gunn’s Superman — you could almost say the same for Snyder but MoS is still one of his finest singular efforts, hell there’s more slow motion in this 2025 clown show. All I’m saying is this was the jokey, comic-accurate-to-the-layman, nerd-friendly version of Superman, I’m sorry, this millennia’s third-time’s-the-charm attempt to break the Super-curse has gone for broke only to wet the bed YET AGAIN. I would say this shit is harder to crack cinematically than Fantastic Four but Kal-El's tales HAVE BEEN DONE WELL, long before you could smother it with tasteless digital dressing (the wow moments of Singer's and Synder's soared so much higher than this movie’s regularly cheap spectacle) and submerge a screenplay in jokes with a 5 to 1 dud-ratio.

I wanted to like it folks, and some of it I do! Nic Hoult’s Lex is more fleshed out than we’ve ever seen before, his outlandish, seething “genius” really on display throughout the whole plot. Though the movie sidesteps developing the characters and their courtship, David Coronswet (better than Routh but a few strides behind the perfect casting of Cavill) and Rachel Brosnahan (damn near the spitting image of Margot Kidder) have good chemistry and do well with the whole “they’re in smitten mode, we’re past the reveal that he’s Superman, blah blah blah." Yeah, nice economy but I guess their honeymoon-phase bickering will have to do, sadly it’s the best part of the movie, ya know the classic Lois-wants-to-break-it-off-with-Superman, "oh wait I love you too!"

But the recognizable figures must be taken for granted, overlooking any origins when I’ve got WACKY SIDESHOW SUPERHERO CHARACTERS TO SHOW OFF! WOW MR. TERRIFIC, wow, uh, Hawk Girl… at least Edi Gathegi and Isabela Merced were due respective redemptions after NOT getting to be superheroes in X-Men: First Class and Madame Web. But yeah, Nathan Fillion just had to be here as random Green Lantern guy because by golly we gotta focus group! The childish James Gunnisms hold this shit back hard — this is just the MCU Superman, which makes sense because, akin to his spiritual brother Joss Whedon, a semi-smug sorta-sincere irreverence is all they really operate on. As not much of a fan of the earlier Guardians, or The Suicide Squad, and only mildly registering the cheeky gross-out horror of his debut Slither or most of his written crap (like the charmless Dawn of the Dead remake, where Gunn’s goofs made for Super-brother Snyder’s tacky debut!), I was blown away that this nerd accessed so much pathos in the methodically melodramatic weepie-then-joyous Guardians Vol. 3, or even in his first superhero moment (not counting The Specials) Super with Rainn Wilson, which too has creeping emotion behind a memorable, effective subversion of the genre’s expectations. Of course in the case of Superman (2025) there’s an emotional layup Pa Kent scene (where he isn’t dying), which helps swallow the whole stupid birth parent retcon, but when the restless rollercoaster IMAX takes are married to an underwhelming shotgun blast of scattered franchise building blocks, it just makes me wish GUNN DIDN’T WASTE SO MUCH TIME ON TERRIBLE DOG JOKES OR TERRIBLE JUSTICE GANG SHIT — “NO WE’RE NOT CALLING OURSELVES THAT,” ugh that tired, wretched meta-bullshit was old decades ago.

The first act promises a globally-conscious, geopolitical Superman movie that it doesn’t have the finesse to deliver on, only to just frustrate the fuck out of you with the offscreen death toll at the end, like HOLY CHRIST — Superman is nerfed more than half the movie, barely saves anyone besides a few trailer moments but the movie has the gall to imply no squirrels were harmed when 2/3s of Metropolis was devastated? No I’m sorry you can’t show the evacuation happening simultaneously with the destruction and expect me to believe not one person was left behind. Meanwhile three other superheroes (sorry METAHUMANS) thwart a border invasion one of them could handle solo, and Clark’s moment of brain over brawn is to what, wait to summon Krypto the Superdog only AFTER he’s been forever getting his ass kicked by a clone of himself, letting lord knows how many innocents perish in the black hole of collateral damage. Mister Terrific just waits around for the humdrum action sequence to be done before getting a quick lift into Lex headquarters to solve said rift in the universe. What a dumb ending.

If it weren’t for maybe handling the journalistic aspects rather well, the tabloid perception and all those media musings that can strengthen the techbro edition of Lex and his fear-mongering and Lois’s reporting beyond horrendous spelling. The literally shit-posting monkeys took it too far, so even this movie’s strongest suit, the fickle nature of public image, was probably more aptly illustrated in Gunn’s unsung written work Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (“I think Smallville sucks!”). Ironically for focusing on up-to-the-minute communications, the source of the movie’s entire conflict happens offscreen — and because reboots brush over beginnings, in Superman’s scoop for a Lois Lane 101, we get to learn that our brand new boy in blue has become a complacent, asshole interventionist (Truth, justice, the AMERICAN WAY? How cute), or I’m sorry an unproven alien-god with lessons to learn, sure: “So what I tortured a world leader what the hey is the big frickin’ deal?!” You can tackle the idea that Superman can’t be above politics without lampooning him, without adding a dash of toxic masculinity, can’t you? For the HOPEFUL, BRIGHT, BUOYANT, OPTIMISTIC, INVITING SUPERMAN FLICK WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, Gunn’s writing holds no water and his ‘vision’ (this dude lives for piercing monsters through the eyeball, another kink besides reserving cameos for his buddies) is still annoyingly, persistently cynical. Sorry, MY Superman doesn’t tango with Twitter, maybe #supershit does.