So, here are my thoughts on Superman (2025), technically the first movie ever to bear that eponymous title. Spoilers ahoy! You have been warned!

I have to start by saying that this review is most likely not what most of you were hoping for or expecting from me, a gigantic comic book nerd and Superman fan. The general consensus in the pop culture world is that James Gunn et alia knocked this one out of the park, that the movie is a soaring triumph, that it was, in a word, magnificent.

My feeling is that it’s…fine.

It was good.

I wanted it to be great. Alas, it is not.

But good…

Especially for DC/WB…

Especially for this character, much-abused by the film studio for many years now…

Good might be enough. It’s certainly enough for me. Like I said, I wanted it to be great, but I’ll settle for good, especially when the nearest antecedent bore precisely zero resemblance to the character I’ve known and loved most of my life.

Why good and not great? Well, I will tell you. But hey — if you abso-friggin’-lutely tmetically loved this movie, consider stopping here. Because I might piss you off. And I’d hate to piss you off — I like you!

Worse yet, even though this is — again, tmetically — abso-friggin’-lutely not my intention, I may inadvertently change your mind about the movie. And I’d hate to do that. Because I don’t want to yuck someone else’s yum and Rao knows we all need some yum in our lives right now.

OK. Consider yourself warned, both in terms of spoilers and all else. Let’s dive in.

I’m going to start with a bit of praise, then go into what I didn’t like, then move on to what I really liked quite a lot, just so we don’t end on a down note.

The general tone of the movie is pretty much pitch perfect. While I prefer my Superman a wee bit more mature and reserved than David Corenswet’s, the tone worked for me and I think was properly reflective of the character. For that matter, Corenswet himself was a casting coup. Dude looks like Superman and Clark. While I will not profane the sacred name of Christopher Reeve by comparison, I will say that Corenswet is the best Kal-El we’ve had on film since Mr. Reeve. (Brandon Routh was terrific, don’t get me wrong, but his portrayal will always be too indebted to Reeve’s to stand on its own. And Henry Cavill looked like Superman more than almost anyone else alive, but I never bought him as Clark. Not for a second. Not his fault — he didn’t really have a lot of Clark to do.)

The rest of the casting was, no surprise, pitch perfect as well. Say what you will about Gunn (and he’s honestly hit-or-miss for me), but that dude knows how to cast a movie. I mean, have we seen a better Perry White on screen than Wendell Pierce? Dude has, like, a half dozen lines, but absolutely 1000% sells his Perry White. I would watch an HBO miniseries of Pierce-as-White in a heartbeat. And again, dude has something like ten seconds of screen time. That is goddamn impressive casting!

THINGS THAT AM GOOD AND I LIKED

Yeah, we’re using Bizarro-speak to avoid too much negativity…

Hawkgirl: Everyone seems to be ga-ga over Hawkgirl because our culture is currently obsessed with “bad-ass girl who is sarcastic and disaffected and beats people up.” To which I say: Yawn. Also, she committed a war crime/political assassination. Yay?

I hate her magically appearing and disappearing wings. You mean to tell me that the guy who figured out how to get Dave Bautista, a raccoon, and Groot into the same frame couldn’t figure out how to have her wings stay visible in crowd scenes? I absolutely loathe the filmic convenience of Hawk-people’s wings disappearing when not in use. The wings are a great visual. Use them! (Plus, the disappearing wings raise all sorts of awkward questions about physiology and such — just show them!)

The Kents: Again, people seem to love them and apparently Gunn based them on some friend’s parents, but to me they just came across as yokels from the jump. Not for a moment did I believe that these people were able to raise a super-powered child. The momentary yuks from their speakerphone introduction weren’t worth it.

Ultraman: The “reveal” was telegraphed so many light-years away that by the time we “find out” who/what Ultraman is, I almost spit out my Coke laughing that Gunn felt it necessary even to tell us.

Timing: Lex breaches the Fortress of Solitude during the night and assures his compatriots that he has a distraction set up for Superman. Again, at night, we see his henchmen release the Baby Kaiju into Metropolis. Next thing we know, it’s daylight and Superman is fighting the enormous kaiju.

So… The “distraction” happened hours after Lex hacked the Fortress computer? What? Are we supposed to imagine Superman’s been fighting it all night? Because a news report mentions it was recently 7-feet tall and then grew, so when did Superman actually get involved in this thing? Did I miss a throwaway line?

Metamorpho can’t make kryptonite. He can only make compounds that already exist in the human body. So… Yeah, that whole bit doesn’t work.

The Murder of Mali: I hated this for two reasons. First of all, I am foursquare against the modern tendency to make every supervillain a psychotic murderer who won’t hesitate to kill off anyone around them. The very best version of Lex Luthor is the one who would never murder an innocent — the only person he wants to kill and would kill is Superman. Because that is righteous and justified. Having him casually murder Mali is another yawner. Oh, no! The villain straight-up murdered someone and quipped about it! I’ve never seen that before! How edgy and innovative!

Second of all, for all Superman’s weeping and wailing at Mali’s murder, it has zero impact on him. Don’t worry, folks — I saw that headline about Mali’s death with Clark’s byline! To which I say: Nice, but so what? If you wanted to have Mali’s death appear impactful, then you could have had Superman mention it. Ever. He could have said something about it when trauma-dumping on Jonathan Kent, for example.  That would have been a great moment, and it wouldn’t have lengthened the scene or the movie for reasons we’ll get into soon enough.

No Iron Man 3 Moment: “Huh? Why are you bringing up Iron Man 3, Barry?” I’ll tell you why. Because Shane Black — whether by accident or design — stumbled into the finest expression of superheroism in cinema in that movie. Here it is:

Tony is told in no uncertain terms that he can’t save them all. AND THEN HE DOES. That right there is three minutes of superhero movie perfection, y’all.

Superman should do no less. There was no moment in the movie, for me at least, wherein Superman defied the odds like that. Sure, he flew into the stratosphere to rid himself of the Engineer’s…lung…stuff (???), but that was to save himself. And sure, he saved that squirrel and I loved it. But the closest we came to Stark-level heroism was the “I’m drowning in a lake of positrons with a baby” scene and honestly, that went on way too long and the stakes were murky because Mr. Terrific led me to believe that dipping in that river was insta-death, but Superman is fine in there and the baby had to get splashed in all that, but is also fine.

We needed a moment where Superman is told flat-out that something’s impossible and then he does it anyway.

The closest the movie comes to that Iron Man feeling is when Metamorpho says, “I can’t make a sun.” Pause. “But I can make something like a sun.” And then proceeds to do just that.

Honest to Rao, when that moment hit, my heart soared. I wanted to kiss James Gunn’s feet. It is the best, most perfect moment in the movie, a synthesis of Silver Age comic book science and deep character understanding, and it’s fucking brilliant and it’s here in the negative section because the best moment in Superman is a Metamorpho moment.

Why Do We Hate Krypton?

OK, this gets its own section because, in all honesty, I could probably overlook all of the above, but this…this bit is what prevents me from ever considering the movie to be great.

Why do we have to shit on Krypton?

“LOL, nerds, you thought Krypton was cool and all, but they were actually a bunch of arrogant supremacists who sent their son to earth to conquer it. Hur dur.”

Really?

Really?

That’s the twist? That’s what I’m supposed to take away from this movie — that immigrants need to forswear their heritage because their heritage is bad? In a movie being praised for uplifting immigrants, please consider that somehow everyone has missed that the immigrant in question was sent here to sabotage us.

Who wrote this: Stephen Miller?

For some reason that defies my understanding, modern writers seem to think that alien heritage vs. humanity is Superman’s core conflict and that this conflict must be resolved in favor of humanity. They could not be more wrong.

Superman is the ideal immigrant, perfectly assimilated, but never forgetting or dishonoring his heritage. He is the dream of a couple of Jewish kids who were painfully aware that no matter what they did, they wouldn’t truly belong. His superpower is the ability to live in two worlds without being ripped to shreds by the tidal forces of them both.

Saying that his birth parents were racist (speciesist?) shits obviates that entirely.

Beyond the thematic bumble, though, the reveal fails on plot and character levels as well.

We are told via Mr. Terrific that the message is 100% authentic and valid. Right. Let me get this straight: The Engineer uses her nano-tech powers to hack into an alien computer and steal data encoded in a format never before seen on earth. Damaged data. This data is then presumably stored somewhere in the Engineer herself until it can be downloaded and decrypted.

I can’t imagine a data scientist anywhere in the world willing to testify that there’s no possibility of data loss, corruption, or intentional shenanigans under those circumstances. Come on.

Furthermore, Krypton is now poisoned as a useful story tool for the entire DCU because it’s apparently a planet of assholes. Unless the plan is to say that it’s just Jor-El and Lara alone who were assholes…who still loved their son enough to send him off to earth…and cross their fingers that he’ll grow up to rule…instead of just sending one of themselves to conquer us…

(And since Supergirl grew up on Krypton, why didn’t she ever tell Superman, “Hey, dude, your parents most likely want you to rule this place.”?)

My biggest problem with “Kryptonians suck,” though, is that it doesn’t achieve the goals the story needs. Like…it really matters what that message says? Superman has been a good, moral person for thirty years…and now he doubts himself because of an old answering machine message? Really? That is how I’m supposed to see the steadfast ethical core character of the movie? As someone who doubts everything he’s achieved because it turns out his parents were dicks?  

How weak and inconsequential that makes Superman seem!

If you wanted him to suffer from self-doubt, then you already had the perfect tool: Mali. As I said before, I don’t like Mali dying, but you could use that to magnificent effect. Superman’s doubts come not from the message, but from his inability to save a single life. He could question his utility to the world, his powers, everything. “He was right in front of me, Pa. As close to me as you are. And I couldn’t save him. I could only watch him die.” And Jonathan could give him some homespun wisdom that would set him back on track.

Oh, and BTW: Lex’s whole plan hinges on turning the world against Superman so that the government will let him kill him. What was he going to do if he couldn’t access the message after all? What was he going to do if the message turned out to be nothing more insidious than “And don’t forget to brush your teeth, Kal-El.”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put Metamorpho in the Ultraman armor, have him kryptonite up and kill Superman, then destroy the armor and kill off Metamorpho in your quantum Guantanamo (Quantanamo?)? No need to persuade anyone — Superman was killed by a mystery villain who never appeared again.

Sorry, but the whole message thing is just…bad. And you could fix everything else with the movie and it still would fall short of greatness because the message is that special blend of offensive, weird, annoying, ridiculous, and non-sensical. It reeks of Gunn wanting to make a Big Change to the story of Superman and planting his stake in the ground here…but the ground is too soft and the stake falls over immediately.

(And again: It’s also a completely unnecessary gimmick because it has nothing to do with the core conflict of the character. The core conflict of Superman is not “Am I human or am I Kryptonian?” The core conflict of Superman is “What is the best way to help?”)

THE GOOD

As I said before, the general tone of the movie is great. Well done, Gunn.

Mr. Terrific: Dude lives up to his name.. ‘nuff said.

Guy Gardner: If you had told me in 1987 that someday there would be a pixel-perfect version of this character on movie screens around the world and people would love it, I would have told you that you need to lay off the drugs. I would have been wrong. (But don’t do drugs, kids.) Bonus points for the giant green fingers flipping off Boravian tanks, something they couldn’t get away with in the comics, but is still perfectly consonant with the character.

Jimmy Olsen: Perfection. Back in the Silver Age, Jimmy was pulling baddies all. The. Time. So I have no problem believing that Eve was all over him…or that he was tired of her. Great use of the character. And Eve herself was a great twist; the  idea that she was spying on Lex under cover of solipsism is just *chef’s kiss*.

In fact, all of the Daily Planet staff was great. I already said how much I enjoyed Perry White, but Steve Lombard really worked for me, too, and I’m a purist who thinks Lombard belongs at WGBS, not the Planet. Beck Bennett is just too damn likable!

Other than my minor quibble about kryptonite, Metamorpho was fantastic. Seeing his bodiless head bopping around the pocket universe on gaseous tendrils just…tickled my Bronze Age Gen X heart something fierce. And like I said before: His moment of creating a not-sun was absolutely the best, most gasp-inducing moment in the movie.

Truthfully, every character felt fully realized and important (except for Hawkgirl). Gunn knows how to handle a large cast, for sure. It’s no mean feat to cram all of that into a couple of hours and not leave anyone feeling like a character suffered short shrift. No lie, I am impressed as hell with Gunn’s ability to work that magic.

The Superman robots were tons of fun, and the overall action was momentous and exciting. And just when you think, Jesus Christ, another Lex Luthor real estate scheme???, you get the twist that the scheme is just a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

Speaking of Lex…

Other than his casual murder of Mali, Lex was perfect. Brilliant. Honestly, it almost feels like his damn movie. His genius and his unrepentant rage and his sheer hatred for Superman drip from the screen, but never does Nicholas Hoult pander or sink to mere camp. His Lex is angry and just barely holding it together, but — again, Mali notwithstanding — never descends into supervillain cliché. 

So there you have it: My Superman review. I realize it’s not quite in step with the consensus, but it’s honest and it’s mine. If you adored the movie, I am truly happy for you, and I hope nothing I’ve said here diminishes it for you in any way. James Gunn did not make the Superman movie I hoped for, but he made a good one, and for that I am grateful.