I’m a huge comic fan. I try to support any and all visual media they cross into. And interestingly, I’ve found that characters I don’t follow in comic book format have been very fun movies. With that in mind, I will say that I love DC and Marvel in different ways. Batman and the Justice League and the X-Men and Spiderman are all books I enjoy. Batman takes up almost a third of all DC content they put out. And the X-Men likewise take up about that much with Marvel. 

I want the DCU to succeed on the silver screen the way Marvel has. James Gunn is banking on Superman to create the foundation (remember this, I’ll get back to it later.)

My first regret is that I paid extra to see it in 3D. This movie reminds me a lot of the Brandon Routh feature Superman Returns. As I recall, that movie had select 3D moments where we were instructed to put the glasses on for what amounted to maybe 15 minutes of 3D. It was a waste of money and effort back then, and James Gunn replicated that feeling for me with this one. 

The movie starts with an interesting lead in about Superman losing his first fight. Ever. He’s beaten and on the brink of death it seems. But Krypto comes and drags him back to the Fortress of Solitude. We don’t see the moment that led to Superman plummeting to such a close landing of his Fortress, but it is lucky he landed so close. Because Krypto is like a cat with the zoomies, unconcerned with anything beyond bouncing around. Eventually Krypto drags him into the fortress where robot assistants help Superman into a “healing chamber” of sorts. After a few quick moments he feels good enough to go back to the fight. They say something about him being only at 83%, and I wondered why didn’t he simply stay for another minute to get back to 100?

Returning to Metropolis, he resumes his fight with the Hammer of Boravia. As the fight restarts we see Lex Luthor watching it and yelling out commands. At first I thought it was recording it and giving commands to the cameras. But then realized he was dictating the actions of the Hammer. Calling out combo commands to the tech geeks with joysticks, much like you might with a friend playing Mortal Kombat as you try and guide them on how to  do a kill combo. The problem right off the bat with this is that the combo moves are too complex in numbering. Pretty sure I heard 83K and like 47V. There has to be reasons for the numbers and letters, and that implies there are like 2600 command options. But Luthor is running around yelling them as it plays out in real time for him. I kinda dig the idea in a silly way, but Luthor is supposed to be a genius bad ass. This made him feel more like a twenty something in grandma’s basement playing on his PS5. Eventually the fight ends and we see the Hammer join Lex after taking a detour through some teleport tube that we later find out is a Pocket Dimension. 

Clark goes to the Daily Planet where he has a story with an interview with Superman. This felt a lot to me like Peter Parker taking pics of Spider-Man. But we meet Jimmy Olson and Lois here, staples that must exist in a Superman story. I’m going to jump around a bit, because my thoughts are doing that.

We also meet the Justice Gang, formed of Guy Gardner (the leader), Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific. Nathan Fillion is amazing as Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern I have always liked the least. Hawkgirl is the character here I always liked the most, but her role was fairly forgettable, beyond the whole “I bash people in the face with my morning star.” (Batman is accused of being too violent and killing people without it being acknowledged, but if your weapon of choice is a morning star and your target is the face… you are killing everyone you hit.) Mr. Terrific is the final member here, and I have never really cared much about him, but oh man. I loved him in this. 

Superman was attacked by the Hammer of Boravia because he stopped that country from invading a neighbor. Luthor gets ahold of a video from Superman’s Kryptonian parents that indicate he has been sent to Earth to subjugate the planet (something he never knew until Luthor got the video.)  These actions caused the government to want to arrest him, and naturally he turns himself in. Lois doesn’t accept this, and goes to the Justice Gang to get their help. Guy is a jerk and refuses, Hawkgirl can’t be bothered to do anything, and Mr. Terrific eventually agrees. As they go to use his ship, we are given one of the many very dry comedic attempts in this movie, as the garage door takes forever to open. Terrific and Lois go to the military camp (Luthor operated?) where Superman was last seen on Earth (Terrific had a tracker letting him follow where Superman had gone.) Terrific doesn’t care at all about all the hostile military around him until he decides to act. Starting with putting a force field around Lois, he then engages with what feels like 30 Iron Man style military soldiers and 20 tech geeks that would never actually run up on someone like Terrific. Bad writing. But this scene was the absolute best of the movie. This moment made me interested in Mr. Terrific, he was like Neo fighting off 100 Agent Smiths. It looked like he had no chance, but in reality the 30-1 odds were so far unbalanced in his favor that he never broke a sweat. And this is actually an interesting problem with the movie. It’s not that I didn’t like Superman, but Guy and Terrific stole the show. If there had been 45 minutes more of them, I would have been thrilled! 

Superman disappearing in the camp is because there is another portal going into the Pocket Dimension. Terrific is appalled by this because of the danger to the planet. A danger Luthor doesn’t seem to care about. Inside the Pocket Dimension Luthor has set up a prison containing anyone Luthor wanted to put there, including an ex who posted something online he objected to. The escape from the Pocket Dimension is rather chaotic and introduces some elements that are a bit silly. The anti-proton river and a potential black hole. The river itself flows into the black hole. Superman can’t escape from it, and once again needs Krypto to save him. The second time it happens in the movie, and the final battle has Krypto save him a third time. Without Krypto, Superman never has a chance for a sequel movie. Everyone “important” escapes the Pocket Dimension before the portal implodes. An issue that is about to come back. 

Because to further Luthor’s plan, he forces his tech geeks to reopen the destroyed portal. An action that creates a dimensional rift emanating from that portal. A rift that threatens to destroy the planet. But Luthor wants to use it as bait to draw out Superman so he can kill him. Which leads to a fight between Superman and the two meta goons (Ultraman and the Engineer) loyal to death to Luthor. In a baseball stadium. Wait, I feel like Superman in a baseball stadium was used in a movie before. This fight culminates in the three combatants going into space because Superman has had his lungs filled with nanite that will kill him. But somehow going into space and then crashing back to earth ejects them from his lungs. No reason why this works, at least Batman explains how he overcomes any obstacle with his genius preparations. 

And that fight leads to the revelation that Ultraman is a clone of Superman, but is controlled by Luthor. Remember the video game combo move commands? And how I said Krypto would save Superman again? In the final battle between them, Superman tells Krypto to play with the “toys.’ Meaning the floating drones that seem to enable the combo commands from Luthor. It does seem dumb though. If Superman realizes those are so important, why not use his heat vision to destroy them? 

And the rift thing! It literally emanates from the military camp across the river and opens up into Metropolis. Tearing buildings in half. Toppling skyscrapers. As Luthor plays Nero fiddling from the sky. His tech geeks pleading with him to let them close the rift. And we saw the black hole in the rift while Superman and Krypto fought Ultraman! This is a classing situation of not being able to put the genie back in the bottle. The rift damage isn’t reversible. At least it shouldn’t be. I honestly would have had more respect for this plot point if Metropolis had been partially destroyed permanently. The rift becoming a horrific scar and dangerous place in this new world. Instead we get a post credit scene where Terrific and Superman are looking at a building that has been “put back together” but the foundation is not perfect. And that is how I feel about this movie. A foundation of the new DCU that is flawed. Can it hold up and be what things are built on? Yes. But this wasn’t the sort of movie I walked out of excited about. My thoughts were racing about all the things I wrote here, and many more. And I liked David Corenswet as Superman. I won’t say that I loved him, but I liked him a lot. He felt like Tom Welling from Smallville. And that is a good thing. Luthor in this, though, never felt like a real threat. His actions didn’t really make sense. Luthor is the go to villain for Superman, and this is the 10th live action actor playing him (I think.) It is hard to say whether the actor in this one did a bad job, because I think his role was written poorly.

I like James Gunn, but he didn’t hit a home run here. A stand up double. And that isn’t a bad thing, just not a great thing. But sometimes the home run is a rally killer, and the stand up double is a rally booster. I hope this launches things. For me, Gunn is hit and miss in DC. I loved Peacemaker, hated Creature Commandos, and am lukewarm on Superman.

I think I’m going to give the movie a 6 star rating. A lot of what I said here was negative, but there was a lot I enjoyed. I feel like in a discussion I would likely waver between 4-8 depending on how the conversation was going.