SUPERMAN (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Superman, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 10, 2025

There are moments watching Superman that might leave one to wonder if writer/director James Gunn even likes his main character. Much of that has to do with how much of the first adventure of this new iteration of Superman is bogged down by other superheroes and a plot in which the Man of Steel barely matters. The rest of that suspicion comes from how unlike Superman the character and the movie actually feel.

To be sure, David Corenswet, the actor who takes up the mantle of both Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent for exactly one scene, appears to be a fine choice for the character. He looks the part, to be sure, and when his Superman is earnest, he's achingly so. Therein lies the problem, however. Gunn has little interest in being sincere with this material.

The filmmaker has a lot riding on this movie—not only because it's taking on the most famous superhero in the history of the comics, but also because his movie is simultaneously serving as a restart of an entire universe of comic-book lore at the movies. His main goals, then, appear to be to fill the movie with as much action as possible, inject humor into just about every turn, offer up several other heroes who might be important in the future of this franchise or at least suggest that there is an entire universe full of "metahumans" to explore, and tell a tale of the humanoid alien who was sent to Earth and has decided to defend humanity with his superpowers.

In practice, the order of importance of that list is from most to least. Superman doesn't get an origin story here, although he doesn't need one, to be fair. Everyone knows that tale, either from other media or through cultural osmosis, but Gunn hedges his bets anyway, offering a clunky excuse to have a message from Superman's parents play a major part in the introduction and the plot.

Our first impression of this Superman is of a vanquished hero, by the way, and he spends the rest of the movie in some state of defeat. It's as if Gunn believes that a practically invincible hero is boring. While that may be true if handled wrongly, we have the entire history of Superman in the comics, on television, and at the movies to prove that storytellers have found some way to make the character interesting and appealing, in spite and on account of his invulnerability.

Instead, Gunn's Superman, who is three years into his mission to protect humankind, has lost a fight for the first time before the movie even begins. Upon healing himself at the Fortress of Solitude (with the help of a chattering crew of robots and a super-powered, poorly trained dog named Krypto), he returns to Metropolis to be defeated yet again by a superpowered figure being controlled by billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). Gunn picks up both the story of the movie and the entire world of this new franchise in media res, and it often feels like a chore to try to keep up with the filmmaker's assumptions that all of this fits into place somehow.

Much of it doesn't. There's an entire team of other superheroes, for example, made up of a Green Lantern named Guy (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi)—the last of whom might be more important to the plot than the title hero. They're also meant to be a running joke, as is cub reporter and Clark's colleague Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo), who might be the second most important actor in ensuring the day can be saved from Lex's evil plans to start a war in Eastern Europe and kill Superman.

As for Superman, he's defeated twice, overshadowed up by that other team of superheroes while battling a giant monster, undone in an interview with his new-ish girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), and spends the second act in a prison cell, weakened by kryptonite. When he's occasionally useful or shows some kind of personality, there's an air of irony to it, whether that be a string of old-fashioned words in the introduction that he rarely uses again or how bored he seems after accepting being sidelined when the world turns against him. Even Ma and Pa Kent (Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince) are played as stereotypical corn-fed yokels, who would be better suited to a parody of the material than the actual thing.

To be sure, Superman is bright and colorful (except for the third act) and always moving (often rendering the effects and action into a blur), but that seems the bare minimum for an allegedly fun comic-book adventure. Its cardinal sin is that Superman rarely feels like Superman, so what's the point?

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