The Esteemed Critic Reviews Superman (2025)

 

James Gunn's Superman is a mostly successful attempt to revitalize the iconic character and bring his hopeful optimism and goodness to a new generation. It's no secret that the once omnipresent superhero genre is now struggling--other than the atrocious Deadpool and Woverine, nothing is coming close to Avengers: Engame or the last Spider-man in box office numbers--and we're just talking about Marvel movies, not DC. Gunn is known mostly for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which are humorous, competent fair. Superman has a slavish attention to detail that previous entries have lacked--Jimmy Olsen, Kryto the superdog, and Cat Grant make appearances) and the audience immediately understands that Gunn comprehends the character and understands his appeal, unlike, say, Zack Snyder. David Corenswet wears the cape well, dispelling my fears from the trailer that he appeared a little too boyish. Rachel Brosnahan is a competent, if a little remote, Louis Lane, and Nicholas Hoult is an appropriately vicious Lex Luthor. My main problem with the film is how poorly it fits into the time it was made. There are allusions to events in the real world, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the manipulation of sentiment through social media, but it all feels... wrong. Seeing a little boy raise a homemade Superman flag while an invading army looms over him pulls me out of this universe and makes me think about how America has let Israel run amok in annihilating Palestinians or how the Trump administration has extorted Ukraine. Similarly, Lex Luthor is successful in riling up the people against Superman with one stolen video, the veracity of which everyone just accepts as true, because the experts told them so. That the video is true isn't the point--people believe what they want to believe, evidence be damned--and the optimism that the masses would put their faith back in a legitimate hero and support Luthor getting what he deserves is just so goddamn naive that I have a really hard time stomaching it in 2025. I'm not arguing that Gunn shouldn't have made a hopeful, optimistic Superman movie. It's just that such a film doesn't play well in our current era, and the hero's essence--Truth, Justice, and the American Way--is so incompatible with Trumpism that I'm having a really hard time seeing it through any other lens than that of the cynical, post-hope liberal doomer. That's on me, not Gunn. Maybe something will happen that will restore my faith in American idealism. But right now I can't reconcile a world, even a fictional one, in which Superman can exist.