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How much do you care about Superman? The answer is of great interest to James Gunn, writer-director of the latest reboot. Don’t be a cynic. It isn’t just that he wants you to buy a ticket. Oh no. The film is pitched as a grand, goofy unifier in troubled times. For now, it may only be comic book movie fans who are hyped for the next project from the mastermind of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. But Gunn wants this Superman to make fans of us all — of the movie, yes, but also of each other.
If that sounds a little mad, strap in for the movie. It is a pointedly giddy corrective to the brooding Christopher Nolan school of superhero, as well as prevailing social currents. On-screen, our uplift falls to the caped figure of lead David Corenswet. Having starred in Netflix serials Hollywood and The Politician, Corenswet isn’t quite the unknown the late Christopher Reeve was before the first modern Superman in 1978. Still, his presence has enough hints of his predecessor to suggest a knowing effort by the film to channel the sweet artlessness of the Reeve era.
But Gunn opens in media res. Clark Kent is already at the Daily Planet, dating Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and routinely saving Metropolis once in costume. Until, still early in the film, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) breaks from winning US government defence contacts to turn the country against his nemesis. This alien in our midst, Luthor now claims, is on a secret mission to destroy America.
The plot point is one of several when Gunn’s summer fun-ride is surprisingly willing to fold in recognisable — and ugly — political themes. A caveat: the film was all but finished by the end of 2024, prior to the events on which it now seems to touch. And yet the non-citizen Luthor calls a “Martian” finds himself arrested, stripped of due process and vanished to an outsourced prison. (In advance press for the film, Gunn has explicitly framed the movie as an “immigrant story” with a message of “kindness”.)
Still, Gunn’s harshest criticisms might be directed at social media, rendered here as a cesspool of unkind hashtags and an engine of social division. The movie can be more subtle than you might expect — but not often. One literal-minded scene sees mankind physically menaced by a phenomena called “the Rift”. In other words: come together, people, and find joy in what makes us human. (If you’re tempted to say Lex Luthor is human too, save your snark for social media.)
To counterbalance the politics, the movie has its tone, which is relentlessly loud, japey and frantic. Gunn throws constant stuff at us: robot butlers, furious monkeys, wallopy fight scenes, toppling skyscrapers, entire miniature cosmic realities. Wacky supporting superheroes enter, bickering; a taste for teeth-itching cuteness is indulged not just with a yappy terrier, but an alien baby.
Oh, you realise as the soundtrack fills with wilfully out-of-place pop songs: Gunn has gone back to his own home planet, and made another Guardians of the Galaxy, just with Superman replacing Chris Pratt. (There have been worse ideas — a shame it never came up before Pratt was ever cast.)
Gunn being Gunn, the screen sometimes also fills with pure green-screen mumbo jumbo. The story too can feel scanty and overstuffed, both at once. And yet, looking on the bright side, as he would surely like us to, it is also true that very little drags, that Corenswet, Brosnahan and Hoult do well; and that moments here and there are authentically funny. (If only it sounded less like a backhanded insult to say a good joke involves a garage door.)
Honestly, I can even almost forgive this $225mn superhero movie from Warner Bros calling itself “punk rock”. Take it as proof that Gunn has made a kinder soul of me already.
★★★☆☆
In cinemas from July 11
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