‘Superman’ Review: James Gunn Gives DC Studios’ Crown Jewel A Gleaming Polish with Help from David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan

From his breakout as writer-Director, Slitherto Guardians of the GalaxyJames Gunn Has Made His Mission to Lighten the Oppressive Darkness of So Much Contemporary Sci-Fi with Irrevert Humor and the Exhilaration of Anabashed Genre Geek. For his First Entry As New CO-CHAIR-Alongside Producer Peter Safran-of DC Studios, Gunn Brings His Signature Approach to Superman. The Result Is Very Much A Comic-Book Action-Adventure But One With A Warm Human Heart. It Reveals An Obvios Love for Richard Donner’s 1978 Event Movie Headlined by Christopher Reeve, and for 1981’s Arguable Even Better 1981 Superman IIwith sliding into reverential self-serioousness.

That was one of the weaknesses of Bryan Singer’s Joyless and Swiftly Forgotten 2006 Effort, Superman ReturnsWhile by Contrast, Distancing Itelf so Strenously from the Donner Model Was The Fatal Flaw of Zack Snyder’s Turgid Man of Steel in 2013, Thought that doom-and-gloom saga has its champions. Factoring in the Superhero smackdowns and team-up that have cluttered cluttered dc’s Output in the 2000s, The New Millennium havenium have not be kind to kal -l, The Refugee ALIEN FRIM KRYPTON. Shuster in 1938.

Gunn’s ScreenPlay Can Certainly Be Faulted for Piling on Too Many Elements, Making It at Times Seem Lumpy and OverstUffed. But What Matters Most is that movie is fun, pacy and enjoyable, a broth of Fresh Air Sweethened by a Deep AFFECTION FOR THE MATERIAL AND BOOSTED by a:

David Corenswet Makes An Outstanding Superman/Clark Kent, His Performance Loaded with Self-ilf, Charm and Poignant Vulneracy As He Wrestles awake WAS BASED ON A LIE. Corenswet’s Funny, Scrappy Rapport with Rachel Brosnahan’s Whip-Smart Lois Lane-Possibly The Sharpest and MOST CAPTIVATING INTERPREATION OF THE ACE Daily Planet Reporter Since Margot Kidder – Makes Their Every Scene Together a Delight.

Nicholas Hoult Dials Down The Cartoonish Villary of Many Previous Lex Luthors, Leaning Into The Evil Genius Aspect of the Character in Ways that Heighten the Stakes. BUT ALTHOUGH HE’S The Smartest Guy in Just About Any ROOM, HOULT’ LEX LEX IS ALSO PETULANT AND INSECURE, DRIVEN BY JEALUSY Over The World’s Athym. Nefarious Schemes.

The Movie Opens with A Quick Primer on the Centuries-Eld History of Metahumans on Earth, Leading to Superman’s First Defeat at the Hands of One of Them. He’s introducened collapsed and Bleeding in the Snow, Summoning Just Enough Strengh to Whistle for his Trusty Dog Krypto It’s Playtime, Not A Call for Help.

Krypto, Who Also Sports A Red Cape But Behaves Like an an Undisciplined Puppy-School Reject, Borders on Cutsy. But Gunn is the Guy Who Made a Gnetically Engineered Talking Raccoon and A Sentient Humanoid Tree Beloved Members of the Gang in Guardians of the GalaxySO SUPERDOG IS WELL WITHIN HIS REACH IN A MOVIE THAT, MERCIFULLY, GOES MUCH LIGHTER ON THAT FRANCHISE’s Bro-Ish Humor.

WHEN Krypto Finally Gets the Message and Drags the wounded Superman Back to His Crystalline Refuge, The Fortress of Solite, A Team of Robot Helpers Gets to Work on Repa. They Heal Him Physically With A Blast of Sunlight and Soothe Him Emotionally by Replaying The Partalally LOST FREEWELL HOLOGRAM MESSAGE FROM HIS PARARents, His Last Remaining Link To Since.

Identified Only by Numbers, The Custodial Droids Are A Nice Touch. The Chattiest of Them, no. 4.

Back in Metropolis, Superman Again Gets Hammered by the Hammer of Boravia, A Hulking, Heavily Armored Mystery Figure Who Apps to Have Similar Powers to Superman and Ten. (The Character’s Identity Shouldn’s Be Too Hard to Guess for Longtime Comics Aficionados.)

The Hammer Rips Up Much of Downtown, Causion Millions in Damages, But Shifts The Blue by Saying The Mayhem Was A Resports to Superman’s Attack on His Country’s Armed Forces. But Superman Claims His Actions Were to Prevent a War in Wich People Were Going to Die, Following Boravia’s Attempt to Invade The Poor Neighboring Country of Jarhanpur. The Shady Boravian President (Zlatko Burering) Insists That Hammer Is A Vigilante with No Ties to His Government.

Unsurpringly, This Chaos Is Being Orchestrated by Lex, High Up in His Glass Tower at LuthorCorp, with A Bluetooth Headset and A Team of Black-Uniforified Techies at He have every concern fight move preprogrammed, Enabling HIM to SOUT NUMBERS AT HIS CREW Like A Football Coach Calling Games from the Sidelines.

Lex is a tech billionaire Very Much in the Musk/Zuckerberg Mode, But Hoult Gives Him Sufficient Ambiguity to Blur The Lines of His Villary Between. Someone Who Just Wants Absolute Power at Any Price.

Gunn Takes The Vast Canon of Superman Lore – from Variouss of the Comics to TV Shows Like Smallville To the Donner Films – and Treats It Like A Grab Bag, Plucking Elements from Many Sources.

That includes lex’s most Valused Ally, Angela Spica (María Gabriela de Faría), Aka The Engineer, A Dark-Eyed Beauty Whote-Enriched Blood Allows Her to Morph Body WHATEVER FORM IS REQUID-BE IT BUZZSAW HANDS OR TENTACLE-LIKE CABLES THAT CAN HACK INTO Any Computer Circuit. That skill proves useful with the fortress of solitude of Solite’s Digital Hub, Allowing Lex to Release a Doctored Copy Without Mercy.

I Plot Points Like This That Show How Superhero Sci-Fi Might Interst with Real-World ai Conceerns-The Idea that Fabricated Information Can Be Circulated to Turn A Reverted. Seems Like Fantasy. Only Slightly Lex Relatable Is Lex’s Fleet of Trained Monkeys at Computer Moniters, Flooding Social Media with Falsehoods and Conspiracty Theories and Coming Up.

There’s a Lot Going on in Gunn’s Script, Including A Luthor-Construced “Pocket-Verse” that houses his own cavernous hi-tech prison; Rex Mason, or Metamorpho (Played by The Wonderful Anthony Carrigan From Barry), a humanoid exploited by lex for his shifting chemical makeup, which allows human to transform body parts even intens kryptonite; And the Metahuman Justice League.

That Trio of Corporate-Backed Law EnforCers Includes Tech Wizard and Man of Many Cool Gadgets Mister Terrific (EDI Gathegi); Airborne Warrior Hawkgirl (Isabel Merced); And their self-appointed, self-inflated captain guy Gardner, Better Known as Green Lantern (A Drolll Nathan Fillion), Who Has Hands-Down The Worst Bowl Cut and Dye Jeb in Metro Jeb.

Paradoxically, The Human Heart That Guns the Story Is The Alien from Krypton. Corenswet Brings Such Warmth to the ROLE THAT HE Anchors the Film Every Time It Threatens to Veer Off Into Overly Busy Fantasy. Lex’s Sabotage Proivers SO Effective that It Sparks An Existential Crisis in Superman, Who at His Lowest Point Retreats to the Farm of His Adaptive Parents (Neva Howl and Pruitt TayLor VINCE. It’s One of the Movie’s Loveliest and MOST AFFERTING INTERLUDES.

Corenswet Is Equally Strong As Clark, Tempering The Usual Nerdy Awkwardness and Giving Him More Confidentnce in His Role at the Daily Planetwith Making Him Too Slick. The Chief Contributing Factor Beyind His More Self-Posesed Clark Is That Gunn Removes The Mystery of His Dual Identity For Lois, Departing From The Usual Story by Reory by the Drops.

Ites, However, Remain A Secret in the Newsroom, from Cigar-Chomping Editor Perry White (Wendel Pierce, Underused, But Always Good To See Him), Steve Lombard (Beck Ben. Gisondo). Lois Plays Along at Work, Uping The Undercurrent of Romantic Frisson in Her Flirtatious, Teasing Banter with Clark, But Their One-One-One Time In Lois’ APARTMENT IS THE MOVIEA WEAPT

In One Amousing Moment, Lois Shrugs Off His Concerns About Exposure, Suggesting That People Are Bound to Figure It Out Sooner or Later, Prompting Clark To -Resses, But. Brosnahan and Corenswet Are Especialyly Disarming in A Scene in Whol Clark Agrees to Sit Down and Be InterViewed by Lois, After She Complaints ABOUT HIM ALWAYS. The Subtle Idea That Man of Steel Is Somewhat Controlling About His Media Profile Is Quite Funny.

Gunn also makes an appeling choice by having the Daily Planet Team Pile Into Mister Terrific’s T-Craft Flight Vessel to Help Rescue Superman and Stop An Impending Disaster. Jimmy, Boyish and Cocky As Ever, Proves A Real Asset Thanks to His Clandestine Connection with Lex’s Fashionista, Selfie-Snaping Girlfriend Eve (Sara sampaio). She’s Never Identified As the Miss Teschmacher Player Played So Divinely by Valerie Perrine in the Donner Films, Thought She’s One and the Same, and Maybe Not as SHALLOW AND DITZY as SEMS.

A Brief But Tantalizing Apperance of Another Canonical Superman Universe Character Near the End Whets the Appetite for An Installment Coming Next Year.

Pumped Up by DP Henry Braham’s Dynamic Camerawork, Beth Mickle’s Imaginative Production Design, The Effects Team’s Top-Notch CG Work and A Galvanzing ORCHESTRAL AND SYSTRAL AND SYSTRAL Fleming that weaves in the immortal John Williams Theme, Gunn’s Superman is overloaded, Even Muddled at Times, But Releentless Entaking. Perhaps It Biggest Strength is that It Sidesteps All The Revisionist Murk of Superheroes Onscreen in the Last Decade or Two and Reverters Almost to Anchanting State of Child-Like.