Superman (Photo – Warner Bros.)
I was born just before midcentury and grew up on black-and-white TV shows, some of which were part of bigger things, like The Mickey Mouse Club, a minor cog in the burgeoning Disney empire, and Superman, who lived on as a franchise.
Superman
Directed by James Gunn – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
Of course, the original charter of Superman, “to fight for truth, justice, and the American way,” has become an increasingly hard sell, at least since the 1960s.
And so, if not the American way, then the Hollywood way, which means spectacle. When I saw it was James Gunn who wrote and directed Superman, I felt a tug of optimism. I was a big fan of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, which combined a good cast with comic-book sensibilities, humor, and a killer soundtrack. It was a cartoon, and yet it worked.
The new Superman works too, but maybe works too hard, a near-constant barrage of big moments, and too eclectically. Bits of The Avengers, Star Wars, Godzilla, Jurassic Park, Cloverfield, and you name it are all there. It’s like an overloaded plate at a visual buffet.
And then there’s Superman, as played, or embodied, by David Corenswet, whose tight-fitting costume matches his emotive range. He performs his Superman feats but is often soundly (and every sound is cranked up on the soundtrack) abused in temporary defeat, always recovering like a bulked-up Wile E. Coyote.
As Clark Kent, he works at the Daily Planet, an apparently thriving newspaper, a fact that requires its own suspension of disbelief. Switching to Superman (at least the film avoided the anachronism of a phone booth), his credo is “to serve humans and make the world a better place.” But hearing this, I thought of that Twilight Zone episode where an alien book called To Serve Humans turns out to be a cookbook.
Present too is an updated Daily Planet staff, with love interest Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White. Nicholas Hoult, acting with the kind of restraint of someone who knows he’s slumming despite the paycheck, plays the baddie, Lex Luthor, of whom someone says, “He wants to make himself king.”
Thinking of current events, I laughed, if no one else did.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, Regal UA La Canada and Laemmle Glendale.
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