It’s funny to think that it wasn’t that long ago that superhero films were a guaranteed font of enough cash to buy out small planets—even if everything back then feels like a tectonic eon away merely by being prior to pandemics and more. We have Marvel now kind of fumbling around with its own flops and while there certainly have been successes, there’s been seemingly as many forgettable failures like well pretty much everything Sony is doing. And now, at last, we have a reboot of a line based on DC comics for…er…the second, or maybe third time? With James Gunn coming over from MCU, to bring us something based on the OG of superheroes, and with many like myself feeling just a little fatigue on the genre, does this one finally work?
For the most part, yes—and it’s funny that all they had to do was bring it back to the essence of the character. Go back to the very first Superman comics of the late 1930s, and you have him as a true champion of the little guy, venting the creator’s frustrations to corruption and more—things were downplayed as cultural strangleholds enforced them, but it feels like this is at least somewhat what Gunn was drawing on, alongside classics like the Richard Donner films. How about everything else, though?
David Corenswelt is our titular Krytonian, who’s…certainly a different take than the more intense Henry Cavill, and to be fair I can see some people preferring the latter for being just a little more versatile. Our man in tights here is a lot more vulnerable and slightly nebbish—which to be fair is a good a way as any to make someone who can shrug off tank shells relatable. Alongside is of course Rachel Broshanan as Lois Lane (anyone remember Lois and Clark from back in the day? No? Eh), who, unlike in the Zack Snyder versions, actually does things here.
However, the real show-stealer is Nicolas Hoult as Lex Luthor—I admit I was skeptical on this one being another younger-faced techbro sort, but unlike Jessie Eisenberg, this one is actually able to radiate some despicable energy and hold a scene. Here, Gunn isn’t afraid to do what those early comics did and send some jabs against our world, with our villain here utilizing disinformation and sponsoring warmongering political leaders, while raging against ‘foreign aliens’ and having a cult of nerds under his thrall. Hm. Perhaps he’s based on…Ed Sheeran, maybe? And with other baddies including a nation with onion-domed architecture that’s also blasting up an impoverished place in the Middle East, I certainly don’t hold Gunn from aiming his sights at perhaps just a few of real life’s crapshows.
I’ll also give this one a confidence to fully embrace a world rife with comic lunacy, where demented tech is common—something Marvel seemed rather reluctant even near 20 years later. Now, the other side to this is that there’s a whole host of side-characters, from Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) to Green Lantern (Nathan Filion) and a bunch of other obscure figures that are introduced very quickly…and indeed if there’s any major flaw here is that the pace really doesn’t settle on many things for the most part. Some rather important elements just happen offscreen in about a minute or two, and while there are slower moments, sometimes a just a few moments to breathe would’ve been nice.
On the other side, I guess for many there’s going to be nothing boring going on, and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome—It’s also not a complete quip-o-rama like I feared it may be. Overall, for what it was, I give this one a pass as fun if fluffy—our hero feels balanced, our bad guy is fun to boo, and while it doesn’t redefine the genre for those totally superhero fatigued it does somewhat grab its own feel. Now, of course, where things go from here in our world of reboots and safe-playing is another thing…
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