Fly boy

Does James Gunn’s new Superman carry us up, up and away?

Superhero comics are often associated with kids, no matter how many adults across the globe read them regularly. But when I was young enough to score pocket money for household chores, I was more interested in the lycra-light mischief of Scottish publisher DC Thomson’s The Beano and The Dandy.

Despite being utterly captivated by the big screen adventures of Superman (1978), Batman (1989), their predecessors, sequels and spin-offs, I was a teenager studying for my high (secondary) school exams by the time I first picked up a comic book.

There it was, Action Comics #700, not in a comic store, but incongruously nestled in amongst the regular magazines at the local corner shop I’d walked to for sweet treats. Published some 56 years after Superman’s iconic first car-crashing cover in 1938, the landmark double-sized edition featured a striking, kinetic cover. The big boy scout holds back the rampage of the Daily Planet’s fallen globe, letters firing in all directions, while high-heeled reporter Lois Lane and more sensibly-shod photographer Jimmy Olsen flee the scene in the foreground.

It was 1994, and I was 15, instantly hooked by epic storyline, ‘The Fall of Metropolis’. I knew Superman, his pal and his gal well from the films and TV, always associating most with Lois’ journalism powers uncovering the dastardly Luthor’s plots.

But this Lex was younger, allegedly the son of the one I knew, though actually a clone who had fallen terribly ill thanks to an engineered plague and desperate to survive at all costs. Superboy was now a spunky biker jacket-sporting, earringed teen cloned from Luthor and Supes. Supergirl was there, as were Machiavellian scientists, giant robots, a lesbian cop, psychotropic-induced Nazis and even a hellish demon, just because?

It was basically as OTT as Dynasty, with the fantastical powers and mythological underpinnings of Tolkien thrown in. Returning to the store each week, increasingly frustrated to find that they didn’t stock the book regularly, I soon discovered magnificent comic bookstore Forbidden Planet and a back-order website, as my obsession (and collection) expanded rapidly in both directions.

My Superman

Long before I picked up that fateful comic book, Richard Donner’s 1978 take on the red, white and blue alter ego of bashful Clark Kent – unbeatably depicted by the dashing Christopher Reeve – forever imprinted on my non-Kryptonian DNA.

Reeve, then a largely unknown quantity, beat out the likes of Rocky star Sylvester Stallone and Stay Hungry’s Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role, after John Wayne’s son Patrick dropped out because his dad was unwell. While the filmmakers really wanted to light up their own star, they weren’t convinced the slim New Yorker fit the bill.

As luck would have it, Darth Vader’s physical presence, bodybuilder Dave Prowse, was turned down because he’s British, focusing his energies instead on training Reeve into the musclebound machine he needed to be to convince in the skimpy outfit. That, and survive torturous hours slung up in ‘flying’ rigs, Donner’s battles with the studio (and subsequent ditching from the nearly finished, concurrently filmed sequel) and Marlon Brando’s infamously surly disdain for being there at all.

Reeve wasn’t the first man to don the cape and outside underpants of DC Comics’ most gentle-natured titan, with radio announcer Bud Collyer voicing the man of steel in the Fleischer cartoons, then Broadway actor Kirk Alyn in the 1948 Columbia Pictures live-action serial. Tragically, George Reeves (no relation, owing to that S) depicted Kent and his counterpart on both the big and small screens from 1951, before his untimely death.

But the eruption of Krypton in Donner’s first flight is a thing of unmitigated cinematic beauty, Brando’s cue cards be damned. As is the earthquake’s devastation – more models please – and Clark’s determination to turn back time no matter how many actual earthquakes his spinney solution would cause.

No Luthor will ever crackle as cannily as Gene Hackman. There is no Zod but Terence Stamp, in a magnificent sequel that flies far beyond its behind-the-scenes rankling. I will never forget Margot Kidder’s yet-to-be-bested Lois punching Sarah Douglas’ Ursa in the mouth (Dynasty-like DRAMA forever). No one before or since has ever convinced me more than Reeve that a man could fly.

Up, up and away again

How does former Marvel captain James Gunn’s latest spin on the last son of Krypton, Superman (2025), stack up?

Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you dig writer/director Gunn’s shtick, bringing across his textbook quippy style and pop song segues from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. While his zanier approach was undoubtedly a necessary course correction from the over-grimness of Zack Snyder’s tenure featuring Henry Cavill, I remain unconvinced he had to go quite so cartoonish (more on that later).

What soars is undoubtedly the magnetic pairing of David Corenswet’s Kal-El and Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois, so much so I’ll even forgive the former for his part in Ryan Murphy’s heinous Hollywood. Every gosh darn it he emits reminds us that at his core, Kal-El is a swell guy raised right by his Smallville-to-the-core parents (Neva Howell, playing it like Dolly, y’all, and Pruitt Taylor Vince). I’m less convinced Brosnahan’s Lois is/was punk, but she sure has the requisite hard-nosed journalist’s fire in her belly.

The film is at its strongest in the first act, when they are professionally needling one another as byline territorial coworkers in a not-so-secret situationship. Lois calls out Clark on his unethical interviewing of his other self – “You know all the questions already” – and he bristles when she chucks curlier ones back at him. If only their still-evolving partnership, in every sense, had stayed front and centre.

Sadly, Gunn makes the somewhat odd decision to keep them apart for far too much of the film’s snappy enough runtime, at just over two hours. The whole shebang kicks off via the unfortunately comics-prevalent tactic of inventing ‘Is this a bit racist?’ somewhere-over-there nations.

They’re on the precipice of a heavily power-skewed confrontation that doesn’t have the balls to go where we know it’s pointing. Kent’s cares-too-much hero unilaterally steps in to stop the escalation, sparking an international incident that allows Nicholas Hoult’s furiously envious Luthor to manipulate the government against him.

From there, there’s a great deal of nonsense involving Croatian-Danish actor Zlatko Burić’s Putin-like puppet president and a horrendously rendered hidden pocket universe prison, both a serious drag on the plot, too often keeping Clark away from Lois.

Props for allowing her to rescue him more than vice versa, but he’s a touch too passive here. Superman is oft-criticised, as a character, for being too powerful. I don’t agree, with interesting stuff to say about how he chooses to use that power. However, it appears Gunn does, with Clark metaphorically Hulk-smashed way more than he gives it out, tipping the film a little off its axis.

Cast off

While I’m glad we don’t have to wait 20-plus films to assemble the Justice League, with Gunn dropping us in medias res to a world already populated by metahumans, there are an awful lot of characters to squish into Superman.

The rest of the Daily Planet staff are seriously underserved for such a fun bunch. The Righteous Gemstone’s Skyler Gisondo secures the most screentime, but his Jimmy Olsen is seriously off. I know journalism is on its knees, but is Gunn really unaware that news photography is still a thing?

Instead, a camera-less Olsen hogs the detective work that should fall to Lois. He also has an uncomfortably icky thing going with Luthor’s current squeeze, Sara Sampaio’s Eve, whom he strings along for insider info while very much not acting on her inexplicable horn for him.

Playing Eve in the giggling bimbo mould established by Valerie Perrine in the 1978 original, Sampaio’s turn has way less agency, despite a late-in-the-game caveat that doesn’t excuse the grossness of Olsen’s game that leaves a sour taste.

Cat Grant, a great foil in the comics, is utterly wasted here, with Mikaela Hoover mostly having to contend with ‘wears glasses’ as character notes without Clark’s secret identity.

Likewise Wendell Pierce as their boss Perry White, who gets little more than ‘chew a gar’. When they all head off on a mission to absolutely nowhere in the final act, it’s kinda embarrassing on Gunn’s part how directionless this sequence is.

There are a bunch more capes in the air, too, with Edi Gathegi’s cocky tech genius Mr Terrific making the biggest impression and sci-fi stalwart Nathan Fillion dudebro, Green Lantern Guy Garder, good value.

There’s nowhere near enough space for Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and daddy issues with Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho feel crowbarred in for unearned pathos. A very late addition steals the entire film in one line.

Lex flex

On the dastardly side, I’m a big fan of Mad Max: Fury Road star Hoult, but he doesn’t bring much original to the Trump-like role, barring a Snyder-style overkill moment that doesn’t sit well with the otherwise jolly caper vibe.

His nanite-souped-up sidekick, The Engineer – not a Prometheus crossover, thankfully – has little to do but indulge in blah CGI smash-em-ups, however intriguing a performer María Gabriela de Faría clearly is. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the comics will have to contend with the super-spoiler-heavy naming of another masked goon who receives a less interesting iteration here.

Any nerves I had about inserting Superman’s similarly alien pup, Krypto, into the action are assuaged by the most interesting thing Gunn brings to the table: what if an overly eager good-but-naughty boy, who hasn’t been properly trained, runs amok with superpowers that even Clark struggles to contain? FUN!! But why on earth couldn’t a real dog be used, for the most part, then inserted into the fantastical action via greenscreen, as with absolutely every other living thing in this film?

Much like DC Comics’ never-ending Crises crossovers, things get a lil wobbly on the rebooted universe front. We were told that this was a new beginning, then literal cartoon Creature Commandos queue jumped a ‘soft launch’. It featured Frank Grillo’s shadowy government agent, Rick Flag Sr, who previously appeared in the John Cena-led Peacemaker, who also pops up here. As does Peacemaker himself, spotted briefly on a TV show. So who carries over and who doesn’t, and is Robert Pattinson’s The Batman *the* Batman?

Holding on for a hero

Sadly, the never-ending Marvel curse crosses universes with Gunn, with Superman visually bogged down by a surfeit of eye-wateringly terrible CGI, including but not limited to Krypto’s cartoonishly unconvincing look.

I get it, they wanted a pop of primary colours as an antidote to Snyder’s greige muddle, but it’s an insult to comic book art to portray it as the cheap-looking CW stuff we get here. The film cost a tonne to make, no doubt, but it often doesn’t look it, from a sub-How to Train Your Dragon beast unleashed early on, to costume designer Judianna Makovsky’s stock standard superhero stitching.

The fakeness of it all also manifests in the seemingly aimless wandering of Superman’s extras. Scene after scene, folks in peril appear unwilling to even try and save themselves. While it might be funny to play the citizens of Metropolis as so utterly inured to the chaos that circles their squirrel-saving hero that they barely respond to abundant apocalypses (apocali??), there’s no sense at all that this is Gunn’s intention.

Last but certainly not least, if you’re going to use John William’s majestic score – and why the hell wouldn’t you? – just, as Nike says, do it. Composers David Fleming and John Murphy’s off-key mangling of it is a cinematic hate crime.

For all the grumbles, Superman (2025) is by no means deathly pointless, like the rotting Jurassic Park re-reboot. Donner it is not, with nary a hope of garnering as many rewatches from me, but we haven’t been duped by this Supes. There’s more goofy heart to be had than most recent superheroic offerings. Corenswet and Brosnahan have abundant energy to lead the way forward, if only Gunn can focus on following them.

Elsewhere

For the ABC, I talked to It Was Just an Accident director Jafar Panahi about why he’ll never leave Iran.

I also spoke to EL 47 director Marcel Barrena about power to the people movements, Songs Inside documentarian Shalom Almond and Barkindji songwoman Nancy Bates about second chances, and Dangerous Animals helmer Sean Byrne about loving sharks.

For ScreenHub I reviewed the magnificent 28 Years Later and not so much Jurassic World: Rebirth.

Over at Flicks, I wrapped my faves from this year’s Sydney Film Festival and reviewed Cooper Raiff’s blooming lovely Hal & Harper.

On stage, I review MTC’s Mother Play for Time Out, and for ArtsHub, I interview Bangarra artistic director Frances Rings about what it takes to lead a creative company