After multiple failures to sustain the DCEU, DC Comics and Warner Bros. attempt a soft reboot of the franchise with Superman. At the helm is James Gunn, maker of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, the most consistently entertaining of the MCU properties. It’s fitting that the protatonist of this first DCU film is DC’s original superhero, but if this latest Superman is meant to open the door to DC attaining the kind of lucrative success that its competitor has enjoyed, the film’s biggest surprise is how steadfastly it avoids merely copying the MCU formula. Instead, it foregrounds the oddities and earnestness of classic comic books that have typically been the first casualties of big-screen adaptation.
Mercifully denying us another rendition of Superman’s origin story, the film picks up with Clark Kent (David Corenswet) already grown and relocated from Kansas to Metropolis and working as a rookie reporter for the Daily Planet alongside Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo). Both Corenswet and Brosnahan nail their roles in ways that haven’t been seen since Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. Brosnahan especially taps into an aspect of Lois that’s rarely been captured fully: that of her stubborn brashness never lapsing into simple workaholism, harking back to the scrappy, Hawksian professional of the late-’30s pop culture era in which the character was first conceived. As for Corenswet, he leans fully into the corn-fed innocence of Clark and the unwavering pursuit of good as the Action Ace.
Clark and Lois share both a quick-witted repartee that plays off their odd-couple chemistry while also conveying the genuine, believable affection that blossomed between them prior to the events of the film. At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is bristling with a deeply set paranoia and loathing at the very idea of Superman by the time we see him, and he’s already hatched a convoluted scheme to simultaneously erode the hero’s standing in public opinion and physically obliterate the alien from existence.
Superman’s archnemesis has never been well-served on film, either reduced to a caricature hatching banal get-rich(er) schemes or regressing to nonthreatening, childish petulance. Hoult at last does the character justice: This Luthor is unquestionably driven by petty envy and frantic image management—he’s heavily coded as a more competent, eloquent Elon Musk—but he’s also a genuine mad genius whose monetary and technological power properly scales an otherwise impressive mortal specimen to become a major threat to a demigod.
In dropping viewers into this world in medias res, Gunn does run the risk of creating a problem common to modern comics: dumping decades’ worth of canon onto unsuspecting newbies. This issue is compounded by the hefty presence of other DC characters of both terrestrial and alien origin, including genius scientist Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), shapeshifter Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Thanagarian warrior Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), a member of the intergalactic police squad the Green Lantern Corps. Luckily, these figures have their own, often selfish impulses for performing heroism, and Gunn concisely contrasts their motivations against Superman’s overriding altruism.
Superman illustrates this best in its action sequences, which showcase Gunn’s gift for large-scale but coherent spectacle. Whip pans and snap zooms convey the dizzying speed of Superman’s movement, but generally long shot lengths give lucid spatial dynamics and fluid motion to the constant careening around monsters and Luthor’s genetically modified mercenaries, chiefly the nanobot-infused hacker/warrior Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría) and the masked Ultraman, who has powers similar to Kal-El’s. Gunn generally slows down when following the combat techniques of, say, Mr. Terrific or Green Lantern, showing how they work via clever manipulation of their technologically-imbued powers over Superman’s raw ability.
Pointedly, the film also calls attention to the cavalier attitude that the metahumans can take toward collateral damage, whereas Superman is always shown to move people and even animals out of harm’s way. His overriding concern for a single bystander gradually sets up the action of the second half, which frequently hinges on Superman’s ability to rescue even one person from certain death as much as it does on his capacity to overcome the most fearsome foe.
At his best, Superman strikes a balance between the ridiculous and sublime. He’s the second-most prominent repository of DC’s loopiest sci-fi ideas after the Green Lantern Corps, but he remains the purest representation of what a superhero is meant to embody. For all the attempts over the years with the character himself or thinly veiled copies to imagine a version of Clark Kent that breaks bad, it’s never been Superman’s godlike power that’s been aspirational or awe-inducing but the ease with which he sees the good in people and in life itself.
Gunn embraces this unabashedly corny optimism with ample humor that never slides into the self-conscious sarcasm that has weighed down so many Marvel movies. This is Superman as he should be: the Big Blue Boy Scout who sticks out like a sore thumb as much for his embodiment of a Rockwellian sentimentality as his alien origin. After so many clumsy efforts to transplant the character to the modern era, this Superman finally admits that the character has been a mainstay for nearly a century precisely because he stands for things outside of faddish trends.
Image/Sound
Warner’s 4K transfer perfectly renders the film’s naturalistic but nonetheless bright colors, calling particular attention to the subtle shades of soft blue that dominate the palette. Detail is ultra-fine in both long shots and the many wide-angle close-ups of Superman in flight where you can see every slight discoloration on his often-bruised face and every minute texture of his costume. The Dolby Atmos track is flawless in its clear mixing of dialogue amid bass-heavy sound effects of battle and the rousing strains of the John Williamsesque score. Not a single element of the mix ever devolves into noise no matter how busy a given scene.
Extras
The chief extra here is an hour-long documentary that covers seemingly every aspect of the production in broad strokes, from James Gunn’s research into nearly a century’s worth of Superman media to the use of shooting locations and physical props. There are also brief featurettes on specific topics, such as the transformation of a railroad station in Macon, Georgia, into the Daily Planet building, and the intricate animation effects used to create Krypto.
Even factoring in the usual tone of bonhomie one expects from official bonus features, the cast and crew consistently come across as engaged and excited by the project and the sandbox that Gunn built for them. There are also short videos about Superman’s legacy and how this film sets a new tone for DC’s cinematic universe moving forward, as well as an amusing cartoon short starring Krypto warring between his dual desires to be a hero and to just be a dog.
Overall
Warner Bros. brings James Gunn’s thrilling Superman reboot to home video with a reference-quality A/V transfer and a bevy of charming, reverential extras.
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