This has been out for a while, so pretty much every position on it that can be taken has, and I don’t think mine is going to be that revelatory. But still.
To start with the de rigeur “me and Superman” background, as a British person who didn’t get into American comics until they were a teenager and holds all the usual boring opinions about him (“he’s too powerful! Where’s the peril! Get me a loser like Peter Parker, etc.”) my entire experience of the lad is (obviously) almost completely All-Star Superman, but probably less obviously that one issue of Hitman and then that Superboy arc where he’s an apartment super (get it?) because that was drawn by Hitman artist John McCrea.
Interestingly (maybe) if you’re really into comics you’ll already have clocked why Superman (2025) has really worked for me, because “that one issue of Hitman” where Superman shows up dwells on Superman failing (badly) and then being picked up by having it spelled out pretty directly that he’s an immigrant trying to make the best of it, and there’s really nothing more you can do than your best.
I mean… James Gunn has to have read that one, right? Because he gets it. Superman is made as real and as vulnerable as possible here, understanding that just because you’re invincible doesn’t mean you can’t be beaten, and that Superman has no more emotional armour than anyone else. While I’ve read some criticism over just how badly Superman gets his ass kicked in this, that it comes from both directions and that Superman reacts so genuinely–so humanly–to it all is what makes it work. There are stakes: you feel your fist tightening because they stole his dog. You are right there with him all the way.
Some of Gunn’s predilections are a bit unbalancing to the movie as a whole though. Some of the gags fall flat. He can push peril a little too far when it comes to the defenceless, and his penchant for eye trauma rivals Lucio Fulci’s. But the real issue with the film is that the big action climax doesn’t work. It’s obvious that the thematic arc of the movie is always going to end in a (largely) non-violent confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor (played with a genuinely incredible seething hatred from Nicholas Hoult) but the other villains (well, bar one) fall completely flat, and the big “why can this guy beat Superman?” mystery is concluded in the most boring way possible. For a movie that digs up so much stuff from the DC Universe (look, I’ve got no idea who Mr. Terrific is) it’s weird that they resorted to the kind of thing we’d expect at this point from the completely shagged-out MCU. But it doesn’t put too much of a pallor on things, because in every other respect, this movie’s heart is in the right place.
Speaking of, the movie’s much talked-about Israel/Palestine allegory is… astounding. It’s absolutely not the center of the movie, but it goes so much harder than you could ever expect when it appears. Look, we’ve all learned by this point that satire doesn’t do much. But Superman said free Palestine, and in this miserable fuckin’ world, that means something.
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