Superman (2025)

⭐ 5/10

My goodness I thought this movie was atrocious. On par with all the flimsy hollow super hero movies basically since Endgame. Watching it outside the hype of its release is interesting, and I get that for fans of the comics or whatever its satisfying just to see a new depiction, but this was a boring and empty viewing experience.

First off, it looks terrible! Congrats on getting rid of the Snyder bleakness, but instead you've just made everything ultra blue and saturated. The fights are incoherent CGI messes, just nothing interesting to look at here. The actors are fine, and the chipper attitudes are refreshing given the past couple years of DC movies, but I had to really fight the urge to just be on my phone.

How about the story? Something about pocket universes, a baby alien's and its dad, war in the middle east? I'll get back to the Israel/Palestine of it all, but this quickly gets in to comic mumbo-jumbo and I just did not care. There is an interesting scene early on where Lois interviews Clark and he rants about how he doesn't care about the rules he is saving lives. Marvel has done this a couple times, pretty sure this is the driving force of a couple of the movies, government oversight vs doing what is right, but I don't think the movie actually comes back to this at all. Also Lois ending the conversation being like, sigh, I knew I wasn't good at relationships. Lots of eye-roll-inducing stuff like that.

I will say kudos for sneaking a very clear statement about Israel/Palestine in here, the biggest movie of the year taking a stance. However, the climax of the movie is Lex being like, I started this conflict so I could blame it on Superman and gain power or whatever is potentially insulting to that conflict? Diminishes all that is going on there so that it can be squeezed into this movie with a nice resolution where the heroes you don't care about show up and save the day in one quick battle. War over! I am certainly not one to speak on the actual conflict and everything involved in it, just seemed a bit too tidy.

There are multiple moments in the movie where something happens, and the entire world instantly becomes aware of it through news broadcasts, and then our characters react in real-time to the public backlash. Actually made me laugh, our world that is very reactionary in this way but not at this speed, as if every citizen in the city is doing nothing but watching events unfold. Maybe that is fair given the all out war constantly happening in their city constantly. I thought it was funny when Superman is fighting the big boring dinosaur, he yells at everyone to flee, but there are huge crowds all around basically spectating, and then seconds after he stops it news comes out about this message from his parents and people are booing him. Why are they all there! What app are they using to stream FOX news directly into their heads! Despite their efforts it just feels like a big empty city with mindless souls. Oh but Superman saves a squirrel! Hooray, he cares so much!

Don't get me started on the plot with the dad and the alien baby, just so predictable. Lex being the Musk figure with a massive prison in some alternate dimension is just so boring. He's studied Superman and knows all his moves before he can do them! And his ultra-weapon is a Superman clone! Who cares. I remember being let down in Logan how hard they hit the "he is fighting himself but younger aka he is fighting age" thing, but at least the clone thing had something thematic happening. This was just a reveal with no kick, a pretty uninspiring cast of villains all around.

One final thing that made me mad is this Daily Planet crew, where Lois becomes a detective but then is basically along for the super hero ride, Jimmy is on some weird side quest with Lex's girlfriend, and then a couple others are just hanging out. Despite how boring Jimmy and Lois were, the thing that made me mad was this lady with essentially no lines wearing tight revealing clothes that is just along for the ride. I'm not some super-feminist guy, but she was blatantly there as eye candy, and for a movie with as "woke" politics as this one I was personally insulted that it was like, oh since Lois is a powerful smart modern woman here's the sexy lady for you to ogle. I'm sure she has some important role in the comics or something, but that's even worse, fan service with no purpose.

I watched this with an open mind, wanting it to be good. There are a lot of super hero movies I love, and I was hoping this reset would be a fun reintroduction to super hero story telling. It wasn't.