Uncle Josh on Superman (2025)
I read comic books. I usually read the X-Men, Moon Knight, Captain Marvel, and Conan (currently at Titan). I pick up a Dark Horse title when they catch my eye.
As a rule, I don’t read DC.
Lord knows I’ve tried. When I could get them through the library I read the collections. Batman and Wonder Woman, mostly, with a rare Superman. I wanted to get into Green Lantern but I just couldn’t, even though Darkest Night is (on paper) my sort of jam.
So why did I watch the latest Superman? I’d heard good things about it. My sister in law comes over once a week and we watch movies or TV shows. A few months ago we watched the 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeve. It was just a silly as I remembered from my childhood but even worse in storytelling. My writing experience and my general experience as an audience member left the 1978 moving lacking in so many things except the soundtrack, because John Williams is a god of music and I shan’t be convinced otherwise.
The big problem (from my modern view) in the 1978 Superman is the origin takes way too long (and opens on a scene that doesn’t even appear until the second movie but that’s an editing/studio mistake). Gunn makes things very clear and easy at the start with a little reading and then lets us see Superman right after someone has kicked his ass. It worked for me. I’m tired of origin stories.
Corenswet does a good job in both roles, although Clark Kent doesn’t get a lot of screen time, the few moments we have of him work. I think putting even a big guy like Corenswet it too-big clothes (those must have been a bitch to source) helped a lot, as well as the silly mop of hair he had in Kent mode. Corenswet was not instantly likeable like Reeve was. Reeve played the role with more charm and confidence, but that’s more stylistic. The character’s core problem is he’s by definition the toughest guy around so challenging him seems pointless.
But here he is challenged. It is the nature of an audience to root for the guy the movie is named after, and I did feel some tension as things got progressively worse, but mostly my experience was hating ~~Jeff Bezos~~ Lex Luthor. In every shot ~~Bezos~~ Luther is clearly the biggest asshole who ever assholed. He’s nasty, mean, vindictive, and selfish. There is a movement to humanize the bad guys and Gunn, refreshingly, throws that movement out the window. There’s nothing about Luthor to like. He has wasted his life and energies and considerable talents on ruining other people because of his envy. When he tells his minions that they may have to die to do what he wants, he’s fine with that. At least he owns up to his faults, but that’s about the only thing about him that’s worth a damn.
That Superman would win seemed inevitable, but I didn’t find myself cheering the ending as much, and I think the supporting cast was to blame.
Not Rachel Brosnehan as Lois Lane. She was fine. She got her heroic moment and in general chose to do the right thing. No, the other metahumans were the problem.
While I tend to enjoy Nathan Fillion, there is nothing about Guy Gardner that I found appealing. I understand that of all the Green Lanterns, Gardner was probably the most undeserving. We got a good chuckle of the fists overturning tanks with a middle finger, but the character sucked. He wasn’t a hero, and I think Lanterns are supposed to be different.
Hawkgirl didn’t get many lines, screeched a lot, and was underdeveloped.
Mr. Terrific had me thinking _Is this a real DC superhero? This guy?_ The power set was nice, but the costume was strange (who the hell wears a plastic T on their face?) and the character denied me the chance to even like him.
And of course we are expected to know about them, which is a problem I’ve had with most DC movies. I’ve skipped most of them, but did end up watching a cable TV cut of Grumygus vs Superjesus: Wonder Woman ex machina, and even a Justice League where it was like, hey, here are some characters in cool costumes, the costumes are cool, right? please tell me we’re popular. There’s just so much noise in the cast I don’t know that I can bring myself to care.
One of the main plot problems with the 1978 movie was having Supes spin the world backwards to reverse time. The idea that he has to be in two places at once is a good challenge for Superman, because it’s something he cannot do. This Luthor does the same thing: forces Superman to decide which of two events to deal with, and the Justice Gang has to solve one of them. Sure, it gives them a reason to be in the movie, but still … why?
In worldbuilding this movie makes a lot of the same sort of mistakes the 1978 movie does. In 1978 there is the recording played to baby Kal-El where Einstein is mentioned by name. What the fuck? It’s established that a) they considered humans primitive on Krypton so why would that be the name they used, and b) the script adds that baby Kal-El was in space for hundreds of years and therefore was put in the crystal comet thing before Einstein was even born. In the 1978 movie, Luthor figures out a meteorite that landed some time ago was from the same planet as Superman because, well, I don’t know they never explained it. In 2025 Luthor manages to convince the world that a bunch of linguists can translate Kryptonian language?
And then the failing of the plot itself. Luthor has a clone of Superman, and goes through all of this crap to make Superman unpopular. Dress up your clone in the blue and red and have him knock over a building, kill people, be a jerk. There was a much simpler solution. Hell, even after pushing the lie (assuming it was a lie), having his clone then try to make good on the threat of taking over Earth would have given him immediate backing to kill Superman.
I guess I enjoyed the movie as long as I didn’t think about it. I did appreciate Pa Kent’s big moment:
* Pa Kent: Your choices, Clark. Your actions… that’s what makes you who you are. I’ll tell you something, son…
* [_starting to choke up_]
* Pa Kent: I couldn’t be more proud of you.
(At least, according to IMDB, that’s the quote.)
I also love that Ma Kent called him Ol’ Mush.
So I think I’m done thinking about Superman for a while. If you saw it, I hoped you liked it.
