There’s a scene in Superman where Clark and Lois are having a serious discussion about their relationship and how they really feel about each other, while a battle against a huge inter-dimensional creature is silently playing out over the city in the background out the window. In the reverse shots where Lois is talking, we can see the blurry image of the battle reflected in the furniture behind her. That’s a fantastic detail, and the scene is one of many that illustrates exactly why I loved this movie so much.
Comparisons between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and this first entry in the James Gunn-led new version of the DC universe are tiresome but inevitable. I still like both a lot, but the comparison doesn’t really make sense because they’re trying to do almost completely different things. The MCU is all about translating the weird, decades-long continuity of the Marvel comics into a streamlined format that makes sense for cinema and television. Superman defiantly insists that trying to make it make sense is missing the point. It’s all batshit crazy nonsense in the service of simple, old-fashioned, moralistic storytelling, and that’s the joy of it.
Before I saw the movie, I’d seen and read a lot of reviews that mentioned the comic series All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely as one of the primary inspirations. To be honest, I doubt I would’ve picked up on that otherwise, but if you go into the movie with that in mind, it’s obvious. It’s definitely not a direct adaptation, but it borrows a lot of the character designs, in particular inside the Fortress of Solitude.
But more than that, it has the same mindset: it’s a self-contained story that doesn’t try to carefully usher a mainstream audience into decades of niche media continuity; and it doesn’t try to adapt all of the wacky and corny ideas into a more grounded or realistic version. Instead, it embraces not just the idea that anything can happen in comics, but also that so much stuff already has happened. These books have been telling stories about aliens and super-heroes and pocket dimensions and gigantic monsters for decades. It’d be ridiculous to try and sweep that under the rug for the sake of an audience that’s perfectly capable of running with it.
One of the things that All-Star Superman is well-known for is its opening page, which simplifies Superman’s origin story to just a few panels and a few words. Superman has a more verbose sequence of opening text going over the history of “metahumans” in this universe and Clark/Superman himself. Normally I despise that in movies (except for Star Wars, of course), but I thought it worked both as a kind of homage to All-Star Superman and as a way to set the tone: this isn’t happening in the same universe as the others.
This is my favorite screen version of Superman, and also the best James Gunn movie I’ve seen (Guardians of the Galaxy is a close second). I always love the enthusiasm and sense of humor he brings to movies, but usually think the end result feels chaotic and over-stuffed. Superman is absolutely chaotic and over-stuffed with characters and plot lines, but to me, it didn’t seem like needless excess or over-indulgence. The Suicide Squad, for instance, felt like he was cramming in stuff he loved, even if it didn’t make sense for the story. Superman feels more like he tried to cram a lifetime’s worth of comics fandom into one movie, but he somehow makes (most of) it work.
That’s why the scene between Clark and Lois stood out to me. Many of the reviews I’d seen or read were less than enthusiastic about the movie, and the packed audience for my screening was extremely enthusiastic about it, clapping and cheering at the DC logo and the opening title, so I immediately went into contrarian mode and tried to find flaws with it. But I thought almost all of it just worked. Including a serious and heartfelt conversation between two characters while CGI slapstick played out behind them.
The balance was perfect, reminding the audience that this movie is supposed to be fun, not maudlin. David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan are excellent as Clark and Lois, getting the tone exactly right, recognizing that comics characters exist in a kind of heightened reality but never resorting to camp. Their conversation was heartfelt and believable, not just about their relationship, but getting at the core of Superman’s character. So the action scene didn’t distract from that, but underscored it: his identity isn’t just about saving the city from monsters and supervillains, there are other heroes who can do that. His identity is about doing the right thing, simply because it’s the right thing to do, and even when it’s difficult.
That’s why the inclusion of other “metahumans” didn’t feel excessive, either. I won’t list them all, in case anybody reading this hasn’t been spoiled yet, but they all felt as if they’d been included not just because James Gunn liked them (although that was clearly the case), but because they were a contrast against Superman. One of them even explicitly says, “I’m not Superman,” before doing something that Superman would never do.
The most significant of those is Mr. Terrific, played perfectly by Edi Gathegi. He’s the most effective of the “side” metahumans — there’s a particularly great scene where the camera focuses on Lois while Mr Terrific takes out an entire squad of bad guys flying around her — but he’s not Superman. Capable, and undoubtedly a hero, but without Superman’s tireless compassion, and empathy, and need to do the right thing always.
And crucially: he’s not a modern take on the character with all of the comics version’s gadgets and costume. He plays exactly like a late-1990s comic book take on an African American character, somehow coexisting with the rest of this universe pointedly set in the 2020s. It’s perfect, never resorting to the corniness of 1970s Blade, but still feeling like he comes from an era when comics creators were eagerly trying to inject some more diversity into their lineups.
Even Lois is contrasted against Superman in their conversation, where she says she’s had doubts about their relationship because she’s “punk rock” and he’s unfailingly a good guy. Which gets at yet another thing I love about the movie: it absolutely rejects the worst bit of conventional wisdom about the character of Superman.
Conventional wisdom says that it’s near impossible to write a great story about Superman, both because he’s over-powered, and because he always does the right thing. There’s no drama! You have to introduce Red Kryptonite to get his evil version, or you have to put him in an unwinnable situation that requires him to break General Zod’s neck.
Superman says that it’s bullshit to treat his unfailing virtue as a flaw. Instead, it’s aspirational. It’s exactly why we need stories about Superman. And the seemingly over-large cast of characters is there to show exactly why it’s important, what you get when you have all of the power but without the virtue. It doesn’t mean that he’s naive, or a simpleton, or that he loves everyone, or that his choices are easy. Just that it’s possible to recognize the right thing to do, without hand-waving it away with excuses like “the ends justify the means” or insisting that the real world is complicated, and everything has shades of gray.
And in case you missed how it was illustrated over and over again throughout the movie, Clark and Lex have some extremely on-the-nose dialogue at the end where they each say explicitly what they’re all about. But it works, because that’s what comic books do. And it’s never allowed to be too preachy, because Gunn has fun with it: in addition to the now-familiar scenes where a superhero swoops in at the last minute to save an innocent from imminent destruction, there’s a quick scene where Superman goes out of his way to whisk a squirrel to safety.
It’s easy to rag on Zack Snyder’s take on the DC characters, which is why I’ll do more of that here. Last year I decided I was being too charitable about Man of Steel, because I’d been considering it in terms of what it was trying to do, instead of asking whether it should’ve been trying to do that in the first place. Superman just makes the failures of Man of Steel so much more evident. Forcing the character to compromise his core values for the sake of drama is simply a total misread of the character.
And while I’m at it, the gratuitous scenes of the destruction of Metropolis in that movie were so excessive and tiresome that it quickly became meaningless. In Superman, I was surprised to see just how invested I’d become in the city, even without being introduced to many of its characters, and how tense it was to see buildings crumbling. It finally made super-hero action scenes matter again, because it had shown me how much work it is, even for someone as powerful as Superman, to make sure everybody has a happy ending. (Well, almost everybody — there was a murder that I actually thought was very well-handled, in comic book terms. It set personal stakes for the conflict and a personal take on how low the villain was prepared to go).
With movies like this, there’s always some degree of throwing up your hands and saying, “Because comic books.” And Superman has plenty of corny moments, shallow characterization, on-the-nose dialogue, and plot contrivances. But I don’t think they’re a case of using the format of comic books as an excuse to cover up deficiencies in the storytelling; I think they’re all cases of embracing the style of storytelling in comic books, and applying them to an action movie.
Honestly, the only outright criticism I have of the movie is that they went too far making the Kents out to be yokels. But even that was ultimately handled well, putting a mild twist on their characters as they’re usually presented. I actually teared up at the scene between Clark and his father, and I thought the tears were well-earned.
Until now, my favorite movie version of Superman has been the 1978 movie by Richard Donner. It has no shortage of plot contrivances or over-the-top slapstick, but it became a classic because it had such a sense of joy and wonder. Its starts with cinema curtains opening, then a child opening the first issue of Action Comics and giving a voice-over with the basics. It’s a great introduction, but it also undeniably sets the tone of that movie, as well as most super-hero movies that followed: this is pointedly and self-consciously a movie in the spirit of a comic book.
The most cynical interpretation is that it’s condescending, an excuse to give Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty free rein to camp it up, and the screenwriters free rein to let Superman turn back time because why not. But even the most charitable interpretation is that it’s a movie made by people outside of comics, looking in, trying to capture what they felt reading them as kids. Superman is proudly a movie from someone who’s been immersed in comics, feels not even a hint of hesitation in loving them as an adult, and is delighted to bring all of their bonkers, earnest, weirdness to the screen.
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