Review Roundup: James Gunn’s Superman

From the very first frame of the wildly colorful and tooth-achingly earnest comic book epic, it’s clear that Gunn’s love for Superman is so abundant that it threatens to overflow. It shows in the niche Easter eggs (hypno-glasses! robots!) that are littered throughout the movie. It shows in the alarmingly large ensemble, which includes no less than four other superheroes and a handful of worldbuilding cameos, in addition to the regular Superman supporting players. It shows in the surprising amount of emotional heft that Gunn gives every scene with Krypto, the super-dog that had never previously been depicted on the big screen for fear of being too cheesy a concept. But most importantly, it shows in how nakedly earnest the movie is.

Superman, for me, is the superhero we should most want to be. I’m not talking about the superpowers, I’m talking about being a decent person who genuinely cares about others. He’s also the one I most wished were real — who, although he had unimaginable advantages, still cared about me.

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.

Superman, however, is also dedicated to treating the Man of Steel as what he was in the comics and the first two Christopher Reeve films: a majestic force of good, yet one who’s stalwart but vulnerable, superhuman but touchingly humane, alive with internal struggle. The new movie isn’t “dark” (Zack Snyder’s ambitious mistake) so much as it’s a loopy, spinning, multifaceted story with genuine emotional stakes. It truly feels like a comic book come to life, which is one reason it treats Superman’s powers as the most spectacular and least interesting thing about him.

This is a Superman movie that favors sci-fi weirdness and slapstick over lugubrious exposition; it’s nearly as kid-friendly as the ’90s Superman: The Animated Series. There’s even a major plot point about Superman’s Kryptonian parents that could have easily fit on the cover of a Silver Age comic teasing a character-defying revelation. An exclamation of “This is not an imaginary story!” would not be out of place. The movie’s humor and sweetness offer plenty for comics-friendly adults, too, provided they haven’t taken a flying leap off the superhero train.

When fear, anger, and cynicism feel like the default, a superhero movie that presents its splash-page havoc with guileless warmth and zero irony is a rare and precious thing. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man swung into theaters in 2002, setting a gold standard for superhero movies while thrilling post-9/11 audiences burdened by imminent war. Now, like a bolt from the blue comes James Gunn’s Superman, a rowdy and vivid film that knocks the doldrums out of the beleaguered superhero genre with the kind of two-fisted brio any self-respecting comic hero deserves — and it arrives not a moment too soon.

It takes mere seconds for James Gunn’s Superman to cast a spell on its audience. The film is not just an introduction to a brand-new Superman but to an entire new DC Universe, and with a very clever, very exciting, very intense collection of sentences that appear on screen, it’s instantly clear how different and resonant this film is about to be. The information sets the tone, stage, and stakes in moments, as each statement reverberates with intensity and anticipation. And that’s just the first 60 seconds.

It’s a sincere but also goofy movie, with a few well-timed twists on the mythology and a couple of added characters (I won’t spoil it, I promise) who keep things light at just the right moments. Our new Superman/Clark Kent, David Corenswet, has muscular shoulders, a dimple in his cheek and a curl in the middle of his forehead, and most important, you believe him when he says he just loves people. He’s channeling a touch of the idealism of, say, the character Jimmy Stewart plays in Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, targeted for his rightdoing by self-interested powerful criminals but also unironically tearing up at idealistic displays of patriotism.