Superman, dir. James Gunn

Another decade-and-a-half, another superhero franchise gets to retroduce itself. To be exact, it's been 16 years since Iron Man and The Dark Knight got released in 2008, both of which have stood well these tests of time. They set the tone for their respective cinematic universes, put many buttocks into cinema seats, and kept many families fed and warm throughout the Obama years. To my younger self, these films were perfectly heady combinations of lowbrow pulp, literary-minded geopolitical commentary, and dramatic character arcs.

So after a painfully extended DC Extended Universe borne of the Nolan-Snyder era, we're now getting a 'soft reset' under writer-director James Gunn. Having (more or less) successfully delivered Suicide Squad and Peacemaker for DC, he's unlocked for himself their biggest IP: Superman. Gunn's Superman is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, much like Supes' super-canine sidekick Krypto.

What James Gunn gets right is the much-needed tonal shift from the Nolan-Snyder era. The grimdark psychological realism post-9/11 could only be sustainably interesting for so long before rival Marvel's breezy, heartfelt, and (crucially) centrally-aligned offerings won out. Gunn doesn't bother to do an origin story, as enough of Superman lore is household knowledge, anyway. This frees him up early on to play with familiar Superman tropes.

Because Lois Lane already knows Clark Kent is Supes, we get a fun scene near the start where, mid three-month-anniversary dinner, Lois insists on interviewing Clark on-record as Superman. She immediately starts grilling him about the controversy surrounding Supes intervening to stop the fictional Boravia (a badly-drawn Russia-analog) from invading the fictional Jarhanpur (a barely-drawn Palestine-analog) 🙄. It's a memorable scene with Lois and Clark trying to navigate geopolitics alongside their personal and private lives, where the dialogue is elevated by the palpable chemistry between David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan. It almost felt like we were back in 2008, when romcoms could still be romcoms without having to worry about dating apps and deepfakes.
Gunn outguns Richard Donner here, the latter's version of Lois interviewing Supes not quite holding up after 40-odd years.

Even the Daily Planet's newsroom feels out of time: mainstream news isn't quite dead, and the intrepid team of reporters are still able leverage sources to uncover the central plot of the film: Lex Luthor's plan to leverage the Boravia-Jarhanpur conflict to grab himself some of that sweet Jarhanpur territory.

Yes, Luthor is still Supes' No. 1 Big Baddie, and Nicholas Hoult plays him with enough charisma and intelligence to keep him compelling. There's a more than a touch of techbro in this version of Luthor, who literally calls the shots in battles against Superman from a glass-walled console-filled penthouse atop Metropolis. Remember that Robert Downey Jr. met with Elon Musk whilst preparing to play Tony Stark, and Musk himself had a cameo in Iron Man 2. How the turn tables.

While Gunn nails the Marvel turn for DC with this Superman film, his politics rings hollow. I saw this film in London, where 1,500 miles away, the Russia-Ukraine conflict hasn't died down. The Palestinain genocide is still ongoing. Gunn recognises the perverted fantasy of an American Superman stopping a foreign war in lieu of diplomacy (Lois Lane even calls Superman out on this), but still ends up giving us an uncomplicated finish.

What feels equally egregious is how Gunn gives us two Plot Reveals, both relating to Supes' identity as Kryptonian and Earthling. At the risk of spoilers, the smaller Plot Reveal does allow the film to have Superman face what is arguably his ultimate enemy, even if it doesn't feel earned. The bigger Plot Reveal, sadly, wasn't done well. Luthor announces it in an off-handed fashion, and while this are (legitimate) reasons to wonder if Luthor is lying, all Nicholas Hoult does is insist he is telling the truth, and off we trundle on to the next big set piece. It all feels a bit slipshod, especially given Gunn's superhero track record.

And we get perfectly servicable CGI bish-bash fight scenes where Superman is never truly in peril. Gunn does try to subvert this from the start, opening the film with Superman actually down from a brusing fight against one of Luthor's baddies. But the finale is predictably predictable, and requires a suspension of disbelief nearing the level of (but thankfully still distant enough from) Donner's Supes-flies-so-fast-he-can-travel-back-through-time ending.

In the end, does Gunn succeed in time travelling DC back to 2008, when superheroes in cinema last became stimulating for a discerning audience? The short answer is no. While perfectly fun for its two-hour runtime, it didn't leave me with the sense of awe and electricity that both Iron Man and The Dark Knight did. Especially in these fraught wartorn times, with policitians trying to be supervillians in their own ways, I'm not certain how Superman (or the upcoming Fantastic Four film) can, or should remain relevant. If only time travel was.