If you grew up reading comic books, you know that myriad artists and writers have touched characters throughout history, especially those that have been around for more than 60, 70, and even 80 years. While most of our heroes have their core values and aspects that make them who and what they are, in an art of limitless storytelling, those characters often shift, in appearances and actions, sometimes for an issue or two, sometimes for years; however, they always come back to the core of who and what they are.
In the 2010s, director Zack Snyder did something similar when he took on the character of Superman in Man of Steel. Rather than the optimistic, hopeful, and colourful character that Christopher Reeve embodied on the big screen, Snyder’s version of Superman skewed darker, as the alien from another world tried to find his place on Earth. Snyder’s take on Superman, and the entire gamut of DC characters he worked with in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) is, was, and remains valid, even if the tone of his film’s were closer to classic outside of standard comic book continuity stories like The Dark Knight Returns and Kingdom Come. Those films have their devotees and are a solid trilogy that made big swings and aimed for their own sort of grandeur.
Just like comic book stories, having highlighted a different vision of the Man of Steel for the last ten years, Warner Brothers and the newly created DC Studios have, with 2025’s Superman from writer/director James Gunn, repositioned the character as the colourful beacon of good that’s made him so enduring for nearly a century. Embodied with a “gee golly” approach by David Corenswet, this is a film and a character with its heart in the right place. Corenswet’s hero’s approach is simple – to do good. It’s how he’s been raised by his adoptive Earth parents, and it’s that mentality that makes Superman, the man and movie, tick.
The online discourse about James Gunn making a “woke” Superman film is asinine. The character’s roots are in the immigrant journey, having been created by two Jewish individuals, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the latter a Canadian who immigrated to the U.S. when he was nine years old. Superman is an alien, an immigrant, amongst his chosen people and home. That’s who the character is, and Gunn’s film, while not beating us over the head with it, certainly makes Clark’s desire to find his place a key piece of it.
As a film, Superman mostly worked for me. The performances by the lead actors, David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), and Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor), are all fantastic. The aspects of the movie that I was trepidatious about, namely the use of the Justice Gang and the potential for them to overwhelm the main character, proved to be unfounded. While there were storyline moments that did feel a bit overstuffed (specifically the threat of the pocket universe destroying the planet), overall, this new Superman and DC universe felt fresh.
Superman is a far cry from the previous DC slate of films, not to mention the massively successful yet currently floundering Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story of a hopeful man’s heroism while trying to do good is closest in tone and spirit to Captain America: The First Avenger, a movie released way back in 2011. While that MCU film is an outlier in many ways, Superman is theoretically setting the tone for how the new DC Studios will position and portray their heroes and universe.
I hope people respond to it, because in 2025, we could all use a little hope right now.