Canis ex machina is a device best used sparingly, but nearly every time Lex Luthor’s metahuman underlings have the Man of Steel on the ropes in writer/director/DC CEO James Gunn’s Superman, the lovably undisciplined uberpooch Krypto swoops in chompers-first to save the day. It’s just too much, and I say that as someone who enjoyed the half-hour or so I saw of DC League of Super-Pets.
That’s the thing with Gunn—if something works, he is gonna work it. If you’re cool with the post-MCU redefinition of “action” as “guys ramming each other into things over and over,” you’ll never get (too) bored with one of his superhero flicks. But you might get a little annoyed if, say, you don’t think it’s still funny the third (or fourth, who’s counting?) time that Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern insists on calling his crew the “Justice Gang” over everyone else’s objections.
Yes Green Lantern is here, bowl cut and all, as are Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and Edi Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, a cool customer who does nearly as much to avert the film’s multiple Luthor-generated crises as Krypto—and more than Superman. Minor characters feel as crammed into scenes as Cat Grant’s tits are into her top, and to make them pop out (the characters, not the tits) they’re drawn as broadly as possible. Curious to hear how Superman’s cartoonishly twangy Ma and Pa Kent play in Kansas.
Some of that’s to be expected/dreaded. This is Gunn’s flagship reboot of the DC film universe, after Disney/Marvel tossed him overboard at the urging of alt-right goon Mike Cernovich. As such it’s a business move that, times being what they are (bad), is as much a part of the story here as anything on screen. Gunn wants to hit us with all he’s got, and that means colorful outfits and upbeat exploits. (Oh well, you’ll always have Justice League, Snyderversophiles.) And yes, it means quips. So many quips.
Sometimes the quippage lands. In the movie’s best scene, a smug Clark Kent insists on a candid interview—as Superman—with co-worker/girlfriend Lois Lane, and the ace journalist he’s dating pulls no punches, getting in as many good hits as any of Luthor’s henchfolk.
Where Christopher Reeve became the most successful onscreen Superman by amping up his otherworldly squareness, David Corenswet’s Clark/Kal/Supes is all-too-human. A real temper and self-regard bubble up from beneath his Midwestern aw-shuckistude. He’s well-matched by Rachel Brosnahan, a purely 21st century Lois Lane who avoids Rosalind Russell throwback vibes as she fields modern problems like work-life balance and how to fly Mr. Terrific’s spacecraft.
The rest of Superman never matches the energy of that interview—in fact, Gunn foolishly splits Clark and Lois up on separate adventures. And so we enter a world of intra-dimensional pocket universes and Metropolis-(Cleveland- actually) gobbling black holes, Superman gets loud and ugly and digital and, well, MCUish. Oh, there’s also a really dumb-looking alien baby Superman has to save, and did I mention the Lex-engineered Boravian invasion of Jarhanpur? I dunno, man.
Superman really takes a licking in Superman (and not just, heh heh, from Krypto). Through studying recordings of past battles, Luthor has learned his archenemy’s every move and he exploits that knowledge. While Gunn gets that what potentially hobbles the Superman story is the hero’s near-invulnerability, he seriously overcorrects for that—midway through I was yearning for a Superman who didn’t continually get his ass kicked.
At least there’s no danger here of Superman being upstaged by a more charismatic supervillain. While I’m glad they didn’t make him some cornball Musk facsimile, Nicholas Hoult (does he have to be in every movie?) chooses to play Lex Luthor as a blandly venomous and fiendishly precise technician, a decision that seems out of step for a moment when evil has shown that it’s no less dangerous when wielded ineptly.
Ugh, OK, I'll discuss the "politics" of Superman. Now that faked outrage has been electorally weaponized so effectively, the wackjobs out there no longer amuse me and I hate to even acknowledge their complaints. So let me just say that while Luthor pointedly denounces Superman as an untrustworthy “alien” and, working in tandem with various world governments, ships such “aliens,” ex-girlfriends, and other undesirables to a black site to end all black sites, there’s nothing here to rile up anyone who considers the sentiments “due process is good” and “people with brown skin shouldn’t be murdered” unobjectionable.
Personally, I think the world needs another Superman movie like it needs a slow-moving temporal rift in the space-time continuum, and my personal DC preference remains the full parody of the animated Harley Quinn. But for all my complaints, I was more entertained by a Superfilm than I’d been since 1980. But I am not thrilled with the reveal that Krypto will feature (even more?) prominently in next year’s Supergirl. Gunn’s DC universe is barely off the ground and already it’s gone to the dogs.
GRADE: B-
Superman is now showing in area theaters.
