Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and David Corenswet as Superman in a scene from "Superman." (Photo by Jessica Miglio, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
The cape is fire-engine red. The tights are big and bulky. The retro suit worn by the titular do-gooder at the center of “Superman” lets its saturated colors do the heavy lifting. The sun is shining, and the skies are a light shade of aquamarine. A new day is here, for the character and the franchise that began (and continues) in the pages of DC Comics.
The Man of Steel's third reboot since Bryan Singer's “Superman Returns” in 2006 is spastic, zippy and not afraid to dive headlong into politics, all earmarks of its writer-director, James Gunn. It is an unapologetic course correction from the grimdark, fire-and-brimstone bravado of the superhero's prior incarnation, as the noble and conflicted alien visitor in Zack Snyder's somber, uneven DC Extended Universe run.
“Let there be light!” Gunn exclaims, and his “Superman” takes that mandate literally, filling the frame with an ultrabright palette and tight, wide angle friendly shots intended for the boxy expanse of an IMAX screen. It also leans in on hip, comic banter, a Gunn specialty, occasionally giving this very busy adventure the air of a Golden Age screwball comedy. After so many years brooding in the dark, it's time for Kal-El, Son of Krypton, to have his day in Earth's yellow sun. This Superman fanboy and former comics collector settled in for a rip-roaring time at the movies.
Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen and David Corenswet as Clark Kent in a scene from "Superman." (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
But underneath its cheery façade, this “Superman” conceals deep-seated issues that have less to do with its protagonist's inner conflict and a lot more with its filmmaker's hangups and resentments. Gunn has delivered a personal, thoroughly eccentric summer movie that commits self-sabotage when it bares its fangs. The bad vibes spread across the movie like a tumor.
The change in gears doesn't come until around the 40-minute mark, so I must report that one-third of “Superman” is good: nimble, brash and proudly cartoonish. It's a reminder of how much fun these movies can be when not weighed down by worldbuilding duties. It's partly why the Marvel Cinematic Universe appears to have run into a recent rough patch, the same MCU where Gunn made his mark with his “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy. Me? I found the first GOTG to be an obnoxious Saturday morning cartoon with swear words, the second weighed down by its daddy issues, and the third a big-hearted return to form for Gunn.
The skepticism this critic had about how compatible Gunn, with his snarky sensibility, and Superman could be in bringing the morally resolute hero to the big screen vanished less than 10 minutes into the new movie. His vision for the caped icon is simple but compelling: The cornfed Kansan who fell down to Earth as a baby has a rigid sense of right and wrong, and if that means going behind Uncle Sam's back in order to save lives, that is a step he is willing to take.
Ozu the Dog as Krypto and David Corenswet as Superman in a scene from "Superman." (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
“Superman” starts as a movie already in progress, with Supes (David Corenswet) falling into the Antarctican snow, his face bruised and bloodied. Earth's would-be savior, 33 years old in Gunn's sly Jesus Christ reference, has just had his butt kicked by the Hammer of Boravia, a mechanized superthug paid for and controlled by billionaire corporate scum Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). I mean literally controlled. Luthor, his head already bald and his soul already corroded, orchestrates the henchman's moves in a room full of pencil pushers typing away in front of computer monitors. The hissable baddie is reminiscent here of that telemarketing supervisor intent in ensuring his operators meet and perhaps surpass their quota.
Back at the Daily Planet, Gunn shows more interest in newsroom chatter and “hard news” copy than Singer and Snyder ever did. Supes, as his disheveled Clark Kent alter ego, is even called out for the quality of his writing, or lack thereof. In this incarnation, Lois Lane (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's” Rachel Brosnahan) is a driven, ear-to-the-ground reporter with a cramped apartment that's a much more believable home on a journalist's salary than the penthouse that Margot Kidder's Lois called home in Richard Donner's seminal “Superman: The Movie.” The most recent Lois' relationship with Supes is by turns loving and fraught with tension, and watching Corenswet and Brosnahan navigate their characters' diverging worldviews is a welcome respite from the onslaught of disaster-movie mayhem Gunn throws our way. Both stars give it all they've got.
Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor and David Corenswet as Superman in a scene from "Superman." (Photo by Jessica Miglio, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
Gunn is juggling a lot of balls here, and trusts viewers to keep up. Superman has run afoul of the U.S. government because he acted of his own volition to prevent the (fictional, broadly etched) country of Boravia from invading the (fictional, even more broadly etched) country of Jarhanpur, in his view, to help prevent a war and loss of life. In the film's most engaging scene, Lois calls the legality and wisdom of Superman's actions into question during an increasingly tense one-on-one, made even more engrossing because the interviewer and subject care deeply for each other.
Gunn is able to strike a judicious balance between spectacle and the more intimate moments, and for a while, “Superman” appears to be that yearned-for knight in shining armor who's come to save us from a mediocre summer at the multiplex. It had me in its pocket, despite my initial trepidation.
And then Gunn flushes the movie down the toilet. From this point on, if you want to go into “Superman” knowing as little as possible, you might want to stop reading, since it's necessary to discuss some plot points that come at the halfway mark and beyond. (You've been warned.) A recording from Superman's biological parents (Bradley Cooper and and Angela Sarafyan), one Kal-El thought partly lost, surfaces online in full, revealing a more nefarious purpose for the Son of Krypton.
David Corenswet as Superman in a scene from "Superman." (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
And in the blink of an eye, Superman is canceled, shunned by a once supportive populace, and “Superman” immediately becomes a lesser film, not only because Gunn embraces the superficial topicality of social media ostracizing, but because this stops being about the rejection of the Man of Steel and a lot more about Gunn's own brush with Twitter infamy.
Back in 2018, Marvel fired Gunn after a handful of tasteless tweets, in which he jokes about subjects like pedophilia and rape, resurfaced online. The director was eventually rehired after a flurry of apologies and an outpouring of support from the film industry and fans. Watching these scenes in “Superman” suggests he's not merely mining the misfortunes of his recent past to guide the story along. In the reductive way he depicts how people turn their backs on Superman, one feels Gunn is here to settle debts. It's not a good look and in so doing, he loses his grip on what makes his version of “Superman” special.
But as it turns out, Gunn is just warming up, and he turns “Superman” into the cinematic equivalent of that comic book geek you start dating because he's fun and dorky and genuine, only to discover he's a jerk with a violent temper.
Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl and Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific in a scene from "Superman." (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
The moment “Superman” transforms from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde involves a detention facility in an illicitly secured pocket between universes. It is here where Gunn, using Luthor and his goons, unleashes the film's most deplorable displays of unadulterated evil, at one point resorting to a game of Russian roulette with an innocent life on the line. Sure, comic book villains must be allowed to twirl their mustaches in chilling fashion, but the scene in question is staged with such relish that you stop thinking about the villains in front of the camera and you begin to wonder about the villain on the other side of the lens.
This sadistic streak, seen to varying degrees in Gunn's previous efforts, rears its head where it has no business wreaking havoc, and eventually, it's the viewers, not just Superman, who feel like they're being beaten to a bloody pulp.
But Gunn doesn't stop there. The character of Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio), Luthor's vain squeeze of the moment, is depicted as a dumb blonde, not like the ditz affectionately played by Valerie Perrine in Donner's film, but as an object of scorn and ridicule, a vapid Instagram junkie with a crush on Daily Planet shutterbug Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo), who isn't really into her, man, but he reluctantly reaches out to her in an attempt to get Luther intel. Gunn has plot-device plans for Eve, but the way she's reduced to the clingy, needy butt of the joke left a very sour taste in my mouth. I can't remember the last time I saw a studio movie that showed this much contempt toward women.
Supes' Earth parents (Neva Howell and the esteemed Pruitt Taylor Vince), fare slightly better, even though they've been flattened into country-hick steterotypes. We're a long way down from Kevin Costner and Diane Lane, Snyder's Ma and Pa Kent. Gunn has also seen it fit to add Krypto, Supes' frisky canine companion, into the mix. Inspired by Gunn's own rescue dog Ozu, this new version of Kal-El's four-legged sidekick plays a prominent role, and like the movie he's in, becomes more than a little too much. But even these bright points are eventually blotted out by Gunn's all-encompassing bile.
“Superman” is a nasty piece of business. It wears its optimism and sincerity on its sleeve, but don't fall for this charade. This stinker is ugly on the inside, and the rot runs deep. That's its ultimate hypocrisy, its snide double standard: It talks a big game about how an immigrant from another world can help us find the good in one another, to be kind with each other, but won't stop treating its characters like garbage. I think it's time to take out the trash. Better luck next reboot.
“Superman” opens Friday in wide release across South Florida (with some preview shows on Thursday), including IMAX engagements at Regal South Beach, AMC Aventura 24, AMC Sunset Place 24, CMX Cinemas Dolphin 19 and the AutoNation IMAX at the Museum of Discovery and Science in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
