Superman Movie Review
Superman soars. For a long time, DC Studios didn’t quite know what to do with the Big Blue Boy Scout, judging that Superman’s values don’t always gel with the gritty, darker times of today. That’s how we got the Snyderverse, making Superman into something that he wasn’t. Granted, that’s been the issue in adapting the character ever since Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel came up with the immigrant alien who wants to help humanity.
But James Gunn knew the score, just as Richard Donner did before him – Superman is the constant, and it’s only the times that change. For Superman to stay relevant, one only needs to understand that the principles of the character never shift because those ideals make Superman into the steadfast hero who has stood the test of time for more than 80 years.
You don’t want to mess with that chemistry too much because it risks making the character less relevant, not more. The bar should always be as high as the clouds when it comes to Superman; anything less betrays the character.
Superman never betrays him. Gunn has crafted a joyous, celebratory film that reminds us that true goodness and love come hand in hand and gives us something to aspire to, even if the rest of us will never fly, blast heat vision from our eyes, or deadlift tons of concrete. There are heroes that we want to explore their flaws, but Superman’s flaws aren’t about his character, but his struggle to maintain his ideals in the face of a world that wants him to bend to their will.
DC Studios has struggled to find its own voice in relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but again, Gunn knows the score and has also made a fantastic introduction to the DCU. Gunn embraces the differences and commits to them, while Marvel has always been mostly reflective of reality, DC has been more about myths and legends, and their comics reflect that. They paint on much larger canvases and aren’t so beholden to real-world issues except in a broader sense.
Even a character like Batman, who seems on paper to be more grounded, is more about the symbolism and stature than, say, Spider-Man. It’s all a matter of taste, but it’s to DC’s and James Gunn‘s credit that they lean in on those differences with Superman, giving audiences something different than the superhero movies we’ve been seeing for nearly 20 years now.
The Richard Donner movie keeps one foot in the real world and one foot in the fantasy and mostly succeeds. James Gunn’s Superman movie full-on leaps into the fantastical, with giant monsters, spaceships, pocket universes, robots, aliens, and megalomaniacal villains, and it does so with surety and confidence that makes some of the more complicated material go down smoothly.
It’s not hard to keep up with everything, and if something misses you, well, there are always repeat viewings to seize every moment (this movie was engineered for multiple go-rounds). With a huge cast and an epic story to match, Superman is a lot of movie.
The opening captions establish the world – metahumans have existed for centuries, and the world has adapted to them. Superman (David Corenswet) himself has only been on the world stage for three years, although he’s been on Earth for 30. It’s already established that he’s the strongest metahuman on the planet, but when we first meet him, he’s had his rear handed to him by another metahuman after preventing a war between two rival countries.
Superman doesn’t take into consideration the geopolitics of stopping a war – he just wants to save lives, and when Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) confronts him about the ramifications of his deeds, Superman must consider what his heroic deeds mean in the larger sense.
He’s already made himself an enemy in Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who considers Superman an alien meant to conquer and subjugate humanity. Luthor needs any kind of edge against Superman and is unexpectedly handed one on a silver platter when, after he invades the Fortress of Solitude, he gets some interesting information about Superman’s Kryptonian heritage. Soon, Superman must face a world that may not want him around and a villain that could very well defeat Superman physically.
As I said, Superman is a lot of movie, and it would be a disservice to go too deeply into the plot, as there’s an awful lot of it. If there’s a chief complaint about the film, it’s this – it’s almost too much happening at any given moment, and the movie never really stops long enough for the audience to take stock. It juggles a lot of characters and only introduces us to them in a cursory manner, including Edi Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl, and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, the current Green Lantern.
But Gunn is confident that we’ll be able to follow along and assumes that it’s not the audience’s first dance with superhero movies. We should also be very familiar with Superman’s origin by now, and Gunn doesn’t spend much time reestablishing that. For many, this may be confusing, but I admire that Gunn has confidence in his audience to not spoonfeed us every character, every bit of backstory, and explain away every set piece or plot point.
He’s doing some heavy lifting in both telling a great Superman story and establishing the DCU, and if anything gets shorted, it’s any deep dive into the characterization. But he’s also building something different than the Marvel Cinematic Universe here, and considering how those movies have mostly lost their way, anything different is good.
This may be the aspect of the movie that I love the most – it’s busy building and establishing this new comic book universe, and by accentuating the differences between DC and Marvel, it gives us something we’ve never seen before in this genre onscreen. Some of the choices Gunn makes here in the story are decidedly deep-cut DC lore. It’s not afraid to get downright nerdy at times. More casual fans may feel left out, but for those of us who eat and drink this stuff, it feels like a kind of validation.
David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan are terrific as Superman and Lois Lane – Corenswet gets the “Aw shucks” aspects of Superman perfectly right, and Lois Lane is a character with urgency, drive, and not a damsel in distress. But much of the supporting cast steals the movie. Nicholas Hoult is a fantastic Lex Luthor, doing something entirely different than Gene Hackman or Jess Eisenberg, and frankly, this is the Luthor I’ve been waiting to see done right on screen – a man who could do some good for the world if his jealousy and hatred of Superman didn’t get in the way.
I also loved Edi Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, a character I wasn’t overly familiar with, but his droll line delivery and facial expressions tell us everything. Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern, has always been a character that people suffered more than befriended, and Nathan Fillion is hilarious, and I want to see much more from him in the future. And how could one write a review of this without mentioning Krypto the Dog, a CGI creation that’s surely going to enter the hearts of the audience for a long time to come.
John Williams’ iconic themes are embedded into the movie to such an extent that it reminded me of how the Bond theme has shown up in those films over the years, with the composers riffing on the iconic material. John Murphy and David Fleming’s score makes all those great themes sing.
The IMAX camerawork is impressive, the effects are first-rate, and as summer movies go, Superman satisfies in a way that not many movies have this year. Again, this movie will pay off repeat visits like gangbusters because the world James Gunn has created feels so full. Gunn and the film are respectful of past films but also determined to create something unique and new, and this feels exciting in a way that Marvel once did in the Infinity Saga.
I don’t want to be the guy putting DC and Marvel at odds, but I want Marvel to find that spark again because Gunn has obviously captured it. Superman feels like a beginning, and I am thrilled to see what happens in this universe next. Unlike the Snyderverse films, this isn’t dour or gritty for the sake of being gritty or ponderous. It made the 8-year-old kid in me happy, looking up at the sky and searching for that streak of red and blue.
Look, no one can touch what Christopher Reeve did, and no one wants to try. Instead, let us celebrate the superhero and tell these stories with vigor, passion, and excitement. Look up at the screen. It’s a great comic book movie.
SUPERMAN MOVIE REVIEW RATING: 9 OUT OF 10
Warner Bros. Pictures will release the film in theaters on Friday, July 11, 2025. It is rated PG-13 for violence, action and language.
