The Real Punk Rock - "Superman (2025)"

In July 2025, Warner Brothers released Superman (2025) kicking off a rebooted continuity for the Man of Steel.  As Superman is my favorite superhero I was very excited, especially after seeing the first couple of trailers.  The film did not disappoint.

I love this movie.

It's not the best movie I've seen this year (I'd give that to Sinners) but it is my favorite movie in a while.  It's even possibly my favorite superhero movie, though, again, not the "best" one.  (For my money that'd probably be either The Dark Knight (2008) or Logan (2017), both of which are incredible films.)

I think this movie absolutely nails Superman's character, the performances are great, and the emotional journey and catharsis are really compelling.  To me, this is easily the best live action Superman movie, and I've seen all of them more than once.

Background

Superman (2025) was written and directed by James Gunn, starring David Corenswet (Superman), Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), and Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor.)  It is the first movie of the DCU, the live action movie universe architected by Gunn.

It was well received by critics and audiences alike, though a vocal contingent of viewers (and people who didn't bother watching it) very loudly hate it.  Anecdotally, almost everyone I know who saw it really liked it, with the only dissenter being a staunch Man of Steel and Zack Snyder defender who kind of damned it with faint praise and honestly seemed a little irritated that it wasn't worse.  Lol

It made about $600 million on a budget of around $225 million.

I'm not going to do a detailed plot speedrun, because I think you should see this movie if you haven't, but the setup is laid out in the text prologue:

3 CENTURIES AGO, the first superpowered beings, known as METAHUMANS, appeared on Earth, ushering in a new era of GODS AND MONSTERS.

3 DECADES AGO, an extraterrestrial baby was sent in a spacecraft to Earth, and adopted by Kansas farmers.

3 YEARS AGO, the baby, now grown, announced himself as SUPERMAN, the most powerful metahuman of all.

3 WEEKS AGO, Superman stopped the country of BORAVIA from invading JARHANPUR, sparking controversy around the world.

3 HOURS AGO, a metahuman called the HAMMER OF BORAVIA attacked Superman in the city of METROPOLIS.

3 MINUTES AGO, Superman lost a battle for the first time.

Oh, and I'm not going to avoid spoilers.

Unfortunate Side Quest – The “Discourse”

It's hard to discuss this Superman without addressing the "discourse" around it.  Specifically I'm talking about the very vocal minority I referenced earlier.  They seem to be mostly Zack Snyder / Snyderverse die hards nursing a grievance against Warner Brothers about the end of Snyder's DCEU and emboldened by their "victory" in getting the studio to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut of Justice League.

It tends to be extremely bad faith or completely media illiterate takes with undercurrents (or overcurrents) of alpha male fragile masculinity and an incel-adjacent mentality.

It is mostly silly and sad but I find it immensely frustrating, and I think the reason why is that it's a microcosm of the Parasocial Megaphone Tribalism, performative trolling, and media illiteracy that the internet has helped infect all of society with.   

At the start it was eye-rollingly irritating with people posting still frames grabbed from the trailer, circling tiny things and saying "Just cancel the film" but then quickly got embarrassing once the film came out and, much to the detractors chagrin, did well critically and financially, at which point they just started inventing straws to grasp at.

As so many insular groups do in the face of a collapsing narrative, they quickly fell back on conspiracies.  The movie was actually a flop, the critics are lying, Rotten Tomatoes is paying off critics, audiences are too stupid to understand the genius of the Snyderverse etc etc.

Then it was actually a disaster because Man of Steel made more money which it did, but not by a lot and with its higher budget and pre-streaming pre-covid media landscape it's kind of apples to oranges.  But even if it wasn't, box office obviously isn't a proxy for quality and I doubt people making the box office argument would say that Man of Steel was a disaster and a terrible movie because Wicked (2024) and Titanic (1997) made more.  (Like, 4 times more in the latter's case.)

And then there was more denial when Warners reported that Superman profited over $100 million.  "They're obviously lying" etc.

People seem to have latched onto "I just don't like bad writing" without much elaboration to use an amorphous catchall to code preferences (or bad faith positions) as a prime facia objective facts that don't need defense.  I've seen "Krypto being named Krypto" is bad writing.  "Krypto being an unruly dog is bad writing" (?).  And my personal favorite "Superman saving the squirrel to show he values all life is bad writing."  Um....an action that ties directly into a character's moral framework seems to me to be an example of good writing.  The "I don't like bad writing" fallback is kind of funny coming from Snyderverse Superman defenders;  See my pieces on Man of Steel and BvS for 21,000 words on why I think those films are written poorly.

The worst of the bad faith criticisms come from the alpha male mindset shit that seems to undergird a lot of it.  I've seen "People don't respect this Superman, they talk back to him!"  Like, no, dipshit, they just aren't scared of him and he doesn't want to be feared.  Even Snyder's Man of Steel didn't WANT to be feared.  (Probably).  This sort of conflation of respect and fear honestly doesn't speak well to the maturity of the guys making the argument. (And it does seem to always be guys.)  I think the hero they're actually looking for is Homelander.

I've also seen people complain that "Superman has to get saved multiple times" and "He's so weak, he gets beaten up a lot!"  The latter of which is, again, funny coming from Snyderverse die hards.  In BvS Superman loses a fight to a human and then gets killed.  But either way, so what?  That's what's called conflict and drama.  If you want an invincible protagonist having no trouble defeating everyone all the time then, to quote James, "Go play a video game."

It can be hard to engage with these kinds of criticisms as the bad faith actors don't care to be persuaded and will just move the goalposts.  Something not being what you wanted or missing the things you like in movies is a valid reason for not liking something, it's not a valid reason to say something is objectively bad.

What irks me is that this kind of thing bleeds over into pop criticism, causing a feedback loop when mixed with general media illiteracy.  Not knowing much or not being curious about stories or film makes you susceptible to narrative and with bad faith soundbites flooding the zone, the pop discourse gets distorted.

I had an acquaintance, who overall liked the film, say "What was the point of Hawkgirl being there? She doesn't do anything" which is a take I've seen in some really misogynist and incel-y posts.  This acquaintance is not one of those people, but the criticism had passed through the Incel / normie membrane.  The incel crowd really takes issue with Hawkgirl's presence.    

And when the obvious response of "she's part of the Justice Gang, intervenes in Jarhanpur at the end and kills the Boravian president" the counter is usually "Yeah but they could have given that to someone else."  Which kind of gives the game away.  They aren't making that statement about Green Lantern, whose functions could also be shifted to someone else pretty easily.  Also, like...yeah.  This just in, if you rewrite a movie and give all of a character's actions to another character, that first character ceases being necessary.  That's like, some deep Aristotelian truth, man.

(Also, that criticism would be way more valid with Cat Grant or Steve Lombard, Daily Planet staffers who really don't do anything, but Cat doesn't take up enough screen time or have the gall to beat up men in a fight.)

Is this uniquely a Snyder fan thing?  I don't remember this kind of gleeful "I hope this movie fails" attitude from The Dark Knight Trilogy fans when The Batman came out in 2023.  (The hue and cry over that movie was more about them casting "the Twilight Guy" as Batman.)

Filmmaking

The Look

Superman is a bright and colorful film that has almost all the superheroing happening in broad daylight.  I like this as an aesthetic choice for Superman anyway but it was also refreshing in the era of desaturated and grey filtered superhero movies.  It's also very easy to see what is going on.

Metropolis feels like a real place for the most part.  The environs during the end fight between Superman and Ultraman near the black hole do get into more placeless CGI territory but at least it's in broad daylight and is city colored so it doesn't look like total mush and the weird physics is explained by dimensional rift shenanigans.

I like how the sunless pocket universe looks as well and though it obviously doesn't look like a real place, it feels tactile and solid enough for such a weird concept.

This movie looks mostly shot handheld and Gunn moves his camera a lot, but I didn't find it distracting.  The camera movement tends towards following characters as they move through the frame rather than directionless wandering and shaky cam.  I honestly didn't really even notice all the motion until a rewatch when I was specifically looking for the visual stylings.

The camera motion feels appropriate and is not always present.  A good example of this is the early Daily Planet scene where Clark takes a phone call from Ma Kent.  The camera is moving and tracking around a lot in the Planet during a busy news day, but the intercut scenes of Ma and Pa Kent are motionless, reflective of their less hectic daily lives.  The camerawork is more chaotic during Superman's opening brawl with the Hammer of Boravia / Ultraman and the fight in the anti-proton river in the pocket universe, but it's very filmically appropriate as both those scenes are of chaotic events.

There's also a nice long take (though I suspect it has a few disguised cuts in it) from Lois's perspective when Mr. Terrific is wrecking the LuthorCorp goons outside the entrance to the pocket universe.

There are a few odd shots, like the sort of weird close up of General Mori's briefcase shutting that transitions to Lois's apartment door lock.  It's honestly kind of reminiscent of the odd and seemingly unmotivated close-ups in Snyder's Batman v Superman but it happens way less often and isn't quite so dramatic so it isn't as distracting.   

James Gunn also seems to have a thing for weird eye stuff.  There's a lot of closeups of eyes getting poked or invaded by nanites.  Well, not like a lot a lot but 3 or 4 times is still more than most films have.  There's even a sympathetic reaction shot from a bystander when Green Lantern creates a giant poker to stab the kaiju's eyeball, so Gunn clearly knows it's kind of uncomfortable.  I don't know what to make of this.

Also: I really like how the flying looks and is shot throughout the film.

Acting and Casting

You aren't likely to find a review, even a not-stellar one, that doesn't praise the performances of Corenswet, Brosnahan, Hoult, and Edi Gathegi (Mr. Terrific).  The acting is quite good all around and I definitely think the mains really inhabit their characters; they feel really fleshed out and real to me.  Some of that, of course, is the script which has a lot of good subtle character work, but the performers really brought it to life.

I've seen this movie get criticized for having too many characters, and there are a lot of characters, but for me it didn't feel like any character was given dramatic weight they couldn't support.  Steve Lombard and Cat Grant, Daily Planet staffers present in a lot of comics, don't actually do anything but the film doesn't need or ask them to.  Cutting them entirely wouldn't cost anything; they're sort of just flavor text to make the world feel lived in, like the film's world doesn't entirely consist of main characters.

I do understand this criticism, it just doesn't bother me very much.  I mean, Lethal Weapon 2 has a crap ton of speaking parts; Murtaugh's squad and Stephanie the police psychiatrist also don't really do anything expect establish some camaraderie with the mains and it doesn't bother me there either.  Making a police station or a busy newsroom feel real(ish) requires a lot of people to be walking around.  C'est la vie.

Pace and Density

Superman is fast paced without being frantic and it's also relatively short at just about 2 hours.  (God, more superhero movies need to be just 2 hours.)  It can be quite information dense, especially at the beginning as there's a lot going on and the viewer is just kind of thrown into the deep end, but there is breathing room; it's not balls to the wall the entire time.  As an easy example, there's a 12 minute dialog scene only 18 minutes in, and it's one of the best scenes in the film.  (More on this later.)

Even given the occasional information density, it's not hard to follow and the world building tends towards environmental rather than expository.  This trips some people up, but a lot of that is either CinemaSins-esque forest-for-the-trees media illiteracy or bad faith criticism from someone looking for reasons to criticize.

Scott of Nerdsync says something really prescient about a certain type of media critic in his "I fact-checked Ben Shapiro's Superman review to prove he's a fraud" video. In response to Shapiro claiming that the film doesn't reveal anything about the characters, Scott says this:

Ben is talking about "I want information about the character.  I want to know the characters backstory.  I want to know their real name.  I want to know this character's origin story." Whereas me, I'm like "I just want this character to feel real in this universe." And he does, and they all do, and that's enough... Ben wants a wikipedia entry about the characters.

I think Scott is dead on here and his statement holds for a lot of online media criticism in general, not just for this film.

Like, who or what Mr. Handsome, Lex's "gondola" navigator in his pocket dimension, actually is really isn't important to any of the actual drama of the movie and I think it's very silly to be upset that the movie didn't halt dead to explain what his deal is.  Back to the Lethal Weapon movie example, we don't get or need a lore dump about the court stenographer.  They're...the stenographer.  It's fine and no one complains about that.  (I don't think there's actually a court stenographer in Lethal Weapon 2, but the point stands.  Bomb Squad Cop #2 then.)

Sincerity

This film is, like Superman, unapologetically sincere and earnest.  It is not afraid, like so many recent blockbusters are, to sit in an emotional moment without undercutting it with a joke.  The film does have some funny moments but nobody really quips, which I appreciate.

There's no unearned sentimentality here, another bane of my existence.  The emotional beats are earned and the catharsis genuine and affecting.

Music

I really like this movie's score by John Murphy and David Fleming.  (I actually purchased it.)  Robert Rodriguez Music, in his video "These 3 Notes in the Superman Score Gave Me Chills!" says the score

...not only honored the original theme but actually expanded on it. I think they found the very core of what makes Superman who he is and turned it into something new, something that is genuinely heartfelt and human.

I completely agree with this.  As Rodriguez points out, Superman's main motif, which uses the three note run from the end of the original theme's fanfare that jumps a major 7th and then falls down to the fifth, is heard "in Superman's most human moments in the film." It's played by different instruments, with different textures, and in different keys throughout the film.  It's a very simple and beautiful motif.

A slow electric guitar version of Williams's original score plays in full during the track "Raising the Flag," where a boy from Jarhanpur, um, raises a flag and the Jarhanpurians about to be massacred begin to chant Superman's name.  This right on the heels of the three note motif in the extremely emotional "Your Choices, Your Actions" scene is an amazing one two punch.  Many people I know (including me) got extremely choked up at this moment.

The liberal use of electric guitars mixed with Williams' theme is appropriate for the film's portrayal of Superman as "punk rock."  (More on this later.)

In contrast to Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which I heard a lot of people compare this to, Superman only has two needle drops (i.e. licensed songs).  The first is Noah & the Whale's "5 Years Time" which plays pseudo-diegetically during Mr. Terrific's action scene, which was quite amusing, especially paired with Lois's slack jawed reaction to Terrific's ass kickery.  The other is "Punkrocker" by the Teddybears featuring Iggy Pop at the very end when Superman is recovering while watching childhood videos of him and Ma and Pa.  It's a great and sweet payoff to the punk rock theme I'll get to in a bit.

Some Writing Stuff

While it would be easy to paint this as a plot driven movie, I think it's really a character driven one.  The central external plot catalyst, Superman's intervention in Jarhanpur, even though it happened off screen before the prologue is a direct result of Superman's unapologetic goodness.  And the other main conflict is Superman's internal one after the true nature of his birth parents' message is revealed to him and the world at large.  And it shouldn't be left aside that most of Superman's problems in this film are caused by Lex's singular envy and hatred of him.

There's emotional conflict and payoff and Superman even gets an anagnorisis, a moment of recognition and insight into himself, something a lot of blockbusters don't bother with.

I was initially a little on the fence about the decision to not show Superman's conflict triggering intervention in Jarhanpur, but as the film went on I decided I really like it.  I think including it wasn't necessary and it would have added too much busyness to an already dense plot and it would have been a distraction from the real centerpiece of the film, which is Superman's anagnorisis.

Having it in the prologue also subtly reinforces how Superman's morality works.  It was a paradigm shift for the rest of the world, but for him it was another day on the job.   He was farther from home than usual but it's clearly not something he agonized over.  He stopped people from dying.  Because he's Superman.

I also think having metahumans be present on earth for 300 years is a brilliant idea.  It means the filmmakers can decouple Superman's arrival from being an immediate world altering event in a way you can't do if he's the first superhero to show up in an otherwise real world setting.  He's the most powerful metahuman but his presence isn't completely novel; the difference is quantitative not qualitative.  What's new isn't the presence of a powerful being but his willingness to do the right thing, realpolitik be damned.  The world altering event here is his decision to intervene in a global conflict rather than stay a local hometown hero the way all the other metahumans are said to be.  General Mori says "Other meta-humans aren't going off half-cocked and interfering in foreign affairs."

Having 300 years of metahumans also frees the film to have people be kind of laissez-faire about all the crazy stuff going on.  "Kaiju in the middle of the city or a dimensional imp?  It's a little unusual for a Wednesday I guess, but I'm not going to stop eating my sandwich."  I really liked the bystanders rubbernecking something that would have been an instant existential and epistemological crisis for everyone on our Earth.

I also greatly appreciated that conversational subtext is back!  Haven't seen that in a Superman movie in a while.  The characters in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman seem to only be capable of speaking in blunt exposition or blunt thematic address.  They don't talk like real people; they talk like people discussing what the ideas of a movie are.  This isn't always a bad thing (The Dark Knight kind of does this, too) but it is kind of a bad thing when the ideas aren't actually handled very well and the questions raised aren't answered.  (See my Man of Steel and BvS pieces for what I mean here.)

Superman, himself

Corenswet's Superman definitely feels like Superman and captures all of the aspects that make the character who he is and all the things that I personally like and find compelling about him.

We see him prioritize protecting people in the fight with the kaiju when he stops it from crashing into a building and after it breathes fire into said building, he turns and asks if everyone's ok before deliberately flying high up into the air to keep the monster focused on him and away from bystanders.  He keeps breaking off the fight with the beast to save people, something the assisting Justice Gang (not their official name) doesn't seem all that interested in doing.

Even weakened from Kryptonite and in no condition do much of anything after escaping the pocket universe, one of his first lines is "There’s more people being held prisoner in there.  We gotta go get ’em."

We see the smile on his face when he heads back to Metropolis at the beginning.   Even injured and speeding back to help, he finds the joy in flying.  It very much reminds me of a great early scene in the Birthright comic.

He values all life, as shown when he saves both a dog and squirrel from the kaiju and even tries to work out a way to stop the kaiju itself without hurting it.

We see his perseverance and determination when fighting the Engineer and Ultraman, even when engulfed by nano-machines and taking full force hits from Ultraman he doesn't even slow down.  His defeat by Ultraman / The Hammer of Boravia before the opening crawl took almost 3 hours.

And he's reflexively kind.  One of the first things we see is him do, despite being grievously injured, is thank his robots for bringing him into the Fortress, despite Number 4's assurance that, as automatons, they do not require it.  And I love the small moment at the end when Number 4 expresses the desire to be given the name Gary and in their next interaction Superman, with no hesitation, calls him that.  Clark greets the doorman at the Daily Planet by name and doesn't seem at all bothered by Steve who is kind of a jerk.

After the kaiju fight, while Green Lantern is plying the adults for adulation, Superman has fun talking to all the kids and they seem to love him.  And the film shows that people aren't afraid of him.  Near the beginning, a man on the street has no hesitation before saying "Maybe you shouldn't have done that thing in Jarhanpur, Superman."   And after Lex reveals the full message from Jor-El and Lara, a bystander doesn't think twice before throwing a can at Superman's head, which Superman ignores.  It shows us what Martha told us in BvS.  People know him, and know he's not really a threat. He clearly has never lorded his power over anyone.

Even when he relays his "audience" with Boravian President Ghurkos to Lois, he says he gently pushed him against a cactus while they talked.  Superman could atomize Ghurkos's head with his thumb but it's almost like overly threatening someone with his powers didn't even occur to him.   

Lois sums him up perfectly:

You trust everyone and think everyone you’ve ever met is, like...beautiful.

That right there is the essence of Superman's humanity and is one of the things I love about the character and I'm so glad this version captured it.

Against Cynicism

Lois and Clark have this great exchange in the middle of the film:

Lois

We're so different. I was just this punk rock kid from Bakerline...and you're Superman.

Superman

I'm punk rock.

Lois

You are not punk rock.

But then after Lois says her line about Superman trusting everyone and thinking everyone is beautiful, he says simply "Maybe that's the real punk rock."

This film makes a statement about Superman's brand of goodness that Rodriguez summarizes as  "In such a cynical world, being unapologetically kind and good is a rebellious act." When apathy, disillusionment, pessimism, and cruelty are the dominant pillars in culture, what is more anti-establishment than unapologetic no-strings-attached kindness.

This sentiment also ties into Clark's anagnorisis after his conversation with Pa Kent.  Pa leads him to understand that he does what he does because of his own compass, not as he thought, because of what Jor-El wanted, and not even because of what Pa wanted him to be.

Parents aren’t for telling their children who they’re supposed to be. We are here to give y’all tools, help you make fools of yourselves all on your own.  No. Your choices, Clark. Your actions. That’s what makes you who you are.

Superman is not conforming to his parental figures and he's not conforming to a cynical world.  He is punk rock, after all.

"Good luck with that" - Gloves Off

I found it quite satisfying that Superman pretty much beats Ultraman's ass when Lex is no longer telling Ultraman what to do.  I also think this gestures at how much Superman usually holds back; since he now knows Ultraman is his clone and can take a hit he can open up a little more.

It's also cool how, even with Lex still in control, Superman does a lot better in the baseball field fight against the Engineer and Ultraman than he did against just Ultraman at the beginning.  He's learning and adapting.

Also, that Lex thought his Raptor's had a chance in hell against Superman is pretty funny. Superman just obliterates them with absolutely no trouble.  Because he's Superman, you arrogant fools.

This is kind of subtle and easy to miss but this Superman doesn't have a no kill rule.  It's almost a throwaway line but Peacemaker (John Cena), in his interview that's playing in the background of the second apartment scene, says Superman made "...this declaration [that] he’s against killing people unless it’s absolutely necessary."

Superman also says of the kaiju:

I was hoping we could capture it and take it to an intergalactic zoo or at least euthanize it less painfully.

This line also implies that he understands that, in a life or death situation, someone who doesn't have his powers might have to make a hard choice.  He would almost never need to, but it would be a bit unfair to expect that of everyone in all situations.

He still values all life, but he's more of a realist than some incarnations.  (Though maybe not the movie versions; I think every Superman except Routh's has killed someone. Whether this one killed Ultraman when he threw him into the black hole depends on how black holes work in this universe.)

Jor-El and Lara

One of the most controversial things in the film, among both bad faith haters and good faith but misguided appreciators, is the unexpected way Jor-El and Lara are portrayed.  At the beginning, Superman listens to the damaged message from his birth parents while he is recovering, as it brings him comfort.  It is:

We love you more than heaven, our son. We love you more than land. Our beloved home will soon be gone forever.  But hope vitalizes our hearts, and that hope is you, Kal-El.  We have searched the universe for a home where you can do the most good and live out Krypton’s truth.  That place is Earth.

The message cuts off here, but as Superman tells Lois, he takes it to mean "they sent me here to serve humanity and to help the world to be a better place."  He tells her the message is why he does what he does.

Later, Lex's Engineer recovers the rest of the message and Lex broadcasts it to the world:

The people there are simple and profoundly confused.  Weak of mind and spirit and body.  Lord over the planet as the last son of Krypton.  Dispatch of anyone unable or unwilling to serve you, Kal-EI.  Take as many wives as you can, so your genes and Krypton’s might and legacy will live on in this new frontier.  Do us proud, our beloved son.  Rule without mercy.

This revelation, which is confirmed to be real like 6 times in the film, including by Lex in a situation where he would have no incentive to lie, is the crux of Clark's emotional journey and his anagnorisis during his conversation with Pa.

Some people really did not like this but I think it's brilliant.  It completely reverses the "Jor-El sent Clark to be a beacon to humanity, wrecking Superman's agency" thing I said I disliked as a story choice in my Man of Steel piece.  Superman isn't Superman because space daddy told him to be.  He isn't a beacon of hope because it was his destiny.  He is those things because of his own morality, his own code, his own choices.  As Pa says "What you wanted that message to mean says a whole lot more about you than what anyone meant for it to mean."

I basically cannot be convinced this isn't a far better choice for Superman than a distant saintly Jor-El telling Clark who to be and how to be it.  That latter story choice has always bothered me.  I didn't like it in Superman (1978) and I didn't like it in Man of Steel.  And watching people get bent out of shape because of a "lack of respect" for their parasocial relationship with a fictional hologram is completely insane to me.  Why is anyone ride or die for fucking Jor-El? Especially at the expense of Superman's character.

As I said in my Superman deep dive, Superman's birth parents aren't really fixtures in Superman stories.  They are there sometimes but are not usually major presences, even in origin stories.  They provide no direct guidance in Birthright and they aren't present at all in American Alien, Man and Superman, Superman for All Seasons, or Kryptonite.

And John Byrne's Post-Crisis Jor-El in the 1980's is kind of a dick.  When asked if he means for Kal to rule Earth and shape them to Kryptonian ways, he just responds with "Perhaps." So this isn't exactly new ground even in live action as Smallville had a similarly malevolent Jor-El.

I've seen some well meaning people talk about hoping that future movies reveal the message was actually faked or was altered by Brainiac or something to which I say "No, no. Fuck no."  Again for the people in the back, the message is the heart of this Clark's entire character journey and I don't know how people don't see how much better of a story choice it is.

And the message is crucial to the catharsis at the very end of the film, where the videos Superman watches for comfort now are of Ma and Pa.  Visually it has the same sense as the ending of American Alien, when Clark is being taunted about being the last Kryptonian and he replies with "I'm not from Krypton.  I'm from Kansas."  I loved that ending and I'm glad this Superman came to the same conclusion.

I suppose I do have a guess as to why people get hung up on this.  To reiterate something I said in my Man of Steel piece:

I think it's easy to fall into the trap of not allowing an iconic character to exist in the story being told and just comparing them to either another version of the character...

Superman (1978) is, for many, the definitive Superman and the template to which all Superman media is compared to and I think it's become so lodged in pop consciousness that people can't get past deviations from its setup.

The Interview

The scene where Lois interviews Clark as Superman might be the best character scene in any Superman movie.  There's so much revealing characterization for both Clark and Lois and the scene sets up their dynamics, their conflicts, and the internal and external conflicts of the film as whole really seamlessly and naturalistically.

It's also ballsy to have a 12 minute dialog scene 18 minutes into your superhero movie.

The acting and writing are great in this scene.  Lois and Clark feel like they know each other and there's great ebb and flow to the exchange where control swings back and forth.  He’s on the back foot almost as soon as she hits record, though in his defense, his suddenly hesitant “Sure” after she confirms that he was being serious and would indeed let her interview him seems like maybe some part of him knew he should be worried

They are both trying to balance their professional and personal identities (reporter vs. girlfriend for Lois, Superman vs boyfriend for Clark), and they both break character when the conversation gets tense. (She lasts longer than he does).  Clark has asides to Lois the Girlfriend while Lois the Reporter constantly reminds him "This is on the record, Superman."  But then her frustration boils over at his asides and she says "This is on the record, CLARK," finally cracking and using his real name while the recording is still going.  (That moment was pretty funny, as well.)

They both feel real with real emotions and, as I said above, actual subtext to the dialog.  Without overtly stating it, it becomes clear that Superman isn't used to being questioned and that Clark the boyfriend tells Lois everything without considering that she's also Lois the Reporter.  She also crosses some lines, like when she asks him where on Earth he's from and he says "I'm not going to say that, you know I'm not going to say that" and she immediately backs down, realizing she pushed too far.

Lois asks good and tough questions and there is some legitimate ideological conflict between the two.  Lois frames the wisdom of the Jarhanpur intervention in terms of cynical realpolitik, asking Superman if his actions might have caused

More problems around the world than a war that lasted between 12 and 24 hours and was just replacing one tyrannical regime with another?

Clark is taken aback at this.  "Is that really how you feel?"  For him, the calculus for intervention was as simple as "People were going to die!"  Both of their worldviews are laid bare in this one back and forth.

It's also setup for their conversation later when she says "I question everything and everyone.  You trust everyone and think everyone you've ever met is, like, beautiful."  A worse written film would have had that exchange in this first interview scene, rather than planting the seeds for it, and letting it be the two of them working out why they were in conflict earlier.

Performance wise, I like how you can track how he's feeling by his responses during the ceasefires in the interview.  After Lois suggests they change the subject when he gets frustrated and shouts "People were going to die," he only musters a defeated "OK," in contrast to his earlier chipper, but maybe a little performative,  "Yeah, fine" after Lois asks if they can go on after a pause in the exchange when it started to get a little heated.

Both Corenswet and Brosnahan were perfect in this scene.

The interview also reinforces the importance of his birthparents' message that we saw at the beginning, without tipping its hand that Clark's "That message is why I do what I do" is going to be the crux of his character arc for the film.

Also, several points in the interview are quite funny without undercutting the serious friction between Lois and Clark that it reveals.  I particularly liked his kind of petulant response to her asking how he thinks the interview is going.  "I think I'm doing a good job."  I also chuckled at how he leans down to say "After I stopped the war" directly into the recorder before moving on to describe his interaction with Ghurkos.

Lex Luthor

I really liked Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor.  He's easily one of, if not the most competent Lex we've seen in live action.  He's also arrogant, petty, and vindictive.  His resentment and jealousy of Superman is the reason for all of his actions in the film.  As the man himself says:

I’m aware envy consumes my every waking moment.  I know when they mention Galileo or Einstein or one of these other twits in the same breath as me, I feel a tide of vomit burn the back of my throat.  But at least Galileo did something. He wasn’t some dopey Venusian catapulted onto this planet just to have the world fawn over him because his strength illuminates how weak we all really are.  So, my envy is a calling. It is the sole hope for humanity, because it is what has driven me to annihilating you.

Lex's ego and lack of empathy lead him to project and massively misread Superman's appeal.  People don't love this Superman because he's strong, it's because he's kind.  It's because he checks to make sure people are ok and doesn't condescend to them.  Feeling inadequate next to him is distinctly a Lex problem; no one else in the film seems to have an issue with this.

As I said earlier, Superman doesn't lord his power over people.  Lex, however, absolutely does and is the type to take the fact that Superman doesn't as a supreme insult, like Superman doesn't even respect him enough to threaten him.  Early in the film Lex has Ultraman, who he just described to Mori and Flagg as "the most powerful being on planet Earth," turning on lights for him at a snap of his fingers.  It's a small moment but captures Lex's idea of power and it is also diametrically opposed to how Superman acts.  Superman thanks his robots; Lex abuses his interns.  And everyone is an intern to him.

Also, as Ultraman is later revealed to be a clone of Superman, the moment with the light switch also reveals Lex's vision of the ideal relationship between him and Superman.

Lex's plans go awry in this film because of his ego and lack of empathy.  In the pocket universe, Rex decides to release Superman after he sees Lex's cruelty in murdering Mali. And his ego leads him to stop obfuscating that he's coaching Ultraman's fight moves and just start yelling out the commands, which tips off Superman that he needs to destroy Lex's camera drones.

Also, Lex's line after murdering Mali, "I’ll be back later with someone else you’ve chatted with, and I’ll kill them too," shows how much he doesn't get Superman.  Superman would care just as much if it was a complete stranger.  But of course Lex can't conceive of this.

Critiques

I do have some critiques of this movie, though not many.  My biggest one is how quickly the populace turns on Superman after Lex reveals the message, and secondarily how quickly they turn on Lex when Lois's article revealing his machinations go live.   I believe the populace would in fact end up where they did in both cases, but the way its done necessitates everyone to simultaneously see the news and immediately have an instant reaction to it, talking head pundits and all.   It's a case of the setup and end point being fine, but the journey was way to fast.

I suppose this could be a satirical thing, like it's commenting on how fickle everyone is in an Instant access 24 hour news cycle setting, but it really isn't framed like that.  The way the scene where the people turn on Superman is shot is great, so I get why the filmmakers didn't sweat the mechanics too much, but the hyper accelerated timeline took me out a little bit.

There's some other small oddities, like it's kind of strange that when the Daily Planet team are in the T craft while Lois is dictates her story, there's a bunch of named characters and then there's just....this guy who is also there but doesn't do or say anything.  But I don't have any other big criticisms.

Even the sillier stuff, like Lex's rage monkeys doesn't bother me; having little weird stuff in what is a pretty weird movie seems on brand.  Nothing felt out of place with the world the film set up.

Oh, and this isn't really a critique but I would have liked if one of the end credit bits was Superman with the kids in Jarhanpur, like playing soccer with them or something.

Gallimaufry

• The drunken mess of a Supergirl (Milly Alcock) who shows up in the end scene is the version of Supergirl from Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow comic.  That story is getting an adaptation next year and I'm really looking forward to it.  Woman of Tomorrow is incredible.  At its heart it's a story about trauma; unlike Clark, Supergirl saw Krypton explode and her entire family die.

This is why she's such a wreck and it adds another layer to how hellbent Superman was to get Krypto back.  The end scene reveals that Krypto is Supergirl's dog.  Clark knows his cousin has lost everything; he couldn't let her lose her last connection to the home world she saw get destroyed.

• The scene where Mali is murdered got a gasp from the audience in the theater.  I was not expecting something so heavy but it was a well done and shocking moment. I suppose it shows what happens when Superman isn't on the board.  In the kaiju fight, the bystanders didn't seem like they were really at risk because Superman, with all his powers, was there.

I like how during the interrogation, even with a gun to his head, Mali, says "Don't tell him nothing, Superman...You eating my food was a great honor."

• The Justice Gang (not their official name) was fun and I really liked that the Green Lantern here isn't Hal Jordan but Guy Gardner, the worst one.  Like the comic book version, he's such a dick and Nathan Fillion plays him perfectly.  The camaraderie between all of them is great.  When Guy says the vow he's using as a pretext to not help Superman is really just implied, Mr. Traffic's exasperated "An implied vow?" got a genuine laugh out of me.

• Clark the reporter is barely in this, but he’s probably the Clark that looks the most different from Superman.  I could almost buy that people don’t recognize him.   

• I kind of hope Clark's hypno-glasses that, according to Guy, change what he looks like in your mind so you don't recognize him, are just something that Clark made up.  Especially in a movie like this, I don't care if there actually are hypno-glasses, but I think it would be a funny reveal down the line that they were just placebo.

• One really dumb criticism I saw was "Why didn't Supergirl tell him what the rest of his parents message was?  That's a plot hole!"  No it isn't you clowns.  She probably didn't even know.  Do you know everything your uncle told your cousin?  Even if she did know, she might not have wanted to tell him.  He was doing fine.

• One aspect of media illiteracy is the fixation on aesthetics.  Like how muted colors equals adult, and brightly colored equals for kids regardless of what actually happens in the movie.  Or dumb fan casting, a thing I kind of hate, that is content saying the only requirement for a perfect casting is that they sort of look like the character.  I referenced the funniest example of aesthetic fixation in my Batman v Superman piece, where a poster acknowledged that Cavill's Superman was poorly written and had nothing to do, but then went on to say he is the best Superman.  I mean, Cavill definitely does look like Superman, but...

• Mr. Terrific trying so hard stay dignified while riding Krypto and the way he shakes himself off and straightens his coat, trying to play it cool after crashing through Lex's tower riding a dog was also quite funny.

• I like that Superman makes an attempt to talk Ultraman and the Engineer down in the baseball field fight.  It doesn't work but I like that he tried.

• I like that the Engineer refers to Superman as "it' in her very first scene, way before Lex articulates "He's not a man, he's an it."  It's nice attention to character detail.

• I like that even Guy doesn't really think Superman is there to conquer the Earth.  "Is Supes here to take over the world? I don't know. Probably not."  It might be because he thinks Superman is too much of "a wuss" but whatever.

• I saw it pithily put on a Facebook comment that "Cavill's Superman is a cop.  Corenswet's is a firefighter" and I think that's a perfect summation.

• It's interesting how in the interview scene whoever is in control at the moment seems to be framed on the left side of the screen.   It's Lois for the beginning, but then switches to Clark when he's talking about his mission and he pushes back on her for asking where he landed on Earth.

• There's some nice planting and payoff in the writing like when the Engineer uses her nanites to envelop Krypto near the beginning, establishing the efficacy of that against Kryptonian physiology which will come up later when she does it to Superman.   Another small example is that Lex brings Ghurkos a donut from a new shop and says he's "Been thinking of opening one in my half of Jarhanpur."  It's a small moment that I didn't even notice on my first watch, but it sets up Lex's endgame with the Boravian invasion that the audience won't learn about till considerably later.

• Lex has a framed photo of Mr. Handsome on his desk.  It's visible only really briefly. Lol wtf

• I like that the post credit scenes are low stakes and aren't used for any setup for future films.  That was starting to really get old for me.  I've heard Gunn doesn't like how superhero movies use them to advance narratives and I appreciate that.

• James Gunn has writing credit on The Mighty Crabjoys' song that plays at between the end credit scene with Krypto and the one with Mr. Terrific.  So, not a real band.

• This film is much less allergic to being critical of the government that the Snyderveres was.  Here General Mori wants to do something about Superman but is worried about how it will look and as soon as public sentiment shifts on Superman the government acts.  The government also knows about the extra judicial pocket universe prison and is ok with it.  And of course the judiciary has decided the 5th and 6th amendment don't apply to Superman because he's an alien.  That last bit is also prescient as in 2025 internet constitutional "scholars" were assuring everyone that the 5th Amendment and due process didn't apply to the undocumented. (I think this movie was written in 2023)

• Superman's line "First of all, whether or not Jarhanpur is an imperfect country does not give another nation the right to invade it" is very on brand for him.  Wrong is wrong, no matter who it happens to.

• It isn't explicitly stated in the dialog, unlike basically every other live action Superman movie, but Superman does give people something to aspire to and hope for.  At the end, the corporately funded Justice Gang (not their official name) gets over their unwillingness to run afoul of the US Government by intervening in Jarhanpur against Boravia, an American ally, and stops a massacre.  And the people of Jarhanpur use Superman's symbol as a beacon of hope.

• I said earlier that this film's interview scene is the best character scene in any Superman movie, and I stand by that, but Lois and Clark's interview in Superman (1978) is also amazing and has a lot of character.  The dynamic is different, though, as they don't know each other yet in that one.

Conclusion

I both really like this movie and think it's pretty good.  Admittedly, DC live action films have set a pretty low bar, but I think this is better than most Marvel movies too, which for me only rarely peak higher than "solidly competent."   

I thought Superman was inspiring and I would recommend it without caveat.

I also appreciate that it took big swing and set a powerful emotional story in a pretty weird world.  Movies aren't comics and in the current landscape ambition is rarely encouraged by a major studio.

I'm looking forward to see what the DCU will do next.

-m