Superman

Superman (2025), written and directed by James Gunn, relaunches the DC Universe and the most famous superhero on earth. With Supergirl arriving this summer, it is worth saying the quiet part out loud: the internet will tell you this is either dumpster garbage or an S-tier masterpiece. The truth sits in the middle, and it depends who you are.

If you are a nerd with firm ideas about Superman, this probably is not for you. If you own long boxes and want the Big Blue Boy Scout at his best, not for you. If you wanted something in the Snyder register, look elsewhere. If you want trailers that honestly represent the movie you paid for, Hollywood marketing needs a new career. If you float through summer blockbusters, like a thing or do not, and refuse to let it ruin your Tuesday, this film is built for you.

I saw it opening night. A year later I still feel conflicted. For me the top shelf has always been Captain America, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Superman. In 2019 I sat with George Newbern, one of the voices who played Superman, talking about why every writer kept turning him into a villain. Injustice. The Snyder era flirting with the fall. Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad flopping on the same idea in 2024. Fifteen years of Superman as the bad guy or written out of the room because people forgot how to write a hero who wants to help. Near as I remember it, George said that era was always temporary: Superman never quits and never stops trying to protect people, because that is what he is.

David Corenswet’s Superman wants to be good. He throws himself in front of danger for strangers. A few times the film stops long enough to let that land. Refreshing. They do not nail it clean. Same breath: something I like and something I do not. That is the whole movie. Flawed fifty-fifty. Heart and crap in the same reel. I want this cast back. I do not want Gunn writing the next Superman the same way. Direct, maybe. A follow-up, not a sequel to this.

Gunn cast the widest net he could: safe, relatable, for as many seats as possible. To get there he made a film for the TikTok crowd. It never sits still. It never breathes. Emotional beats arrive and the Quip Reflex undercuts them. An earnest moment lands, a one-liner evaporates it. When Corenswet finally delivers a monologue about what it means to be human, it is one of the best things in the picture, because nobody interrupts him. The film proves it can slow down and mean something. Then it speeds back up and spends an hour proving it would rather not.

Rachel Brosnahan is a good Lois. Their chemistry is real and refreshing. The dynamic is flipped: Clark is the emotional one, Lois the stoic, with a half-finished girl-boss shape they seem to have sanded down before release. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex is excellent cold menace in the face. The writing hands him homework. Whole scenes exist so Lex can stand there and explain the plan out loud. Menace drains. A villain who narrates his scheme stops being scary. Mr. Terrific gets to be brilliant by doing brilliant things on screen. Hoult earned that trust; the script would not extend it. I still want him back under a better pen.

The Justice Gang is the Justice Society from Black Adam all over again. Get these misfits out of my Superman movie. Mr. Terrific is the exception: spectacular, the best live-action version we have gotten. Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner did nothing for me. Hawkgirl is worse: Isabela Merced on screen with nothing to do, a costume in the back of frame. Every minute the Gang occupies is stolen from the name on the poster. This is a Superman movie that keeps forgetting to be about Superman.

Physically, this is the least super Superman we have seen. He gets beaten fight after fight. In context, most of those losses make sense. The film just never shows you the version that wins. It opens on a title card: three minutes ago, Superman lost for the first time. First time. That means he was undefeated until the jump, the Superman we have known our whole lives, and the movie skipped proving it. Sitting there I thought of Disney’s Hercules: act two montages Herc demolishing Greece so vulnerability later means something. Superman needed ninety seconds of being the most powerful man alive up front. We never got it. So he just looks weak, and I sat inventing the fix the screenwriter should have caught. Insane that I am defending why Superman is soft in a Superman film.

The Krypton change is the wound. I will hold the spoiler. What I will say: the film alters the message from Krypton, who his parents were, and what they sent their son to Earth to do, and it is god-awful. For eighty-seven years the bedrock was simple: two good people put their baby in a rocket out of love. This movie twists that for a cheap gut-punch. The Quip Reflex scaled up to mythology: a story so scared of being earnest it would rather shock you than mean something. Everything else in this review is a pacing note. That one is the injury. It looks like Supergirl will double down on the insult.

As the launchpad for a new cinematic universe, firing the starting gun with something this divisive was a horrible idea. Performances are good. Heart is real. A hero who rarely gets to look heroic and a Krypton story that should be tried at The Hague drag the rest to the middle of the road. Banished to the Backlog. Matinee or cheap rental on a night with nothing else going. Full evening money for a Superman this conflicted is a hard sell. Wait until it is already playing, not the thing you drove out for. And set expectations low: the trailers sold a different movie.