Movie Review: Superman (2025)

 

    I really liked this movie.  It was a lot of fun, and it pulled me out of my overthinking head for a couple of hours, and that's always appreciated.

    I like comic book movies, and always have, though comic books themselves aren't really my thing. I think it's because comic books have a simpler focus, and that translates really well to the screen. It's no coincidence that the storyboards that movie makers create as part of movie development, look like ... comic books.

    I loved the fact that the fight scenes were slowed down and easier to follow (there was a 20-or-so-year trend toward chaotic fight scenes in both DC and Marvel movies, that I hated - if I can't tell what's going on, then the violence turns into a boring slog). The acting was also really good, and Nicolas Hoult might well be my favorite Lex Luthor.  

    It wasn't without flaws: the plot was too complex, and there were too many heroes and villains, and all of that diluted the story.   It was an ensemble movie in search of a single, central protagonist.  I wanted to know more about so many of the characters, and they all felt a little short-changed.

    I hated the fact that the recording by Jor-el and Lara was in Kryptonian. The focus was always on the impact of the message on the characters of the movie, and never on the message itself.  First, you see how their telling Kal-el to do good helps to shape him into a hero, then when the message is repaired, the focus is on how much it devastates Clark, and how it turns the world against him.  But when I saw the message, all I saw was a couple speaking a made-up language, and that made Clark's bioparents seem kind of like background noise. They translated the message, but that just made it look like a lie, a manipulation on Lex's part.  It turns out to be true, but we were told it was real, not shown.

    What did I like about the movie?  It was damn fun.  I missed seeing his childhood a little, but as my husband pointed out, they can't tell the 1978 movie over and over again, and we know the story. I enjoyed Crypto, the fact that Lois (at least in private) could provoke Clark into getting mad (and she did ask some very pointed, very reasonable questions that absolutely pointed out that Superman had acted thoughtlessly).  

    Was the broohaha over his being an immigrant warranted?  Nah.  

    There certainly was some political commentary there - the movie seems to depict either the Israel-Palestine or Russia-Ukraine war, and that one fictional world leader might have been poking fun at a couple of real-life people.   But the movie connects Superman, not so much to immigrants, but rather to "meta-humans," other powerful beings. When so much power is concentrated in a single individual, it's pretty reasonable to worry about what they are going to do with it, because power corrupts and all that.  It's basically the same theme of "distrust the mutants" that featured in many of the X-Men movies.

   For now, it's my third-favorite DC superhero movie, after Wonder Woman (2017) and Superman (1978).