SUPERMAN REVIEW

“A movie that really needed to reinvent what’s become a relatively rusty wheel.”

My very first comic books ever were a pile of Superman comics that I found in a clubhouse behind the house in Massachusetts, my family moved into in the early ‘70s. And yet, he’s never been my favorite DC Comics character, because I’ve always felt there was only so much that could be done with the character. Sure, there have been exceptions like the Death of Superman and everything that came out of it, plus I also thought Frank Miller and John Romita Jr’s Superman: Year One was terrific.

That brings us to James Gunn, who I became a big fan of during my early days doing interviews, talking to him about his earlier movies Slither and Super and others, and then I really appreciated his Guardians of the Galaxy movies (at least the first and third, mostly) and I loved The Suicide Squad. Superman seems like such an odd choice for Gunn, just because he’s a character with such a squeaky-clean image in the hands of a guy who has always been kind of edgy, with Peacemaker being a great example of just that.

It might not be that necessary to get too deep into the movie’s overly complicated plot, beginning in the middle of the story with Superman (David Corenswet) having already been in Metropolis for three years, working in disguise at the Daily Planet as Clark Kent, as has always been the case. We learn in the opening titles that he also got caught up in a conflict between two nations, and having just been badly beaten down by one of the nation’s heroes, the Hammer of Boravia, Superman is on the ropes. Billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is morally opposed to Superman, since he’s an alien, which makes Luthor want to turn the world against Superman and get rid of him. Sound familiar? Luthor has help from Ultraman, best known in the comics as an Earth 3 version of Superman, and The Engineer from the Authority.

There are so many ideas jammed into the movie, many of them making me wonder, “Why?” Such as the scene where a fire-breathing Kaiju attacks Metropolis and Superman gets aid from the Justice Gang, made up of Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced). These are generally decent characters in the comics, but the way they’re just thrown into the mix with no rhyme and reason doesn’t do them justice. That goes quadruple for Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho, whose inclusion seems to be merely the result of a random roll of the dice. There’s just no reason for any of these other characters to be in a Superman movie, and taking them out of their normal realms does a huge disservice to all the work done by comic creators to make them interesting characters. That’s particularly the case with the Engineer, who is such an interesting character in The Authority comics, but here, she’s little more than a henchman with cool powers, basically Ursa. Problems such as those make me think that those who whined about The Flash and Black Adam are full of shit, since Superman has some of the exact same issues as both those earlier DC superhero films.

The biggest problem I had with Superman was the general casting, not necessarily Corenswet, who is fine, but many of the other characters just feel low-rent. Nicholas Hoult is not a good Lex Luthor, and that’s probably what hurts Gunn’s version of Superman more than anything else. Hoult is such a good actor, but his performance goes so outside the bounds of what has worked in the hands of other actors, and that annoyed me more than anything else. Very few of the other actors in the cast have much charisma or personality to make their characters stand out, and a lot of Gunn’s trademark humor injected to liven things up just falls flat. Sara Sampaio’s as Lex’s girlfriend Eve is probably the most annoying aspect of the movie, as she’s almost like his Harley Quinn.

There are some good things in Superman worth mentioning, mostly Superman’s dog Krypto, who literally steals every scene he’s in. Rachel Brosnahan is very well cast as Lois, giving vibes falling somewhere between Margot Kidder and Teri Hatcher in Lois and Clark. Sadly, that latter television show seems to be the blueprint for the relationship between the two main characters, and we only really only see them together a few times. In fact, Superman only appears as Clark Kent for a little bit during the first 30 minutes, and then he’s gone. Mr. Terrific grew on me, but mainly due to his scenes with Lois. Otherwise, the Daily Planet bullpen is pretty bland and irrelevant, and like everything else, I had a hard time caring about any of them, even though they get a nice moment together towards the third act.

Whatever you want to say about previous iterations of Superman, at least Zack Snyder had the sense to cast the likes of Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Clark’s adopted Kansas parents. I have no idea who the actors were playing Ma and Pa Kent in Gunn’s version, but other than a nice speech by the latter, you can tell these are not actors on par with early versions. In general, I struggle to find anything in Gunn’s version that is significantly better than any previous incarnation of Superman… except for Krypto.

I even had issues with some of the crafts, like the score by David Fleming and John Murphy that leans way too hard on the John Williams style of scoring. Production Designer Beth Mickle has done some great work with Gunn, but some of her work in Superman seems a little hacky. For instance, why do the interiors of both the Daily Planet AND the Hall of Justice look like the interior of Grand Central Station? It makes it painfully obvious they were both built on the same set and that corners were cut. (UPDATE: I have since learned that the Hall of Justice interior was in Cincinnati and the Daily Planet was in Georgia… crazy that they have some of the same architecture.)

So much of Superman feels like Gunn trying to make commentary on the politics of our world, including a not-even-remotely-subtle dig at Trump, and making the conflict in the movie feel too much like what’s going on in Israel and Gaza. While I commend Gunn for trying to make this superhero feel more relevant to our own world, throwing in digs at social media (represented by poorly-rendered CG monkeys) which seems somewhat disingenuous.

Gunn’s biggest faux pas is his decision to throw a punk rock analogy into the mix. For many years, I felt that James Gunn was very punk rock in the way he infiltrated superheroes with his edgy sensibilities. (I bring up Peacemaker as an example.) This movie makes it more obvious that Gunn’s strengths lies in telling stories about outcasts and misfits, and working with Superman, meant to be the ideal hero, he seems to be punching above his class. The movie also makes Gunn feel less like punk rock, and more like something bland and corporate.

More than anything, Superman is probably going to be a movie more for those who are already fans of the character and who already know all the beats to expect in Gunn’s movie. Anyone else will be confused by all these other characters and story ideas (like the whole “Pocket universe” thing… again, WHY!?), which doesn’t make Superman a good entry point for the uninitiated. Sure, plenty of comparisons can be made to Richard Donner’s classic movie of the same name, and they will be, but any attempt to reinvent the wheel in Superman falls short, and this was a movie that really needed to reinvent what’s become a relatively rusty wheel.

Rating: 5.5/10

Superman opens worldwide on Friday, July 11.