James Gunn just can’t get out his own way. Superman is an earnest mess. Was it the worst iteration of Superman? No, but boy, does it have problems.
I’m sure by now you’ve either seen it, read enough about it the major plot points, or just know what to look, for so I’ll forgo the plot breakdown and just go over the major points of contention that seem to be cropping up as well as just give you my general thoughts.
Characterizations
David Corenswet plays the titular Man of Steel quite well. He evokes a bit of Dean Cain’s portrayal insofar as he’s much more of a normal dude who happens to have super powers. He’s just a guy doing his best and has a life he has to juggle with it.
Unfortunately, his Clark Kent doesn’t get nearly enough screen time to really flesh that out. While Chris Reeve is still the gold standard, his Superman was much more apart from the world, similar to Henry Cavill. He’s not moody and tortured, though, and that’s a breath of fresh air.
Similarly, Rachel Brosnahan does a fine job as Lois Lane. She’s never a girl boss. She’s headstrong and decisive with her own issues in relationships. But she does what she must do to save Superman later, using her persuasion and smarts. Never see her tossing around stuntmen twice her size or anything like that. She has great chemistry with Corenswet.
Luthor however, is a letdown. He’s evil. Why? Because he’s Lex Luthor, dammit. Nicholas Hoult is a fine actor, but he never comes across as menacing. People are scared of him because of what WE know about the character, not because of anything he really does in the movie. He cries when he loses, and that was dumb.
Then there’s the Justice Gang. While Edi Gathegi is great as Mister Terrific, Nathan Fillion is wasted as Guy Gardner. He does a great job as the character, but it’s still very one-note comedy relief. Then Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl is… there. She screams like a hawk when going into battle, which was a silly choice.
Anthony Carrigan plays Metamorpho, and my only real history with that character was in the old Justice League cartoon, and he’s nothing like this. A typical timid James Gunn character.
The rest of the cast barely registers. Perry, Cat Grant, Miss Teschmacher, and Jimmy Olsen are all there and have slightly more than background appearances to do, but not much.
Finally, Ma and Pa Kent. Good lord, I live in Kansas, so I admit to some irritation whenever I see cosmopolitan Hollywood types trying to portray Kansans. No one here has that sort of folksy accent, not rural, not urban. You have to go much further south for that.
They come across far too simple-folk to be Superman’s parents. Yes, Jonathan and Martha always have been people of simple values, but never simple people. They always had a sort of dignity, and Gunn tosses that into the dumpster. Did not like. Yes, they were good people, but damn insulting.
Plot
Good luck. First of all, it starts almost as a Part II of another movie we never got to see. Superman stops a war that we don’t see. The Justice Gang is already doing stuff. Clark and Lois have already started their relationship. Superman already has a fortress, complete with robots. Supergirl is already present, though not until the end of the movie, and he has a Superdog from… someplace.
It’s like you should already know all this. Sure, Superman aficionados like myself know all the lore, but I do wonder if anyone who doesn’t know much about Super-lore wouldn’t be lost as hell.
Lex wants to kill Superman. To do that, he gets two countries to go to war, knowing Supes will try to stop it. This gets him under scrutiny with the government, so they will put him under arrest. So then they will give Superman to Lex to put in Lex’s private metahuman prison in some dimensional rift that Lex created? Or found? Whatever.
No wait, Lex uses kaiju and his own metahumans to keep Superman busy so he can find the Fortress of Solitude. He then finds the damaged message from Jor-el and Lara, which he reconstructs to release to the world. This shows the full message that Superman himself was unaware of. They said to him to basically repopulate Kryptonians by taking a harem or something.
Oh, and then the riftis now out of control, which will destroy the world. But more importantly… somehow… these two made-up third-world countries are going to war again.
I don’t know, you figure it out.
Good… And Bad
Gunn does a great job of making an optimistic movie at its heart. He wants to make Superman a genuinely good person who simply sees this as his duty to save lives. He even saves a little squirrel at one point. He also smiles and has good conversations with Lois.
A lot of people hated Jor-El telling Kal-El to be a ruler, saying it ruins the character. While it’s not my favorite portrayal, the idea that Kryptonians have always been written as angelic, good people isn’t really true.
The idea that Superman has found out that what he assumed all his life about his parents turns out to be wrong, and he has to decide who he really is is a tried and true character motivation and arc. It’s the thing that the plot should’ve worked around instead of putting all these nonsense plot points in. Hell, it’s basically the same arc Luke Skywalker went through. So I was genuinely compelled by that.
The dog. Eh, I could’ve taken or left it. Krypto’s inclusion didn’t piss me off, nor was he someone I kept wanting to see again. Just didn’t register one way or another. He was there when Supes needed him or to provide funny moments, and gone when the plot needed him to be.
Another good thing is that this weird shit seems to happen quite often in Metropolis. Occasionally, you get the idea that people are just used to giant monsters and people having flying flights, and it’s just a part of life. Kinda funny.
Not good: At one point, Superman and Lois are having a heartfelt conversation while the Justice Gang is fighting a big monster over the city that you can see through the window. Supes just shrugs and says they can handle it. It’s just a minor monster. So you get this “focus on Baby Groot while mayhem is going on behind him” type shot.
It’s far more subdued as it’s a lot farther away, but it’s a typical James Gunn “hahaha” shot that was funny once in a very differently toned movie and doesn’t belong in a Superman movie. He wouldn’t ignore something like that.
This is the problem throughout the whole movie. If you’re going to be a funny, whimsical movie, then lean into it. If you want heartfelt moments, you can’t undercut those scenes with jokes. Worse yet, the jokes are all warmed-over rehashes of jokes that we’ve already seen done funnier in Guardians and other movies.
Verdict
I don’t want to be mean about this one. This isn’t a movie from Disney bashing over the head with “the message.” Nor is it boring, uninteresting, lowest common denominator corporate slop either. This is a story that Gunn wanted to tell, and I give him props for trying some things.
Adding robots to Fortress, not redoing the origin story, trying to show what we know in a different way. And through it all, I never felt like he was disrespecting the character.
But it’s all in the execution. Superman ’78 will always be the gold standard. They’ve never figured it out since, and I can’t quite understand why. Superman The Animated Series was quite possibly the best and most faithful adaptation, but other than that, these movies are all just not quite right.
Here, I think sometimes when Gunn wants to go full sincerity, he can’t quite pull the trigger and retreats into what’s worked for him in the past, quirky nonsense, and humor.
I wanted to like this movie, and I believe the movie wanted to please me, rather than talk down to me, but it fails.
Too bad. There may be something here. Certainly, he has the right actors. But it just doesn’t come together.
