Like Kal-El squaring off against Lex Luthor in a bodybuilding competition, if you list out all of the things that the new Superman gets right vs wrong, the pros are girthy, and the cons are slim. Calm it down, Man of Steel… The one explicit negative is writer/director James Gunn.
That dude has put himself front-and-center while promoting the film to a wildly upsetting degree. It is immediately obvious that he has a tight grasp on Superman’s soul but has butterfingers in every other way that matters.
Great themes, concept, and tone clash with an execution that simply refuses to let you forget Gunn’s involvement for one single, solitary second. Needle-drop song selections that scream “trying too hard,” various cameos from the filmmaker’s go-to collaborators/friends/family, and upsetting stuff involving animals make this a James Gunn movie before it is a Superman movie.
That is a flying shame, given how good Superman (David Corenswet) is. Nostalgia and Christopher Reeves’ well-earned aura make it dangerous to say, and others admittedly know and love the character far more than I do, but this performance really feels about as good as it gets for Big Blue. Corenswet’s Clark Kent isn’t an affable doofus so much as a sweet “regular dude.” His alter ego is fittingly otherworldly, oozing kindness and power in equal measures.
And yet somehow, Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane still beats the red underpants off him. Given the assault that journalism is under these days, greenlighting a feature film focused solely on Brosnahan’s Lois using crackerjack reporting to reign in a world overrun by authoritarian superheroes seems like a matter of national security.
Imagine seeing those two flirt, fight, and fall in love. You will have to imagine it, because the movie skips over those parts and goes out of its way to keep the two characters apart.
The opening text, arguably the best part of the script, skips over origin stories and tells us that this world is filthy with “metahumans,” Superman is the strongest of them, and he’s never lost a fight…until now. We see him after that fight. That would have been interesting to see. This is a theme that continues for the entirety of the movie: The most interesting things are told, while the less interesting things are shown.
Superman is in hot water because he unilaterally stopped a war between two sovereign nations. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) seizes on the opportunity to turn the world against the hero. When he breaks into Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, he finds the last piece he needs to flip global sentiment: a video of Kal-El’s parents saying that they were sending their son to conquer earth and not save it.
The revelation rattles Superman. That makes sense. Finding out your parents are planet-killing evil is a revelation that has been traditionally reserved for the children of billionaires. But the script seems to suggest that this is some “dark night of the soul” for him. Why? He’s not wrestling with whether he should be evil. He’s just bummed out that his parents suck. The screenplay also does this a lot, repeatedly confusing motivation for narrative.
It also has so many unnecessary moving parts that nothing can gel. For example, why is “The Justice Gang” in this movie? The answer? James Gunn likes those characters. Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) are absolutely, completely irrelevant to anything that happens. He’s at least funny, but she literally just screams like a bird and hits people with a spiky stick. Neat? Their other teammate, Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), also really didn’t have to be in this from a plot perspective. But he is excused because he is maybe the best part.
What is perhaps most upsetting is that everything in this movie happens to Superman, he doesn’t actively propel any of it. He loses almost every fight, gets his powers taken away, and mostly just does what others tell him to do.
The script is also painfully cheesy, and I say that as a truly massive Doctor Who fan. If a guy with a Gallifreyan tattoo and will defend Daleks to the death feels pummeled by cornballs, you’ve gone too far. It’s not that the sentiment is wrong. Simplistic moralizing that screams “it is good to be a good person for no other reason than to be a good person” is very much my jam. It is just that the writing is painful.
Lex Luthor has a whole tirade about how he knows that he is overrun by jealousy. Virtually everything he says is some variation of “I hate Superman because he is so different!” Corenswet’s delivery on a line about how trusting people is “the real punk rock” is breathtaking in that it almost doesn’t inspire raucous laughter. Almost.
What definitely doesn’t inspire raucous laughter is a whole host of stuff that clearly makes James Gunn (and likely only James Gunn) happy. Beck Bennett’s few scenes as a sports reporter are light years beyond distracting. The recurring gag about a beautiful influencer obsessed with Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) is just plain weird. And the jarring moments of outright brutality and cruelty betray the film’s wonderful, colorful, cartoony vibe.
Look, Superman is at once nothing like the DC dreck funneled in our faces for the last decade and also absolutely falls victim to similar problems. In the same way that the DCU became “The Snyderverse” due to the influence of the last heavy-handed writer/director, this is immediately “The Gunnverse.” While the essence of the heroes is better captured this time out, nobody still knows what to do with them. Here is hoping that the inevitable sequel finds a way to use its perfect cast to tell a story about the folks on screen and not the person behind the camera.
Grade = C-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Siddhant Adlakha at Mashable says “It has vital, meaningful themes surrounding what Superman’s allegiance to truth, justice, and “the American way” truly means in 2025, with a brash penchant for the political in a manner that most Hollywood blockbusters tend not to touch. But in the end, it rushes past these tenets of its story, in service of big-idea fireworks that make its creative ambitions feel a little too small.”
Walter Chaw at Film Freak Central says “Superman is the angel of our best nature. This character was always about standing up and doing the right thing, and not because it’s easy for him, but because it’s right. Superman is an open hand extended to a lapsed patriot.”
Carla Hay at Culture Mix says “The Superman franchise has a new lease on life with this engaging reboot. This superhero movie (which has Kyrpto as a scene-stealing dog) can get overstuffed with subplots, but it’s got plenty of thrills and comedic moments. The 2025 version of Superman is a promising step in the right direction for a new era in movies based on DC Comics.”
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