Superman (2025)

I Break My Silence

My silence lasted roughly ten minutes

I went to see the new Superman movie with my family over the weekend. Those of you who haven’t followed me for the last twenty-five years don’t know this, but Superman is a big part of my (non-theistic Taoist Quaker-forward) religion. I feel exceedingly medium about James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, and I must forgo all Guardians of the Galaxy material because it is the immoral equivalent of Farscape. However, I liked the trailers for this new Superman movie and I really wanted to like the movie itself. We would all benefit from a super-hug right now.

I’m no fool, though, not anymore. The churning, gushing mediocrity of superhero movies chipped away much of my early life fondness for superheroes, and no media mega-conglomerate holds a monopoly on my hope. There are metaphysical places within me where the diversified mass media holding company Warner Bros. Discovery will never find purchase.

After viewing Superman (2025), I’m lukewarm, tilting towards luke.

James Gunn, You Are Not Grant Morrison

A lot of people hate Grant Morrison lately, I think? I guess it’s comic books: everybody hates everybody all the time. Anyway, I stopped following Morrison’s work closely when they stopped writing my favorite characters, but I always wish them well. Their work on Justice League of America and Superman gave me a great deal in a very difficult time of my life.

Morrison’s work is certainly delirious, pretentious, nigh-impenetrable, and drug-fueled, but it is sincere. Morrison may have an at-times weak hold on writing for female and  POC characters, but they truly want to believe in heroism as typified by Superman. They want us all to see him in the mirror, and be better for it. If they miss a trick for that myopia, their play is at least entirely honest.

Grant Morrison’s particular talent, at least when they wrote DC books, was stuffing every page of an issue with wild, glorious ideas that defied sense but collapsed efficiently back down into the core emotional or metaphorical idea of Morrison’s story. Issue #10 of All-Star Superman moves me anew every time I read it--the good in Superman creates the good in us because the good in us bore him in the first place. This is expressed by the image of Superman cultivating and nurturing a galaxy-filled cube, the infant universe of Qwewq, wherein lies our own world: Earth! What a wonderful way to speak to the nourishment we receive from dreams and stories of impossible things.

James Gunn barely has hold of the themes and emotions of his Superman movie. Putting them together into something that shines goes about as well as the Humpty Dumpty Reassembly Initiative. Sure, the film endorses Superman values of kindness, compassion, and mercy in theory…but it also wants us to laugh when Hawkgirl drops Slavoj Zizek’s authoritarian cousin to his death. Is that what you sought to tell us, James? That we ought feel comfortably certain ugly people with funny accents occupy an uncomplicated spot in the geopolitical landscape? That regime change, when inspired by good intentions, is hilarious and hype?

All the lines that mention kindness, compassion, or hope can’t make up for an inability to commit to those values stylistically or structurally, if slapstick-ass violence is still the punchline to every other scene. Having Superman inspire the other DC heroes to kill people doesn’t fill me with hope. It makes me sad, like the rest of the world does. I don’t believe nonviolence is a universal solution to the Big Problems. Neither does Superman. But what’s the point of being impossibly immune to harm if you can’t then be impossibly brave and impossibly generous, even to your enemies?

As an Artist: Make Choices, Have Priorities

James Gunn stuffs this movie with ideas and characters, some of which are pretty wild, but none of which cohere. They strut and fret about the stage, some giving startlingly fun performances, and others being 90% outfit. This movie only needed three characters: Superman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor. All three characters benefited from Superman (2025)’s stellar casting, with David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult putting entertaining spins on the familiar archetypes. With this trio, you have all the movie you need.

However, bit after bit is added, and though most were funny or cool (Mr. Terrific was great), they didn’t need to be there. In two hours and nine minutes, I spent relatively little time with Superman and Lois, and a lot of time with just…stuff.

Constraint is a good thing for creators. Not necessarily studio meddling or editorial intervention, but constraint. Someone to say “James, let’s aim for 90 minutes, and then add more to the script around that foundation.” To tell a good story, you have to know what the story’s about.

So much wasn’t important. So much actively detracted from the best parts of the film. I wish desperately that any female character besides Lois was well-treated by this film. I wish that James Gunn had worked with someone who said “The Miss Tessmacher bit won’t work because we don’t live in 1978 anymore.” I wish James Gunn had worked with someone who said “Making up a new Slovakia and a new Lebanon to have a war with each other so viewers can read an extraordinarily facile Israel-Palestine allegory into the film is not a good idea.”

Running Out of Steam

There’s a reason comic book Superman doesn’t go around fixing geopolitical problems. We already litigated this with superheroes and 9/11. There is no satisfaction to be derived from seeing superheroes kill bad world leaders or stop wars or change history. No good can come of this dream.

The dream of Superman is simple: what if someone had all the power we can imagine, and decided to use it to do good for others? The lesson of Superman is simple: every one of us has all the power most of us can ever aspire to hold; use it to do good. See? I can say that without a cheap joke or a cheesy reference, easily.

I wish I saw the movie it seems everyone else did. That one sounds like a great Superman (2025). Reviewers and writers I respect saw the film that way and wrote on it thoughtfully. But I didn’t see that movie, and when it comes to superhero movies I’m running out of steam. I’m probably old man yells at cloud, but the film was just thin and formless. It held so little of the tremendous life that All-Star Superman gifted to me. Perhaps my relationship with Superman is better conducted in private, even if it slows my content mill.

I’m not sure I want to be a superhero fan anymore. I’m not sure I want to be a fan of anything anymore.

Maybe Tolstoy. It will be very hard for Warner Bros. Discovery to sell me Prince Andrei Bolkonsky-branded paper plates, but I’d like to see them try.