James Gunn’s Superman roars onto cinema screens bearing the weight of enormous expectations – not just of the Man of Tomorrow’s legion of fans but also of Warner Brothers, desperate for Gunn’s new vision of the DC comic universe to wipe away the sour aftertaste of their previous mismanagement of some of the most iconic characters in superhero history.
It looks as if we can all breathe a sigh of relief; Gunn has brought his A-game to Superman’s latest exploits and delivered a film that bursts off the screen, firing on all cylinders and doesn’t let up until the final credits start to roll two hours later. It’s thrilling, colourful, exuberant, hugely imaginative, funny… but maybe just a little bit too overstuffed and undisciplined to be considered an unequivocal success.
Gunn has identified that Superman’s strength is his greatest weakness; the last son of Krypton is so powerful that it’s hard to come up with an adversary who can really put him through his paces. As a result, Superman (David Corenswet) spends significant chunks of the film either temporarily without his powers due to exposure to green Kryptonite or else beaten almost to a pulp by some unspeakably more powerful force.
A handful of opening captions handily reassure us that Gunn’s not going to make us sit through all that ‘Superman’s origin’ stuff again. We’re also told that Superman has been ‘active’ on Earth for a few years, that the existence of ‘meta-humans’ is well established, and, most worryingly, that Superman, intervening in a war between (fictional countries) Jarhanpur and Boravia, has been, as they say, handed his arse on a plate in a tussle with an entity referred to as the Hammer of Boravia.
Battered and bleeding in the snow, not far from his Antarctic secret home, the Fortress of Solitude, Superman calls for his trusty hound Krypto, who thunders to the rescue and drags him to the Fortress, where our hero’s wounds are tended to by his phalanx of fussy ‘Superman robots’.
If this all sounds as if it could have been lifted from a 1960s or 1970s Superman comic strip, then that’s surely exactly what Gunn was aiming for. Superhero movies have been the predominant cinematic action genre for nearly two decades now, but few films have looked quite as much like an actual comic book as Superman.
Gunn makes no concessions to newcomers and his lively script is packed with stuff lifted straight from the four-colour world – pocket universes, dimensional portals, black holes, robots, and a black-hearted baddy (Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor is surely the most genuinely evil incarnation of the character yet brought to screen). There are even bonus superheroes – the so-called Justice Gang led by Gunn favourite Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner/Green Lantern and featuring Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and scene-stealer Edi Gathegi as the interestingly-named Mr Terrific, as well as the conflicted shape-shifter Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), and other treats/surprises we won’t spoil here.
Through it all, Gunn weaves a plot that’s coherent if scattershot, as Luther becomes utterly obsessed with destroying Superman even as the world starts to wonder exactly why the Man of Steel is on Earth at all and if he has some sinister ulterior motive. Amidst all the craziness – the gag rate is high in this one – the film is perhaps at its best in it more reflective moments, such as when Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent (whose appearances in the film are little more than cameos) is grilled by his journalist girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) – at this point she knows Clark is Superman and they’re already a couple, so we don’t need all that will they/won’t they stuff because they clearly already have – about his less-than-subtle modus operandi.
There’s also some interesting stuff about Superman’s own confused relationship with his Kryptonian parents and their last, incomplete message to him, and his ‘adoptive’ parents back in Smallville. These are the moments that reassure us that Gunn not only knows his Superman lore but respects it, and here he treats it with the reverence and patience it deserves.
In David Corenswet, we really have a new Superman for the ages. He looks the part, but he’s also a very modern take on the character, riven by insecurities and doubt, convinced that he’s doing the right thing for the planet he now calls home and frustrated by the fact that anyone could think for a moment that he has an ulterior motive. Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois is a very modern take, too, and whilst our hero is undergoing another of his bouts of incapacitation, it’s Lois who moves the plot forward and drives an increasingly desperate situation towards its resolution. That resolution, of course, involves an explosion of CGI as Metropolis itself faces destruction, but hey… superhero cinema… some things are as inevitable as they are a given.
There’s so much going on in Superman that, obviously, not all of it is going to work – some jokes fall flat, some characters aren’t as developed as we might have liked. Although the film is so full it almost feels like the second or third in a series and not the first, it’s hard not to admire Gunn for throwing caution to the wind and putting his vision for Superman on the screen in the 21st century in big, bright, bold primary colours. Despite the odds, Superman is a triumph; our advice is for you to get up, up and away and catch up with this one as soon as you can. It’s super, man.
SUPERMAN is on general release all over the world now.
