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Review: ‘Superman’ is an achingly human antidote to a cruel world
James Gunn's film is both warmly empathetic and shockingly political, with David Corenswet playing a down-to-earth Clark Kent.
More than 87 years since Action Comics #1 first hit newsstands and almost a half-century removed from Christopher Reeve playing Clark Kent, has the world outgrown Superman?
That’s the question that keeps Warner Bros. executives up at night and inspires flame wars on dark corners of the internet. It’s also the central question that animates “Superman,” the official relaunch of the DC Universe from director (and DCU architect) James Gunn.
The answer, revealed over an entertaining two hours, is a resounding no. Not only have the paranoid, phone-obsessed people of Metropolis not outgrown Superman, they need him more than ever.
“Superman” begins in media res, briefly summarizing the hero’s well-known origin story with a few lines of onscreen text before throwing the caped hero (David Corenswet) into action. He’s been temporarily bested by a masked assailant, and the first images we see of him are of him in recovery, basking in the life-giving sun while listening to a recording from his Krytponian parents.
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Corenswet’s Superman isn’t just more fragile than prior editions, he’s also more relatable. It’s no surprise that a script written by Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) gives Clark Kent some fun one-liners, but it’s more than that. This Superman has a favorite band, a dog (albeit a superpowered one), and a girlfriend (Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane) for whom he cooks breakfast for dinner. He gets frustrated reading nasty social media posts about himself, and sheds a single tear when an innocent civilian is killed. In short, he’s human.
Superman’s humaneness stands in stark contrast to that of Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, a billionaire styled to look like Andrew Tate but with the intellect, temperament, and ambition of a Silicon Valley technocrat. Whether he’s spewing performative outrage on cable news or whispering in the ears of cabinet members behind closed doors, Lex is playing every angle. After Superman stops an American-allied country from invading its poor, unarmed, subjugated neighbors, Lex works overtime to ensure that he is given ultimate authority to neutralize the spandex-wearing threat to U.S. hegemony.
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It’s frankly incredible that after a decade of angry fanboys labeling any superhero project more humanist than Zack Snyder’s Nietzschean vision of Superman as “woke,” Gunn was allowed to release a movie with this much empathy and sociopolitical relevance. Though the movie wrapped production in early 2024, scenes in which hundreds of political prisoners — including immigrants, anti-Luthor bloggers, and metahumans separated from their children — are locked in cages and extradited to another dimension prove that the arc of history is both cruel and predictable.
If there’s one problem with “Superman,” it’s the sheer number of additional superheroes pulled into the fray to help Gunn build out his cinematic universe. Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), and Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) are just some of the metahuman crime-fighters in the film, each of whom acquit themselves with varying levels of success. Then there’s Krypto the Superdog, Clark’s high-flying, ankle-biting, tongue-lolling canine pal, who got the biggest laughs at my preview screening but is ultimately an overused gag. Their inclusion, among others I won’t mention to avoid spoiler territory, makes “Superman” feel overstuffed. One or two of these heroes surely would’ve been left on the cutting room floor if the ultimate goal of the film was anything other than getting the DCU production line of sequels and spinoffs up to speed.
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Nevertheless, “Superman” is an encouraging first step for the DCU, one that doesn’t play it safe despite the billions of dollars and decades of future entertainment resting on its shoulders. The studio clearly made an astute choice entrusting one of its most important heroes to Gunn. Just as he did with “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Gunn shows us with “Superman” that what separates the good superhero films from the bad isn’t the CGI or the IP: It’s the human touch.
Rating: *** (out of 4).
“Superman” will be released in theaters July 11.
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