‘Superman’: James Gunn Updates the Man of Steel With a Touch of Irony and All-American Cheer

Alci Rengifo

Even when rebooting the most famous superhero of them all, James Gunn can’t help but leave his undeniable stamp. “Superman” is designed to be a true summer event. Several levels of anticipation are carried on its shoulders. In addition to marking another cinematic return of a pop cultural icon, this is also the first entry in the DC Universe overseen by Gunn after he jumped the Marvel ship. We are meant to be swept away to the point of forgetting the last decade of scattered DC titles that could never catch up to its famous rival. As a popcorn escape this is certainly a fun time. As cinema, what is intriguing is how it stays somewhat loyal to its roots while clearly flying with Gunn’s very distinct voice. This is a colorful Superman yarn with irony and misfit energy.

Gunn decides to not repeat the entire origin story of the red caped hero, considering most of the audience will know it by heart. After a brief opening title explaining the history of “metahumans,”meaning beings with super powers roaming the earth, we see an injured Superman (David Corenswet) crash in a glacial landscape. His loyal super dog, Krypto, quickly follows to lick his master’s wounds. It turns out Superman was fighting a meta called Hammer of Boravia after intervening in Boravia’s invasion of its poor neighbor, Jarhanpur. At his crystalline Fortress of Solitude, Superman is cared for by dutiful robots led by No. 4 (Alan Tudyk). Once he’s rested and restored to strength by a dose of sunlight, Superman has to return to Metropolis to fight the Hammer and resume his double life as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. There’s also his colleague and sort of girlfriend, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), who seems to flinch at the idea of admitting they’re in love. A greater threat than the Hammer emerges when arch villain Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and manipulates a message from Superman’s long gone Kryptonian parents to smear him as an alien threat.

Like Superman’s origins, there’s little need to recount the entire history of the character going back to his 1938 debut courtesy of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joel Shuster. Nearly every reader of this review knows the most enduring film representation of the Man of Steel is Richard Donner’s 1978 classic starring Christopher Reeve. That film is such a cultural landmark that composers David Fleming and John Murphy reference John Williams’ heroic theme, without too much bombast, in this movie. In the mid-2000s and early 2010s, the character underwent a gloomy reinvention in Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” and Zack Snyder’s still divisive “Man of Steel.” Gunn wants to channel the original spirit of the concept by bringing color and humor back. Yet, he’s also a sly artist and doesn’t necessarily revive a naïve, hyper patriotic fantasy. As in his “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad,” Gunn uses the comic book source material to celebrate outsiders with a tone you can almost call punk empathy.

First, there are the basic ingredients. Gunn’s regular cinematographer, Henry Braham, again uses rich palettes that feel like comic book panels come to life. David Corenswet is likable and has the required chiseled look for Superman. Rachel Brosnahan is a sharp Lois, staying loyal to the independent character of the persona. Plot-wise, Gunn isn’t out to reinvent the wheel of superhero plotting. The story beats follow the familiar patterns. Lex (Hoult can play evil in his sleep by now), staring down at Metropolis from his LuthorCorp tower, wants to destroy Superman. He has the hero captured and sent into a “pocket-verse” to be encaged with other prisoners such as Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan). At the Daily Planet, Perry White (Wendell Pierce) is the cigar-chomping editor-in-chief woefully underused. Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) is still the young photographer learning the ropes, who might have a lead by messing around with ditzy Eve (Sara Sampaio), Lex’s selfie-obsessed acolyte. Jimmy also knows Lois has been romantically involved with Superman for at least three months. 

Gunn takes these standard Superman elements and then has fun with them, sometimes too much when he overly crams the story with monsters and cute side characters, like Metamorpho’s baby, who our hero tries to help save in his cosmic prison. It holds together because Gunn does successfully adhere to one of the true essences of comics as pop art. He actually has things to say. “Superman” in his hands becomes a misfit parable about immigration and fear of outsiders. Lex’s scheme involves using a message Clark’s Kryptonian parents sent with the vessel that brought him to Earth as a baby, in which they instruct him to rule over the less powerful humans, as proof that he is a danger to the planet. Lex spreads fear by denying Superman his humanity. In some pretty keen writing by Gunn, Lex admits he envies the superhero for having abilities that make normal humans seem so weak by comparison. His rhetoric has echoes of the sort of fear-mongering you get from figures like Stephen Miller when it comes to immigrants. In the current climate, it’s also no accident that Lex embodies every aspect of the billionaires now infamously running the world on megalomania.

Then there’s the storyline involving Boravia’s despotic president (Zlatko Burić) who sounds like Benjamin Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin in justifying invading weaker neighbors under the guise of “liberating” them. In a rather powerful moment, Jarhanpurians watch as Boravian troops amass at their border and a boy desperately starts waving a flag with the “S” symbol, calling for Superman. Such moments raise the fantasy of if only a superhero had intervened in Gaza or Ukraine. Superman, like Captain America, emerged in an era where fascism was ascendant and World War II marked a whole generation. Ma and Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell) almost embody such a bygone era and are written not as the typical archetypes but as a real rural couple who love their son to the point of not seeming to realize the scope of what he actually is.

Gunn tempers such heroics with irony. Superman may keep a straight face, but that’s not the case with the other heroes featured who can’t decide how to call themselves with a name starting with Justice (you know where this is going). For now called the Justice Gang, cocky Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), scrappy Hawkgirl (Isabel Merced) and humorless Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) provide satirical comic relief. These are the kind of characters Gunn loves. They lounge around, say absurd statements about “being of the cloth” (meaning they wear costumes) and don’t mind dropping a villain from the sky without bothering to catch them. They can be too much even for a tough reporter like Lois. Though, none of them can handle Krypto, whose own origin is revealed in the end with a hilariously mischievous Easter egg. It’s so many characters that villains like Angela Spica (María Gabriela de Faría), aka The Engineer, who can change shape thanks to her nanite-infused blood, end up becoming mere action scene tools.

“Superman” culminates as most, if not all, of these movies do with the big showdown requiring lots of CGI and crumbling buildings or other structures. It is, unsurprisingly, the least engaging part of the movie. One can’t hold it against the filmmakers considering they are delivering as promised. Gunn at least goes against the grain. The end credits go for a punk song (inspired by Clark Kent’s favorite fictional band from high school) instead of the soaring orchestral number we would expect. The bonus scenes are light fun but say nothing about upcoming DC titles. You are meant to enjoy it on its own terms. Studios have been chasing after the original impact of Marvel’s “Iron Man” and “Superman” may not be there quite yet, especially considering the legacy it’s already trailing after. Still, Gunn and his team have made a genuinely enjoyable comic book adaptation and summer escape, with the added touch of giving the story actual meaning. 

“Superman” releases July 18 in theaters nationwide.