A Brighter Tomorrow - Superman (2025)

It's everything we want it to be

More smooching in films!

A few months ago, I wrote about my fears and concerns regarding James Gunn’s new Superman film, coming as it did off a string of films that were a bit of a struggle. The big takeaway was the optimism of a trailer, and how it really turned me around. “Oh this is not what I was expecting”. The second trailer did the same, showcasing an extended scene in which Lois interviews Superman for the first time. After that trailer, I didn’t bother watching anything else. The excitement was too high, and it was really hard to tamp expectations down because my reasoning for not getting back on board with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder directing) was the big problem at the center here. James Gunn writing and directing.

Boy have I never been happier to be wrong.

There’s a number of reasons why this Superman is amazing, too many to count. Complaints abound about the movie for being “silly” or “messy” or “imperfect”, having lots of side plots and characters and a misguided direction. But the reason this movie gets everything right is down to two reasons:

1. It gets to the heart and soul of its central character in a fundamental way, making it the most faithful live-action adaptation of a superhero main character in years.

2. James Gunn puts himself in direct dialogue with the current state of the world, from superhero films to the film industry to domestic & global politics.

This movie has been in my head for less than 48 hours and it’s still playing on repeat. I can’t wait to see it again and live in it. God. James Gunn stuck this landing. It’s hard to imagine a harder stick.

Full spoilers, obviously.

Where we’ve been

In his own review of Superman, culture critic (but mostly Superman historian, let’s be honest) Glen Weldon talks about eras getting the Superman they need, saying:

“Richard Donner's grand, mythic, unapologetically hopeful Superman: The Movie (1978) arrived in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, when America had sunk into a defensive cynicism.”

And… sure. By this logic, (and assuming Superman to be about 30 in any given incarnation)…

• Donner’s Clark Kent would have come of age in the mid-60s, with formative years in the 50s.

• Snyder’s Clark Kent would have come of age around 2001, with formative years in the late 80s and 90s.

• Gunn’s Clark Kent would have come of age in 2010, with formative years in the 00s.

Snyder’s take on the character makes sense from the perspective of the Kents as Tea Party Republicans¹. Farmers in deep red Kansas? Yeah, of course. This makes sense too with Snyder’s deep cynicism for the whole character in general, and his view that Superman is a dangerous, terrifying individual. Kal-El the sort of person who can level the whole of Metropolis because his powers are incredible and awe-inspiring. Critics often conflate superheroes with fascism because of the Nietzschian vision of an I-alone-can-fix-it individual. Superman is superior. What is to stop him from flipping out and killing everyone or acting with impunity?

This is the central thesis in Superman’s best scene, in which Superman grants an interview with Lois and they sit down to discuss his recent interference with Boravia’s invasion of Jarhanpur. She pushes him on his actions, asking who gave him permission to intercede in international politics. Was he representing America? Did he talk to military officials or even the president? What gave him the right to interfere?

And… you know what? Superman’s actions in Jarhanpur are absolutely the sort of thing that should turn the world on him. They validate Snyder’s concerns. For all that it is morally right for Superman to protect those he can (“People were going to die!”) getting involved in a war (or preventing one) is inserting himself into global politics in a way that forces the question: to whom is Superman accountable?

So… what? He can just run around the globe, being a cop? Stopping people everywhere from doing harm? Great. But where is the line? What is worth his interference? When does his intervention start to interfere with freedom or a difference of beliefs? For all that saving the lives of children gives him the moral high ground, there’s a naivete to what he’s done. It’s dangerously reckless, especially when he admits to whisking Boravian President Vasil Ghurkos out to the desert to poke him with cactus spines. Again, under what authority does he take these actions? His own?

It’s like Gunn is baiting Snyder. This is exactly the sort of fear that Snyder was trying to convey but never could. Gunn does it entirely offscreen and only shows the fallout. There’s not even a flashback to seeing Superman do this.

So… why is it okay? Why is it acceptable that we allow Superman to act wholly on his own authority?

The reason is because we trust him. For all that Spider-man’s mantra is “with great power comes great responsibility”, this is many orders of magnitude beyond that. The point that Snyder missed through all of his films is that yes, Superman is an absolutely terrifying individual, but we trust him because he is fundamentally exactly the boy scout of his critics’ complaints. In the post-credits scene he calls himself a jerk because he made Mr. Terrific feel bad about the slight misalignment in the put-together Metropolis. He’s hard on himself because he demands himself to be better. He is a human attempting to reach for the clarity of divinity rather than its omnipotence. His level of seeming perfection only highlights his many imperfections.

The whole point of Superman is that he’s too good to be true. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t struggle.

Superman unleashed

To prove Gunn isn’t unaware of this, there’s the scene where he’s at his most utterly unhinged. After Luthor has broken into the Fortress of Solitude and abducted Krypto (amongst other things), Superman blasts into his office and practically assaults him, demanding his dog back. He screams. He smashes desks. He cracks windows. It’s terrifying to see Superman in pure rage mode, and it feels like he might literally start ripping heads off or throwing people out of skyscrapers. It’s the scene in Justice League when he tries to kill the entire team, only this is for a legitimate, emotional reason.

It feels so small, but at the end of the movie it’s clear why he cares so much (not that he wouldn’t; this is the dude who literally saved a squirrel from the kaiju’s big giant foot squish). Krypto is not his dog. Krypto is Kara’s dog. He has a duty of care beyond his normal obligations while she was out partying on another planet. She entrusted him with Krypto’s safety. It’s to him to ensure it.

This is who Superman is. He’s messy and imperfect, but that means he has to strive for betterment just as we all do. Snyder (or anyone, really) being incapable of imagining someone this “pure” says a lot more about them than it does about this film itself.

Imagine how the film works without this scene. Gunn mirrors it directly at the end of the film when Superman bursts into Lex’s control room and kicks him across the room. It’s then that he gives the big speech, the one about what it means to be human and to strive to be better. He never pretends to be perfect, but he knows it’s a thing for all of us to strive for. If someone as powerful and magnificent as him can admit these things and still struggle, what excuse do any of us have?

And yeah… Superman isn’t real. But the whole point of this film is to argue what a better place the world would be if he were. We don’t need a world with a dude who has the smorgasbord superpowers like his. We need a world where people can be the good, kind, and noble person he is.

Who is Superman?

“Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent.” - Bill, Kill Bill Vol. 2

It’s that core understanding of the character that makes this such a triumph. There’s a school of thought that might think otherwise or have quibbles. There might be those out there who want more of the Clark mode of Superman, the one with the hunched shoulders and the nebbishy glasses and foofy hair. That Clark putters around the Daily Planet offices and we get a great scene of him. But the question is… to what end?

Sure, Reeve’s portrayal thrived in Clark Kent mode, doing that famous moment where he almost tells Lois his secret. He transforms from Clark into Superman back to Clark in one continuous master shot, an incredible physical and vocal performance that shows just how well-defined his take on the character is. No shade on Corenswet, but is that a moment he can top? Does he need to? That moment entirely exists already in another context. Unless there was a better way to showcase that (and it’s maybe the best moment by the consensus-best actor to play Superman), it’s just iterating on something we’re still talking about almost half a century later.

Gunn minimizes “Clark’s” presence by design. Even the film’s title emphasizes Superman (not Clark) as the central character². But that makes it sound like Clark is not present. To the contrary. Clark is all over this movie just like Superman is all over this movie. Gunn seems to subscribe to the above quote from Kill Bill that Clark is the alter ego… and… yeah, sure. We want a Superman movie.

But for anyone wishing for more Clark… is more Clark worth sacrificing the interview scene? I might have not gone back to other Superman stories recently (been a while since Lois & Clark and I never got around to Superman & Lois), but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a scene like that in any Superman ever. It’s one thing to place a scene three years into Superman’s time in Metropolis that’s also three months into his relationship with Lois. Where she knows who he is but they’re still in the early days of the deep intimacy of being in love.

My partner pointed out that the chemistry between Brosnahan and Corenswet is off the charts. And it is. But that scene crackles because of how uncompromising it is in looking at the two of them. Corenswet wildly vacillates between the Superman who would sit for an interview, the incredulous Superman who feels the need to defend his perfectly-reasonable-to-him actions, and the Superman who’s actively dating the love of his life. They yell. They argue. They go off the record. It’s not pretty. It ends with Lois more or less breaking up with him, which is basically their runner for the rest of the movie. Dramatic? Sure. But it’s an incredible scene, the sort that puts to rest any sort of expectation that Corenswet is playing Superman as some joyless, stoic boy scout. Not five minutes earlier he’s lifting Lois up onto the counter so they can make out. By the end, they’re hardly talking.

This is Clark. This is who Clark is. There is an affect he puts on in public (don’t we all), but Gunn recognizes that the most he can milk out of Clark’s Clarkiness is what he shows in the brief Daily Planet scene. Maybe a future film will show more of Clark on the reporter beat. There have been many stories over the past century that have dug into this more intrepid reporter aspects of the character, but outside of that specific context, isn’t Superman the far more interesting facet? Barring us getting Clark Kent as Columbo, the majority of the audience is here for the Superman. All of these Clark gags have a shelf life.

Brains vs brawn

One of the big standout things in Man of Steel is its extended Kryptonian-on-Kryptonian fight scenes. It was so much punching, and while most of it felt like Zack Snyder thinking that punchy violence is very cool (especially when you can have super-powered gods just slugging the absolute shit out of each other), it did feel like it was in dialogue with Bryan Singer’s (scandal noted) Superman Returns. Infamously, Returns had zero punching. Seven years later, Snyder was the remedy.

In the final act of Gunn’s Superman, Lex Luthor begins to monologue about his vision for the world and why he hates Superman so much. They communicate through the voicebox on Ultraman’s chest, with Luthor able to see Superman through floating cameras as they watch the fight. A lot of his monologue is about jealousy and egomania, but he does scream at one point that “brains always beats brawn!”

Peculiar statement. Especially in a film that’s not afraid to have Superman go absolutely ham against the Engineer, Ultraman, and Luthor’s legion of private metahuman military force. There’s a lot of punching in the finale and there’s been plenty of punching leading up to it.

It’s no accident that Gunn chose Mr. Terrific as one of the four metahumans to graduate from comics to film. In the comics, Mr. Terrific’s claim to fame (besides being awesome) is his ranking on the “Smartest beings in the DC Universe” list. Famously, he comes in around #3, a weird, peculiar yet fabulous stat in comics lore. Despite not having read enough Mr. Terrific in my life, I’ve been a fan for a long time. Edi Gathegi’s casting was one of those moments that made me question my aversion to Gunn’s vision. Unsurprisingly, Gathegi crushes the film’s standout bipedal character, playing the character with an aloof annoyance that perfectly conveys his aggravation with everyone being perpetually two steps behind his brain.

So too it’s no accident that he’s the one who joins Lois in rescuing Superman from the pocket dimension. Gunn ensures Lois has autonomy on top of her requisite smarts, proving why she’s got the reputation that she has. At the same time, she is also working through the complications of a relationship with Superman and trying to check herself and her expectations for what she wants. Like Gathegi, Brosnahan demolishes the scenes she’s in, adding her name to the long list of astonishingly good Lois Lanes.

This doesn’t even include Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo), who plays Jimmy as a plucky 20-something with enough brain intelligence to pull together the conspiracy at play. Nevermind the emotional intelligence to recognize the complex needs of Eve Tessmacher and the support she needs to keep her knowledge flowing.

There’s no shortage of smart characters in this movie. But this includes Superman. When he’s fighting the Kaiju, he spends most of the fight thinking, trying to figure out how to get the monster out of town without hurting either it or the citizens it threatens. It’s not his fault for not figuring out a solution that doesn’t involve murdering the creature. The Justice Gang robs him of that. He can only do so much to work through the problem while doing his level best to keep the situation under control.

In the end, when Superman is fighting Ultraman and the Engineer, it’s Superman alone who figures out that flying into low orbit will be enough to disrupt the Engineer’s nanites, freezing them into an exoskeleton that will protect them in their meteoric descent back into the earth. It’s Superman who figures out how Luthor is kicking his ass and who tasks Krypto with destroying the cameras that abet that cause.

Luthor might be able to outclass him by studying his moves, might have all Ultraman’s actions coded to a alphanumeric key sequence, the equivalent of dictating video game action in real time. But Luthor is not above descending into pure brawn. He might shout and scream what he wants to happen, but he puts the signature move as the most memorable number: “1A.” And what is “1A”? It’s just punching Superman in the face. Over and over again. Again. And again. At the end of the day the best he can think to do is to punch Superman in the face. That’s some higher calling. Sounds like a total brain move.

The Justice Gang

To run through these really quickly:

• Nathan Fillion finally plays a live-action Green Lantern, and his ability to play smarmy fits perfectly with his role as Guy Gardner. It should feel like it’s 20 years late, but really it’s about damn time.

• Isabella Merced as Hawkgirl falls on the thank-god-we’re-not-wasting-time spectrum. The only complaint with her is Mr. Terrific and Guy Gardner drown her out, the former because he gets the film’s big sexy setpiece and the latter because Fillion plays charismatic, arrogant douche better than anyone. Cannot wait to see more of her.

• Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho. Man. Carrigan is always good, but he plays the pathos with such verve and character. Someone on Letterboxd said how delighted they were to see Metamorpho live and on the big screen and it’s hard to argue with that in any respect. His addition to the Justice Gang in the final moments just makes me want a Justice Gang movie.

• Man seeing a real live action Hall of Justice was incredible. God damn.

Gods & Monsters

DC is taking a page out of Marvel’s playbook for this first wave of movies, opting to name this opening chapter “Gods and Monsters”. For all the eyerolling that comes with so evocative a title, Superman does show why starting here is a good choice. It means cities like Metropolis have grown inured to living day-in-day-out with metahumans. They’re plenty wary to see something big and strange and threatening, but it’s not debilitating. That’s just life.

This jaded sensation percolates into every aspect of life, from Lex Luthor’s monomaniacal plan of killing Superman to the Justice Gang’s brutal murder of the kaiju to Metamorpho’s remorseful tormenting of Superman with Kryptonite poisoning. Luthor’s egomania manifests as xenophobia, narcissistically mapping his own fantasies about Superman’s powers onto his interpretations of who Superman is. The Justice Gang murder the kaiju because there’s little incentive to leave it alive. And fair enough. The people of Metropolis just want it done so they can move on with their lives. Metamorpho himself becomes a metaphor for depression. He does not see a brighter world until he literally makes one.

And into this world, we have Superman, a singular figure who is constantly striving to do better. His job is to save lives, not make moral judgments of which lives are worth more than others (the Kaiju’s life vs general Metropolitan welfare). This is why Lois struggles to understand him in the interview. Despite his internal consistency, he has trouble explaining how he can justify his actions when the entire basis of the rationalization comes from his own inherent surefooting in his beliefs etc. Superman’s worldview is extremely clear, egalitarian in a world that is utilitarian.

Lois’s lack of comprehension presages later events. Very few people seem to comprehend Superman even as they generally trust him. It doesn’t take much for the people of the world to flip on that. Just one video of his parents speaking about how much they (literally) wish the world for their son and poof. It speaks to the inherent trust the world can give to most metahumans. They will keep the people safe. But break that trust for an instant and they’ll turn on you.

Superman takes citizen trust seriously, and is constantly working to justify the peoples’ trust in him. He recognizes the delicate equilibrium of the situation, knowing that even one step out of line is all it would take for a great diminishing of his capacity to do good.

Luthor preys on this inherent weakness, going right at the one thing Superman can’t control: his very nature.

Jor-El and Lara might be dicks, but this vision of Kryptonians as a sort of warlord-like people is not a new one. The comics have been playing with it for decades. It’s not Clark’s fault he didn’t have the capacity to repair their full message, the one that wishes for him to rule over the humans and to have a harem by which he can propagate the Kryptonian species anew. He still takes the blame when it all goes bad.

It’s down to him, though, to prove that he isn’t just some intergalactic conquerer.

The proof of this is in his ability to change. In the beginning of the movie his Kryptonian birth parents are the ones who soothe him, but by the end he chills to the smooth childhood home videos of him and his parents. In the argument of nature vs. nurture, this film comes down strongly on the side of the latter. If it didn’t, Ultraman would win. The Kents raised Superman well. It’s why we (and humanity) can trust him to do the right thing even when it’s the hardest thing in the world.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor has the moment of Russian Roulette, where he’s the sort of dude who assumes that everything is going to work out and that he won’t be murdering an innocent bystander on the second trigger. Luthor indulges his basic instincts, never mentioning where he came from and only spouting the sort of xenophobic bile that comes from a dude who’s pickled his brains by thinking about how much of a genius he is.

That moment of violence is the most shocking moment in the movie, but even while Kryptonite poisons Superman and keeps him weak, Gunn underlines that Superman’s greatest weakness is not something so silly as a chunk of green rock. No. It’s that despite having the ignoble distinction of being one of the worst video games of all time, at the core of Superman 64 (which came out for the Nintendo 64 in 1999) is that Superman doesn’t have a health bar. You technically can’t kill him. Instead, the game gives him a health bar for the city of Metropolis. Let the city’s health fall too low and Superman loses.

The state of cinema

Finally, what elevates this beyond just “a good movie” is the way in which James Gunn puts a bright smile on his face and shows very simply all the things wrong with superhero movies (specifically the MCU), cinema in general, and the world at large.

The MCU alternative

For starters, there’s Gunn quietly producing a response to his struggles with the MCU. This is something many studios have attempted and almost none have succeeded. To be fair, Marvel Studios has started to drop the ball lately, a proper comparison point to how this decides to move.

One of the big stumbling blocks since the turn of the decade has been Marvel’s overly complicated and wildly labyrinthine canon. So many movies, so many TV shows. So many characters ducking in and out. At the center of it all is Kevin Feige, making sure that all of it fits neatly together. When the board is relatively small, making these yarn connections is relatively simple. As the tapestry weaves the rapidly expanding nodes intertwine, it’s easy for the string path to become a snarled knot and tangle up every single traveler. Even the ones who know where they’re going.

For this, Gunn throws caution to the wind and introduces a whole slew of new characters. Almost everyone walking into this movie is going to know Superman, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and then probably Perry White and Jimmy Olsen… but outside of that? This introduces Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, a Green Lantern (the first of many), Metamorpho, Krypto, and even has cameos for Maxwell Lord and Supergirl. Will these characters be important later? Perhaps. But Gunn throws them in here because the story needs it.

And this movie without the Justice Gang just doesn’t work. The Justice Gang’s presence allows for a contrast to Superman’s worldview, but also grants for the scene where the giant interdimensional imp terrorizes the city. It’s mythological texture. For all my distaste of seeing Superman make out with Lois Lane while it looks like this giant being is floating in the sky and zapping willy nilly, it turns out that this is the sort of thing that happens all the time. Something Superman easily dismisses and trusts the Justice Gang to help out with.

Now, imagine Marvel.

Marvel generally doesn’t do its connections haphazardly, but that means that their films lack an ease with which they can include fun bonuses who might help the story. Dr. Strange wants to turn up in Spider-man No Way Home? Well hang on a second. Let’s make sure everything with Dr. Strange is going okay before we do that. Hang on let’s make sure we include Ironheart in Wakanda Forever so everyone will know who she is when they watch her TV show in a few years.

The result has become a soggy, messy malaise. It’s too uptight. Too rigid. And maybe this will change in the future when DC Studios has gone on for nearly 20 years and has produced dozens upon dozens of films and shows in that time. But while continuity is wonderful, at a certain point it becomes a massive albatross that only gets heavier. At this point, story needs to win out over canon and continuity. What good is canon and continuity if your films are mid at best? The film should win. A quality film will lift the series. Who cares if there’s slight discrepancies? Most people will allow for anything if the story is good enough.

The final end credits scene is proof of this. Outside of the film’s main text, Gunn doesn’t set up anything. In the post-credits, he gives us one last opportunity to spend some time with Superman and Mr. Terrific, letting the two characters bounce off each other in ways that will leave the audience smiling and giddy. It’s a reminder of how good the movie we just watched was. It will get us to come back to see this movie again and again (raising the box office) instead of going the requisite once and needing to see what’s next, if that even pays off at all.

Countering cinematic trends

Over the past decade or so, studios have retreated to known properties or existing IP, preferring the built-in (sure bet) audience over new stories and ideas. Was a time films could market themselves based on directors and actors. That world doesn’t so much exist any more. There are breakthroughs (Christopher Nolan comes to mind), but it’s exceptionally rare.

So, too, institutions like Marvel have pushed for CGI effects that are closer and closer to real life. It’s put tremendous strains on the VFX artists and have only contributed to the uncanny valley of visuals that look very close to the real thing but with just enough difference that it makes the human brain want to scream in terror.

Most powerfully, however, Disney’s dominance at the worldwide box office has shown studios that big swings can mean big hits with big dollar sign profits. Was a time that a couple hundred million dollars at the would be a massive success. Nowadays, with budgets rapidly pushing the half-billion dollar mark, studios need to make movies with broad appeal. This is slightly easier with Disney, not because of their brand, but because they generally attempt a four-quadrant strategy, creating as big and broad an audience as possible.

All of this has led to films that feel homogenous and nonspecific. Visual effects can look the same nowadays. These films tend to not be about anything. Four quadrant means appealing to viewers of any gender at any age. That means that sexual content needs to be basically nonexistent, and Philistinian rule-following means we’ve rapidly hit a point where kissing in movies has started to be an extremely rare occurrence. It’s also led to films where a broader, more universal message is preferable to the laser-focused, sometimes esoteric thematics of cinema’s best.

James Gunn clearly wants to change that.

This film is big. It’s bold. It’s funny, yes. But it has a perspective. The CGI feels cartoony and round, hardly the photorealism of most films. It heightens the world and indicates a level of specificity.

It says damn the rules, let’s put kissing in the movie. And… profligate kissing used to be a thing. The only problem with kissing in movies was that 99% percent of the time the heteronormative assumption boxed out spaces for queer characters. But no we’re gonna stop the movie after the climax so our two central lovebirds can do a beautiful flying smooch.

Marvel wants to make a big Thunderbolts* movie where the main character suffers from depression and then ends with the whole team joining together for a big hug to defeat a living manifestation of grief, trauma, and mental illness? That’s a solid idea. We should normalize mental health. But it’s also quite generic when you start pulling it apart. Superman is a film about kindness, heroism, and the burdens of being a superhero. It’s about being an inspiration unto others.

It’s also a film where Gunn (himself the CEO of the studio) allows himself to just be a great director with a clean vision to execute. We’ll see how this goes in future installments, but transferring story power from studios back to directors (and writers) means there’s more of a chance that films can be about something. Going to a theater for several hours and coming out satisfied is the ultimate goal. The goal should not be to worry about whatever’s coming up in a few months, an endless chain of future promises that will eventually stop paying off

Today superheroes, tomorrow the world…

This scope extends beyond just film, though. Gunn has made a film that’s deeply political, that isn’t afraid of offending people or making them think about the world at large. This is a movie with a conflict that bears striking resemblance to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. It shows a for-profit mass incarceration system, owned and operated by Lex Luthor, far outside the U.S. governmental oversight. It features as the villain an angry tech billionaire who thinks he’s a genius and uses an army of sentient monkeys to shitpost Superman in the online discourse.

Don’t audiences want movies to be about something? They might not agree with Gunn’s perspective on big rich countries with well-funded militaries who steamroll smaller, weaker countries in the name of land³ (or worse), but it’s the sort of thing that will get audiences talking and engaging with the world around them. And Superman is a terrific mouthpiece for it, inserting himself directly into the conflict because of how simple and clean he thinks it is (which it is in certain respects) and how messy and complicated it becomes once all of the various players weigh in on the actions of one individual.

Marvel has gotten far away from this. Sorry for punching them again, but they’re still the big dog in town and the ones that Gunn seems to most directly be responding to. Like… was Captain America: Brave New World about anything? There’s a conflict in it involving countries fighting over the adamantium forefinger of a half-aborted Eternal, but the movie goes out of its way to minimize the political aspects of this ostensibly political thriller. And it’s worse for it. Art is inherently political. What we do or do not talk about is politics. It’s taking a stand and arguing how the world works or should work.

They weren’t always like this. Black Panther was about colonialism and the intergenerational sins that fall to children for atonement. Avengers Age of Ultron discussed A.I. and heroic monstrosity. Iron Man was about the military industrial complex and how it rotted the heart of a man who only cared about profits.

Great movies are about big ideas. And Gunn uses all of the big, current-event topics in this movie to inform his themes about kindness and the neverending fight towards self-improvement and aspiring to something greater than ourselves.

Towards the end of the film, as the Boravia begin their assault to run over and annihilate the Jarhanpurians, several Jarhanpurian children raise a makeshift Superman flag Iwo Jima style, praying to him to save them. It’s extraordinarily powerful. A statement of hope that takes the overly preachy (but iconic) “woman on roof reaching out towards the god” shot of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and makes it about the strength of humanity, not the frailty of a world in which we wish for a god to deign to save us.

It’s the moment that made me cry.

That’s the power of politics in movies. That’s what happens when you make movies about topics and issues that people care about. It creates empathy with the audience. It provides release of seeing a better tomorrow. That empathy opens channels to deeper storytelling, wells of emotion they can tap into and relate to… and all of that is a good thing.

I’m a punk rocker yes I am

All of this to say… god what a gift this movie is. I’ve spent this entire post thinking about how excited I am to go back to a theater over and over again this summer, living in the glow of its bright promise of what we could have.

This is exactly the sort of film the world needs right now. It’s colorful and optimistic even in the face of crippling darkness. It has opinions and things to say and acknowledges that while the world might be dark and cynical, it’s only that way if we let it happen. We can strive to be more. We should. Superman hardly brings anything radical to the table.

All of this and we can still have the Superman of yore. There are times in this movie where Superman clearly feels profoundly alone, be he locked in a glass cell with Metamorpho or working on his own to non-lethally kill the Kaiju. When he shows up at Lois’s place during the interdimensional imp fight, he feels so sad and broody without it overwhelming him. The Justice Gang killed the kaiju. The world has turned on him. His birth parents are actually massive douchebags. Lois might be breaking up with him. And Krypto is missing. God. Krypto is missing. His heart breaks. But he has to go out there and find him. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Superman is heroism at its purest, simplest form. It’s the best springboard since Iron Man, and the future is open and the sky is the limit. Maybe not every movie after this will give the high this does. And maybe James Gunn’s next film is going back to the cynical, macabre, dark humor and violence of his prior films.

For one shining moment, though, we got the best Superman movie in almost half a century. And that, certainly, is never going to come off. Finally, a Superman story that the world can point to and say “that. That is who Superman is.”

In 1978 Richard Donner wanted us to believe a man can fly. In 2025, James Gunn can make us believe that we can live in a better world, be better people, and live better lives. And he wisely surmised that living in this world and holding these views makes Superman a radical in his own way. Imagine that. There’s a Superman movie and it turns Superman into a punk by having him argue that we should all be nicer to each other. That’s how far we’ve fallen. Superman’s Position is the radical one.

And now we have a movie that can help us all be better. Because this movie is pure, uncut, perfect Superman.

1. This observation courtesy of El Sandifer from like a decade ago.

2. As opposed to Donner’s title, where “the Movie” does heavy lifting to tell you you’re going to get the whole epic package from Jor-El to dead Pa to first appearance to first major test…

3. It is hysterical that this movie features yet another Lex Luthor plot that involves him wanting more land. As if Superman Returns homaging Superman: The Movie wasn’t enough…