Superman (2025)
Running time: 129 minutes (2 hours, 9 minutes)
Rating: MPA – PG for violence, action and language
DIRECTOR: James Gunn
WRITER: James Gunn (based characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster)
PRODUCERS: James Gunn and Peter Safran
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Henry Braham (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Craig Alpert and William Hoy
COMPOSERS: David Fleming and John Murphy
SUPERHERO/FANTASY/ACTION
Starring: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced, Skyler Gisondo, Maria Gabriela de Faria, Sara Sampaio, Wendell Pierce, Beck Bennett, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Neva Howell, Bradley Cooper, Angela Sarafyan, and Sean Gunn
Superman is a 2025 American superhero, fantasy, and action film from writer-director James Gunn. It is the first film in the new DC Comics cinematic universe known as the “DC Universe.” The character, Superman, first appeared in the comic book, Action Comics #1 (on-sale date of April 18, 1938), and was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who also created other characters and situations related to Superman. In Superman, the embodiment of truth, justice, and the human way must reconcile his desire to help humanity with a shocking revelation about his alien heritage.
Superman opens threes years after the metahuman, Superman (David Corenswet), revealed himself to the people of Metropolis. His alter-ego, Clark Kent (David Corenswet), works as a reporter for “The Daily Planet,” where he has a relationship with fellow reporter, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan). Lois knows that Clark is Superman. She knows that he is Kal-El, a baby sent from the planet, Krypton, by rocket ship to Earth. Lois also knows that Clark was raised in Smallville, Kansas by his adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell), a fact he has kept secrets from others.
Superman recently stopped the country of Boravia, an ally of the United States, from invading its neighboring country, Jarhanpur. As the film begins, Superman has just received a beat-down from Boravia's own metahuman, the Hammer of Boravia. Things are not as they seem, however, as brilliant billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) has launched a secret plot to destroy Superman, whom he sees not as a superhero, but as an existential alien threat to mankind. With the help of his lackeys, Ultraman and The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria), Luthor believes that he has the science and technology – the brain power – to beat Superman.
But Superman is not the only metahuman who is a superhero. He occasionally gets help from the “Justice Gang”: Michael Holt/Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), and Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced). And Clark Kent will need all the friends he can get; a complete version of the broken message his Kryptonian parents, Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafyan), sent with him has come to light. Now, some of the people of the world are starting to feel differently about Superman just when they need him the most.
Superman is a good film, but not a great film. Overall, I like it, but I found myself rather cool to it as I watched it in a local theater last night. I must admit that I felt the same way about the previous two attempts to reboot the Superman film franchise, director Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2006) and director Zack Snyder's Man of Steel (2013). Like Superman (2025), the plot and narratives of these earlier films are over-stuffed with subplots, settings, and characters that make the overall plot and narrative struggle to come together. The over-stuffings are like roadblocks that force the central plot and narrative to veer off their most obvious and productive path. I don't think the new Superman is as awkward in these areas as the aforementioned Superman reboots, but I do believe that the new film spends its first half bouncing around ideas, subplots, themes, relationships and conflicts. To me, it is obvious that Superman 2025 borrows the big action set pieces of Man of Steel and also follows Superman Return's veneration of director Richard Donner and star Christopher Reeve's respective work on the Superman film franchise (1978-87).
There are things about the new Superman film that I really like. I think the actors and the way they play the characters, for the most part, are nearly perfect. The best thing about David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman is that he is the first actor that I have accepted as a true heir to the late Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), who is the gold standard when it comes to a cinematic Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman. In a way, Superman 2025 offers its audience a vision of Superman as the quintessential nice guy the way Christopher Reeve and Superman: The Movie (1978) did.
Also, Rachel Brosnahan is a true heir to my favorite cinematic Lois Lane, the late Margot Kidder (1948-2018), Christopher Reeve's co-star. I also got a kick out of Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific. I liked him in his early roles in such films as Twilight (2008) and X-Men: First Class (2011), and I'd like to see him play Mister Terrific as a lead in either film or television. I like Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, but the character is played way too over-the-top, but I think Hoult as Luther will be a huge benefit to future DC Universe films.
I obviously don't like James Gunn's Superman as much as I enjoyed his work on Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, which ended with the fantastic Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). Still, the new Superman is both a fresh start and a start in the right direction.
B
★★★ out of 4 stars
Friday, July 11, 2025
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