Whilst I’m not quite managing to watch a film a week (my wife has been ill with, of all things, Kennel Cough – caught from one of our dog’s inoculations!), I have managed to finish watching Superman (2025) – you know the one with Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern/Guy Gardner, Alan Tudyk as Four/Gary, Bradley Cooper as Jor-El, Pom Klementieff as Five, and Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord: surprisingly it was directed by James Gunn who did Guardians of the Galaxy. I wonder if he has any favourite actors… Oh, it also has David Corenswet as Superman and Nicholas Hoult as Luther.
Casting wise – I think they’ve got Jimmy Olson (Skyler Gisondo) spot on: Lex Luthor (played by 36 year old Nicholas Hoult) is too young and doesn’t quite have the gravitas for Luthor – he’s got the “Modern Doctor Who Master” villain issue of “make him over-excited/manic”: I can’t see how Luthor would have acquired all the funds and technology necessary with that sort of attitude (and age: even if he inherited a large portion). David Corenswet as Superman is okay – they’ve definitely gone for the Christopher Reeves look and feel for him (hair curl, shorts and even the classic theme) and Maria Gabriela de Faria as “The Engineer” (a nano-tech metahuman) has got the semi-mechnanicalish movement, but didn’t quite have the acting ability.
As for the film/plot itself: It might have been good in 2016 – before the Ukraine/Russia War, before Gaza/Israel really kicked off, before Musk went full right-wing, before Covid (when you could believe the population would follow instructions for their safety), before “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (the “pocket universe” being basically identical in look and entrance/exit method to the Quantum Realm), and before [gestures at everything]. In 2026 however, it all feels a bit too “close to home” with too many parallels .
It also feels overloaded with characters (it’s a Superman movie – but with metahumans, the Justice League/Gang, Supergirl making a cameo – but Krypto was welcome!), some of the visual effects are a bit on the dodgy side and inconsistent (Superman gets thrown through a building but is stopped by a trash/rubbish bin?). Also – you’ve just established that “this world” has the help of Superman, The Green Lantern, Mr Terrific and Hawkgirl – but where were they in the big “Metropolis is being torn in half and buildings are falling?” section – are they just useful for “small things” like The Imp?
And why when the literal earth being split, did the water/river/ocean not seep into the rift? The “Pocket Universe” has multiple black holes for some reason – and they are quite large, but don’t seem to have much effect for their size. Also the portals to the pocket universe collapse if they have been open for too long: but the universe has a research lab with staff, a monitoring station with staff, hundreds of “larger-than-the-portals” cages (with hundreds of prisoners) – how, exactly, did all that get there? It seems excessive and a massive waste of resources for Luther to put ex-girlfriends in there: why keep them alive at all and if you do want to keep them alive, why not just a standard prison or basement – for metahumans, it could be understood for a high-security facility, but everyone else he has captured?
I did like the introductory text used to give us the backstory – we all know the basics of Superman’s origins by now and I’d much rather have a paragraph of text just ensuring we’re all on the same page than 60 minutes of the same origin story (especially setting up the metahumans have been here for 300 years).
Some scenes seemed to go on for way too long (especially the fight scenes – the Fort Kramer fight went on for reportedly 2 minutes – but 30 seconds would have been enough) meaning the 2hr 9minute (129minute) runtime could have been substantially shortened which might have helped stave off the boredom in parts. Why they bothered with the “fight interview” with Supes and Louis except to pad the runtime, I’m not sure.
It’s an okay movie but I probably wouldn’t watch it again (and if I did, as more “background noise”). I’d say I’d rate this about 7.5/10 : if they had concentrated on the core Superman movie instead of trying to relaunch the DCU yet again, it might have been 8.5.
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