Superman (2025)

Superman (2025)

Rating: ★★★½
USA. 2025.

Crew

Director/Screenplay – James Gunn, Producers – James Gunn & Peter Safran, Photography – Henry Braham, Music – David Fleming & John Murphy, Visual Effects Supervisor – Stephane Ceretti, Visual Effects/Animation – Framestore (Supervisor – Stephane Naze, Animation Supervisors – Michael Elder & Loic Mireault), Industrial Light & Magic (Supervisor – Enrico Damm, Animation Supervisor – Paul Kavanagh) & Weta FX Ltd (Supervisor – Guy Williams, Animation Supervisor – Michael Cozens), Special Effects Supervisor – Dan Sudick, Character Prosthetics/Animatronics – Legacy Effects (Supervisors – Shane Mahan, Lindsay MacGowan & J. Alan Scott), Production Design – Beth Mickle. Production Company – DC Studios/Domain Entertainment/Troll Court Entertainment/The Safran Company.

Cast

David Corenswet (Superman/Clark Kent), Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor), Edi Gathegi (Mr Terrific/Michael Holt), Skyler Gisondo (Jimmy Olsen), Sara Sampaio (Eve Teschmacher), Anthony Carrigan (Metamorpho), Nathan Fillion (Green Lantern/Guy Gardner), Maria Gabriela De Faria (The Engineer/Angela Spica), Isabel Merced (Hawkgirl), Zlatko Buric (Vasil Ghurkos), Neva Howell (Martha Kent), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Jonathan Kent), Mikaela Hoover (Cat Grant), Alan Tudyk (Gary), Wendell Pierce (Perry White), Beck Bennett (Steve Lombard), Dinesh Thayarajan (Malik Ali), Frank Grillo (Rick Flag Sr), James Hiroyuki Liao (General Mori), Tinashe Kajese Bolden (Flo Crawley), Bradley Cooper (Jor-el), Angela Sarafyan (Lara), [uncredited] Milly Alcock (Supergirl)

Plot

Superman has intervened to prevent the nation of Boravia from invading its neighbour Jarhanpur. He has been wounded in battle with another metahuman and is dragged back to the Fortress of Solitude by his dog Krypto to be healed by his robot attendants. Lex Luthor, who is secretly funding Boravia’s war with cheap arms sales, is determined to get the US government to take action against Superman. Luthor breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and hacks the corrupted recordings from Superman’s parents, twisting these to make it appear that Superman has been sent to Earth to become the overlord of humanity. Superman is publicly shamed. Luthor captures Superman and imprisons him inside a pocket universe, guarded by the shapeshifter Metamorpho who has the ability to turn his hands to kryptonite. With Luthor free to conduct his war, Lois Lane sets out with the aid of the superhero team the Justice Gang and the Daily Planet staff to rescue Superman.

Superman was the first and is probably the most well-known of all superheroes. Ever since the Man of Steel graced Action Comics #1 back in 1938, he has enjoyed a regular life on screens, beginning with a series of cartoons from Max Fleischer in the 1940s and then the live-action serial Superman (1948). On tv, we have had everything from the classic Adventures of Superman (1952-8) starring George Reeves, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-7) with Dean Cain, the animated Superman (1996-2000), Smallville (2001-11) with Tom Welling and Superman and Lois (2021-4) with Tyler Hoechlin. These have vied alongside various film outings – Superman and the Mole-Men (1951), the classic film series starring Christopher Reeve beginning with Superman (1978), Bryan Singer’s revival Superman Returns (2006), and assorted animated offerings. Most recently, Superman was incarnated by Henry Cavill in the so-called Snyder-verse consisting of Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), which met with generally negative reception. (A full list of Superman’s screen appearances is at the bottom of the page).

This new Superman film comes from James Gunn. Gunn started working at Troma Films, co-writing Tromeo & Juliet (1996) and Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman’s biography All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger (1998), which later became the basis of the film Terror Firmer (1999). Gunn graduated to an A-list screenwriter of films such as Scooby-Doo (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), as well as the little-seen superhero spoof The Specials (2000). He made his directorial debut with the alien monster movie Slither (2006) and went on to direct the witty superhero spoof Super (2010), the Beezel segment of Movie 43 (2013) and then found wide acclaim with the Marvel Comics adaptation Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequels Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017) and Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (2023). Prior to Superman, Gunn entered the world of DC comics with The Suicide Squad (2021), while spinning one of its characters off as the tv series Peacemaker (2022- ). Gunn has also written The Belko Experiment (2016) and produced the anti-superhero film Brightburn (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Superman is intended as a clean break from the Snyder-verse and an attempt to launch the DC Universe – something DC should have tried to do more than fifteen years ago when Marvel were finding their stride. Superman is the flagship for the new DCU and there is an announced sequel, a Supergirl film, and others including Mike Flanagan’s Clayface film, a Swamp Thing film and others. This does sit uneasily alongside stragglers from the still-not-quite deceased Snyderverse, including Gunn’s Peacemaker, who appeared in The Suicide Squad, while Peacemaker makes a cameo here. Also in production is a sequel to The Batman (2022), a rogue take on the character that sits in a pocket universe of its own in terms of continuity.

David Corenswet as Superman (2025)
David Corenswet as Superman

Nevertheless, Superman is a promising start of a new DC screen universe. All the previous versions of Superman on screen have felt like compromises in one way or another. They were either handled by people who had no clue what they were doing – the Salkinds with the Christopher Reeve films, especially when it came to the sequels; lacked the budget or imagination to pull things off – the serials and the George Reeves tv series; Bryan Singer who sidetracked off to conduct an elaborate homage to the Christopher Reeve films; and Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer who certainly knew their comic-books but seemed distracted into going grimdark. With the exception of the DC Universe Animated Films, James Gunn feels like the first filmmaker who readily accepts Superman as a comic-book character and is perfectly at home in the comic-book environment.

At times, the film feels almost like it is namechecking as many characters from the comics as it is possible to pack in. This is particularly evident when it comes to the Daily Planet scenes and we get appearances from every character that has turned up as a regular over the years – Lois, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Steve Lombard, Cat Grant (and apparently Maxwell Grant in there somewhere). There is a bewildering array of other familiar comic-book characters packed in every corner of the film from Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific, who operate as the Justice Gang (an organisation new to the film), to Metamorpho, Rick Flag, Mr. Handsome and Sapphire Stagg.

The surprise also is that Gunn pays homage to the Christopher Reeve films. This is most evident in the character of the bimbo Eve Teschmacher who was created in the first two Reeve films (as played by Valerie Perrine) and is resurrected here, a deliberate choice over Mercy Graves, Luthor’s usual assistant in the comics. Another homage is the design of the white crystalline Fortress of Solitude taken from the first two Reeve films. You could also argue that Superman’s fight with a dark clad clone version of himself is an echo of the evil Superman battle we had in Superman III (1983). The end credits appear against an infinitely zooming starscape in a repeat of the look of the first two Reeve films. There is also the son of Christopher Reeve who makes a minor appearance as a tv interviewer.

Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Superman (David Corenswet) in Superman (2025)
Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Superman (David Corenswet)

The interesting thing is that James Gunn starts Superman in media res. That is to say he wastes no time on establishing origin stories, has Superman and Lois already an item (I do miss the days before they got together and the play between secret identities where she was constantly coming up with outrageous schemes to expose him – as it is, like Snyder, Superman’s attempts to maintain a disguise as Clark Kent is barely of interest to the film). All of the other characters are just thrown in in the background and it assumed we are familiar enough with the comic-books or other media incarnations to know who Mister Terrific, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern and Metamorpho are.

The other thing about Superman is that James Gunn is not afraid to be goofy. Krypto the Super Dog was one of the most ridiculous spinoffs of the Superman comic book. Krypto was introduced in Superboy comics in 1955 and has become a regular fixture where he would go through a series of adventures where he displayed a human-like intelligence and his thoughts would be represented in comic-book balloons – he even appeared in his own film DC League of Super Pets (2022) – although just as equally ended up being written out of continuity. Gunn not only embraces the ideas of Krypto but in a bold move features him in the film’s opening scene, as well as releasing said sequence as a trailer. The other goofy idea thrown into the mix is a mention of Clark Kent’s Hypno Glasses, an idea that appeared in the comic story The Master Mesmerizer of Metropolis (1978) that postulated the idea that people didn’t recognise that Clark Kent and Superman were the same person by explaining that his glasses projected a hypnotic illusion.

As with the Guardians of the Galaxy films and The Suicide Squad, Gunn takes a comic-book source that was originally serious and plays it with an irreverent sense of humour that is constantly making fun of the characters. Some of the characterisations/deflations take you aback a little. The most obvious of these is Ma Kent. The Kents are supposed to represent an All-American decency that gives Clark his morality but here with a hayseed accent as though she has just stepped out of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), she becomes a comic caricature. And then there is an almost unrecognisable Nathan Fillion as the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern where Fillion plays the part with a pudding bowl haircut and a manner that gives the impression he is channelling a superheroic version of Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber (1994) – my first impression was that the role had been cast with Owen Wilson. Even a scene where Superman and Lois have a serious talk about his purpose is being distracted by a comic scene with the Justice Gang fighting a tentacled alien blob in the sky outside. And then there is the uncredited appearance of Supergirl right at the end and her characterisation as an intergalactic party girl.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor in Superman (2025)
Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor

Christopher Reeve’s Superman seemed the ideal embodiment of the character as perfect Boy Scout. By contrast, David Corenswet’s Superman is often seen as hopelessly naïve and well meaning. There is never better demonstrated than a well written scene early on where Lois interviews Superman and tackles him on questions of what he was doing intervening in a war between two nations where his earnest morality is awkwardly punctured when contrasted to contemporary international realpolitik.

This also ends up being very much a Superman designed for the social media era where both Superman’s shaming by the public and Luthor’s eventual downfall occur via social media headlines – Luthor at one point is even shown having an army of trained intelligent monkeys typing inflammatory social media commentary. This is a film where Superman comes up against Cancel Culture and is himself Cancelled. It is worth noting that this is a very personal issue for James Gunn who himself was Cancelled and fired from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise by Disney in 2018 after several of his poor taste Tweets from a decade earlier came to light (although was later rehired).

The film is very entertaining, although perhaps lighter on superheroics and effects than some of the previous films (although maybe it is more a case of these having invisibly merged into the surroundings). One thing worth doing is making contrast is between Zack Snyder and James Gunn’s superheroics. Snyder’s Superman was a rampant orgy of mass destruction that went on and on ad nauseum. By contrast, Gunn goes almost the opposite way and emphasises Superman’s genteel and protection of all life. In the midst of the battle with a giant monster run amok, Superman stops to ask people in a blasted office building if they are okay, shelters a girl from exploding debris and holds up a monster’s massive paw up to shoo out a dog trapped underneath, and elsewhere holds back a falling building long enough for a woman to drive free. He even stops in the midst of action to escort a squirrel to safety. There is the requisite orgy of mass destruction of Metropolis at the climax, but it is also one where the authorities are perceptive enough to evacuate the civilians to safety first.

Other Superman appearances on screen are:-

(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2025 list. Nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (David Corenswet), Best Supporting Actor (Nicholas Hoult) and Best Special Effects at this site’s Best of 2025 Awards).

Trailer here

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