Review: Superman

For a film tasked with jumpstarting an entire cinematic universe, Superman (2025) plays like a series premiere that forgot it needed a pilot. James Gunn’s first foray into the newly minted DCU ditches the gravitas of Snyder’s steel-and-shadow mythmaking for something lighter, weirder, and depending on your patience for tonal whiplash, either delightfully off-kilter or infuriatingly insubstantial.

In lieu of another origin story, Gunn drops us three years post-reveal into a world where Clark Kent is already a household name, Superman has already made headlines in geopolitical conflicts, and Lois Lane already knows the truth about her boyfriend’s double life. It’s a choice that skips the tiresome cradle-to-cape routine, but also one that never quite justifies its own confidence. We’re told this Superman is beloved. We’re told this world is complicated. But what we see mostly resembles a candy-colored fever dream of a universe that hasn’t earned its complications yet.

David Corenswet brings a bright-eyed earnestness to the title role, a kind of 21st-century Boy Scout with the physique of a Greek statue and the emotional depth of a Saturday morning cartoon. He’s endearing, but curiously inert, less a protagonist than a moral center the plot pinballs around. Gunn’s script gestures at complexity (Clark as the world’s most powerful undocumented immigrant, haunted by the political weight of his every action) but those ideas rarely resonate beyond surface level. Superman’s inner conflict is stated rather than felt, and the film’s refusal to give Clark time in his bumbling Kent persona robs the duality of its usual charm.

Instead, Gunn fills the margins with everything else. And I do mean everything. A militarized Justice Gang (Edi Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl, Nathan Fillion’s lascivious Green Lantern) crashes into a baby kaiju subplot with the manic energy of a mid-season crossover event. Mr. Terrific is a highlight here, like a superhero Shaft, and I am eager to see more of this character. Meanwhile, Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor oscillates between chilling precision and cartoonish malevolence, building multiverse prisons for his exes while livestreaming monkey-led smear campaigns. It's an overstuffed, uneven mix of themes, satirical, sincere, sci-fi, slapstick, that never finds a consistent tone.

And yet, for all its chaos, Superman isn't without charm. Gunn’s irreverent eye delivers flourishes that feel genuinely refreshing for a character so often burdened by his own iconography. A throwaway moment where Clark saves a squirrel plays better than most of the actual set pieces. There’s a superpowered dog named Krypto who nearly walks away with the film. And when Gunn lets the movie slow down, especially during an early interview scene between Clark and Lois, the whole thing sparks to life. But the film doesn’t make room for that intimacy; it’s too busy juggling deep-cut jokes and alien invasions to linger on anything so small as human emotion.

What’s most frustrating is how close Gunn comes to capturing something essential about Superman: the paradox of a godlike figure whose greatest strength is his refusal to act like one. There’s a lovely idea here, Clark as the world’s kindest alien, disarmed not by Kryptonite but by the cruelty of the world he chooses to believe in, but it’s mostly drowned out by noise. However, the humanity and good nature to Gunn's filmmaking is still refreshing when most superhero movies these days have so little of it.

Like much of Gunn’s work, Superman swings between sincerity and spectacle, goofiness and gravitas. But here, the needle never quite threads as well as I had hoped. The film’s best intentions, its optimism, its inclusivity, its anti-imperialist leanings, are undermined by its reluctance to take a breath, to sit with its themes instead of sprinting past them in a blur of CGI and quips.

Superman wants to feel like the dawn of a new era. Instead, it feels like a playlist on shuffle: bright, busy, intermittently inspired, but ultimately incohesive. Gunn doesn’t reboot the myth so much as remix it, and while the beats are catchy, the soul of the character is nearly drowned out by all the noise.

3/5