Warner Bros. Pictures
Ever since Marvel Studios reached the apex mountain of comic book movies with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, they have been struggling creatively. The streaming shows flopped, the movies feel redundant, and ever since they brought back Robert Downey Jr. and Thunderbolts* turned out to be The New Avengers, it’s clear they would do anything for a do-over.
Luckily, if that’s how you look at it, the DC movies were never that good or culturally important, so when they wanted to start over … they just did! Now, James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and the better Suicide Squad movie — as well as one of the few auteurs allowed to work in the MCU — is the CEO of DC Studios. His first move in the new role? Hire himself to write and direct the new Superman, now in theaters. Wouldn’t you?
Superman is now played by David Corenswet, neither the born-for-this Christopher Reeve nor the hulking Henry Cavill (oh yeah, Brandon Routh made one too), but he’s the kind of Superman that we want. He stands for truth, justice, and peace in the Middle East. For many, Superman’s idealism is their own personal Kryptonite, a phoney-baloney feeling of moral (and physical) superiority. For Corenswet, it’s the world’s greatest superhero’s Midwestern white bread and salted butter. His Superman is so naturally good that he even makes sure he saves all of the squirrels. Unfortunately, his first outing is an atypical introduction written by an unusual pick for the job. Superman’s greatest power is arguably his earnestness — James Gunn shoots spitballs from the back of the class.
The movie’s first decision is one of its best — skip the backstory. The Superman groundwork has been laid for decades. He’s from outer space, he grew up in Smallville, he works at the Daily Planet, he wears his undies on the outside, his parents were killed after the opera, he was bitten by a radioactive spider, blah blah. We know it, we’ve seen it. After some short opening text that says, ‘Superman’s been on the planet for a while, everyone’s used to it by now’, the movie jumps right in. That’s great, cut the crap we already know.
But after 129 minutes (only stay through the credits for the short scene if you couldn’t live with yourself otherwise), the movie is stuffed to the brim with Mister Terrific, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and a few characters you don’t yet know about, and you can’t but help but feel like you missed something. This is the first movie? You’re telling me that I’m at a disadvantage if I didn’t watch Creature Commandos on HBO Max? There’s homework already? I was under the false impression that this was a fresh start.
Casual comic book fans know that they will always be at a disadvantage against the meek who shall inherit, but if those people hover out of their seats and yelp things like, ‘He’s going to be C——-!’ and ‘The G—- L—— C—- are going to — — — —– —-!’ and ‘That’s probably going to be in —— — of P———!’ — all bleeped to save you from spoilers, of course — you can’t help but feel like you aren’t prepared for the comic book pop quiz. If we hadn’t been inundated with the same eight stills from the film over and over again for months (some of which are quiet gorgeous, to be fair), I’d have assumed they had leaked a Superman sequel. It took the MCU six movies to put the Avengers together, James Gunn jumped straight to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with this first DC film. When he rips emotional beats from the second Spider-Man movie, the third Batman movie, and the fifth Superman movie (this 2025 entry features Superman’s second-best action sequence set in a Major League Baseball park), he hasn’t earned those yet.
He’s also so far gone in his quirky and quippy ragtag super style that he can’t find his way back to what we know and love about Superman. Mark this one off your bingo board, there’s an action scene (completely lacking Superman, by the way) set entirely to an indie pop song from 2008. Nobody takes anything seriously, Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern is particularly non-pedantic. And more than a few of his past MCU and DCU collaborators return to his repertory troupe. Guardians, Suicide Squad, Superman — one of these things is not like the other, unless you’re James Gunn and it all feels the same. And in James Gunn’s Superman (if we’re going to tease Zack Snyder for putting his name in the title, you have to tease James Gunn for putting a cartoon version of himself in the Creature Commandos credits), we’ve skipped over the good movies and gone straight to the complicated sequels, complete with gobbledygook pocket universes and backstories we don’t understand in countries like Madeupastahn and Dontthinktoohardaboutitanon.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Lost in the cinematic universe table-setting is, uh, all the Superman stuff. Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane have cute chemistry, but only share two real scenes together. He’s only Clark Kent in one scene. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor (how did someone so young get so rich and so bald?) is only Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos because that’s how you would picture Lex Luthor in 2025. There couldn’t be at least one movie before this one where he doesn’t have a 12-step plan to eliminate Superman by using the US government, international conflict, unstoppable robots, clones, nanotechnology, and a little known, but soon to be the focus on their own feature film, group called The Authority? It’s messy and leaves nowhere to go. Hoult (he should’ve been in like four movies), along with Brosnahan and Wendell ‘two line’ Pierce and Beck Bennett’s ridiculously large mustache are all wasted. And don’t even get me started on Krypto the Superdog …
The nerds will love their deep cut word search, but I’m curious how long casual blockbuster goers will last before they throw up their hands and accept the fact that they’re bound to be lost. Sure, it’ll make a baquillion dollars, but how many people will be circling Supergirl‘s June 26, 2026 release date on their calendar? The MCU built up dozens of movies and a decade of goodwill before it got too unruly. We’re only one film into the DCU and I’m already lost. David Corenswet should’ve gotten at least one movie that was actually about Superman.
Superman has a run time of 2 hours 9 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for violence, action and language.
Warner Bros. Pictures