My own most replayed clip from Donner’s classic is that same sequence, Superman’s second appearance rescuing Lois Lane falling from a stricken helicopter… “Say, Jim!” “Excuse me.” “That’s a bad outfit!” His first costumed appearance, incidentally, is flying from a ledge in the Fortress of Solitude up to the camera and exiting frame right. Eagle eyed viewers may be able to spot that this isn’t Christopher Reeve, but stuntman Vic Armstrong.*** Donner had the cast and crew memorise a word that he wanted to guide the production with. That word was ‘verisimilitude’, reality at all costs. It’s no coincidence that the movie’s first spoken line is ‘super’ dad Kal El’s “This is no fantasy…” Well, we have, as have superhero movies, come a long way from those more innocent days of “truth, justice and the American way.” Reeve’s Superman would be appalled at the current state of the world today. In that context, I have no great love for Zach Snyder’s darker superhero era at DC. Neither was I terribly happy with Joss Whedon’s reworking of Snyder’s Justice League despite still being (unfashionably, today) a huge fan of the man whose work I’d championed despite that unfortunate project now remembered more for director and cast clashes and a fudged CGI moustache removal than any other merit it may have had. A 75-80% shot movie’s DNA cannot be easily transformed. It points to DC executive culpability to allow one man’s vision to be completely reworked. They should have hired a Dexter Fletcher to clean up a Bryan Singer absence a la Bohemian Rhapsody, not hire one alpha male to jettison a great deal of another alpha male’s work. I never cared a great deal for DC’s characters except for Tim Burton’s and Christopher Nolan’s Batman. Do we watch superhero movies for the feels or the wows? Marvel seemed to have got the ‘formula’ right at least in terms of box office success. But I don’t think I shed a tear for Tony Stark. Heightened fantasy, unless there are characters (human or alien) who are deeply developed, is so hard to invest in.

So I’m off to see the first performance of James Gunn’s Superman tomorrow and it’s a little worrying that my son and I and one other are the only ones booked in so far. One other point, here’s an additional excerpt of the James Gunn interview quoted above… “But it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.” James. Be kinder. I can see DC execs face-palming in unison. Doesn’t the director know that unkind people’s dollars are worth the same as kind people’s? I admire the sentiment but Gunn is selling a tent pole franchise movie that will probably have to hit well over half a billion dollars to stand a chance of breaking even. And kindness has taken an undeserved holiday. Can we tempt it home again? In some ways, the new Superman will either be a rebirth or the burial of the superhero franchises.

Let’s see… So is it a newly beating heart or the patting of spades?

OK. Right. Well… Uh. Hmm.

I (almost) don’t know where to start. If my over-riding impressions of the film’s best moments involve a couple fighting over morality, a flying dog, a rescued squirrel and a slow opening garage door, then you might understand that I am definitely not this film’s intended audience. I’m going to wrangle my thoughts, conflicting or otherwise, into sub-headings.

DC seems to be approaching their new and improved universe building in reverse having left the Snyder-verse offerings in a drawer somewhere. No one even locked it. Marvel, wisely it seems, started with fully fleshed superheroes in their own smart and successful films. Only after those films, released carefully timed over four years, did they take it up a notch with everyone uniting (and dividing) in Joss Whedon’s hyper-successful first Avengers movie. Originating what will almost certainly be nicknamed ‘the Gunniverse’, James Gunn’s Superman offers a wealth of characters to keep up with and overall, the film feels like DC did make about six other films, showed them to no one and then gave them all to Gunn and his editors and said “Make a two hour film out of that lot!” Tonally, the film seems deaf, unaware that smart arsery can nullify emotional beats and the humour, while sometimes eliciting a smile or even a barked laugh, is nowhere near as satisfying as his three Guardians’ wit and panache. The light touch doesn’t gel with the enormity of the consequences of the villain’s plans. After the hugely moving, emotional heft of Rocket’s journey in the last Guardians film, this comes as a disappointing surprise.

Remember Donner’s 1978 cry of ‘verisimilitude’? Well, Gunn seems to have jettisoned that crazy, old fashioned idea of keeping things real. He’s added to the mix levels of science-fantasy, techno-silliness and alien superbeings – one, the plot requires, that can turn bits of himself into any substance including guess what? Then there’s the illogical (illogical? How about terminally ill logical?) portholes to different ‘pocket’ universes and some shocking canon busting. In case you didn’t know, Superman’s biological parents are now proto-Nazis who sent their son to Earth to rule over the ‘confused’ human beings and create a harem for many ‘super’ kids to come… I kid thee not. Bend a story to your will but don’t provide so many ample brickbats for critics and comic fans to throw at you. I simply cannot see a franchise evolving from this particular over-stuffed film and I’m very happy to be proved wrong but I do hope it makes its money back. We are light years away from the purity and innocence of Christopher Reeve’s tenure and Gunn had some very difficult choices to make not least about Donner’s original’s glorious music.

Often the bedrock of a franchise may be its recognisable score. They don’t get more recognisable than John Williams’ epic orchestral blast of adventure. Gunn had a choice and he was damned if he used it and damned if he didn’t. He opted to incorporate the main themes at certain ‘super’ moments but orchestrated within the compositions of electric guitars and synthesised orchestral elements delivered by composers John Murphy and David Fleming. It’s certainly not as up front as Williams’ original was in the 1978 mix but it services the film well enough. But what an opportunity for, say, James Newton-Howard to come out of retirement and knock us all out with a new iconic anthem to smash the champagne on the hull of the new Gunniverse. We can dream.

In the second episode of Tina Fey’s smart comedy, 30 Rock, resident comic Tracy asks resident show writer Toofer “So how are you doing?” to which Toofer replies “I’m doing good.” Tracy comes back with “Ah-ah. Superman goes good. You’re doing well. You need to study your grammar, son!” This ‘good’, Superman’s ‘good’, is fundamental to the story and the character. The aim and philosophy of ‘doing good’ simplifies the character of Superman and while that suit and attitude still fitted in the cynical 70s, it doesn’t play so well in the complex 2020s. Superman comes across as hopelessly out of touch and somewhat shallow in his socio-political understanding of world events and concomitantly his particular suit is hardly cutting-edge with Gunn going back to natural fibres unlike Snyder’s sprayed-on Henry Cavill’s brawny musculature look. Years ago, our first peek at Gunn’s Superman was a still of him putting his boots on which cleverly set the character into Gunn’s new universe. We see so little of Clark Kent – it may have been just the one scene – and there are no ‘changing’ in a flash moments as Reeve used to do. In fact there is only one shot emphasizing his chest emblem and that’s in the middle of yet another mid-air scrap.

Superman, as we know, can happily exist in space (see the Donner movie or the sequel with the bad guys killing astronauts on the moon or any moments in the comics that had him travel through the airless medium). Air is not a necessity until James Gunn decides it is and has a metamorphing henchwoman deprive him of it. It’s a nice idea – drown our hero with nanobots – but just barely logical. And that little moment in the film is a red flag pointing out Superman the 2025 movie’s greatest weakness, and it ain’t Kryptonite.

Who or what can Superman physically fight? And does he have to? How do you hurt or kill the Man of Steel? After scene-setting at the start with paragraphs of explanative text, an injured Superman crashes into the icy wastes and is rescued by Krypto, the ‘super’ dog. When I saw this in the trailers, I thought “That’s brave, showing us the man of steel brought so low. By what?” Donner’s film pitted Lex Luther’s intellect against his hero’s super-brawn so there was no one or nothing directly physically challenging enough to stop Superman thwarting Luther’s plans except for that meteorite containing kryptonite. And it was all so well judged. He performed his life-saving super feats and that was more than enough. We didn’t need to see Superman beating up the bad guys (well, until Superman 2) and those moments were shows of strength not super-fisticuffs. Should we be lucky that we have those earlier Superman films before astonishing visual effects enabled ‘super’s to fight on and on (and on and on… and on) while buildings crumbled and some people in the audiences stifled yawns. Superman fighting ‘super’ men is, alas to my eyes, as dull as it gets. Superman facing and fighting Zod in Man of Steel, was one of the dreariest ten minutes I’d spent in the cinema (it was more like 7 – Ed.). Gunn’s Superman does the same with Luther’s strongest henchman. And if his identity was supposed to be a surprising reveal, then James, know your more mature audience! We’ve seen Christopher Reeve duke it out with his evil side in Superman 3. Sorry, was that a spoiler? OK, we’ve not seen that fight while Superman is drowning in a proton lake (a what?) in a pocket universe leading to a black hole (uh…) Mr. Gunn has the same level of respect for physics as J. J. Abrams and as impressed limbo dance crowds say “That’s a low, low bar.”

David Corenswet does a fine job as the man of steel (this actor needs a name change) but he seems ill served by a film that divides its attention in so many ways that Superman is often sidelined. There is an early flying shot that made me smile, his joy physicalised as a mid-flight pirouette which I found charming. But while the film tries hard to shore the character up, his personality is reduced to petulance that anyone could question his goodness. And he loses a lot of fights, to Lois and his enemies. Corenswet does hold the screen. It’s whom he’s playing that’s the issue. Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane is better served. She crackles and fizzes (easy on the sugar, girl) and she and Corenswet are a believable couple but again, like everyone, she has her moments but not too much more than moments. Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor has visited this character before though he may not have realised it. His glorious crackpot turn in The Great as Peter III of Russia gave him a grounding of how absolute power corrupts, a neon-lit runway for taking off and then landing as Lex Luther. Yes, scenery chewing is fairly high but then if I had any issues with Donner’s film it would be how does ‘verisimilitude’ relate to the theatrically overblown villains? The new Lex’s problem is that Gene Hackman was delightfully evil. Hoult’s Luther kills someone in the film in the most personal way, so that he ceases being fun, just nasty and over the top.

Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific (who names these characters?) is by far the stand out ‘super’ who has a hugely effective fight scene and for my money, his garage door has great comedy timing. He seems to know what a pocket universe is and how dangerous a proton lake is. We’ll just have to take his word for it. There’s no one else to guide us through this dark soup of extreme quantum gobbledegook. And then there’s Captain Tightpants himself, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern. While a fan favourite as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the much loved Firefly TV series and spin-off movie Serenity, the Green Lantern was never my favourite superhero even in the guise of Fillion. Sporting a ridiculous haircut (specified by the actor based on the original comic character’s style) he can make real whatever he imagines which is as broad or narrow as his own mind and this guy is not overflowing with good sense. It’s like giving an ant the power to build cathedrals. He’s almost as much comic relief as Krypto, the ‘super’ dog.

Overblown metaphor ahead. Just saying. Being a movie executive is hard. They have little choice in seeing a film as a set of ingredients, any one of which might be the reason for its success or failure. The ingredients when cooked correctly make a meal and if a lot of people like the taste of it, you have a hit. Lebohang Morake may not be a household name but his voice and music is known to millions of children and adults all over the world. His stage name of Lebo M is credited in his most famous work, The Lion King in collaboration with composer Hans Zimmer. Execs at Disney could not comprehend why this animated classic had been such a huge hit with audiences. It made just shy of a billion dollars with a $45 million production cost in 1994. Today, that box office haul would be well over 2 billion. So Disney hired Lebo M., clearly partly responsible as an ingredient of its success, and put him to work on its sequels and other films, the mundane Dinosaur for one. None came close to the haul of The Lion King. And with Superman, we’re still dealing with ingredients, not meals. Let’s enter into the realm of Hollywood executive logic. If X made a billion dollars and had a visual FX soaked climax, then any film wishing to make a billion needs to have the same. It seems a little mischievous to quote another article/review but it is very relevant and not just a little amusing. And writer James Hibberd says what I wanted to say but a lot better.

“You can practically hear the debate happening behind the scenes: “Yeah, we know it’s a huge cliché. But if we don’t end the film with a portal that needs to be closed and a massive CG battle that throws physics into a Vitamix and feels a bit like a kid mashing his action figures together for 20 minutes while we pump up the score and sound effects and pray that 900 pixel jockeys in a UK effects house save our third act… if we don’t do that like nearly every other superhero movie which made a billion dollars has… will our movie still feel big and spectacular enough?” ****

Feeling big and spectacular is not the point. I know it may seem that this is the point but it really isn’t and never has been. Perhaps the genre expectations are the enemy here. For a movie, any movie to really work, you have to feel something and being in awe at visuals you’ve never seen before simply don’t do the job today. We are way beyond that. In going forward, our emotional satisfaction seems to be inching more toward the primal, or should I say back to the primal. The more advanced we seem to be, the more critical it is for us to connect to an earlier branch of the human tree. As Mr. Spock once observed “The more complex the mind, the greater need for the simplicity of play.” We go to the movies to let our minds play. Movies, so called, don’t only move, which incidentally they don’t. They are designed to move us. The more sophisticated modern films become, made possible by tech most of us do not comprehend, allows us the bare and paltry luxury of dismissing the craft because “it’s all done with computers.” In the time when it wasn’t, movies had embedded a cachet of craft it has since squandered. The effect of the movies before photo-realistic visual effects seemed far greater emotionally because we knew certain things were impossible even though they clearly weren’t and we were witnessing them without a single clue how the effect was achieved. Yes, FX nuts like myself made it our business and passion to discover how the impossible was presented on screen but most people just gaped in genuine awe. Those impossible images touched us because of the magic and mystique of what we were seeing which could not possibly be real. Dare I say, the impossible has become mundane. How much in awe were we all at the sight of the mothership in… (wait for it) Independence Day: Resurgence? I mean, come on… It was 3,000 miles wide!

That innocence has long since gone. It drives some filmmakers to carry the authenticity torch in the hope that this innocence can be regained. Well, visual effects, indeed, invisible visual effects, are now as much a part of filmmaking as the camera and in some cases we don’t even need one of those. Just rethink the idea that this is what audiences are crying out for, indestructible people beating the shit out of each other.

Early reports and predictions are buoyed up by a strong Thursday preview haul added to Friday’s tally (“Up, up and away!”) but writing this on the Sunday morning, things are way too early to call. I hope it does well and I also hope I can adjust my own expectations of a film given this is what audiences (so far) want to see. Not sure I have enough life left to attempt that level of rewiring. Good luck Superman and if there is a next time, let’s see a lot more of Clark Kent.

* https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/james-gunn-interview-superman-film-2025-david-corenswet-dhb3bw3rp

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk1aQx9hTaE

*** In his book, The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman, Armstrong writes on page 110, “I doubled Chris when he flies out: the first time you see Superman in costume in the movie.” There are clues in the lighting. As he flies closer and closer, his face is cast in shadow the closest he is to the lens and then flies out of shadow to the right where motion blur does the job of obscuring his features. That said, the wig he’s wearing really sells the trompe l’oeil. And is he wearing a Christopher Reeve mask? The effect is perfect. Unless Reeves actually did the stunt (unlikely).