Superman 2025

A review

Superman (2025) Review

“It Cleared the Sociopath Bar”

It cleared my “Superman shouldn’t be a sociopathic alien menace” bar, but other than that, it was pretty mid.

David Corenswet’s Superman is heroic. No question about it. And he’s probably the most physically vulnerable Superman we’ve seen. I’m assuming that’s in an effort to make him more relatable, which actually works, because the public sees his perseverance as he fights for them through his injuries.

But despite that, he doesn’t have the weight of personality that would inspire the public or other heroes to be better. Corenswet lacks the presence of Christopher Reeve, Tyler Hoechlin, or even Tom Welling for that matter.

I don’t have an opinion on his portrayal of Clark one way or another, because we didn’t get to see him much in that capacity.

But let’s look at some of the other characters.

With the exception of Lex, the antagonists were pretty forgettable.

Ultraman mostly blended into the background and The Engineer was more of a tool than a character.

I think Nicholas Hoult in this version of Lex Luthor is alright. I prefer him as a comic book-style villain rather than a bent real estate mogul, but he was still more petty than menacing, think more trust fund brat than evil mastermind. But Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville will always by my gold standard as Lex.

I thought the cast who played the Daily Planet staff were quirky and have potential for later stories, especially Kat Grant.

Rachel Brosnahan’s portrayal of Lois Lane was great, she’s my next favorite next to Margot Kidder. She really embodies the spirit of a contemporary journalist. Really competent, but not in an over-the-top Mary Sue style.

And I like that Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen got a chance to shine in this.

I have similar criticisms of the Kent family in this movie as I do of David Corenswet’s version of Superman.

I appreciate that Jonathan isn’t encouraging his son to let innocent people die to preserve his secret, but they lack the presence of the Kents from the Richard Donner films, or even Smallville.

The one character everyone else thought would be a disaster that I actually loved was Krypto.

He would’ve been the perfect comic relief, if not for the fact that there was already so much unnecessary humor in the film.

One problem I did have with him was, how they treat him like a benign lovable menace throughout the whole thing, but as anyone who’s been around poorly behaved dogs can tell you, a dog as poorly behaved and powerful as Krypto is potentially a weapon of mass destruction. And realistically it was pretty irresponsible to have him around the general public.

The supporting superheroes were a mixed bag .

Green Lantern, Mr. Terrific, and Hawkgirl are The Justice Gang, and are meant to be a corporate-backed version of the Justice League of America, possibly Gunn riffing on Vought International from The Boys.

Guy Gardner was never my favorite Lantern, and I would’ve preferred Nathan Fillion be cast as Hal Jordan, but he put a lot of work into making Guy interesting and likable, despite his abrasive attitude, and when it came down to it, heroic and competent in battle.

I’ll get into this more later, but they missed the mark with his costume, which was generic and uninspiring. And the hair, even though it is canonical, it was canonical for the ’90s, not 2025. It draws too much attention to itself.

That said, I actually really liked the VFX execution for his power ring constructs. They were pretty awesome. Green Lantern is one of my favorite DC characters, and I’ve been looking forward to a good depiction for a while. I’m pretty excited to see how they handle the Green Lantern movie.

Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific was excellent. It was good to see a Black male character that wasn’t marginalized or felt the need to kowtow around the female characters. I like that they let him be a genius and a fighter, unlike Black Panther, who they had to nerf intellectually for the sake of the Shuri character. He didn’t become narratively incompetent to make the female characters seem more so.

I actually think one of the best action sequences in the movie was him using his physical prowess and technology against all of Lex Luthor’s armored goon squad.

These two characters really stood out to me, and in my opinion, wound up being somewhat more interesting than Superman.

I think it’s because the team-of-misfits thing is more in line with James Gunn’s comfort zone, like The Suicide Squad or Guardians.

Hawkgirl had wings and carried a mace, I guess? I honestly don’t remember enough about her to give an opinion.

Every one of the costumes missed the mark.

I have a huge pedantic issue with The Justice Gang’s name and costumes. They play it off like the name is a half-baked idea by Guy Gardner that the team isn’t on board with, but I feel like a brand-conscious corporation is going to want a name that sticks, and look that pops and is immediately noticeable. Like we see with The Seven in The Boys, Vought put millions into finding the right name and costumes through market research and focus groups.

Superman’s uniform as well, I hate that they replaced the clearly recognizable “S” with some vaguely S-shaped geometric glyph.

When you know the version of Superman that wore that emblem was deeply cynical, alienated, and detached from humanity, it doesn’t fit in this movie.

And a super suit should complement the physique of a character known for their raw strength, not hide it.

I don’t know what’s up with modern interpretations of him always missing the mark as far as his costume.

I read somewhere that James Gunn was debating whether or not to keep the trunks. I don’t know why this keeps being an issue, most people grew up with the version of him we saw established in the Paul Dini animated shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. People just take it for granted. There’s no need to justify or overthink it.

James Gunn is similar to Zack Snyder in that he’s one of these directors that likes to subvert expectations, which actually works well when it’s C-tier characters like the Guardians, Peacemaker, and The Suicide Squad, not Superman.

I’ve always said, all you need to do is put Chris Evans’ Captain America on screen with the S and cape and you’d have the perfect Superman.

They could have adapted one story, but instead, they took Allstar Superman and cobbled together pieces of a bunch of other different elements, including Omni-Man’s mission from Invincible, and the big twist reveal from The Boys, and it wound up feeling really disjointed. I think John Byrne’s Man of Steel series was the definitive retelling of Superman’s origin and perfect for a more straightforward adaptation to the big screen.

I liked that they avoided Snyder’s grimdark tone, but I don’t really think a lot of the humor landed.

It was that MCU-style humor where they undercut dramatic tension with a joke unnecessarily. Which is fine, as with all things, in moderation, but it didn’t feel like it fit in this circumstance.

I prefer this over the Snyderverse, but I think the CW Superman sets a better tone.

At the end of Man of Steel, they establish an antagonistic relationship between the U.S. government and Kal-El, where he adopts an “I’m going to do what I want because you can’t stop me” attitude.

In this version, Superman also challenges the government, but in a more well-meaning, but possibly misguided, series of actions when he intervenes in a war between one of the country’s allies and another more vulnerable state. Lois actually challenges him over it.

This is another part where the story suffers, because of Corenswet’s lack of gravity. I think Reeve’s Superman, or Chris Evans’ Captain America, would have been able to better argue his point. A lot more effectively.

There were a couple of gems, though, that I thought really captured the spirit of who Superman should be in contrast to the Snyder films:

When he swoops in behind a little girl to shield her from debris being kicked up during a kaiju attack.

When he holds up the same monster’s foot to keep it from crushing a dog.

A more lighthearted moment, he swoops past the camera to rescue a squirrel during a tense moment.

And In probably the only scene where dramatic tension isn’t undermined by inappropriate humor, there’s a moment where he is powerless to prevent someone’s death, and his emotional reaction in response seems earned and genuine.

The climactic fight between Superman and Ultraman was… okay.

As much as I despise Man of Steel, the one thing I will never say is that the final battle between Zod and Kal-El wasn’t incredibly well executed.

This on the other hand was like a big video game, with Lex orchestrating Ultraman’s actions like a gamer kid putting combo moves into a controller.

There was substantial infrastructural damage in this movie, though nowhere near the scale of Man of Steel, but still, it was contrasted by Superman making a conscious effort to rescue civilians despite the challenging situation.

The Fortress of Solitude was pretty great.

The scene where it erupts from beneath the surface makes it feel even more epic.

And the Superman robots were a great addition.

Even though the score recycled a lot of themes from John Williams, it was still pretty unmemorable. In fact, I don’t remember the last time a modern superhero movie had a memorable score. Memorable themes, yeah, but the whole score? I think the last one was probably The Dark Knight trilogy.

The movie assumes the audience knows a lot more than they probably do. And I think a lot of people will be lost.

It tries to juggle multiple pieces of Superman lore from across different media and just as many from other franchises arcs, without fully committing to any of them. It winds up feeling like a remix of better stories with no clear spine.

And this movie feels like an overcorrection. Where Man of Steel and Batman v Superman took themselves too seriously, this doesn’t take itself seriously enough.

Final Verdict

I think overall the entire film lacked narrative weight .

I feel like Dini’s Superman: The Animated Series was more substantive than this and struck the perfect balance of seriousness and humor.

And overall, I feel if DC would stick more faithfully to the tone of some of its animated features, they’d be making a superior product, but for whatever reason, they just keep missing the mark with their cinematic outings.

This movie comes in fourth on my list of favorite Superman movies.

And Corenswet comes in sixth on my list of favorite Supermen.

So on a scale of…

Must see, stream it, or skip it?

Stream it.

It’s a fun movie, but not worth the price of admission.