Superman (2025) is written & directed by James Gunn. It stars David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced, Anthony Carrigan, Maria Gabriela de Faria, Skyler Gisondo, Sara Sampaio, Wendell Pierce, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Neva Howell, Mikaela Hoover, Zlatko Buric, and Frank Grillo. Three years after adopting the title of Superman, new information revealed by Lex Luthor (Hoult) forces Clark Kent/Kal-El to reevaluate his Kryptonian heritage, including what it truly means to be human. With violent conflicts brewing around the world, Superman finds his support from the public at an all-time low. When it becomes clear that this is all part of Luthor’s game to discredit him, Superman sets out to remind the world what a true hero looks like—a harbinger of truth, justice, and the human way. 

As the titular hero, Corenswet is everything I could’ve hoped for. He effortlessly embodies the character’s do-gooder, golden boy personality without making him feel robotic. This is because he maintains a level of emotional vulnerability through his struggle to discover what defines him as an individual. These kinds of struggles, including his relationship with Lois Lane (Brosnahan), help ground the character because they’re internal. Sure, Superman can pick up a skyscraper and fly it across an ocean, but just like you and me, he still debates simple matters of morality. No matter what he achieves physically, his emotions are distinctly human in some of the best and worst ways. This human behavior also extends to his relationship with his superpowered dog, Krypto—an unruly young canine that’s sure to remind any dog owner of what it’s like to train a new pup.   

As Superman’s arch nemesis, Lex Luthor, Nicholas Hoult is good, but not particularly impressive. The character is cartoonishly petty in all the right ways, but is never fully established as a competent villain. Don’t get me wrong, he’s intelligent and evil; just never at the same time. Therefore, Lex never actually intimidates or scares the viewer. How is the audience supposed to see him as a threat to Superman when he doesn’t even feel like a threat to normal people? Some may argue that the character is supposed to be this way, which, in that case, raises the question: “Is he supposed to be forgettable?” 

Rachel Brosnahan is fittingly cast as Lois Lane, so it’s a shame that the film often seems uncertain of how to integrate her. She’s frequently asked to lead scenes that fail to support the larger story, and the script doesn’t provide her with even a semblance of an arc. This isn’t Brosnahan’s fault, but it points to one of the film’s larger issues: it’s overstuffed roster of characters. 

The large cast of supporting heroes and humans is a surprisingly strong bunch, especially Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern/Guy Gardner and Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher. I can’t wait to see more of these characters, but I just wish I could’ve seen more of them in this particular film. They all receive their various moments to shine, but the script never actually conveys what makes each of them unique beyond their powers or quirks. In other words, there’s no understanding of what drives them on a human level, so they just feel like tools to propel the plot. For example, the Justice Squad is established as a team of heroes with a level of moral flexibility, but as soon as the script requires them to reconsider their ways, they do so without any kind of inciting incident/reason. They simply do things, and the script appears to be uninterested in explaining why.

  Before seeing the film, I was skeptical that this new DC universe would somehow feel wholly distinct from the MCU. Well, I was only half correct. Visually, the bright colors and CGI-heavy action setpieces are dangerously similar to what the MCU has served up over the last two decades. This initially causes the film to feel like more of the same, but it eventually establishes a unique identity through a combination of minor distinctions from its MCU counterpart. For example, the film takes place in a time when superheroes have existed for years, allowing it to skip all the cliche origin stories and gratingly slow world-building featured in the MCU. The film kicks off the new DC universe in a place that already feels more (or at least equally) complex and interesting than the MCU without needing 30+ films to achieve it. Trusting the intelligence of your audience goes a long way, and with Superman, James Gunn proves it. 

The film never feels particularly groundbreaking in its general formula, but it consistently finds ways to be ferociously fun despite its lack of originality or depth. It reminds me of a bowl of Fruit Loops—each loop tastes the same, but that taste is a pleasant one. Whether the colors actually affect the taste is irrelevant, because what matters is that I think they do. In other words, I can’t explain why this movie works so well, but the fact is, it does. It assaults your senses with so much bright pop nonsense that it transcends feeling like a comic book film and instead feels more like an actual, physical comic book. It leans into everything franchises like the MCU desperately want to ground, and by doing so, is unhindered by the things that make that universe so stale. 

Overall, this is a fast-paced, fun, and refreshing reintroduction to DC and its characters, while also succeeding as a satisfying standalone Superman story. It’s not a particularly surprising or profound film, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. Audiences around the world are sure to be unoffended, which spells big profits at the box office. I would have liked the supporting characters to be fleshed out further, and I would have also preferred a less predictable story, but these are things that can easily be improved upon in a sequel. If you hate superhero/comic book stories, this won’t change your mind. In fact, it cranks everything you probably hate about the genre up to eleven. For everyone else, this pretty much achieves precisely what it needed to. B-