Superman soars, DC reboots

The Sun

4 days ago

THERE has not been a film that DC Studios and Warner Bros Pictures desperately need to succeed more than James Gunn's Superman. It has to fly faster than a bullet, hit harder than a train and more importantly, be more human than its colder predecessors. Despite the relatively low bar thanks to the previous decade of middling DC Comics films, Superman surpasses expectations.
Hovering right across the pitfall of subjecting the audience to another origin story, Gunn's film drops viewers into the third year of Clark Kent (David Corenswet) already donning the red underwear and blue suit.
In a world full of metahumans, Superman is firmly established as being the strongest among his costumed super-peers, which draws questions from pundits, politicians and defense agencies on the alien immigrant's beliefs, politics and agenda on earth.
After stopping the invasion of the fictional country of Jarhanpur by the more powerful Boravia, an ally to the US, Superman finds himself in the crosshairs of not only the US, but also Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and his girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan).
This geopolitical intervention by Superman serves as the catalyst for the events in the film.
Humanity in focus amid cosmic chaos
The very on-the-nose Israel-Palestine parallels with Boravia-Jarhanpur aside, Superman has a strong story, at least in terms of comic book films that serve the role as a jumping-off point role in a potential 'cinematic universe', but it does come at a cost.
By dropping the audience into an already developed world with existing superheroes, supervillains, aliens, pocket dimensions, nanotechnology and cloning, this can be exhausting for those more accustomed to standard superhero origin films, because from the opening sequence, Superman 's pacing is all gas, no brakes at Mach 10 speed.
Having said that, everything the film introduces at breakneck speed is entertaining, particularly due to the focus Gunn puts on the individual in the centre of Superman, which is Kent and his humanity.
Bright, colourful, sometimes goofy, most times charming, Gunn's writing, aided by a solid performance by Corenswet, nails what makes Superman who he is: a boy scout raised in rural America that sees only the good in everyone and will not hesitate to save them.
From sequences such as the interview Superman has with Lois over his interference in the Boravia-Jarhanpur conflict being due to simply how 'people were going to die', to how Superman repeatedly goes out of his way to rescue and protect innocent bystanders, Superman proudly wears Clark's heart and love for humankind on its sleeves.
Hoult's Lex Luthor is another standout in the film, being the most comic-accurate version of the character ever put to live action film.
Long past the quirkiness and silly wigs worn by Gene Hackman and Jesse Eisenberg in their iterations of the character, this screen incarnation of Luthor is an actual menace and danger, not just to Superman, but the entire world. An extremely smart technocrat, calculative deceitful, viciously petty and narcissistic, Hoult brings his A-game to carry out Gunn's script to perfection.
The same extends to Lois, who spends the entire film being a journalist rather than Superman's girlfriend, along with the other supporting characters, such as the Justice Gang's Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and even Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo).
Second shot at legacy
Criticising the now-dead DC Extended Universe and the mostly maligned films under that umbrella is a low-hanging fruit at this point, but it has to be done, as Gunn's Superman is Warner Bros's second, latest attempt to kickstart their own cinematic universe, similar to what Zack Snyder did in 2013 with Man of Steel.
Developed by the new DC Studios – led by Gunn and Peter Safran – Superman comes across as a more natural superhero film, with a plan already in place for the new DC Universe (DCU), a goal in mind and what would come next.
However, chronologically, the DCU started with Creature Commandos last year, but that was an animated series and as great as it was, it did not firmly establish what Superman does in terms of world-building or in introducing the bigger universe that Gunn and Safran are bringing to the table.
Based on the certain appearance of another popular character in the Superman family towards the end of the film, there is certainly expectation on how the next films in the DCU will carry not only the momentum, but also the hope of something better that has been started by Superman.