B+Directed by James Gunn Starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult Review by Jon Kissel |  |
James Gunn’s Superman casts its Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) as a former punk enthusiast, a fitting interest for a burgeoning journalist speaking truth to power. There’s nothing punk about the character of Superman (David Corenswet), a farm-raised hayseed whose goofy alter-ego Clark Kent doesn’t take much acting. Contra Kill Bill, Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, except Kent doesn’t shoot lasers out of his eyes and punch kaijus in the jaw. In response to Lois’ jibes about his corniness and earnestness, Kent retorts that maybe that’s the new punk if her irony and complexity is the norm. In the wake of Zack Snyder’s grimdark imagining of the character, Gunn brings a new sensibility to DC and Warner Bros, redefining punk in opposition to Snyder and Gunn’s old employer at Marvel, who also have an allergy to earnestness. Some real-world resonances and old-fashioned spectacle complete the picture and get Gunn’s tenure as studio head at DC off to a stirring start.
After so, so many superhero movies, Gunn’s Superman has to be credited with assuming the audience has heard of the character. Beginning well after Superman’s emergence, the film starts with Lois and Kent in passionate love, with her full knowledge of who Kent is, and with multiple other superheroes operating in the world. Superman’s parents back on Krypton appear on a video screen only and the planet itself isn’t shown. Just like no one needs to see Bruce Wayne’s parents killed again, Gunn pushes the story into the space where he wants it, which is in the middle of Superman actively thwarting one of Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) schemes. Immediately before the film begins, Superman has stopped an invasion of one advanced country into another defenseless one, and in the aftermath, he’s suffered his first defeat at the hands of the invader’s own super-powered fighter. Combined with public questioning of his acting like a one-man global policeman, Superman has begun to doubt his purpose and his methods. More meddling by Luthor and his minions uncovers Superman’s true purpose on earth, turning most everyone against him and Luthor is then empowered to take federally-backed action against a savior who has been recategorized as a menace.
Superman has been in production for a long time, so any comparisons to the real world are accidental, or perhaps evergreen. Tech titans who can’t tolerate being away from the center of attention have been around since Gunn was making Troma films. Every time Peter Thiel talks about the antichrist, one can imagine Hoult taking notes for the sequel. The chillingly casual way that Hoult’s Luthor breezes past any safeguards in any system, be they legal or extradimensional, is a grim embodiment of moving fast and breaking things. Obviously no physical match for Superman, Luthor fights through a surrogate who responds to the numbers called out by Luthor, each number defined as an attack or reversal. Hoult is excellent as a man in control who wants to lose control, spending time and effort and money on getting to the point where he can bludgeon an alien to death, spitting out commands with greater and greater amounts of spittle-flecked intensity.
As there’s always been grandiose industrialists, so too has there always been exploitation of weaker nations, and the obvious comparison in 2025 is unavoidable. Where would Superman be if zealots were blocking aid trucks on their way to feed starving children? Would he intervene as a quadcopter took aim at a teen about to cross a line invisible and secreted from him? Ta-Nehasi Coates said of the Israel-Palestine conflict that he’d been told his whole life that it was complicated, and then he went there and observed that it was actually quite simple. That’s what this version of Superman’s all about, that there is a time to cut through complexity and obfuscation and arrive at the point of being able to stop a thing from happening, that not doing can be the same as doing. This is a populist movie in its heart, and not only because of the prominence of Superman’s dog Krypto.
Gunn uses broad strokes to paint his film, but the small grace notes from the well-considered cast are just as resonant. Corenswet and Brosnahan have great physical chemistry in a genre that’s been dead below the waist. In that vein, Gunn’s version of Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) looks like the aw-shucks character that has always been portrayed, but this Jimmy fucks, and in a hilarious way that’s integral to the plot. Pruitt Taylor Vince as Pa Kent is as far as possible from the most recent version, played by Kevin Costner. That this man, fat and pasty and cross-eyed, could raise a son of infinite power and infinite gentleness is the most powerful facet of the film. His big scene with Superman isn’t wise or verbose, but what makes it unique is how he carries himself as a man painfully full of love for his adopted son, a warmth unironically as powerful as the yellow sun that gives Superman his powers. It’s corny, but Vance’s big body does the work.
Just as the Christopher Reeve version kicked the genre off, Gunn’s Superman pushes the genre forward by both returning to basics and waving away what has outlasted its purpose. Imaginative and colorful visuals instead of gray goop (barring some third-act messiness), dialogue that doesn’t need to be punctuated by a quip, antagonists that are both fun to watch and chilling in their villainy. Who knows if the blip of recent years, where superhero fatigue set in and these movies could once again fail, is going to persist, forcing studios to give wide audiences something new? With Gunn leading one corner of the world, that fatigue might be premature. B+
Superman has been in production for a long time, so any comparisons to the real world are accidental, or perhaps evergreen. Tech titans who can’t tolerate being away from the center of attention have been around since Gunn was making Troma films. Every time Peter Thiel talks about the antichrist, one can imagine Hoult taking notes for the sequel. The chillingly casual way that Hoult’s Luthor breezes past any safeguards in any system, be they legal or extradimensional, is a grim embodiment of moving fast and breaking things. Obviously no physical match for Superman, Luthor fights through a surrogate who responds to the numbers called out by Luthor, each number defined as an attack or reversal. Hoult is excellent as a man in control who wants to lose control, spending time and effort and money on getting to the point where he can bludgeon an alien to death, spitting out commands with greater and greater amounts of spittle-flecked intensity.
As there’s always been grandiose industrialists, so too has there always been exploitation of weaker nations, and the obvious comparison in 2025 is unavoidable. Where would Superman be if zealots were blocking aid trucks on their way to feed starving children? Would he intervene as a quadcopter took aim at a teen about to cross a line invisible and secreted from him? Ta-Nehasi Coates said of the Israel-Palestine conflict that he’d been told his whole life that it was complicated, and then he went there and observed that it was actually quite simple. That’s what this version of Superman’s all about, that there is a time to cut through complexity and obfuscation and arrive at the point of being able to stop a thing from happening, that not doing can be the same as doing. This is a populist movie in its heart, and not only because of the prominence of Superman’s dog Krypto.
Gunn uses broad strokes to paint his film, but the small grace notes from the well-considered cast are just as resonant. Corenswet and Brosnahan have great physical chemistry in a genre that’s been dead below the waist. In that vein, Gunn’s version of Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) looks like the aw-shucks character that has always been portrayed, but this Jimmy fucks, and in a hilarious way that’s integral to the plot. Pruitt Taylor Vince as Pa Kent is as far as possible from the most recent version, played by Kevin Costner. That this man, fat and pasty and cross-eyed, could raise a son of infinite power and infinite gentleness is the most powerful facet of the film. His big scene with Superman isn’t wise or verbose, but what makes it unique is how he carries himself as a man painfully full of love for his adopted son, a warmth unironically as powerful as the yellow sun that gives Superman his powers. It’s corny, but Vance’s big body does the work.
Just as the Christopher Reeve version kicked the genre off, Gunn’s Superman pushes the genre forward by both returning to basics and waving away what has outlasted its purpose. Imaginative and colorful visuals instead of gray goop (barring some third-act messiness), dialogue that doesn’t need to be punctuated by a quip, antagonists that are both fun to watch and chilling in their villainy. Who knows if the blip of recent years, where superhero fatigue set in and these movies could once again fail, is going to persist, forcing studios to give wide audiences something new? With Gunn leading one corner of the world, that fatigue might be premature. B+
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