Superman Returns (Again) - How James Gunn's Reboot Defines DC's Future

Forbes

26-04-2025

This summer, you will believe a man can fly again. And again. And again. Superman returns to the big screen on July 11th this summer in writer-director (and DC Studios co-CEO) James Gunn's reboot that will define DC's future on the big screen.
David Corenswet stars in "Superman."
Gunn's film is Superman's eighth solo feature film and the character's twelfth live-action movie appearance, counting 1951's hour-long Superman and the Mole Men starring George Reeves in what was essentially a low-budget cinematic pilot launching The Adventures of Superman TV series a year later. Reeves' Superman was actually quite faithful to the depiction and persona in the early Superman comic strips, while his Clark was less cowardly and more of an intrepid reporter like Lois – they competed, and it was part of their friendly repertoire.
The 1978 one that started it all, Superman: The Movie, offered a comics-accurate adaptation of the character in all of his earnest corny charm. Christopher Reeve was born to the play the role if anyone was, making Clark Kent and his costumed alter ego two distinct performances that could've been played by different actors. Reeve's Clark put on a bumbling and cowardly display, in line with much of the early comic strip stories, but only gradually incorporated more of the investigative reporter elements.
Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor is an evil mad scientist with plans for destruction and domination, armed with Kryptonite and a subterranean lair shared. Superman stops crime, saves people from disasters, rescues kittens from trees, and demonstrates all of his famous powers in what were then eye-popping visual effects promoted as making you believe a man could fly. And in 1978, it did.
Superman II continued the approach of the first film, with superhuman villains threatening the world and Lex Luthor once again with his grubby fingers in the mix. Superman, however, is feeling disenchanted with his role as Earth's protector at the expense of his own personal happiness – namely, a love life with Lois Lane. The extended fight sequence in the middle of Metropolis offered even more dramatic action spectacle than the first film, and firmly established superhero cinema as a modern force to be reconned with.
But Superman III, for all of its charm – and there's much charm to be found, from Reeve's never less than 100% effort and performance to one of the coolest scenes in any Superman movie when Clark Kent does battle with his own cape-wearing identity. Still, the plot and production values were weak and the film relied heavily on camp and a comedic turn by Richard Pryor.
Superman IV was the worst of the bunch, by a wide margin. Terrible visual effects, bad plot, ridiculous villain, a cast who mostly sleepwalk through their roles – with the exception again of Reeve, who commits to the role fully and sells the themes about disarmament even while the movie falls apart around him.
Superman Returns was a worthy if flawed sequel to the first two Superman films, ignoring the third and fourth movie completely. Brandon Routh was a great Superman and could've made the role his own if given the time. Alas, the film's choice not to have Superman fight anybody, the love triangle and dominance of relationship drama, and the addition of a son were controversial choices among different corners of the audience and fandom. Routh's Clark and Superman were treated as mostly the same person, frankly, and Clark had only a few hints of Reeve's more comically bumbling persona, yet also lacked any notable distinctions as a character from his costumed alias.
So it was that after five films across 28 years, Superman's next appearance would finally be a reboot for new generations.
Man of Steel in 2013 introduced a very different type of Superman in Henry Cavill, with a grounded deconstructive approach similar to the popular billion dollar Dark Knight Batman trilogy from director Christopher Nolan. Nolan's 'grandfathering' of Man of Steel and David Goyer's script brought the same sensibilities the pair brought to Batman Begins, and combined with Zack Snyder's directing it established a mythic scale and counterpoint to Marvel Studio's MCU approach (which had just scored $1.5 billion with The Avengers a year prior).
The desaturated colors, somber tone, and questioning of Superman's place in the world – indeed, questioning whether humanity deserves him or is ready for him – were unexpected approaches and combinations at a time when Marvel's more mainstream and colorful, family-friendly approach had made superhero cinema the dominant force at the box office.
Still, Man of Steel shared a great deal in common with Superman and Superman II.
The origin story begins on Krypton and brings Kal-El to Earth, young Clark sets off in the world to find his purpose, and he discovers his origins via hologram of his father in a Kryptonian structure in the Arctic, all mirroring the 1978 film.
Then comes the arrival of General Zod and his two primary compatriots – a warrior woman and a silent hulking brute – who do battle with Superman around the city, causing much destruction and threatening the life of Lois Lane and her Daily Planet coworkers. Now add in Superman losing his powers temporarily when Zod's crew first arrives and needing to regain his powers via help from his father, Superman's flight high over Earth as he zooms toward the camera, and a few other homages.
(Maybe even at least consider that the theatrical version of Superman II seemed to suggest Superman killed Zod, Ursa, and Non, dropping them down into the freezing shafts of his Fortress of Solitude and then seen flying away with Lois in his arms. Deleted footage showed the trio of villains taken into custody. Interestingly, the theatrical film also implied Superman left Lex Luthor stranded in the Arctic as well.)
Cavill's Clark was an interesting throwback to George Reeves' intrepid reporter, lacking the bumbling personality and other aspects that perhaps drew more attention to Clark than if he just acted like a regular guy who was trying to be good at his job – few people would expect Superman to spend most of his life wearing glasses and a suit so that he could be a newspaper reporter of no notable personal distinction other than good local reporting. It's actually maybe the smartest play.
So Man of Steel was at once a nod to everything audiences generally knew and had seen from Superman on the big screen, but all of it modernized and made more serious, with upgraded visual effects to turn every super-powered event into an operatic and often destructive force. Viewers mostly liked or loved it, contrary to how its reputation is perceived these days – it earned an A- Cinemascore from audiences, and while considered 'Rotten' by site standards it still enjoys majority-positive reviews from critics at 57%.
Whatever flaws it had, it seemed audiences were intrigued enough and entertained enough to want to see more of this new Superman. Again, the proximity to The Dark Knight Trilogy and some of the same creative team members created the sense we could get a Superman trilogy comparable to the magic they worked with Batman.
Instead of standalone Superman movies like Nolan's Batman series, however, Man of Steel quickly evolved into a shared-universe setup. The most obvious choice, and one not just rumored but indeed investigated by Warner at the time, was to use The Dark Knight series and Man of Steel as part of the same new DC shared universe of films. But Nolan balked, and the studio agreed to honor a promise not to use his Batman again.
With a new Caped Crusader installed, Man of Steel's sequel became 2016's Batman v Superman. And now the deconstruction dominated the proceedings, something many of us loved but which most audiences felt was just too much too fast. Superman's death at the end of the film, after only his second cinematic appearance, was a big surprise and upset many fans. Superman's entire purpose was questioned in the film, not just by society and by other heroes like Batman (who sought to literally murder Superman), but even by Lois Lane and ultimately Superman himself.
Notice that this is one of the few films – Superman III being the other – in which the character's life and work as Clark gets as much attention and screen time (and is more important to the story, if you think about it) than his costumed heroics and battles.
While Batman v Superman scored $874 million at the worldwide box office, it was short of the $1 billion threshold Warner Bros. was chasing and shy of the roughly $900 million that would've been enough to avoid panic and to make more modest course-corrections. Instead, leadership already convinced nobody cared about Superman (because they didn't, apparently) wanted to veer even further away from the original plans and sequels, upending a planned Justice League trilogy of team-up films at the first signs of box office trouble.
But the trouble started before Batman v Superman was even released, because the same leadership reacting so badly to the film's results were the ones who demanded cuts to reduce Superman's screen time and gutting the emotional and informational reasons for the film's central conflict. The extended version of the film reveals how much Superman's own arc and story were gutted, and how much the reasoning for society's backlash against him took place.
The next time Cavill's Superman appeared on screen in the DCEU was the Frankenstein's monster of Justice League in 2017, a box office failure that was the beginning of the end for the shared DC universe, even though most people didn't fully realize it at the time. Only Aquaman with a fantastic $1 billion run managed to avoid the curse, as the next nine DCEU films in a row each grossed less than $450 million worldwide – indeed, six of them grossed less than $300 million, so bad was the mainstream worldwide rejection.
Theatrical Justice League's Superman starts out dead, wakes up crazy and attacks the other superheroes, and flies away with Lois for several hours and hangs out in some nice romantic scenes and hugs his mom while the other superheroes are desperately trying to find the space-demon who is about to destroy Earth and enslave the universe. Then he shows up at the climactic battle just in time to save the day.
But at no point is there any difference between who he is when he's wearing burial clothes, farm clothes, or a super-suit. Clark and Superman aren't treated differently, except that Clark is 'dead' in a small obituary in the newspaper and his resurrection will be harder to explain to the world than Superman's.
Clark starts out being the same guy he is as Superman in Man of Steel, then Clark evolves into a reporter whose work is most central to his role and arc in Batman v Superman, and then Clark is gone in Justice League… or is it Superman who's gone, since we're back to the man he was in Man of Steel in those regards? He's just himself both in and out of the suit. Except both were dead, and now only 'Superman' was resurrected by his costumed peers to fight to save the planet.
It's confusing, right? Maybe it should be, maybe that's part of the point about deconstructing costumed heroes with secret identities, or without them, or somewhere in between. Those are themes and questions the theatrical version doesn't remotely seem interested in exploring or reflecting, even though we can feel it baked somewhere deep into the ideas of this story. Where did they go? The answer didn't take long to arrive.
Zack Snyder's Justice League – released on HBO Max in 2021, after the studio repeatedly insisted it didn't exist and/or would never be released – showed us what might've been, if the studio had delayed release and let the filmmaker return to complete his project. Ironically, if after Aquaman's billion dollar success we'd gotten a two-part Justice League cinematic 'event' that basically split Snyder's version of the film into two two-hour parts generating at least $1 billion combined, then the DCEU's reputation would've been much better and might've sustained itself. And who knows, maybe in that scenario, James Gunn writes his Superman screenplay but as a reunion with Snyder (they teamed on 2004's Dawn of the Dead) in a Man of Steel sequel.
Coulda-woulda-shoulda aside, the point is Superman felt flat in the theatrical Justice League and sported laughably bad CGI to cover up his mustache, but he soared and redeemed the entire DCEU in ZSJL. He was a redemptive and inspiring character, a symbol of hope even to Batman. Clark was indeed back to the man he'd been in Man of Steel, except wiser and now sure of the man he both wanted and needed to be, as his father and mother always told him. His arc wasn't treated as an afterthought to a Batman-focused team-up. This was the Superman Cavill was supposed to be, meant to become, planned even, but the studio just never could wrap their heads around it.
And as tragic as that is, whatever caused the collapse of public trust in DC cinema, the result is the same. There just wasn't enough interest anymore from mainstream moviegoers to risk hundreds of millions of more dollars to try to course-correct again with a DCEU far removed from its origins and struggling for direction and tone. After Snyder's departure, no oversight of the DCEU ever had a chance to get set up and deliver its plan. Everything was in flux, leadership changed, and things were too far gone by the end to hope to revive them if that revival counted on audiences showing up and trusting the DCEU after nine straight years of obvious rejection.
Superman himself needed a reintroduction to the public. And now, he's getting one.
Tasked with building a new cinematic DC, Gunn and his co-CEO partner Peter Safran came up with a game plan that kicks off the new live-action big-screen DCU with this summer's Superman, starring David Corenswet looking every bit a worthy successor.
James Gunn's Superman is a clear return to the tone and style of the Christopher Reeve era in many ways, but modernized and with an idealized Metropolis akin to Superman Returns (the only Superman movie that made Metropolis feel like a unique place with a personality and 'look'). But it also clearly mirrors certain elements of the DCEU as well, and in fact carries over some characters and story arcs that will overlap both the DCEU and new DCU.
Indeed, the trailer and much of what the story is doing seems like it wouldn't take much to imagine this as a soft sequel to Man of Steel and the aftermath of Zack Snyder's Justice League – including thematically suggesting heroes need to try to be heroic, not always so antiheroic as became perhaps too popular across the genre to some degree, and to embrace their status as role-models and inspirations by appealing to humanity's better nature and presenting themselves in positive redemptive ways.
Which is to say, Gunn is in the envious position of having plenty of different approaches to look at and figure out what worked, what didn't work, and how to cherrypick the best perspectives and approaches and influences to create something new and yet honoring the legacy of what came before. It's no surprise this film's original working title was Superman: Legacy.
Let's break down some of the key choices Gunn makes. The comparisons to the first two Reeve films are obvious, in the return of the trunks and the Fortress of Solitude's appearance, as well as some more overt sense of humor and bright colorful embrace of the superhero comic book inspirations. There's also what looks like a somewhat more awkward persona for Clark again, too.
The 1978 Superman film established the template that's been used pretty consistently for most of the successful superhero movies, and in particular Marvel's MCU found tremendous success by precisely emulating and merely modernizing the same template originated in Superman. So for those who felt the DCU needed to pay more attention to what makes Marvel's films so consistently popular and successful, it's notable that the MCU got its own approach from Superman, and that Gunn seems to be returning to a strong application of that same approach again.
But Gunn knows DC is not Marvel, and one of the reasons I felt immediately comfortable with Gunn running the creative show for DC is because of the Gods and Monsters framing of his plans to reboot these films. DC uses the characters and their personal stories to talk about the larger mythic stories and themes, whereas Marvel uses the larger mythic stories and themes as frameworks to tell and examine personal stories. It's a slight shift in perspective, like the way Superman/Clark suggests the 'nerd' or ordinary person is secretly super-powered but Spider-Man/Peter suggests the super-powered person is really secretly just a nerdy ordinary person.
Gunn's previous DC work in Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, combined with his Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel (which are among the superhero movies that speak most to me on a deeply personal level) have already demonstrated how well he understands the differences in perspectives and themes and storytelling between DC and Marvel, and that he can apply the superhero cinematic template exactly the right way for the right characters and story – he's batting a thousand as far as I'm concerned.
The inclusion of Krypton is going to prove pivotal to why Superman will probably be a big hit and earn at least in the neighborhood of $700-800 million, in my too-early guesstimate. Families will turn out this time, and if the film is as good as the trailers suggest and hits that tone just right as I suspect Gunn will do (again, as he always does), the word of mouth will be relief and joy, and audiences will reward it.
There's every reason for it to succeed, when looked at this way. On the other hand, I have to be honest that there is another way to look at it.
Here is where I find myself worried. Gunn isn't stepping into pre-existing superhero worlds with blockbuster branding to tell these stories, as he did with Guardians and Suicided Squad. He's starting one from scratch, and has to build atop the previous failures without much room for error.
DC also previously tried to jumpstart their big-screen plans by leapfrogging to a pre-existing superhero world – they started with a solo Superman movie, even. And they did it alongside everyone's memories of a separate grounded blockbuster Batman franchise.
Even the trailers for Superman have echos of the Man of Steel and Batman v Superman trailers, including starting with Superman falling out of the sky into a desolate Arctic area. There's the darker and dirty costume, there are protests against him, there are a bunch of other superhero cameos fighting a big monster destroying a city, there's an alien spaceship over the city.
It all looks different and also the same, which is probably the intent. Win over those who loved what came before, show those who disliked what came before a version of 'this is what it should've done, right?' And for anyone who sat it out, give them a new entry point that might finally mix enough of the right ingredients to win them over – including Marvel fans, which is everybody basically these days due to the MCU.
Part of my concern is, we're still only a couple of years from the last DCEU movie, and I don't know that the sour taste in mainstream audiences' mouths has faded enough yet. Part of me believes the smartest move would've been to make Matt Reeves' The Batman series the fast-track priority and hold back Superman a couple of more years, so Batman could revive enthusiasm for DC properties again and Marvel will have done the heavy lifting of getting Hollywood over the genre's sluggish performance lately.
That's all without the issue of Superman having to release in competition with Marvel's Fantastic Four: First Steps just two weeks later. Man of Steel at least gave Iron Man 3 a month of distance.
So my gut would've made me consider this scenario instead: release The Batman Part II in 2026, then follow up with Superman in 2027 (and hey, with that already filmed and ready, they'd also have Supergirl and probably another project ready to go, so they'd be way ahead of the curve and better able to do softer course-corrections as events unfold).
Since that scenario keeps DC out of cinemas for too long, however, in this case I'd probably also have begged Matt Reeves to edit The Penguin series into two 2-hour 45-minute feature films – Part 1 and Part 2, released at Halloween and Christmas in 2024 – and include a couple of cameos of Batman, even just a stuntman in the costume if necessary and maybe reuse some clips of Bruce Wayne and Batman from the events of The Batman film.
I keep bringing up what-if scenarios to demonstrate how and why DC cinema got to where it is, including potential good alternatives that might have existed along the way. Because none of those things happened of course, and whatever my own gut would've told me to do in similar situations, the people now running DC Studios made billions of dollars making movies and have access to far more information than I do, obviously.
We are here, and despite any other possible outcomes and choices, the fact is Superman looks like exactly the movie Superman and DC needed, at the time it needed it, regardless of how it had to get here. But is it the movie audiences want right now?
The stakes couldn't be higher, not only for DC and Warner as corporations, but also for Superman and for Gunn. If Superman is perceived as a failure or underperforms, I strongly suspect WBD will pivot to prioritizing The Batman and developing out that world while putting the rest of the DCU plans on hold, aside from finishing projects already in development that cost more to shutter than finish.
They can't just wait to see how Supergirl performs while also investing hundreds of millions more dollars into plans that just stumbled out the gate yet again, so soon after the DCEU's failure. They'll have to make big choices if Superman isn't a blockbuster success.
My guess (again, this and 10 bucks gets you a cup of coffee – inflation strikes again) is that if Superman fails to launch, then Gunn and Safran will need to find a way to convince Matt Reeves to develop the larger Batman world – Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing, and so on – faster and with more hands on deck (like with The Penguin series) over the next five years. Then, they could use that larger world of streaming series and films to push boundaries of grounded realism a bit, while changing their own DCU plans to incorporate them into the expanded DC world Reeves has built around Batman.
Think back to my point about using The Penguin as feature films, and why that would've been worth considering in an alternate scenario for DC Studios' plans.
You think two Penguin movies that good, tied into a blockbuster Batman franchise, with a budget per film of about $50 million, wouldn't have turned a tremendous profit? Maybe earned Colin Farrell an Oscar nod? And at the box office, even if they performed as weakly as Joker: Folie à Deux, that's good for at least $400 million and probably considerably more, considering the popularity and widespread acclaim for The Penguin. Put the Arkham Asylum project into development again, and the Gotham PD series. Easy choices to make, and there's the Clayface movie that would need to be rolled into the Batman franchise universe as well.
Meanwhile, use the script for The Batman Part II and plans for future films to develop a Batgirl movie spinoff and get into production in 2026 to announce it as part of the promotion for Part II. See how quickly and easily it can be to pivot to the safer bat-bet, and meanwhile use existing plans to merely lay groundwork for a relaunch within the context of Reeves' Batman world? It's even possible that, after such a pivot, Gunn and Safran could simply restart their existing plans with mere tweaks to utilize the popularity of the branding created around The Batman universe.
This is just five years, remember, and Superman and Supergirl plus a couple of other projects, as well as The Batman Part II, will all already be released by that point regardless, so I merely propose putting the remaining four years into building Reeves' world with a Batgirl movie, Clayface movie, and Part III of the Batman crime saga, while putting out Arkham Asylum and Gotham PD, and then unpause the DCU plans but with tweaks so Reeves' Batman world is part of the DCU.
Like it or not, if Superman fails then I think the smartest move is to double down on what is known to work – Batman, in the form he exists right now with The Batman and The Penguin – and use that to build.
It's the opportunity that WB and DC will have had but rejected twice in a row (by ending Nolan's Batman, and by not building a DCU around Reeves' plans at the start), so any negative outcome this summer will present a 'third time's the charm' opportunity. I'd guess the studio takes it in that situation, since at the very least it's the closest thing to a sure bet they've got with anything from DC (especially in a scenario where their best effort with Superman doesn't work).
But notice, it doesn't preclude still also using the existing future plans for the DCU and for The Batman series. In fact, if Superman doesn't do well enough, there's still a chance to pivot the marketing around Supergirl as the plans to pivot toward Reeves' bat-world develop and take shape.
In this worst-case scenario for Superman and DC Studios' current plans, Supergirl could even hypothetically be delayed to 2027, until The Batman Part II can reset public sentiment again and the announcements of other Batman projects sets the stage for a rebranded Supergirl film released with that new messaging and marketing. Use The Batman Part II to heavily trumpet Supergirl and get fans to show up, spread the word, and make the film a success.
What's clear to me is that, if Superman is a blockbuster hit, then DC and WB are sitting pretty with the likelihood of a lot more success ahead from both the DCU and the standalone The Batman franchise. But what's also clear is that, however things turn out, I think DC will have good options for what comes next.
If Superman is only a moderate success instead of a big hit, then things can still continue as planned with Supergirl and more projects to help further boost the DCU and add turn that moderate success into a healthy foundation for greater success, while The Batman sequels still deliver their own rewards. And if Superman is a disappointment, then The Batman series can take over fairly quickly as the center of gravity for DC plans, as noted, and existing plans can be adjusted to fit things together.
It isn't hard for Batman's own movies and world to be more grounded, while his crossover with other DC heroes let him play in more fantastical stories. The comics work fine that way, and I bet the overwhelming majority of audiences would've been not just fine with but actually thoroughly thrilled by seeing The Dark Knight world overlap with Man of Steel. I'd argue that in fact, Batman Begins could've easily stood alongside Wonder Woman and a version of Man of Steel that looked closer to Gunn's Superman visually and tonally, and audiences would've loved it.
Whatever my concerns about Superman's obstacles, I think my faith in Gunn's filmmaking combined with my faith in Reeves' filmmaking leads me to conclude that Gunn sees the crucial difference right now between his situation and where things stood in 2013 with Nolan's Batman and the desire to build a shared world with Man of Steel is that Nolan's Batman had just concluded, while Reeves' Batman is just beginning. Gunn knows he can launch his Superman and see whether or not he needs to build around Batman or not, without fear of losing that Batman altogether in the first place.
Which allows the studio to go all-in on Superman, as they seem to be smartly doing. Supergirl likewise has a backup path to success, and thus is in a comfortable spot. Not that anybody wants anything to go wrong, but if things do, then the studio won't face impossible choices and lost opportunities while lacking any backup plans.
There's always even the outlier option of using the delay as an excuse to license DCEU properties – meaning specific existing scripts and plans, for a specific set of films within the context of the DCEU, including a solo Batman project and a couple of Justice League sequels, as well as a Wonder Woman sequel and the Batgirl movie – to Netflix or Apple (indeed, Apple has deep pockets to pay well for licensing such major properties for a set of streaming-exclusive superhero movie releases) for animated movies appealing to fans of the Snyderverse.
Why not? It's free money, someone else does all the work, and you know there's a built-in audience and another streamer would pay handsomely. Throw in exclusive rights to stream the DCEU collection of films to that same streamer, and in the event the DCU plans have to be postponed while The Batman builds out a new world, this licensing idea is a good option to keep generating revenue for DC and find ways to engage audiences where they are, until the feature film plans get back on track again.
I say that partly to poke those who claim licensing such content is somehow not possible, but mostly it's to say there are plenty of good options even in the unlikely event Gunn's and Safran's plans don't work out with Superman. Instead of the potential chaos and 'break the company up and sell it' fears that might seem obvious in such a situation, I think this all spells out how smartly positioned the studio is right now, and why they don't feel a need to rush projects or announcements or plans.
Superman lives, and this summer he intends to give us all a reason to look up again.