Jonah Naplan   July 10, 2025

James Gunn’s “Superman,” a complete reimagining of a beloved character and a story that must satisfy fans and set up a brand new franchise in a compelling way, is ultimately a letdown. Departing from the gritty blandness of the Snyderverse, it kickstarts something entirely new, tonally and visually. But both creative avenues feel surprisingly restrained, afraid to lean all the way into its over-the-topness in the echo of Gunn’s brilliant previous work in “The Suicide Squad” and the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. All of that to say, “Superman” should still be given its flowers for boldly defying the genre conventions we’ve become too comfortable with, creating an experience true to the comic books that fans will surely appreciate. But beyond being a heartfelt love letter, it’s just not a very good movie.

In what is supposedly a catalyst for future DC projects—all of which will be overseen by Gunn, whose auteurist visions will hopefully resurrect some of these characters from their graves—“Superman” comes to life at the very start with a few words on-screen that set up something intriguing. It’s not wrong to be hopeful that “Superman” will at least include a little bit of theatrics like this, but the movie is never as compelling again. Gunn’s entropic tendency to take almost nothing seriously, except when he absolutely, positively needs to, makes “Superman” one big mess with barely a story lurking underneath.

The screenplay by Gunn drops us immediately into the life of Clark Kent (David Corenswet), who’s been Superman for three years. His origin story—born on the planet Krypton, sent to Earth by his parents, raised on a farm by the Kents—is largely out of this picture. We meet our title hero after he’s lost a battle against the Hammer of Boravia, a mega-robot controlled by the evil businessman Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who’s been working with the Middle Eastern country’s government to fight off Superman in the midst of their war with Jarhanpur. It’s a sticky situation, made no better by the media’s misleading coverage of the conflict. Clark’s kinda-girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is one of the only people he can lean on for support, even if she’s becoming increasingly hard on him to consider his actions (and the city-spanning destruction they cause) more thoughtfully.

Gunn seems to want to communicate something important about the nature of foreign conflicts in this day and age through the escapades of Superman, who’s revered as the people’s colossus in the Middle East, and who’s depicted as a sort-of-immigrant himself (after all, he’s an alien struggling to be accepted as “one of us”). The movie’s central metaphor about the immigrant experience feels so out of place in the midst of this otherwise silly movie that features, among other things, a ferocious “super-dog” named Krypto who ignores commands and mostly knocks people over recklessly, giant space creatures who terrorize the city of Metropolis by crushing buildings, a character named Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), also known as “The Element Man,” who can shapeshift, and an army of evil monkeys responsible for publishing incriminating tweets and editorials about Superman online.

For all the work Gunn has done to reinvent the DC universe in “Superman,” he can’t quite seem to shake off the old franchise’s infamous problem with tonal inconsistency. In one moment it’s presenting us with an action sequence so nonsensical that it borders on farce, while in the next it’s beating us over the head with unsubtle political messaging that undermines the well-rounded screwball experience this film could have been (a late-movie monologue by Superman to Luthor about his humanity feels especially forced, and I actually thought it was satire the second it began). The film’s uncertainties about what exactly it wants to be are reflected through the character of Lex Luthor, played by Hoult in what is surely the most “villainous” iteration of this bad guy we’ve seen yet. Even still, the screenplay can’t seem to decide whether it wants to lean all the way into painting this man as a figure so morally corrupt that he’s beyond defending, or as somebody with a semi-charming, self-lacerating edge—like the Lex Luthor that Gene Hackman played in the original 1978 “Superman: The Movie”—who’s undeniably “bad” but who we still like and are kind of still rooting for. The result is an awkward villain who doesn’t inspire any definitive feeling from the viewer.

This film’s depiction of “The Justice Gang,” comprised of Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion, whose unfortunate bowl cut is the object of several of the movie’s jokes), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), is particularly evocative of Gunn’s treatment of characters such as Harley Quinn, Star-Lord, and Peacemaker in the past; not to be taken too seriously and played mostly for laughs. The moments where Gunn has Superman and Lois trading quips with this ragtag team make for the movie’s highlights, sharing a glimpse of what “Superman” could have been had the filmmakers leaned all the way into the camaraderie that made movies like “The Suicide Squad” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” so special. At times, the film feels like a milder version of those two, a project trying to replicate the same creative spark that illuminated prior works.

Instead of being a consistently engaging interpretation of a classic character, “Superman” is surprisingly uninspired. In a painfully boring middle act, the title hero spends most of his screentime physically weak and confined to both a literal and figurative jail cell. And by the time he finally gains strength and gets around to the real action again, it’s too abstract and fantastical to be truly engaging. Back at the Daily Planet, all of the “Clark Kent stuff” is equally bland. An “interview” with Lois about ethics and accountability had potential to inspire conversation but ultimately falls flat, while characters such as “Mutant Toes” Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio), and young journalist Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) add little personality to the scenery.

Corenswet is fine. He lacks the charm of Christopher Reeve and the stoicism of Henry Cavill and is merely forgettable at best. I didn’t believe him as the weathered, experienced version of this hero who’s already been on the job for a few years, which may unfortunately be the result of a screenplay neglecting to dive into his origins and build our relationship with him as a character. He’s similarly unconvincing as the nerdy Clark Kent with curly hair and thick glasses, attempting to be an everyman. Corenswet is just too chiseled and muscular to pull it off. His chemistry with Brosnahan holds little intrigue, too, a disappointing set-up that will more than likely act as a principal anchor in the future of this DC franchise.

Cinematographer Henry Braham and production designer Beth Mickle endeavor to create a whimsical world, both in the cityscapes of Metropolis and within the walls of the Fortress of Solitude, that’s true to the comics while being accessible to newcomers. The result is surprisingly flat and ugly at times, often looking like a feature-length Super Bowl commercial. There’s something overly artificial about it all, which may help to whisk some viewers away, but it was completely distracting to me. Likewise, the use of the fisheye lens to depict characters as they zoom through the skies paints an awkward picture, refuting its thesis about xenophobia by only showing how these characters are so very different from the rest of us in their abilities and superpowers.

I get it. Watching “Superman” is like reading a comic book; silly, and extravagant, and cartoonish. It aims to bring readers back to their childhoods growing up with these characters, diving into their adventures and immediately picking the next one up after putting the last one down. It’s the most comic book-y comic book movie you’ve ever seen. I get all that. But its relentless nostalgia-farming, fan service, and homage to the people who’ve been here from the very beginning is a weight this movie carries, on top of the burden of starting a new franchise from the ground up, setting the stage for what the tone will be from here on forward. Its love letter illusion disguises just how messy “Superman” is under the surface and its poor attempts to be politically relevant.

This movie is like Costco: it’s dressing up in a deceptive costume and celebrating Halloween three and a half months early.

Now playing in theaters.