Review: SUPERMAN

 by Rob DiCristino

Look up.

If there’s one scene in James Gunn’s Superman that encapsulates the writer/director’s approach to the Man of Steel — one moment, in fact, that justifies the wholesale brand reset Gunn is spearheading at the newly-minted DC Studios — it’s probably a quiet one between Superman (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) set in Lois’ apartment. While a team of metahumans battles an interstellar threat somewhere in the background, the Man of Tomorrow takes a quick break in an easy chair. Lois brings him some hot cocoa. “This is really good,” he whispers into the mug. She gives him a beat. Space monsters aside, Supes has a lot on his mind, including revelations about his past that have turned him from planetary savior to Public Enemy #1. Despite all that, though, Clark Kent still believes in his mission. He still believes in his mandate to do good. To be a force for justice. “You trust everyone,” Lois says, still in disbelief after months of dating. “You see everything as bright and beautiful.” And it’s true. He does. Because it is. Why else would he fight so hard?

Billionaire industrialist Lex Luthor (Nicolas Hoult), on the other hand, is consumed by jealousy and rage. In the years since metahumans first revealed themselves — gods among the men from whom his money and intellect once allowed him to so easily stand apart — Luthor has committed vast swaths of his fortune to developing weapons meant to dominate them, weapons ranging from automated battle drones to genetically-enhanced soldiers like the Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria). Luthor hopes that strategic supremacy will buy him influence with world governments and break the hold that these metahumans — including Metropolis’ own Justice Gang, a corporate-sponsored group comprised of Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawk Girl (Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) — have over the popular imagination. When Superman draws criticism for interceding in a conflict between Eastern European nations without the consent of the United States government, Luthor sees his opportunity to turn humanity against this alien interloper once and for all.

Reverential but never fawning, grounded but never grim, James Gunn’s Superman dodges franchise fatigue by reintroducing Kal-El of Krypton in medias res: Clark Kent is already years into a promising career at the Daily Planet — his first front page story coming on the heels of an “exclusive interview” with Superman — while Big Blue himself operates comfortably from the Fortress of Solitude, where a team of robots (voiced by Alan Tudyk, Michael Rooker, and other Gunn regulars) tends to his wounds and does its best to keep superdog Krypto from tearing apart the furniture. Lois and Clark are navigating the early days of their romance, with the self-proclaimed “punk-rocker” Lois hesitant to invest too heavily in Clark’s farm boy moralism. Global politics is an intricate beast, she insists, and preserving a lasting peace may require a more nuanced approach than Superman’s black-and-white ethics allow. Then again, maybe Clark’s relentless belief in the essential goodness of every human being is exactly what makes them such an intriguing match.

Teeming with vibrant color and fueled by unabashed joy, the film also represents the most significant seachange in superhero cinema since Robert Downey Jr. first donned his iron suit, a diversion in approach sure to unsettle audiences who’ve grown accustomed to Zack Snyder’s oppressive tragedies or even Gunn’s own jukebox snarkfests. The winking postmodernism that came to define — and eventually cripple — the Marvel Cinematic Universe is almost entirely absent from this Superman, replaced by something earnest but contemporary, a satisfying synthesis of Richard Donner’s 1978 film and Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman comics. While Gunn’s screenplay does inevitably buckle under the weight of a third act far too busy to serve the galaxy of new characters he introduces — including Skylar Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen, Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho, and Wendall Pierce’s maddeningly-underwritten Perry White — Gunn deserves credit for giving us a Superman film that makes being Superman feel like something other than a backbreaking chore.

So much of that comes from Corenswet, perhaps the best Man of Steel we’ve ever had on screen. Whereas Christopher Reeve oscillates gorgeously between Kent’s helplessness and Superman’s strength, Corenswet synchronizes the personas into one, giving us a hero both gifted and cursed by that duality. In the film’s best scene, Superman sits for an interview with Lois about his actions in Europe. His answers begin calm and confident — the pair even give a flirty nod to the role play of it all — but Lois’ prodding soon brings out Clark’s petulance, a frustration with diplomacy that decays into a tirade about why We Should All Just Trust Him. He’s imperfect! Human, even! It’s a compelling contradiction that extends to the action, as well: This Superman takes an uncommon amount of physical punishment, which not only neuters his detractors’ most common complaint — “He’s too powerful!” — but reinforces the idea that said power emanates from his vulnerability, in turn deepening his unshakable certainty that this brutal world is nonetheless worth defending with his life.

Superman is not without its flaws, of course. Again, Gunn’s mandate to kick-start a cinematic universe means that we eventually lose touch with characters we’ve grown to like — Brosnahan is magnetic as Lois, and her absence from the third act is unforgivable — to make time for hollow villains like Ultra Man, whose secret identity betrays Gunn’s lingering weakness for lazy thematics. My favorite freak Nicholas Hoult plays Lex Luthor with the perfect blend of malignant narcissism and 4Chan bigotry, but Superman’s “I don’t think about you at all” attitude toward him means that — at least until Lex kidnaps Krypto — their relationship doesn’t carry as much weight as it might have. Nathan Fillion brings his signature Captain Hammer flavor to the self-important Guy Gardner, but even he’s relegated to plot functionary by the end. This goes on and on; for every scene-stealing Edi Gathegi, there’s a wasted Isabela Merced. None of these quibbles are deal breakers, necessarily, but it is frustrating that DC seems just as eager to overcrowd its new universe as it was its old one.

Taken as a whole, though, Superman is easily the most successful iteration of the franchise in decades, a high-water mark for both James Gunn and the multimedia conglomerate he now heads. The internet will bitch about the costume, the lack of galaxy-obliterating stakes, and the film’s refusal to — heaven forbid — depict its hero as a flawless exemplar of masculine authority. But that’s the charm, here. That’s the fun. That’s why this was worth making. This Superman laughs and gets angry. He cries when his friends get killed and takes the extra second during a boss battle to help a squirrel cross the road. He looks out for his dog — actually, his cousin’s dog; hang out for a cameo near the end — and maybe, just maybe, waited a hair too long to tell his girlfriend that he loves her. While so many movies have bent over backwards to make us marvel at the immense weight on Superman’s shoulders, to look upon this god from another world as an impossible ideal, Gunn makes him one of us; just another guy out there trying, failing, suiting back up, and trying again.

Superman hits U.S. theaters on Friday, July 11th.