#REVIEW: “SUPERMAN”

Review by Nicholas Porteous for Mr. Will Wong

James Gunn opens his Superman–nay, his reboot of the entire DC Extended Universe–on a refreshingly vulnerable note. You know exactly which scene, if you’ve been anywhere near a superhero movie in the last six months. Our hero lies face down in snow, bruised and beaten. Hardly the indestructible golden god we associate with the name. His breath is short and wheezy. He can barely summon a whistle. And what’s that in the distance, scampering towards him at maximum velocity… he has a dog???? Humanity levels rising… and this adorable dog, Crypto, doesn’t necessarily listen to Superman‘s commands. He jumps and barks and tosses the perilously-injured guy around. Could this new Superman be any more relatable? We might as well call him Man at this point.

Gunn seems to be taking a bold, much-needed stance on the character–and the superhero genre as a whole, harkening back to the magic of Spider-Man and earlier Marvels… heroes need gravity. No matter how mighty, they need to be tethered to the world as we know it somehow. They need an intuitive, human, dramatic anchor that us mortals can latch onto. Spider-Man, Batman, Iron Man–their best movies always played like personal dramas. The masks and powers were just fun extensions of real-life struggles. How can Peter Parker balance his love for MJ with the full-time responsibility of protecting New York? These are fundamentally human problems we can understand. Cut to 2025. The genre can’t get much more insular. Quantumania, The Marvels, Deadpool and Wolverine… nothing feels connected to this planet anymore. It’s a soup of multiverses and made-up rules that must be explained over and over so we might get a grasp on whatever we’re ‘rooting for’. Even the ratio of superhuman to regular human characters is out of control. Humanity is mostly an offscreen mention at this point–a Macguffin to enable the superperson to fight more monsters. All this to say–Superman has a dog now. A naughty dog. And that’s endearing as hell. It’s a dynamic that just works, no explanation needed, and Gunn gets it.

…or so it would seem. Unfortunately, it turns out this opening scene doesn’t represent a guiding principle for the new DCEU at all. It’s really just an exceptional intro to a world that is completely engulfed in all that made-up, multi-dimensional, constantly-expository, random super hero stuff. Lex Luthor has control of a “pocket dimension” now! It’s VERY important. And it’s full of monkeys on typewriters review-bombing Superman!?! But I’m getting ahead of myself. In broad strokes, Gunn‘s take on Superman is bursting with superpowered gobbledegook that loudly proclaims you shouldn’t take any of it seriously. By the end of the first hour, Gunn is already using a giant, floating interdimensional monster as a sight gag–relegating it to the background of a conversation between Supes and Lois. The decision to pile on disposable villains and dramatically undermine them into little more than selfie-material *could* be a bold choice, if the Movie wasn’t ultimately concerned with these kinds of threats. There are hints of a story about Superman‘s relationship with humanity, international politics and Lois Lane. But, syke!–we should actually be more worried about those other dimensions. Despite reams of text explaining how pocket universes work and why spacetime is at risk and blah blah blah, I can’t say I understood how the ultimate threat to Metropolis worked, or how it could be stopped–and I’m not confident Gunn could tell you either. The noise of Superman is partly a style thing–Gunn wants his heroes WACKY. You are not prepared for how unrelentingly wacky this Movie is. But the needlessly complicated bits and pieces are also a screenwriting tactic. Rather than invest in any substantial themes, we’re left to process dozens of quarter-baked ideas and random threads, each one more juvenile than the last.

Calling Gunn‘s worldview ‘reductive’ is about as charitable as one can get. He presents two fictional Eastern countries at war (fighting entirely in one small, sandy valley without buildings?), with a clownish leader we’re meant to point and laugh at. There’s a recurring thread featuring Jimmy Olsen, who, for Daily Planet intel purposes, must lead on and turn down the same statue-esque, overtly-sexualized woman who is absolutely crazy for him. Their dynamic strikes me as a pretty obvious incel power fantasy. And there’s a whole news media ecosystem that speaks in a chorus and dictates the political leanings of Metropolis, but they’re so easily manipulated by Luthor I think we’re supposed to instinctively mistrust them. But it’s also never clear whether Luthor uses fake sources to turn the public against Superman, or if his bombshell report itself is fake. Regardless, No one seems to be double-checking their sources before reporting on them. Way to continue to erode the public trust in the news, James Gunn.

Superman isn’t a dead loss. David Corenswet is an endearing step up from Henry Cavill‘s mostly humourless take on the character. Crypto is possibly the greatest movie dog since Air Bud. Mr. Terrific is a fun character, and he has nearly as much screen time as the Man of Steel. As much as I wanted Gunn to put the breaks on his Screenplay’s endless jokes and winks–and they basically rob this universe of real dramatic tension–there are more than a few funny moments. I’m interested to see whether a new movie universe can successfully build on these wobbly, wacky foundations, and whether audiences at large will embrace this vision or feel worn out from two hours spent in Gunn‘s goofy glow. Watch this space. Or rather, look up??

Warner Bros. Pictures Canada release SUPERMAN July 11, 2025.