Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a New Superman Movie

I still really don’t know what to think about James Gunn’s Superman. Did I love it? Did I hate it? I don’t know just yet. I’m afraid the hype got me, well, too hyped up.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. I grew up with the Christopher Reeve films and Superfriends. I got back into comics when they killed off Superman. I really liked Superman Returns and watched it right before I watched Superman. I hated the Snyderverse.

As for Gunn, I loved Guardians of the Galaxy, liked Peacemaker, and was fine with The Suicide Squad.

I was excited for this movie and was thrilled M@GA was triggered because Superman was “suddenly woke”. Spoiler alert: Superman has always been “woke”

Despite following the production and watching the trailers, I guess I still didn’t know what to expect.

Superman is not an origin story. In fact, it quite literally drops us right into the action after some exposition text gets us caught up on the last three decades, three years, three months, three hours, three days, three hours, and three minutes. Supes, played here by David Corenswet, has lost his first fight and needs help from his foster dog, Krypto, to get home to the Fortress of Solitude. Yes, Krypto is adorable. Yes, we will meet his owner later, hilariously. Kal El has emotionless robots that take care of him and the Fortress. They blast him with sweet, sweet radiation from Earth’s yellow sun, which makes Superman super.

After powering back up, he returns to fight the Hammer of something or the other, who is actually being controlled by Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor and his team of nerds. It’s what I imagine DOGE was. After the fight, we get to see Corenswet as Clark and meet Lois, played by Rachel Brosnahan.

I think it’s important to note that this is a Superman movie. Like, Corenswet is in the glasses for maybe 6 minutes? Thinking of Gunn’s Guardians movies, he didn’t deal with secret identities. Lois knows who Superman is, Guy Gardner, played perfectly finally by Nathan Fillion, certainly does and they talk about the power of the hypnoglasses, which I love. But most of the movie he’s in the super suit doing super things, which is also fun.

Let’s talk about the suit. It’s great! Gone are the drab colors and harshness of the Snydeverse. This is much more classic blues and reds and it looks fantastic. I think the S just stands for Superman and not hope or some shit. The other suits also look awesome—even Krypto’s cape.

The story here is that Luthor hates Superman. Like really, really hates him. And he has a convoluted plan that ends with Superman dead and Luthor the king of the country. The classic Luthor land grab scheme! I love it.

The acting here is top-notch. Everyone seems to fall fully into their characters. Hoult and Brosnahan are particularly awesome. Fillion is funny as hell as Green Lantern and the leader of the “Justice Gang.” Unfortunately, Isabela Merced seems somewhat underutilized as Hawkgirl. She screams a lot and is bad ass but doesn’t have a lot to say other than she doesn’t like the name Justice Gang.

As a Cincinnati native, it was thrilling to see our beloved Union Terminal/Cincinnati Museum Center cameo as the Hall Of Justice, but it was literally Union Terminal. Some CGI on the outside and construction cranes inside and out indicated that a transformation was happening, but that was it. Seemed weird to me, and I imagine they didn’t budget enough time or money for the Cincinnati shoot. Also, when Mr. Terrific flies off toward CGI Cleveland, standing in for Metropolis, my brain broke a bit. I’ve been to Union Terminal countless times in my life and looked lovingly at the Cincinnati skyline across from it every single time. So seeing NOT Cincinnati was too weird for my simple brain.

The post is cohesive enough. Luthor hates Superman. He’s done his research on how to fight him and convinced the government to empower him to arrest and detain him. There’s a great big threat from Luthor’s unhinged experiments. Jimmy Olsen does some journalism to unravel Luthor’s plot while being in the weirdest love triangle ever. Everything is building up to Luthor being exposed and defeated without needing a huge face-off between Luthor and Superman. I’m sure we’ll get that eventually.

I still struggle to wrap my head around how I feel about this movie, 24 hours later. I liked way more than I didn’t like. I had fun. However, I suppose I am just disappointed that I didn’t immediately love it as enthusiastically as most. I mean it’s LEAGUES better than anything from the Snyderverse. It felt more like Superman than those movies ever did. Using the classic soundtrack was great for nostalgia, but since this isn’t connected to the Donnerverse or Returns, it seemed a bit out of place. I feel like the pendulum swung too far to the lighter side from the Snyderverse. I was having a bit of whiplash trying to adjust to Gunn’s comedic style in a Superman movie.

Here’s the deal. This movie is fun. The casting and acting are fantastic. The movie looks good, despite some questionable CGI. Brosnahan and Hoult shine. Brosnahan captures what made every Lois Lane before her so good and makes the role her own. Cornenswet is very good, but some of his delivery, particularly as Clark Kent, seemed inconsistent and just a bit off somehow in a way I can’t place my finger on. He does a good job of being the most “human” Superman we’ve seen. He even does a big speech about it. I was not a big fan of how either set of parents was portrayed. The Kents seemed too over the top in, well, whatever it was Gunn was trying to make them. They seemed like a parody of a random rural couple? If the twist about his Kryptonian parents’ true intentions is true, I’m not sure about that either.

Listen, I like this movie, just not as much as you probably do, and I’m not certain why. It seemed like a puzzle that wasn’t completely finished, because some of the pieces were from another puzzle that had been mixed in with this one. Also, some of the classic Gunnisms that work so well in GotG and Peacemaker seemed out of place here. The Mr. Terrific fight scene outside the entrance to the pocket dimension, in particular, sticks out. The unnecessary Kaiju, too.

The bottom line is that I love seeing people connect with this and go to theaters to have a good time. Half of my theater clapped at the end, which makes me happy. If this is the Superman we need right now, I’ll take it.