Superman (2025)
WHITE CEO GETS HIS FACE BEATEN-IN BY AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT!
CEO PLANNED TO USE HIS CONSIDERABLE WEALTH TO ABUSE THE POOR
BY CLARK KENT
The alt-right is absolutely losing its shit over the idea that an immigrant could want to come to America and do good for no other reason than altruism and a concern for his fellow Americans.
Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938, and the Nazis didn’t like Superman either.
Connect those dots as you see fit.
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That header is the plot of the movie, by the way.
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Pleasantly, the movie did NOT force us to sit through yet another origin story, but in the off-chance you’re not familiar: Kal-El was the last son Krypton, delivered to Earth via experimental cryo-pod in effort by his parents Jor-El and Lara to save the culture of the Kryptonians; with him, Jor-El sent a mandate to use the powers given by our yellow sun to protect and guide humanity to a better future.
The pod landed in a field in Smallville, Kansas where it was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent who forged the necessary paperwork to adopt the alien infant and to bring baby Clark home.
The Kents raised Clark with the best hard-work ethic they could; as Clark’s powers grew and manifested, his parents helped guide and refine his moral compass. If you want a greater breakdown of that, go watch “Smallville” (2001-2017) on HBOmax or on Hulu, (depending on which company has the streaming rights this month).
But as much as I loved watching Smallville growing up, that’s not what we’re reviewing here.
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Director James Gunn was handed the reigns to the DC Extended Cinematic Universe (DCU) back in 2022, following Zack Snyder’s disastrous “Justice League” (2016) and the release of his own hyper-violent soft-reboot “The Suicide Squad” (2021). Instead of immediately launching into his own Superman iteration, Gunn took a while to find his sea legs, grow his brand, and build up to the character that everyone wanted.
We are all so very lucky for it.
While I love Henry Cavill in anything, he’s simply too handsome – his alter-ego disguise as Clark was entirely unconvincing.
Meanwhile, Superman - as played by David Corenswet - was far more believable. He fit the ‘just handsome enough’ vibe that Alyn, Reeves, Reeve, Cain, Routh, Welling, and Hoechlin all nailed perfectly, and when he was dressed as Clark, his hair and glasses actually made just enough of a difference.
In this iteration, metahumans and other super-beings have been on earth for over 300 years, with Supes being just another one in the bunch. Because metahumans were as ubiquitous as cars and smartphones, the good people of Metropolis were unconcerned whenever they saw monsters trying to ravage the city or breach space-time. Multiple shots showed the citizens just going about their daily lives, some even stopping to take smiling selfies with cataclysmic battles happening behind them.
It gave really strong “Powerless” (2017) vibes; I wish NBC hadn’t cancelled that show…
Anyway.
Because Superman was so extremely super-powered and kind, CEO-billionaire-narcissist Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) couldn’t fathom why Superman wasn’t using his powers to enslave humanity.
Thus Luthor tried to use his considerable wealth and key role in the military industrial complex to convince the big-wigs at the Pentagon to let him arrest the Man of Steel as one step of his grand plan.
When Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) realized he was gone, she went to the Justice Gang to beseech The Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Mr. Fantastic (Edi Gathegi), and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) to help her find him. Meanwhile, Luthor enacted his dastardly scheme to get everyone in a panic so he could get what he wanted.
It’s a Superman movie – take a wild guess at how it ends.
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Hoult was a flawless pick to be Luthor for this movie: his intensity and acting chops worked together so well that you as the audience will actually hate the character. His greed and needless cruelty show crystal-clear in every scene, and I don’t think I’ve hated a villain so much in such a long time. Kudos to Hoult and everyone who worked on his part of the script.
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When I was a kid, someone told me that Metropolis was based on Wilmington, DE, while Gotham was based on Pittsburgh, PA. I have never found any supporting documentation for that, though I found a small nudge of validation when Lois Lane stood next to her Toyota Bizzyforks with a shot that showed the word “DELAWARE” very clearly on the license plate.
Fun fact: while Metropolis is largely analogous to NYC and Gotham is Cleveland (or NYC at night, depending on which source you read), it turns out the various Batman shows keep using maps of St. Louis.
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My sole item to mourn for this new era of Gunn-DCU is the loss of the alternate Superman theme. "What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World?" by Hans Zimmer was released in “Man of Steel” (2013) and is an stunningly gorgeous piece that fits the Superman aesthetic as much as the original Superman theme by John Williams.
I get why Gunn didn’t include it as he revamps the DCU, it just makes me sad.
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One of the best parts of this movie was the underlying message of “you are who you want to be, not who your parents want you to be,” repeated constantly by Jor-El (Bradley Cooper), Superman, Lois, and Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), each time with different intonation and purpose.
Had I seen this movie in 2020, that would have been a fine message but it would have largely just flowed past me. Now that I’m a father, it hit hard.
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The special effects for this movie were fine. There were parts where the CGI was frustratingly obvious to me, but there were also scenes that almost seemed to be purposefully odd; I can’t confirm the ‘why’ to that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a nod from James Gunn to the source material being a hand-drawn comic book.
The soundtrack was good. It wasn’t particularly stellar by any means, but it was a myriad of renditions of the John William’s Superman theme (see above) and some other stuff that didn’t stick in my head because “K-Pop Demon Hunters” is still lodged in my inner-inner-ear.
This movie deserves to be seen on the big screen, then also in your personal movie collection when a physical copy is released.
4 Claws.
