This post is going to be a bit different. There's no spiritual point to it. It's just my review of Superman (2025).
I got around to watching Superman (2025) yesterday. To be honest, I went into it with a bias against it because of WB's behavior towards Zack Snyder, Henry Cavill, and the others of that era of DC films. I also waited until I didn't have to pay full price and picked up a Blueray leftover from Black Friday for $10. So, that's my disclosure. I've seen every Superman series and movie since George Reeves' Adventures of Superman and Christopher Reeve's quadrilogy (also a large amount of the animated movies and series over the last forty to forty-five years), so I think I'm fairly qualified to give my opinion on this one.
First, David Corenswet did well in his role, as did Rachel Brosnahan. That is, I think they did well with the material which was given to them. The same is true of Nicolas Hoult. I don't think any of the actors in this movie delivered a subpar performance. The special effects were good and were what we've come to expect from movies of this genre in 2025.
But I do have a gripe. It felt to me like the movie tried too hard to be a comedy rather than a superhero movie. Jokes and intentionally comedic moments were inserted at random and in places where, honestly, they just weren't appropriate. Another gripe is the lack of character development when compared to their counterparts in previous Superman iterations. Jonathan and Martha Kent stand out as prime examples, but Lex Luthor's character suffers from this as well. The characters felt far too two dimensional. The only ones who demonstrated more depth to them were Lois Lane's and Superman's. While I realize Gunn was going for a stricter adaptation of the comic book characterizations, it felt jarring when compared to the depth given to them in previous adaptations (and yes, Man of Steel weighs in heavily here, but so does the Chris Reeve movies and even Superman Returns; it's unfair to bring in Smallville and Superman and Lois because they had far more time to develop and flesh out their characters than a movie has).
This movie might be a silly one to throw on every so often, but it dodges or barely addresses the big questions asked by the Superman mythos, and when it does, I feel like it mishandles them. To be clear, this isn't the fault of the actors. They all did well with what they had, but what they were given felt like it went out of its way to avoid being anything other than a shallow Saturday matinee movie. For me, it was jarring and disjointed.
This is just my opinion, and I'm sure many will disagree. If you really liked it, that's great. Not saying I wouldn't watch it again, but given all of the Superman material that came before it, I think Gunn could have done a lot better.
As a follow up, I rewatched Man of Steel in order to compare it with Superman (2025). Disclosure, I already went into it with a bias towards Man of Steel to begin with. Also disclosure, I didn't start out that way.
Initially, I was reluctant to see Man of Steel because I had enjoyed Superman Returns and Brandon Routh's portrayal of the character. He was a spot on drop in for Christopher Reeve and really brought back that feel of the Donner/Salkind movies. Kevin Spacey was phenomenal as Lex Luthor in that one as well, and probably the best cinematic Lex Luthor portrayed to date, or at least on par with Gene Hackman's portrayal. I felt WB had given them a seriously raw deal by not bringing them back, especially when Superman Returns was profitable. And I didn't like that they had cast a British actor for an American midwestern role.
Then I read the novelization, and I started seeing the trailers and clips on YouTube, and I eventually bought the DVD when it came out. Man of Steel didn't just grow on me, it spoke to me, especially as a kid who also struggled with being different and had challenges growing up. I loved the portrayal of Clark's powers as a disability at first before they became his superpowers. The casting, the acting, the writing, the story telling, the grounded realism that it brought to the Superman mythos was intense, even with and especially with the motivations and depth of the characters. This was superhero film raised to the level of a near biblical epic with Shakespearean overtones. It should have won awards in my opinion, but the Academy didn't tend to recognize superhero films then, which is a crying shame for a number of films and actors which deserved it (Robert Downey Jr.'s final scene in Endgame comes to mind).
Man of Steel became my favorite cinematic portrayal on its own merits even when I was initially against it.
Knowing this, I purchased Superman (2025) on sale and decided to give it a go and a chance to change my mind. To be honest, I was disappointed with it. It had its moments, but when compared with Man of Steel, those moments felt unearned. In comparison with Man of Steel, Superman felt surreal and not able to reach the threshold for suspension of disbelief. The characters didn't feel like real people, which, I suppose is what the director was going for in trying to harken back to the silver age of DC comics but it felt jarring. It was difficult to empathize with any of them whereas in Man of Steel, you could empathize with nearly all of the characters, including the villains, and understand to some extant where they were coming from even if you disagreed.
To me, having recently watched both movies, comparing Man of Steel to Superman (2025) is like comparing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings to, perhaps, the movie adaptation of Eragon, if not Robin Hood: Men in Tights (though at times Superman feels like it tries too hard to be the latter while maintaining a facade of Superhero drama and action).
I know there are people who prefer the most recent movie. I really wish I would have been more pleasantly surprised by it, but I just can't see how anyone would say it's the better adaptation. Maybe something for kids on a Saturday afternoon, but it just doesn't reach the level of filmmaking and storytelling that MoS does.
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