Superman (2025) review

 

The umpteenth attempt to revive the perpetually ailing DC Comics film universe sees the best-known superhero in what is more of James Gunn film than a Superman one. The director / writer’s scrappy, humour heavy, music laced style is all over this movie. While it sometimes works in isolated scenes there is an overall sense of a cluttered canvas in which too much is happening and too many characters are involved. At the same time the fundamentals of storytelling are too easily skipped over in favour of effects heavy set pieces. There was no point during watching when I felt really excited about anything on screen and with an over reliance on special effects, especially the last section, the results are undoubtedly spectacular but strangely uninvolving.

Spoilers after the break... 

At least we have moved on from the saturated look of Zach Snyder’s DC take and overly noisy boots are nowhere to he heard! Matters are brighter; in fact, we open in a snow and ice filled landscape. While nobody wants to sit through the whole Superman origin story yet again this film takes the opposite tack parachuting us into events a few years after the legends’ familiar beats have happened. So everyone knows Superman, Lois knows Clark is Superman and Lex Luthor has been fermenting his hatred of the metahuman for some time.

Which would be fine where it not for the film opening on a low note as we initially see Supes after his first ever defeat. Unfortunately, it will not be his last. He falls into the snow near the Fortress of Solitude (not so quiet as he has a brigade of chatty androids for company) after a bad licking by a larger metallic robot that’s straight out of a 1950s comic. Thus begins a trend in which our caped crusader is pummelled by antagonists several times to the point where it starts to become repetitive. What’s more, he must be constantly rescued by others whether his energetic super dog or the more comedic Justice Gang.  These assaults are engineered by Lex Luthor whose pathological hate of Superman drives him to take increasing risks with the world and increasingly unlikely steps with science.

I reckon this entire plot would better serve a second or even third film rather than an introductory one. While we don’t want a whole origin story from scratch the assumption that we know who everyone is allows the narrative to skip over important details. More than this, the tone for the main character feels wrong. An opening movie for a superhero character should be mostly aspirational and celebratory, focussing mostly on the great things that Superman can do and what he stands for and only then undercutting that. Sure, he can have a difficult scrape and need a pick me up but having him so near death several times as well as being publicly disgraced just feels deflating where it should be soaring and uplifting. A lot of the material here would be more suitable later in the timeline not least because it now means that the threats in subsequent ones are going need to be ramped up considerably. At times it feels like the writers are using too many ideas yet never allowing time for any of them to settle. The editing is uneven too; the film doesn’t have the flow that it should especially during the first half.

Which is all a pity as the cast fill these iconic roles with vigour and are definitely some of the best versions of these characters we’ve seen. Rachel Brosnahan is an enjoyably feisty, less earnest Lois Lane, Nathan Fillion almost steals the film with his laidback quips as a version of Green Lantern even while wearing the worst hairstyle you’ve ever seen. Edi Gathegi really is terrific as the serious minded, practical Mr Terrific and Mariaa Gabriela de Faria is quite a presence as the shapechanging Engineer. Skylar Gisondo makes for a likeable Jimmy Olsen though the splendid Wendell Pierce is underused as Perry White. I suppose a newspaper office is something of a throwback now anyway.  Surely the Daily Planet would be an online news resource with its staff out and about streaming the news though it’s always unclear what year we are supposed to be in. Nicholas Hoult’s take on Luthor works despite dialogue that seems generically evil villain stuff. As the man of steel David Corenswet offers a more human touch to a role that is always difficult to make interesting. However, the eventual confrontation between Superman and Lex seems rushed and under written. As for Krypto, the hyperactive mutt does become more irritating as the film progresses and gets a surprisingly large chunk of the action.

Anyone familiar with James Gunn’s previous work will spot recycled ideas notably a big fight scene taking place in the background behind something far less dramatic. Visually the film certainly delivers some busy set pieces and those involving the Engineer are quite inventive. Yet sometimes it relies too much on public buildings being flattened or collapsing especially during a very generic digital heavy climax. The bit where the rift is headed for the city seems lifted almost frame by frame from disaster movies.

Nobody seems that concerned either about all the people who must have died in these incidents; the film prefers to show off with things like a slow-motion moment where Supes saves one child rather than linger on the broader picture. Much of the plot revolves around two fictional counties’ conflict, something Luthor has engineered because supervillains always dream up the most convoluted methods to achieve their ends. This strand feels as if Gunn is trying to allegorically reference Russia and Ukraine but does Superman now involve himself in every conflict? It feels out of context especially as neither country is given much back story, and it seems unlikely Luthor would dabble in this way when he has the capacity to do things like create pocket universes. There’s no shortage of interesting concepts; indeed, I do like the visualisation of that pocket universe in which he keeps his prisoners and which is accessed via an unstable circular tunnel that’s all sparks and corroding metal. It feels more real, ironically considering what it is, than a lot of the computer-generated stuff happening around it.

Perhaps the most appropriate example of how this film under achieves occurs during the fictional countries’ conflict. Amidst the chaos we see a child raising a homemade S flag and both they and the audience expect our caped hero to swoop in at the last moment. Only the flag falls over and it’s the Justice gang who turn up. Fun as they are, this should be Superman’s moment but he’s being beaten to a pulp (again) elsewhere.

Superman suggests that DC still have not taken note of the incremental manner in which the overall arcs of Marvel films were built. Avengers Endgame was the twenty second feature in that franchise and only worked so well because of the twenty one films behind it. If this is film number one in a reset, DC has a long way to go.