From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
The DC Extended Universe never quite caught the zeitgeist the way the Marvel Cinematic Universe did at its height. In that, they were in good company, as several folks attempted to create a cinematic universe (Universal Monsters, Spider–Man, e.g.) without much success. But the DCEU in particular was notable for its controversies as much as its movies.
When Disney let go of James Gunn after some old online postings came to light, DC snatched him up to take a mulligan on 2016’s Suicide Squad with 2021’s The Suicide Squad, which was much better received, and which also spawned a TV spinoff with the very successful Peacemaker on HBO Max.
At Kevin Feige’s urging, Disney reinstated Gunn, and he did The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and finished the movie trilogy with GotG Volume 3. However, the newly christened DC Studios wished to do a reboot of the DCEU into the DC Universe, and wanted Gunn to bring his Guardians and Suicide Squad magic to the rest of DC.
While Gunn has said that aspects of the prior DCEU will be brought forward to the DCU—for example, both The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker are considered part of the new continuity, ditto Blue Beetle—other parts are being changed. (Continuity nerds can point to the time-travel shenanigans of the 2023 Flash movie to paper over the inconsistencies.)
The biggest change is the re-casting and re-doing of DC’s flagship character of Superman, with a new movie starring the Man of Steel signaling the official start of the DCU. Originally titled Superman: Legacy at the start of production, it was eventually simplified to just Superman.
David Corenswet was brought in to play the title character (as well as Ultraman, a clone of Superman created by Lex Luthor), with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult (last seen in this rewatch as the Beast in the X-Men films First Class, Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix) as Luthor, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell as Jonathan and Martha Kent, and Bradley Cooper (previously seen in this rewatch in Gunn’s three GotG films and two Avengers films as the voice of Rocket) and Angela Sarafyan as Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van.
We get the corporate-sponsored Justice Gang team (whose headquarters were filmed at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, which was the visual inspiration for the Hall of Justice, the headquarters of the heroes in the Super Friends cartoons in the 1970s, which is just fabulous). The team includes Nathan Fillion (previously seen in this rewatch in small roles in all of Gunn’s superhero movies, including all three GotG films and The Suicide Squad) as the Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Fillion apparently insisted that Gardner have the comics character’s Moe Howard bowl-cut hairstyle), Edi Gathegi (last seen in this rewatch as Darwin in X-Men: First Class) as Mr. Terrific, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, and Anthony Carrigan (who previously played Mist in the 2014 Flash TV series and Victor Szasz in Gotham) as Metamorpho. Sean Gunn has a cameo as the Justice Gang’s corporate sponsor Maxwell Lord, a new version of the character previously played by Peter Facinelli in Supergirl and Pedro Pascal in Wonder Woman 1984.
There’s a full contingent of Daily Planet folk present beyond Clark Kent and Lois Lane: the great Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Beck Bennett as Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover as Cat Grant, and Christopher McDonald as Ron Troupe.
Working with Luthor are Sara Sampaio as his girlfriend Eve Teschmacher (a version of the character originated by Valerie Perrine in the 1978 Superman), María Gabriela de Faría as the Engineer (a character from the team The Authority, who will be seen in the DCU in the future), Terence Rosemore as Otis Berg (a version of the character originated by the late great Ned Beatty in the ’78 film), Stephen Blackehart as Sydney Happersen, and Zlatko Burić as Boravian President Ghurkos.
Rounding out the cast are Dinesh Thyagarajan as the falafel cart vendor Mali, Michael Ian Black as TV talk show host Cleavis Thornwaite, James Hiroyuki Liao as the secretary of defense, Frank Grillo back from Creature Commandos as Rick Flag Sr., Tinashe Kajese-Bolden back from The Suicide Squad as Flo Crawley (now the FBI Director), John Cena back from Peacemaker season one as Peacemaker, Milly Alcock as Supergirl, and Alan Tudyk, Michael Rooker, Pom Klementieff, Grace Chan, and Jennifer Holland as the voices of the Fortress of Solitude’s robots.
Corenswet and Alcock (at the very least) will return in Supergirl next year, with Corenswet, Brosnahan, and Hoult, among others, set to return in Man of Tomorrow in 2027.
Superman
Written and directed by James Gunn
Produced by Peter Safran, James Gunn
Original release date: July 11, 2025
“You are not punk rock”
Scrolled text brings us up to date: Three centuries ago, metahumans first started appearing in the world. Three decades ago, an alien baby was sent to Earth and raised by Kansas farmers. Three years ago, that baby was all grow’d up and announced himself as Superman, a very powerful metahuman. Three weeks ago, Superman stopped the nation of Boravia from invading its neighboring country Jarhanpur. Three hours ago, a metahuman called the Hammer of Boravia attacked Metropolis. And three minutes ago, Superman had his ass handed to him by the Hammer.
He lands in Antarctica, bleeding and broken. He manages to scrape together the energy to whistle for Krypto the Superdog. Krypto bounces around on Superman and licks his face, and after a minute of that finally pays attention to Superman’s request to take him home. Krypto drags him by the cape through the snow to the Fortress of Solitude, which pops up from under the ice on his approach, keyed to Superman’s DNA.
A bunch of robots care for Superman, infusing him with magnified rays from the yellow sun, which will heal and revitalize him. They also play the footage from the ship that brought him to Earth—a message from his biological parents, recorded on Krypton before its destruction. Only the beginning of the message is intact, the rest was damaged in transit, but it speaks of how much they love their son and sent him to Earth to thrive. As Four, one of the robots, says, it soothes him as that message inspires him to do what he does.
Once Superman is 83% healed—and after rebuking Krypto for trashing parts of the Fortress, while the robots attempt to advise him against leaving so soon—he flies back to Metropolis. While he is unable to defeat the Hammer of Boravia, he does distract him and keep him away from harming bystanders. At one point, he’s thrown to the ground, and a falafel cart vendor named Mali—who gave him free falafel once after he saved someone’s life—helps him out of the hole.
We also see that the Hammer is being directed by Lex Luthor and a cadre of computer operators (many of whom appear to be gamers) from a control room that’s located on the connector between the two towers of LuthorCorp’s office building.
After defeating Superman a second time, Hammer buggers off. Another of Luthor’s operatives, the Engineer, is in Antarctica, having tracked where Superman landed. But by the time she reaches the Fortress, it has already sunk into the ice, which explains how the thing has been there without anybody knowing about it. The Engineer returns to base, as does the Hammer, who goes through a portal that takes him to a pocket universe and then through another portal to the LuthorCorp control room, where he’s revealed to be Ultraman, another of Luthor’s operatives.
The next day, Clark Kent reports to work at the Daily Planet, having written a front-page piece on the Hammer’s attack which also includes an “interview” with Superman. Kent gets a phone call from his adoptive parents, and he also banters with sportswriter Steve Lombard, who makes fun of Kent’s writing. Jimmy Olsen celebrates his making the front page, while Lois Lane also makes fun of his writing.
That night, Lane goes home and finds an intruder in her apartment—who turns out to be Kent. He’s cooking her breakfast for dinner, which he says is her favorite, but is really his favorite. It turns out they’re secretly dating, and she also knows he’s really Superman. He compliments her on their fake arguing, and she says it wasn’t entirely fake, and she also gives him shit about interviewing himself. So he offers to let her interview him, she whips out a digital recorder, and they wind up facing off right there.
Lane asks some hard-hitting questions about his stopping the Boravian invasion of Jarhanpur without any consultation with government officials or any thought to the consequences, and the back-and-forth comes to a rather heated conclusion when Kent says, rather loudly, “People were going to die!” Which is the only thing that matters to him. The evening ends with Kent deciding to leave and Lane saying she knew this wouldn’t work.
Luthor, the Engineer, and Ultraman go to the Fortress, which rises from the ice on their approach. Between them, the Engineer and Ultraman take care of Krypto and the robots and the Engineer is also able to user her nanotech to reconstruct the entire message from Jor-El and Lara.
To keep Superman busy while Luthor invades the Fortress, his henchmen Otis Berg and Sydney Happersen let loose a tiny kaiju that grows into a massive monster in a few hours. Superman tries to stop it humanely, but then the Justice Gang—Green Lantern, Mr. Terrific, and Hawkgirl—show up, at which point the amount of collateral damage increases and the creature is killed.
Right after the battle, Luthor appears on Cleavis Thornwaite’s show, presenting a translation of the full message from Krypton: his parents sent Kal-el to Earth specifically because he would be powerful there and would be able to rule humans, as they are weak and confused and easily conquered. His parents specifically say that he should take many wives to spread Krypton’s genetic seed. Luthor assures Thornwaite that he used a team of top linguists and computer forensic scientists to verify this. Luthor speaks directly to the camera about how scared he is of this alien invader and his secret harem. President Ghurkos goes on television and decries Superman, speculating that he finds Boravian women particularly attractive, which is why he interfered in their invasion, so he could procure women for his secret harem. Ghurkos then goes to his office and locks the door and reveals that he has a portal in his office to Luthor’s pocket universe, where he meets with Luthor, congratulating him on that fake footage. Luthor surprises Ghurkos by saying it’s all completely real. He also mentions in passing that he will be getting half of Jarhanpur after the invasion.
Superman retreats into a Stagg Industries office building to be alone, but the Justice Gang joins him. Green Lantern wants to know why he didn’t mention his secret harem before, and Superman angrily assures him that there’s no such thing. Mr. Terrific assures Superman that he knows the people Luthor used—they wouldn’t have said it was genuine if it wasn’t.
Then Superman realizes how Luthor must have gotten his hands on the recording, and he flies to Antarctica. He finds the Fortress trashed, the robots all badly damaged, and Krypto missing.
Luthor meets with the secretary of defense, as well as the directors of the FBI and A.R.G.U.S. (the latter being Rick Flag Sr.). Luthor wants the U.S. government to authorize his people—Ultraman, the Engineer, and his armored army the Raptors—to protect the planet, starting with arresting Superman. The secretary is unwilling to authorize that, as the optics would be terrible.
Superman flies to Luthor’s office to confront him. (Surprisingly, this is the first time the two of them have met face to face.) Superman demands to know where the dog is. Luthor claims ignorance, though it’s obvious he has Krypto.
Returning home, Superman finds Lane waiting for him in his apartment. “You have a dog?” Superman explains that it’s more like a foster situation. They discuss their earlier argument, with Lane saying that they’re too different. He’s an optimist who sees the best in people, she’s a cynic. Since breaking into LuthorCorp, there’s a DOJ warrant out on him, so he’s decided to turn himself in, hoping that they’ll take him wherever they took Krypto. When Lane points out that he’s only a dog, Superman says, “And he’s not even a very good one, but he’s out there alone, and he’s probably scared.” Superman also tells Lane that he loves her.
(While they’re talking, we see through the windows of the apartment that there’s a fight between the Justice Gang and a dimensional imp happening over the city, though Superman is unconcerned about it.)
Superman turns himself in, with Ultraman putting the cuffs on him. Flag informs him that it’s been decided that, as a non-human, he doesn’t have any rights. They turn him over to Luthor. Ultraman brings him through one of the portals to the pocket universe, where he has a prison. Various governments have hired Luthor to imprison folks they want hidden as well as incarcerated, plus he’s also put his own personal enemies there, including an ex-girlfriend. Luthor puts Superman in a cell with Metamorpho, the Element Man, who can change his body into any substance—including Kryptonite.
Luthor’s girlfriend, Eve Teschmacher, has the hots for Olsen, and they’ve seen each other on the sly occasionally. Teschmacher is afraid to break up with Luthor, and she sometimes wonders if Olsen only talks to her to get info on Luthor, which he unconvincingly denies. Olsen does learn from her that Superman is imprisoned in a pocket universe, which he tells Lane.
Luthor questions Superman with Ghurkov watching, using another prisoner as leverage to force a confession: Mali. The falafel vendor insists that Superman not say anything. Luthor plays Russian roulette with Mali, who winds up being killed on the second shot. Luthor leaves, saying he’ll keep bringing people Superman cares about to kill. He muses that his next victim might be that reporter who writes all the stories about him, Clark Kent. (Superman is in too much agony to appreciate the irony.)
Lane goes to the Justice Gang to try to convince them to free Superman, but they refuse, as his arrest was legitimate. Mr. Terrific, however, decides to help out, though he admits it’s mainly to annoy Green Lantern. Terrific has put nanobots in Superman’s blood so he can track him (which he’s apparently done to all his friends). The trail ends at an abandoned military fort. He’s not dead—the nanobots would still be trackable. They just disappear, which tracks with the pocket universe notion. They fly to the fort, where Terrific makes short work of the Raptors and other personnel on site, while Lane watches, impressed, protected by a force field.
Terrific opens the portal to the pocket universe, bitching and moaning about how dangerous and stupid it is to do that, as it’s incredibly unstable and could wipe out all life on Earth.
Metamorpho is horrified by what Luthor did to Mali and agrees to help Superman. But Luthor’s hold over Metamorpho is that he’s holding his infant son. If Metamorpho frees him, Superman has to free his son. However, it’s not enough for him to simply stop replicating Kryptonite; Superman needs sunlight to heal and get his strength back. Metamorpho is able to simulate sunlight, which powers Superman up enough to break through the cell and free Metamorpho’s son, as well as rescuing Krypto. The Raptors try to stop them, and Superman defeats them with the help of both Metamorpho and Krypto, but he then gets stuck in an anti-proton river and needs their help again to escape it.
Terrific and Lane enter the pocket universe, and Terrific’s drones find Superman and the others. Krypto, unfortunately, thinks the drones are chew toys, to Terrific’s frustration. They’re freed, but Superman is still in bad shape. Terrific lends Lane his ship, telling her to go take Superman somewhere to recuperate. Terrific needs to deal with the pocket universe.
Luthor is livid that Superman has been freed, and so he figures out a way to draw Superman out: he destabilizes the pocket universe, which will create a nasty interdimensional rift. He also screams at Teschmacher, throwing a pencil at her. She immediately hides in a closet and contacts Olsen, saying she’ll send him everything, including lots of incriminating stuff about Luthor. She does so, but Ultraman overhears her in the closet and grabs her. Luthor sends her to his prison, but not before she’s sent Olsen her entire collection of selfies.
Lane takes Superman to Smallville and meets Jonathan and Martha. Lane is amused to see posters from the bands he mentioned liking earlier decorating his childhood bedroom. The next morning, Superman is feeling better—he wakes up with Krypto on his chest. Jonathan gives him a pep talk, and then they check the news to discover that Boravia is invading Jarhanpur once again, with the Jarhanpurian people chanting Superman’s name. However, Terrific contacts Superman needing his help with the rift—if they don’t stop it, there won’t be a Boravia, a Jarhanpur, or an Earth left to save.
Superman convinces Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Metamorpho to stop the Boravian invasion (which they do, the mission culminating with Hawkgirl killing Ghurkov), while Lane flies back to Metropolis in Terrific’s ship. She looks at Olsen’s pictures and realizes that there’s all kinds of incriminating evidence in the background of Tess’s selfies, including proof of the fact that Ghrukov plans to give half of Jarhanpur to Luthor. In addition, Lane has turned up information showing that Luthor pretty much just gave Boravia billions of dollars’ worth of weapons—getting half of Jarhanpur is likely the pro quo for that quid.
The rift is about to tear Metropolis apart, so the city has to be evacuated. Perry White, Lane, Olsen, Lombard, Cat Grant, and Ron Thorpe evacuate in Terrific’s ship, with Lane dictating a story to Olsen while she pilots the ship. White gives his approval as editor and Olsen uploads it.
Superman and Krypto try to stop the rift, but are instead menaced by the Engineer and Ultraman, the latter of whom is revealed to be a clone of Superman. As the fight continues, Luthor explains why he hates Superman so much. He also corrects a misapprehension: Luthor didn’t try to kill Superman to pave the way for the Boravian invasion, he created the Boravian invasion so he would be given carte blanche by the government to kill Superman.
As the fight goes on, and the Engineer is defeated by Superman flying into orbit and then flying back down to Earth, Superman realizes that there are drones following them around. He tells Krypto to “get the toy,” at which point Krypto goes after every drone the way he did Terrific’s drones earlier, chewing them to pieces. Superman is able to defeat his doppelgänger after that.
He then goes to Luthor’s control room, which is flying independently, the rift having destroyed the rest of LuthorCorp’s tower. Superman explains to Luthor that he’s just as human as anyone—he gets up each day not sure of himself or if he’ll do any good, but he does the best he can. Krypto then kicks the crap out of Luthor, to everyone’s horror. Superman calls the dog off, but then every news service carries the story just uploaded to the Planet’s website revealing that Luthor is in cahoots with Ghurkov.
Everyone is freed from Luthor’s pocket universe prison (including Teschmacher, who jumps into Olsen’s arms) while Luthor himself is sent to Belle Reve Prison. Superman approaches Lane and says he’ll give her an interview. They go into an office building at which point they smooch and Lane says she loves him too. Outside, White asks Olsen how long they’ve been hooking up, and Olsen says, “About three months.”
Superman returns to the Fortress, as he’s not completely recovered. The robots have all reconstructed themselves, and Four (who announces that he’d rather be called “Gary,” a request that Superman accedes to) starts to plays the footage of his parents in order to soothe him while he recuperates. But it’s no longer Jor-el and Lara—now it’s Kent family videos from throughout Clark Kent’s childhood.
Superman’s cousin Kara returns from her offworld trip, taking back her dog. Superman sets up her upcoming movie by noting that she goes to planets with red suns to party, since Kryptonians can’t get drunk on a world with a yellow sun.
“I’m not messing around, I’m doing important stuff”
This movie came out the same year that marked the forty-fifth anniversary of the release of Superman II, which also means that it’s been forty-five years since there was a good theatrically released Superman movie. While the character has generally been well-served by television (Superboy, Smallville, Lois & Clark, Superman & Lois, the 1990s animated series starring Tim Daly and Dana Delany, and the Justice League/Justice League Unlimited animated series) and by direct-to-home-video animated films, the live-action Super-films following Christopher Reeve’s first two outings are, frankly, awful, from Reeve’s wretched Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, to Bryan Singer’s Richard Donner fanfic masquerading as a movie, Superman Returns, to Zack Snyder’s completely wrongheaded nonsense in Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and both versions of JusticeLeague.
So this movie is a breath of fresh air. This feels in every possible way like a Superman movie, even more so than the first two Reeve movies, which, it must be said, were deeply flawed, and came from creators who did not take the source material particularly seriously. Gunn, however, treats the source material with affection and love, and embraces the entirety of Superman. We get the 1970s retcon that Superman helps keep his identity secret via Clark Kent’s glasses, which enable him to use “super-hypnotism” to alter the perception of his face. We get Krypto, who acts like an actual dog would with super-powers and it’s a delight. We get the Fortress of Solitude and the robot servants. We get made-up nations going to war with each other.
More to the point, we don’t get Superman’s origin retold for the billionth time. At this point, the mainstream audience is used to superhero stories after twenty-five years of good, successful comic book movies. So Gunn can open his film in medias res and just start the story three years after Superman first shows up. Lane already knows Superman is really Clark Kent, and the two reporters are already in a relationship.
Instead of having all the set-up, we instead get a straight-up superhero story, and it’s glorious. David Corenswet manages the same trick that Reeve pulled off in 1978 (and that Chris Evans pulled off in 2011): he’s earnest and noble without ever once being goofy or silly. It helps that he has a screenwriter who actually understands the character.
There are two moments in particular that show that Gunn gets Superman in a way that Zack Snyder never, ever, ever did. The first is the plaintive justification for why he stopped the Boravian invasion: “People were going to die!” To Superman, that’s the only yardstick that matters. The second is much quieter, also in conversation with Lane, when he says that he’s turning himself in, not because he wants to capitulate to the government, but because it’s the only way he can think of to save Krypto. And yes, he’s not even a very good dog, but he’s alone and scared and needs to be rescued.
That is Superman. That’s a hero.
One thing I noticed in particular upon rewatching is the fight choreography. When Superman fights, he works very hard to minimize the damage. He doesn’t just save the people, he makes sure they’re okay, and he goes out of his way to limit the property damage. Heck, he even saves a squirrel! This is brought into sharp relief when he’s fighting the kaiju. As soon as the Justice Gang shows up, there’s a lot more collateral damage, all of it caused by the newly arrived trio.
The casting is letter-perfect all up and down the movie, too. Rachel Brosnahan is definitely in the top tier of screen Lois Lanes. She’s smart, sassy, clever, snarky, and brilliant, everything Lane should be and more. I particularly love her going to the Justice Gang and trying to bully them into freeing their friend. And her interview of Superman is a masterpiece of characterization and dialogue.
Matching her is Nicholas Hoult, who may be the best live-action Luthor. He masterfully encompasses the character’s sociopathy and brilliance, but also his charisma. You get why a whole room full of people go along with his shenanigans, and why most of Metropolis probably views him as a philanthropist.
There’s the great Edi Gathegi, who is magnificence itself as the cynical, above-it-all Mr. Terrific. There’s Nathan Fillion perfectly embodying Guy Gardner’s asshole of a Green Lantern, right down to the bowl cut. There’s Zlatko Burić’s spectacular sleaze as Ghurkov, Sara Sampaio’s ditzy goofiness as Teschmacher, Skyler Gisondo’s youthful charm as Olsen, Wendell Pierce’s cigar-chewing gruffness as White, Anthony Carrigan’s heartbreaking portrayal of Metamorpho, and Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell, who are very much the people who raised a hero as Jonathan and Martha Kent (which is who and what the Kents should be). And there’s the eternal Alan Tudyk, once again providing magnificent voice work as Four—or, rather, Gary.
The pacing is superb, mercifully free of Gunn’s tendency to let scenes go on too long. There’s a lot happening here, but you never lose track of anyone or anything.
The movie is not perfect. Public opinion alters a bit too quickly, both when the full recording from Jor-el and Lara is revealed and again at the end when Luthor’s mendacity is revealed. Hell, we go from the Engineer restoring the footage in Antarctica to Luthor going on Cleavis Thornwaite to reveal the translation in what seems like an hour or two, when that would take days to translate and verify, if not weeks.
Still and all, this is a delightful superhero movie, a Superman movie that feels like the character that we’ve seen in the comics for almost 90 years, and an encouraging start to the DCU.
One final touch I adored: at the end of the movie, we see a front-page story in the Daily Planet by Clark Kent, but it’s not about Superman or Boravia or Lex Luthor or the Justice Gang or the dimensional rift. No, it’s a human-interest piece on Mali the falafel guy. And that was just beautiful.
Next week, it’s the (fittingly) fourth major attempt to bring Marvel’s flagship characters to the big screen, this time as part of the MCU, as we look at Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Wonderful movie. But I think I’m going to take hostages if I see one more person refer to Christopher Reeve as “Christopher Reeves.”
As someone who grew up watching both George Reeves and Christopher Reeve’s Supermans, I have made that mistake plenty of times myself.
The post has been updated!
I have to say that, as someone who lives around half an hour away from Union Terminal and has probably set foot inside dozens of times, seeing it actually used for a live action DC movie was really neat. I actually liked the added detail that both of the murals in the rotunda were changed for the movie, being more about the history of meta humans as opposed to the history of the United States and Cincinnati respectively (Something I only paid attention to on my second viewing.)
As for the actual movie itself, it was great, with so much that felt like a deliberate ‘screw you’ to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.
I’ll note that Union Terminal was used as a Hall of Justice previously in the Arrowverse Flash TV series. Not obvious whether that was an inspiration here, or arrived at independently — either seems possible.
I’d also put Jon Cryer’s Lex Luthor in Supergirl up against Hoult’s, in terms of being charismatic. (Michael Cudlitz’s was deliberately played very differently, of course.)
As Keith said, Union Terminal was the original inspiration for the Hall of Justice back in the 1970s Super Friends series. The cartoon was sponsored by Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, and when the producers were in town for a meeting with the sponsors during the show’s development, they saw the Terminal and were inspired to use its design. And that’s inspired later DC Comics-based productions to consider the Terminal as a location. The makers of Batman Forever initially planned to use the Terminal as an exterior for the convention center where Dick Grayson’s parents died, but they ended up using a matte painting inspired by the Terminal/Hall of Justice instead.
As I mentioned, the Arrowverse only used an exterior shot of the Terminal which was digitally modified to look more like the Super Friends Hall of Justice. They didn’t actually film in Cincinnati; they used a hangar outside Vancouver to represent the interior of the building, even though it didn’t match the shape of the Terminal at all.
This was probably the most consistently good live-action Superman movie we’ve ever had. It strikes an effective balance, embracing all the lunacy of Silver Age comics but playing it straight with believable character nuance. It does a good job of feeling like a lived-in world right off the bat and bringing the audience up to speed on everything they need to know.
As a Cincinnati native who lives less than two miles from Union Terminal and once worked there briefly as a museum guide, as well as tagging along with my father when he did radio broadcasts from it in my childhood before it became a museum, I loved how well the Hall of Justice scene celebrated its magnificent architecture. When the Arrowverse used a photograph of the Terminal exterior to represent the Hall, it was digitally altered to look more like the Super Friends version that it inspired, and the interiors were shot in a Vancouver airport hangar. But Superman lets us see the Terminal as it really is, with no changes except the “Hall of Justice” sign out front and the digital alteration of the historic Winold Reiss murals (as mentioned in Lin’s comment — hi, fellow Cincinnatian!). They didn’t even hide the Art Deco “To Trains” sign! (Which is still accurate, since the Museum Center is still the only passenger rail terminal in the city.) Even the garage door was the real thing! It was lovely seeing such a great showcase for my favorite building. Gunn’s team found some other gorgeous locations in a similar architectural vein for the Daily Planet and the shopping center (?) where the flying kiss happened.
I do have a couple of plot quibbles. The way Jimmy Olsen led Eve on about their relationship felt mean-spirited and kind of misogynistic. And it bothered me that the Engineer’s fate was left unresolved. They said she was still alive after the impact, but then just forgot about her, and there was no evidence that she’d been retrieved from the rift before it shut, so it seems like she must have died. (I gather she’s going to be back in a later movie, but then they should’ve made her survival clearer.) I was expecting that Superman would save her and make her re-evaluate her hatred of him, but instead, she had no character arc and was just a physical threat. (And the Fortress scene where Lex and the Engineer monologued about their reasons for trying to destroy Superman was very clumsily expository.)
I have a hard time buying that Superman could be so unconcerned about the consequences of his actions; by the “World of Cardboard” principle, he’d have to be constantly thinking of consequences to others or he couldn’t even open a door without damaging the building. But I guess physical consquences are one thing, abstract geopolitical consequences another. And it does work as a way of establishing that Superman is incomplete without Lois to keep him grounded. The interview scene was a very effective way of establishing their relationship in all its complexity. And I liked how they started with a fakeout scene in the Planet offices that created the illusion of a standard Lois-Clark rivalry before revealing that it was just a cover.
Hoult’s Luthor is an excellent portrayal of the character, comparable to Jon Cryer’s in capturing the essence of his personality, and better able to show the extent of the schemes he’s capable of with his technology. It’s the modern business-mogul version of Luthor, but fully embracing the reckless scientific genius of the pre-Crisis version, much like in All-Star Superman. It did feel contrived that every threat Superman faced in the movie was orchestrated by Luthor, but I guess that’s because it’s all one movie, so there’s one consistent adversary.
Jimmy and Perry were okay, and it’s nice to see a version of Jimmy that isn’t defined as a photographer (an invention of the Donner films, when he was a cub reporter in radio and comics). I have to wonder why we even needed Cat Grant, Steve Lombard, and Ron Troupe except as continuity winks.
I also had my usual problem with the depiction of skyscrapers toppling over like dominoes. As we all saw on 9/11/2001, when a tall building begins to topple sideways, the vertical structural members aren’t designed to handle lateral shear forces and break right away, and the building collapses mostly straight downward, not holding together long enough to tilt far sideways. In this case, though, I’m willing to be a little forgiving, since the buildings were toppling into each other and pushing each other sideways, which makes it a little more believable, though not much. Just in general, though, I’m sick of this need in feature films to depict mass urban destruction at all, even though they did say the city was evacuated first (though realistically it would take hours if not days to evacuate a city that size).
Have we ever had a Superman film where he had so few scenes as Clark Kent? I think the only time we saw him in the glasses putting on the public persona of Clark was in the newsroom scene; otherwise we just saw him being himself in civilian clothes with Lois and his family, which is arguably closer to being Superman than being “Clark Kent” as he’s publicly known. And technically he was acting as Superman for the interview, mostly.
My other question is, in that final scene where we saw that Perry and Jimmy totally know that Lois and Superman are hooking up, does that mean they totally also know that Superman is Clark? Hard to see how they’d catch onto one without the other, since they’ve probably seen Lois interacting with him in his Clark persona more often than in his Superman persona.
I loved this movie. It felt like Superman. It’s been a while since any of the movies made me think that.
I haven’t felt like I watched a good Superman movie like this since the late great Christopher Reeve. Oh, and I agree — this was the BEST Lex Luthor.
Ok, sure the whole Union Terminal thing is cool.
but this movie is way more Cleveland than anything else. Every city scene is a recognizable part of Cleveland including the flying kiss scene shown in the review. That’s The Arcade on Euclid Avenue, a once thriving mall downtown built in the 1890s.
The Superman crashes and is helped up by Mali scene was filmed close by at Euclid and E 9th. I work right there and spent the day not-working and watching them film.
This of course makes sense in that Simon and Shuster originally based Metropolis on their hometown, the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland.
****
Otherwise a great review. I loved the insight that collateral damage increases each time the other “good guys” show up.
i myself loved the portrayal of Perry White and team as super competent and driven, cool and professional even under the most extreme pressure. But, who am I kidding? I’d be happy to watch Wendell Pierce read a telephone book, as the cliche goes.
Thanks for the insight on Cleveland locations. Cool that you got to watch the filming. By the time I learned they’d filmed at Union Terminal, it was already over.
But you mean Siegel & Shuster. Simon & Schuster publishes novels (including all the Star Trek novels that Keith and I have written).
Doh! Yes, Siegel & Shuster.
Overall, a good film. My issues with it are mainly just with the modern way of storytelling and characted portrayals which affects a lot of media these days, and some of the scenes played off for laughs were a bit much for me. Interestingly, the Mali scene was incredibly dark, and really poignant. So there is a little bit of a whiplash between that scene and some of the Silver Age level shenanigans.
And while they fixed many things from Man of Steel, they left in all the city destruction corn.
This was a great performance by Nicholas Hoult. I feel like his material as Beast was not a great showcase for him–his performance was good but I didn’t specifically mark him as extraordinary. When I saw The Menu is when I thought, “this guy is a great actor,” and he reinforces that opinion here.
“And while they fixed many things from Man of Steel, they left in all the city destruction corn.”
Well, not all of it. It didn’t go on nearly as long. And Superman was actually shown saving people from it, unlike in MoS, where he was literally on the opposite side of the planet for the first really long phase of city devastation, and was a participant in it for the second really long phase. And at least we were shown people evacuating first.
Also, I’m pretty sure this one didn’t have the ridiculous bit of skyscrapers collapsing like houses of cards just because two human-sized bodies slammed into their sides. Skyscrapers are designed to be a lot more robust than that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sick of city-destruction porn in movies (unless they’re kaiju movies, where it’s obligatory). But it wasn’t remotely as bad here as in MoS.
Yeah, you make great points about the contrast. I guess I just exhausted by needing to see city buildings destroyed at all. At least here they made some effort to show that the damage was repaired a little bit, if a little off going by the post credits scene.
Yes, it’s an overused and unpleasant trope, especially in superhero movies. As I’ve said from time to time about MoS: In a Godzilla movie, if the city is destroyed, the main character is succeeding in his job. In a Superman movie, if the city is destroyed, the main character is failing in his job.
“Krypto then kicks the crap out of Luthor, to everyone’s horror.”
Mine included. It was a very James Gunn thing to do, but it undercut the terrific speech he just wrote for a violent gag (and, I suppose, some catharsis for the kind of viewer who needs to see the bad guy physically punished). Apart from that, the only complaint I have about this film is that I’d have liked to see more of the Kansas farm boy in his portrayal, since that’s what I’ve always seen as the character’s true identity (it’s one of the reasons I actually like Superman III) though the fact that he’s replaced the footage of his Kryptonian parents with images of his adoptive ones is a nice touch at the end. At any rate, a solid foundation to build off of.
I hated the heel turn of Jor-El so much. It feels like Gunn watched Invincible and just stole that story entirely, too.
I also didn’t like how apparently world-class reporter Clark Kent is so completely naive throughout.
“People were going to die!” Yeah, and you just made everyone realise that you’re prepared to step in and stop anything that goes against your personal ideals. God help us all if we learn that Superman disapproves of policies in his own, or allied nations.
What’s to stop him from slamming down through the roof of the Oval Office when the President sends troops to x or y nation and Supes thinks it’s unjustified?
The fact that Luthor is bad doesn’t invalidate his point. Even without the alien origins, would you trust just some guy from Kansas (or anywhere) with godlike powers and only his own morals as oversight?
(As a complete aside, when a link above a comment box invites one to login to comment, one might be forgiven for expecting the login page to redirect you back to the article one was about to comment on…)
IMO, that opening scroll (3 weeks ago, 3 days ago, 3 minutes ago) perfectly captured the feeling of picking up an issue of an ongoing comic.
The previous issue ended in a massive fight scene, and I could picture the final splash page where Supes finally lost – making a cliffhanger out of where he’d land and what condition he’d be in…
I absolutely loved this movie. As a child of the 1970’s, what it reminded me of most was the experience of seeing a cool cover on the spinner rack and slapping down my couple quarters for an issue of Action Comics, joining mid-storyline – and with a great recap page setting up the next thing you’re going to see.
There wasn’t a bad performance among the bunch. The greatest thing about it was that it embraced its origins in a way that even most MCU films don’t. From the psychedelic river in the pocket universe to the gigantic Kaiju monster and Guy Gardner’s crazy bowl cut, it was the best translation of the source media to film that I’d seen in a long time.
Not much I can add to this that hasn’t already been said. It is that great. One thing that really makes this one stand as far apart from the Snyder films as it can be is the inherent humanity Superman oozes in every scene. I simply adore Clark’s heart-to-heart with Jonathan (love his and Martha’s casting!). It took me a while to fully embrace the idea that the Kryptonians would in fact position Clark to become an emperor looking to spread his legacy and genes. I spent much of the film lying to myself, trying to buy the notion that Lex had in fact doctored the whole thing. But after so many incarnations of benevolent Jor-El, I’ve come around to find it truly refreshing. And in turn, it makes the Kents’ role in Clark’s upbringing that much more meaningful and poignant. A real endorsement of foster care.
And it reinforces a theme that Gunn always seems to go back to: found families. It worked beautifully in the Guardians trilogy, and it works superbly here.
This was also my introduction to Mr. Terrific. Great sidekick and a lively performance from Edi Gathegi. I remember him best as the Jobs/Musk-esque character Dev Ayesa who’s been a real asset on Moore’s For All Mankind the past few seasons.
The only oddity in the film to me is that we don’t get a lot of Lois Lane being a reporter – at least not compared to prior incarnations. We have the excellent Clark interview in act one and very abbreviated sections of her uncovering Lex’s skeletons, but not much more. Her actions don’t drive the plot as much. I feel it’s a byproduct of the movie’s deeper focus on Lex and Boravia, plus the Justice Gang and Superman being more directly involved in the action. I love it that the movie bypassed the origin story and made sure Lois already knew his identity, making that a non-issue – we certainly didn’t yet another round of secret identity 101 -, but I still feel we could have gotten some deeper Lois investigation scenes. Hopefully, we’ll get some more old-fashioned investigative reporting the next time around.
I never understood the appeal of Superman as a character until I saw this film. “Superman Returns” helped — it shed light on the fact that the two-person love triangle between Supes, Lois and Clark, and more importantly the frustration of being unjustly overlooked and misjudged, is a key part of the character –but… a superhero who is binary?–either totally invincible or, in the presence of Kryptonite, totally helpless? How could that be interesting? If we’re honest, it mostly isn’t; but then, neither “Superman Returns” nor “Man of Steel” had any scenes where Supes was rushing around trying to be in a gazillion places at once to limit loss of life. James Gunn leaned into that hard, and suddenly everything clicked into place for me. Having him come into a crowded field, be the light of optimism versus the pre-existing showboating of the Justice Gang, was also a brilliant idea.
This is also the film that made Lex Luthor click for me. He hates humanity; he wants to transcend its awkwardness and weakness and slowness. On the other hand, you have Superman, who cares about being the best person he can be. One wants to exceed mankind, the other embrace it; wants to be a super-man; the other wants to be a super man. And I will happily pay money to watch that argument play out some more.
Superman hasn’t always been portrayed as invincible in the absence of kryptonite… or red sunlight… or magic… or whatever. Originally, he could just jump 1/8 of a mile and “nothing short of an exploding shell” could penetrate his skin. In the 1940s Fleischer cartoon shorts, there are some effective moments where Superman is overwhelmed by the monster or electrified cables or erupting volcano or whatever and there’s genuine suspense, not that he’d be killed, but that he’d be incapacitated too long to save Lois or others from death. His powers got amplified over the years to nigh-godlike levels, but there were occasional attempts to tone them down to more reasonable levels, e.g. in the 1986 comics reboot (the one that redefined Lex Luthor as a wealthy businessman rather than a mad scientist and that reoriented the romance angle from Lois/Superman to Lois/Clark) and in the 1990s Superman: The Animated Series. S:TAS’s premiere storyline had a set piece where Superman struggled to keep a jumbo jet from crashing and was barely able to bring it to a soft crash landing in an unpopulated area — although by the end of the first season, he was tossing helicopters around like shotputs, so they weren’t consistent about it.
But the true appeal of Superman has never been about whether he was physically beatable or endangerable. The best Superman stories are about exploring his vulnerabilities on a personal level, his doubts about how to use his power or how he can be happy with a secret double life, or his fears that he won’t be able to help people enough, or his debates with others about whether his ethics are too simplistic. This movie hit all those points very nicely.
And yes, my favorite Superman action scenes are the rescues. The Christopher Reeve movies emphasized that a lot, and I disagree about Superman Returns, a very flawed movie whose best action sequence was the one where Superman was, indeed, rushing around to protect people from the earthquake tearing up Metropolis.
Lex would argue that he’s defending humanity, that he resents an alien coming in and taking a paternalistic role over humanity when we should be responsible for saving ourselves with our own strength and intellect. But Lex really wants it to be his strength and intellect that prevail over everyone else, and he can’t abide competition.
Lex has a fleeting but very illuminating comment to the effect that Superman’s magnificence makes humanity feel weak. I thought that was a wonderful illustration of his fundamental insecurity, because just about every other human we meet in the movie doesn’t feel diminished by Superman’s example, but rather ennobled and inspired by it.
The 1990s animated series wasn’t inconsistent al all. He was always strong enough to throw helicopters around, but helicopters also weight a lot less than jet planes. But the issue with getting the jet to land wasn’t strength, it was leverage (which is why it started with him accidentally tearing the tailfin off) and momentum.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Granted, but I’m sure there were other, later episodes in S:TAS and particularly Justice League where he was able to handle much heavier objects than a jet. I always rationalized that he got stronger over time as he took on more powerful foes and more massive obstacles, but it was pretty clear that the writers were engaging in the same kind of power inflation that writers of Superman have been engaging in for over 85 years.
I actually liked the Snyder DC movies…..for uh, what they were.
But this Superman, this felt like the Superman I knew from the animated 90’s show and the JLA/JLU cartoons (never read enough of the comics). Love this movie.
I overall loved the movie, but have to disagree on the Kents’ portrayal, from two angles.
First, I grew up on reprints of the original Superman stories, where Pa Kent was a country doctor, and had a certain reserve and authority from that.
Second… I’ve lived in Kansas for almost 50 years, and both sets of grandparents were rural Illinois farmers. And by those standards, the optics were almost offensively overblown and stereotypical. I can’t remember ever speaking to someone with an accent that thick.