This is not your father’s Superman—and that’s the point.
This review contains minor spoilers.
Three years after the announcement of the movie, and a dozen years after the previous film, the new Superman is finally upon us and answers the $64 million question: is it worth the wait?
Well, it’s certainly not cut from the same mold as the thoroughly earnest, sweepingly romantic, googly-eyed classic starring the late, great Christopher Reeve—a version the brooding, Henry Cavill-led, Zack Snyder-directed reboot actually tried to emulate, albeit with a heavier dose of psychological weight and emotional doom and gloom, for better or worse.
What it is, is a very James Gunn film: fun, upbeat, even giddy, busy, loud, fast and furious, loaded with lots of wit, winks, a wicked, even snarky sense of humor about itself. It’s dynamite and rather subversive as a Superman movie—and it’s punk-rock that way.
Sure, it has Guardians of the Galaxy in its DNA, but what Gunn film doesn’t? This dose of youthful energy is a very welcome shot in the (super) arm of this widely and deeply beloved, cross-generational pop culture icon that’s already pushing 90 (the character debuted in Action Comics #1, released in 1938).
Superman (David Corenswet) is still every inch the quintessential superhero of old—but now, he’s more unapologetically himself than ever before.
Gunn has taken that DNA—a turbo-powered baby from another planet who is raised as a human on Earth—and fashioned an unapologetically timely, politically charged story that’s practically ripped from today’s world news headlines. It’s not the first time Superman has wrestled with an existential crisis, but here it’s not just personal.
When arch enemy Lex Luthor uses technology to unleash fake news about him in a bid to court cancel culture and have him imprisoned as an undesirable alien (both literally and metaphorically) and deported back to where he came from, the movie cackles with real-world heat and signs-of-the-times urgency.
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This covert machination effectively makes the public instantly turn its back on Superman, and it forces him to prove and defend his humanity while Luthor continues conniving with an authoritarian leader (providing advanced technological warfare weapons), who’s hellbent on invading and occupying a neighboring smaller country. (You’d have to be living under a rock these past couple of years to not see Musk, Russia’s Putin, and Ukraine in there.)
That humanity now comes with more color and some edges. The Clark Kent/Superman of 2025 is at times cocky, stubborn, and not above throwing a hissy fit like a child whose favorite toy has been taken away from him.
Gunn is served extremely well by his huge cast, from the playfully dashing and dashingly playful David Corenswet putting the man in Superman with scrappy wit and grounded passion, to Rachel Brosnahan, playing Lois Lane who’s less of a love interest and more of a self-sufficient match to Clark, down to House of the Dragons star Milly Alcock in a scene-stealing but all-too-brief cameo towards the end of the 130-minute film.
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It’s clear that Gunn was having a mighty good time tinkering with Superman conventions, playing with comic book lore, and upending viewers’ expectations. His glee radiates through the entire universe—Clark Kent/Superman and the Justice League (there are many other characters and tons of Easter eggs for hardcore fans).
And both Superman the movie and its audience are all the better for it.
