Warning: Spoilers will be minimal, but key parts of the new “Superman” movie will be discussed. To avoid spoilers, please DO NOT read this column until you see the film!
The good news is, it’s not a liberal movie. Nor is it a love letter to immigrants, which drove much of the controversy.In fact, the only time the words “liberal” or “conservative” were even mentioned was toward the end, when the character Maxwell Lord (played by Sean Gunn—the brother of Superman director James Gunn) used them as a gag line to condemn Lex Luthor.
The wokeness is minimal. (In fact, if you squint really hard, you could almost detect a conservative message: Among the film’s themes is family, identity, and — in a very sweet moment — the superpower of loving, selfless parents.) Which means, Superman doesn’t date Batman; there are no doe-eyed immigrants in ICE cages; and Wonder Woman doesn’t shave her head and demand trans in sports. (Although, the less we could say about the Green Lantern’s haircut, the better. Eww.)
But the bad news is, it isn’t a great movie.
That’s not to say it’s atrocious. It’s not — at times, the action is snappy, the dialogue is clever, and the eye-candy is delicious. The casting was well done: David Corenswet, the new Superman, was clearly inspired by Christopher Reeves, and that’s not a criticism. He’s got the chops to carry the cape. Rachel Brosnahan is Lois Lane, and although she doesn’t have much of an arc, she looks and sounds the part. (Beginning with the original 1978 ‘Superman’ and the dreadfully miscast Margot Kidder, we’ve yet to see the definitive Hollywood portrayal of Ms. Lane.) Nicholas Hoult’s rendition of the dastardly Lex Luthor is far more menacing than anything Gene Hackman or Jesse Eisenberg had ever envisioned.
Still, for a main character who embodies hope, faith, and goodness, much of the film is a joyless slog: Superman is beaten, bloodied, imprisoned, pounded, depowered, and manhandled. Perhaps James Gunn deemed it necessary to establish Superman’s vulnerabilities, but he went overboard. The fantasy of being Superman — soaring through the sky, putting evildoers in their place, and protecting our loves ones — is minimized. Instead of being blessed with great, Godlike powers, his Kryptonian lineage is a tragic curse.
James Gunn excels at quippy, sarcastic one-liners, punctuated with '70s-era music drops. A Big Blue Boy Scout like Superman isn’t a good fit for Gunn’s strengths. Gunn is just too damn cynical and jaded to grasp the wide-eyed earnestness of a Kansas farm boy who simply strives to help others.
Cynical, jaded, quippy, and sarcastic worked well in Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy. Not here: There’s a tonal dissonance that’s jarring.
As for the political messaging, there’s not much to it. There’s a plot about a powerful European nation invading its much-weaker neighbor, which seems loosely based on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (If so, the “Putin” stand-in pays a very high price for his evil actions. This dictator also had a haircut that was nearly as crappy as the Green Lantern’s.) And at the halfway point, we learn that the social media trolls bad-mouthing Superman are, quite literally, monkeys on a keyboard: To flip public opinion against the Last Son of Krypton, these monkeys manufacture fake controversies — a plot element that certainly seemed inspired by Gunn’s own Twitter/X misadventures.
But it’s more a by-the-books, paint-by-numbers superhero movie than a leftwing political screed. There are evil clones, superpowers, scary aliens, a pocket universe, and a space-time rip that could destroy the world. (There’s also a super-powered dog named Krypto, who was more grating than adorable.) After so many false starts and disappointing results in the “DC Universe,” Gunn and Warner Bros were more concerned with monetizing Red America than converting it.
Naturally, this doesn’t mean James Gunn has abandoned his woke worldview. He’s still a very liberal filmmaker with very liberal beliefs in a very liberal industry. But before he can fully let his freak flag fly, he’s gotta get this franchise off the ground.
Even for liberals, a bad box office is Kryptonite.
Maybe next time.
GRADE: B
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