After multiple failures to sustain the DCEU, DC Comics and Warner Bros. attempt a soft reboot of the franchise with Superman. At the helm is James Gunn, maker of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, the most consistently entertaining of the MCU properties. It’s fitting that the protatonist of this first DCU film is DC’s original superhero, but if this latest Superman is meant to open the door to DC attaining the kind of lucrative success that its competitor has enjoyed, the film’s biggest surprise is how steadfastly it avoids merely copying the MCU formula. Instead, it foregrounds the oddities and earnestness of classic comic books that have typically been the first casualties of big-screen adaptation.
Mercifully denying us another rendition of Superman’s origin story, the film picks up with Clark Kent (David Corenswet) already grown and relocated from Kansas to Metropolis and working as a rookie reporter for the Daily Planet alongside Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo). Both Corenswet and Brosnahan nail their roles in ways that haven’t been seen since Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. Brosnahan especially taps into an aspect of Lois that’s rarely been captured fully: that of her stubborn brashness never lapsing into simple workaholism, harking back to the scrappy, Hawksian professional of the late-’30s pop culture era in which the character was first conceived. As for Corenswet, he leans fully into the corn-fed innocence of Clark and the unwavering pursuit of good as the Action Ace.
Clark and Lois share both a quick-witted repartee that plays off their odd-couple chemistry while also conveying the genuine, believable affection that blossomed between them prior to the events of the film. At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is bristling with a deeply set paranoia and loathing at the very idea of Superman by the time we see him, and he’s already hatched a convoluted scheme to simultaneously erode the hero’s standing in public opinion and physically obliterate the alien from existence.
Superman’s archnemesis has never been well-served on film, either reduced to a caricature hatching banal get-rich(er) schemes or regressing to nonthreatening, childish petulance. Hoult at last does the character justice: This Luthor is unquestionably driven by petty envy and frantic image management—he’s heavily coded as a more competent, eloquent Elon Musk—but he’s also a genuine mad genius whose monetary and technological power properly scales an otherwise impressive mortal specimen to become a major threat to a demigod.
In dropping viewers into this world in medias res, Gunn does run the risk of creating a problem common to modern comics: dumping decades’ worth of canon onto unsuspecting newbies. This issue is compounded by the hefty presence of other DC characters of both terrestrial and alien origin, including genius scientist Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), shapeshifter Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Thanagarian warrior Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), a member of the intergalactic police squad the Green Lantern Corps. Luckily, these figures have their own, often selfish impulses for performing heroism, and Gunn concisely contrasts their motivations against Superman’s overriding altruism.
Superman illustrates this best in its action sequences, which showcase Gunn’s gift for large-scale but coherent spectacle. Whip pans and snap zooms convey the dizzying speed of Superman’s movement, but generally long shot lengths give lucid spatial dynamics and fluid motion to the constant careening around monsters and Luthor’s genetically modified mercenaries, chiefly the nanobot-infused hacker/warrior Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría) and the masked Ultraman, who has powers similar to Kal-El’s. Gunn generally slows down when following the combat techniques of, say, Mr. Terrific or Green Lantern, showing how they work via clever manipulation of their technologically-imbued powers over Superman’s raw ability.
Pointedly, the film also calls attention to the cavalier attitude that the metahumans can take toward collateral damage, whereas Superman is always shown to move people and even animals out of harm’s way. His overriding concern for a single bystander gradually sets up the action of the second half, which frequently hinges on Superman’s ability to rescue even one person from certain death as much as it does on his capacity to overcome the most fearsome foe.
At his best, Superman strikes a balance between the ridiculous and sublime. He’s the second-most prominent repository of DC’s loopiest sci-fi ideas after the Green Lantern Corps, but he remains the purest representation of what a superhero is meant to embody. For all the attempts over the years with the character himself or thinly veiled copies to imagine a version of Clark Kent that breaks bad, it’s never been Superman’s godlike power that’s been aspirational or awe-inducing but the ease with which he sees the good in people and in life itself.
Gunn embraces this unabashedly corny optimism with ample humor that never slides into the self-conscious sarcasm that has weighed down so many Marvel movies. This is Superman as he should be: the Big Blue Boy Scout who sticks out like a sore thumb as much for his embodiment of a Rockwellian sentimentality as his alien origin. After so many clumsy efforts to transplant the character to the modern era, this Superman finally admits that the character has been a mainstay for nearly a century precisely because he stands for things outside of faddish trends.
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To a high degree, Superman 2025 continues the character; and, how he fits into the modern world, of the first 1978 Richard Donner Christopher Reeve Superman film.
Let’s pause for a Superman Hollywood history refresher. The 1978 film is more about building a contemporary world Superman makes sense in; and, how he’s a humble, honest, sincere man of few words (this is the “zinc man” as opposed to the “Iron Man” of Dark Batman).
The second Donner-Reeves film, with Terence Stamp’s General Zod, is way darker and dramatic. It throws forward closely to the Snyderverse Superman.
The 1978 Donner film was a prayer for a kinder-gentler world where our heroes are no longer grandiose and wear their brutality as a badge of masculinity.
Then comes the Dark Batman films, ten of them, if you include the Justice League movie and The Flash (2023). Starting with the Tim Burton films, (with the Jack Nicholson Joker predicting Trump) Dark Batman predicted Jan 6, 2020, MAGA culture; and, the current pro-chaos oligarch scene.
The world was not yet ready for another Christopher Reeve Superman–until–James Gunn picked up the 1978 Donner Superman banner and carried it forward. The Superman of Reeves and Corenswet is humble, honest and a man of few words (Supe is not like this as much in the comics, but onscreen it works well).
Another good thing going for Superman 2025 is the handful of super-others. As the IGN critic noted, this takes away the need to be wowed by Supe’s too-well- known powers. Instead we see new miracles. Yet the positioning Supe in the middle with crazy characters all around, harks back to the Jerry Seinfeld TV series. Superman 2025 is the Jerry Seinfeld of super heroes, the calm, less reactive foil for all the other more extreme, reactive characters.
Kindness as the new punk ~ If you’ve looked at social media on the 2025 movie, you’ve seen scores of posts about how refreshing the kindness is, how “kindness is the new punk” and so on. It’s not “corny optimism.” Neither was the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman corny. It’s honest, sincere kindness, optimism and “do what I can to make a positive difference.”
Finally I quote from Jake Coles’s review in SlantMagazine:
“Gunn . . . never slides into the self-conscious sarcasm which has weighed down so many Marvel movies. This is Superman as he should be: the Big Blue Boy Scout. He sticks out like a sore thumb . . . After [the Snyderverse] efforts to transplant the character to the modern era, this Superman finally admits the character has been a mainstay for nearly a century precisely because he stands for [truly human values] outside of faddish trends.”