“Superman” is a movie I never want to rewatch. Rather than inspiring its audience to strive to be like the titular hero, it openly patronizes the character of Superman. Superman is not here to save the day, he’s here so someone else can.
“Look Up” is plastered on all the posters for this movie, but the only thing this movie makes me look forward to is its credits.
The movie opens with the aftermath of Superman’s first loss. Before this, however, we only get on-screen text. Because we don’t see Superman being “super” or any other type of set up, David Corenswet’s portrayal of Superman comes off as weak and unearned.
It assumes that because Superman is a legacy character, you don’t need to show him being a hero first. I rewatched the film for this review, and I counted how many times Superman defeated a villain by himself: once.
Superman also neglects an immediate alien threat to drink hot chocolate. Is this the hero we should look up to — one who is content with his own inaction?
When people call for Superman then, it’s jarring because he can’t hold his own, let alone stop drinking hot chocolate to save people’s lives.
So while Superman is losing during the entire film, who is winning? Enter the Justice Gang, made up of Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific and Hawkgirl.
Who are these new heroes? What are their powers, abilities and limits? Why do they care about Superman? These are all questions that a better movie may have answered. They’re in this movie because the movie’s interpretation of Superman has him unable to overcome any threat by himself.
For example, they introduce the Justice Gang during a kaiju fight. Instead of Superman defeating the kaiju, the Justice Gang does. At the end of the movie, the whole Boravian conflict subplot isn’t solved by Superman, but by the Justice Gang.
To be clear, Superman tried to stop the conflict at the beginning of the movie and failed; at the end the Justice Gang (without Mr. Terrific) solves it in around five minutes.
The highlight of the film is Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen and his subplot with Sara Sampaio’s Eve Teschmacher. It was heartfelt and legitimately funny, unlike everything else in the movie.
Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane was smart and her chemistry with Superman is romantic. As a journalist, she’s smart and challenges Superman at every step, even though Superman never learns anything from her.
For example: she criticizes Superman for not thinking about the repercussions of his actions in the conflict of Boravia. She tells him how aligning with a country other than the U. S. could be seen as treason. So, being the hero he is, he asks the Justice Gang to do the treason for him.
Contrary to her warning early in the film, both the Justice Gang and Superman don’t face repercussions for their actions. So what did the main characters of this film learn from the conflict in Boravia? Nothing.
It’s a shame that interesting plotlines like this were neglected in favor of expanded universe worldbuilding.
Nicholas Hoult is one of my favorite actors working today, but even his talent can’t salvage a Lex Luthor whose supposed genius is constantly undermined by a nonsensical script. His plan lacks both menace and basic logic.
His stated motive is that he wants the government to approve of him killing Superman, yet the film never explains why he passed on the perfect opportunity to do so anonymously. The inconsistencies extend to his methods.
He commands a powerful puppet in Ultraman, but the finale devolves into a farce where the “smartest man alive” has to manually type commands, a needless delay that Superman’s speed should make irrelevant. Furthermore, Lex’s obsession with finding the Fortress of Solitude feels entirely contrived, given that he already possesses multiple assets that are capable of killing Superman, like Ultraman and Metamorpho.
Why hire The Engineer as an extra liability to find the Fortress when his drones that already follow Ultraman could have just followed Superman there? These glaring plot holes reduce “the smartest man alive” to an incompetent fool.
Lastly, I want to go over the terrible CGI. It is distractingly atrocious to the point where it all felt out of place and uncanny. The pocket dimension looked worse than most films that came out in the 2010s and even DC’s previous Superman movie “Man Of Steel.”
Filled with jump cuts, shaky cam and CGI covering up nonexistent fight choreography, the river scene in the pocket dimension made the movie feel like straight to streaming content.
In conclusion, “Superman” didn’t make me want to “Look Up,” rather, “Look Away.” James Gunn and DC massacre yet another beloved character in “Superman” in a way that feels both disrespectful of the source material and the active audience.
“Superman” didn’t just kill the Snyderverse, it killed excitement for the future of DC and prospects that James Gunn would “fix” the DCU. The problem isn’t that James Gunn didn’t try, it’s that he doesn’t care.
3/10
