Here we go again–another attempt at putting the Man of Steel on the big screen, and another attempt to create some sort of DC Multiverse. What’s the saying about doing the same thing over and over again and coming up with the same result?
This time around writer-director James Gunn tries to inject some smarmy, hip GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY vibes, but at the same time he also wants to make parallels to current political & social events. The result is a movie with a very inconsistent tone, and a title character who a lot of the time takes a back seat to a Kyptonian dog and a group of very obscure DC comic book heroes.
David Corenswet is the new Son of Krypton, and while he’s okay in the role, he doesn’t have the presence of Christopher Reeve (or even Henry Cavill, for that matter). It appears James Gunn really wanted his Superman to be more of a “regular guy”–but the thing is, the character isn’t a regular guy. At times Corenswet acts insecure, and even a bit whiny–and these are attributes that in my opinion Superman should never show. (To take the regular guy concept even further, Gunn presents a Ma and Pa Kent so rural they seem to be related to the Beverly Hillbillies.)
All the expected elements are here: Metropolis, the Daily Planet, the Fortress of Solitude, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult)….but none of them particularly stand out. I must admit that by now I have a bad case of Comic Book Movie Fatigue–how many times can you watch huge skyscrapers fall over and break apart in slow motion, or CGI-fueled fight scenes that go on just a bit too long?
The new SUPERMAN isn’t a terrible movie by any means–but it was just too goofy for my taste. My personal idea of the Superman mythology still hasn’t been presented on the big screen yet (except for maybe the first hour or so of SUPERMAN–THE MOVIE back in 1978.)
