Superman (2025)
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It’s good! Some stray thoughts:
* David Corensweat nailed it.
* I’m on board for Gunn kind of reducing the mystique of the billionaire schemer and making Hoult’s Luthor more of his Golden/Silver Age version of a petulant flop. Certainly anyone paying attention over the past ten years would get the sense that this is how Musk or Zuckerberg would behave if anyone got in their face. Still, if there were a bit more done to build up the facade of calm-and-collected Luthor, it would have been all the more effective to see him crash out.
* A good amount of Daily Planet and Lois Being a Journalist in this, but now I have to grimace at Clark being the world’s most unethical journalist. Also, they did nothing with Cat Grant and the tertiary members of the staff. Without the source material, these characters have no business here. And then there’s the front page with Malik, a shot which would have you accept that Perry White is going to get extremely sentimental and subjective in the weeks following a major disaster for the city. Which brings me to Malik….
* Part one of the aspects that actually are kind of glaring. The Malik character feels uncomfortably underwritten. Making him a food vendor is already a red flag. And then he gets to have the one human death in a movie that otherwise seems to adhere to the kinder, gentler superhero movie wherein Superman goes out of his way to save a *squirrel.* But Malik is just an avatar for Metropolis and making a person of color hero-worship Superman and then get dispatched as a plot device is probably not the message Gunn thinks he’s telling. Which leads us to Jarhanpur.
* Yes, absolutely I want to see the story of how Superman handles having the power to save people from war and genocide while trying to hold himself accountable. We take one reasonable step into exploring that and then it becomes, once again, a mere given that Clark’s instincts are 100% correct and that he shouldn’t be confined by the shackles of diplomacy or conflict resolution. It works for a progressive audience in our current context where we’re all sick to our stomachs at what’s being done to the Palestinians. You know who else this would have worked for? People supporting the Iraq War.
Still, I’m on board for simply saying “I’m sick of dithering while innocent people are trampled like this.” But the payoff? “I’m sending Maxwell Lord’s private goons to do this in my name.” That whole third act, I was like “Okay, they’re layering the parallel conflict tension kind of thick,” but the Justice Gang did not earn the Han Solo payoff they try to give them. As it shakes out, Superman doesn’t even fly into Jarhanpur airspace during the actual events of the movie. That one cool scene happened offscreen.
* He just straight-up gave Mr. Terrific a Yondu scene.
Still, a good direction for Superman and the DC Universe overall. If Gunn can give me a Guardians Volume 2 sequel to this, it will probably rocket past the Reeve movies. We’re on a good foundation.
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