3. Superman, dir. James Gunn
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I gave Man of Steel too much shit. Zach Snyder isn't history's greatest monster. Was his movie really an omen that everything I thought good about America was doomed and we were on a path to madness? I mean, yeah, turns out I was right, but that wasn't Man of Steel's fault! That movie was just a complete fucking piece of shit, top to bottom. It didn't end democracy. To call our depiction of Superman as some kind of barometer of the state of the country at large was silly of me. We have a great Superman movie now and you'd never believe how bad things are right now.
Still can you imagine being Zach Snyder right now? I don't think I could show my face in public! Imagine being the guy who made Man of Steel thinking you were smarter and could "fix" this character for a cynical modern audience who didn't want to be lectured about right and wrong. Then you failed completely, and you get to sit down and watch somebody else go ahead and just make... Superman. Turns out all we needed was Superman all along. This movie seems effortless. The action is great, the characters are wonderful, its goofy in the right ways, Superman has a dog! You'd never believe Man of Steel could have happened after watching Superman.
Superman is black and white morality, always has been. Superman the movie presents this pressure of complicating the issue. The last son of Krypton (David Corenswet)'s own girlfriend, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) grills him in an interview, playing the hard-hitting journalist. This is just on the heels of stopping a war involving Not-Russia clearly about to invade Not-Palestine (a sorta medley of just-disguised-enough 2025 geopolitics). The journalist in the room is pushing objectivity and demanding answers, "who is Superman to do any of this?" and Superman is not media savvy enough to come up with a response. You leave this scene thinking our hero is untested and unsure. Except, Superman was right, even here, even when he loses the debate. What a perfect statement about the state of media right now, with journalists wasting their time trying to push a "balanced" viewpoint, so busy with appearance of un-bias that they're useless, in forced blindness to reality.
I guess we should be happy there even is still a newspaper media in Metropolis. It is sorta charming for any of what they do to matter.
The villain of Superman is Elon Musk, a guy everybody learned to hate in 2025. Even Donald Trump got sick of his shit. I mean, sorry, the villain is the totally fictional character, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), a man who knows exactly how to play the media, the government, and even Superman. Where Superman sees the best in everybody, Lex sees what is useful to him and what is not. There's a whole cult of Luthor freaks following him around, worshiping him as a god that he very much isn't. The actual god, the super man people brings together and promises us that better things are possible. Lex gets his power from telling us nothing is real or good, or even possible except him.
Superman is not an origin story, if anything this is a remake of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. We open with Superman already out here, fighting big weird stuff. We're in full Silver Age comic book swing. One positive of twenty years of the MCU is that superhero movies can just be themselves, they do not need to bother explaining or justifying any part of their genre anymore. There's a Green Lantern (Nathan Fillon), this alien guy has elemental powers (Anthony Carrigan), there's a big Stitch-Godzilla thing. Don't worry about it. James Gunn's best joke is having an important Lois and Clark conversation framed against while a window while in the background the other superheroes fight some space creature from another dimension. It isn't important. that's just life in Metropolis these days.
I'm impressed by how much James Gunn kept Superman a James Gunn movie. His whole career has been about misfit failed superheroes, The Specials to Super to Guardians of the Galaxy, so you'd worry he'd lose something when depicting the ur-superhero here. However, in a way, Superman is a weird misfit too. Even the most perfect man alive is kind of a dork who says things like "maybe that's the real punk rock" when confronted with thinking too many people are too good.
James Gunn is really good at pulling the heart strings. Superman's struggle for identity and family is as powerful as anything else Gunn has done. I think I cried harder at this than the little animal guys suffering in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I almost cried telling people about Superman's ending and how perfect it was. I might cry now thinking about it.
Not to spoil anything, but we are not our histories. We are not our ancestors. Let's say Superman is once again a metaphor for America. Well, he doesn't need to be defined by whatever happened before, neither do we. America today is not the nation of slave owners, capitalists, racists, and con artists, unless we let it. We are not the sum total of all the sins of the past and doomed to suffer in guilt and punishment, and cursed to repeat endless cycles. Recognizing what is wrong and what was a lie is one thing, but still we can be anything, even the illusions we thought we were. We can be fucking Superman. We can defeat evil and be the greatest society in history. Better things are possible, even at this late date.
There's a lot of awful emotions in the world and a lot of pain to work through, maybe we need a movie that is good, bright, and offers better worlds like Superman.
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