James Gunn’s “Superman” is a return to comic book lore. It is bright, hopeful, corny and at its heart, political.
In this newest iteration, Kal-El is played by David Corenswet, an actor with a history of side character roles. At the staggering height of 6 ‘4, with dark hair and bright blue eyes, he is a ringer for a comic book-accurate Superman.
The film centers on Corenswet’s Superman three years into assuming his role as a protector of Earth. The opening shots of the movie show Superman losing his first fight to the Hammer of Boravia.
The cinematography is brilliant, to say the least.
The movie begins with the audience seeing the bright blue and red of Superman’s suit against the white tundra of the Arctic, and he is oozing vivid blood onto the snow. The sound design furthers our understanding of the brevity of the situation by adding wheezes, which are audibly strained as he whistles for Krypto the Superdog.
Krypto is a niche character in the Superman lore, especially for those who only know Superman through movies. His addition to the script was the first sign that this movie was for the comic book nerds.
Early in the film, the audience meets Superman’s team of robots, including Four, who makes jokes concerning his capacity as a robot to care or feel things. I found this to be a purposeful decision in many ways, for obvious foreshadowing — but also in a world overwhelmed with the what-ifs of AI and robots.
I found it particularly interesting that the characterization of Four was his overwhelming self-awareness of his lack of human qualities. This theme carried on in multiple aspects of the film and Superman as a character.
Superman is a literal alien on Earth raised in Kansas. In many ways Superman rather than Clark Kent, is a deep exploration into what makes someone human. Kal-El looks like us; Four does not, but they are both by definition not human.
This tension sets the film up early for themes and questions like: What makes someone human? What are humans willing to do for the sake of humankind? Where is our humanity? We discover that a key part of humanity in this film is the relationships one creates — romantic and otherwise.
A small part of the narrative takes place in a fictional town in Smallville, Kansas.
Kent, for all intents and purposes, is a Kansas boy by trade.
The actors for Ma and Pa Kent sport something of a thick country accent, which had some people questioning how this could be an accurate portrait of Kansas. While I do think the accents were a little too much on the twang, if the Kents are from any small town in rural Kansas, they are likely to sound more country than the stereotypical accent of a city like Wichita. The accent associated with current Wichita has roots in the Transatlantic accent, because of the call centers that were in the city. So the accents, though eccentric, are not completely geographically inaccurate.
The film is also concerned largely with Lois Lane, played by Rachel Brosnahan, and her chemistry with Corenswet. Things go from hot to heated, however, when Lane interviews Kent as Superman about his actions in an in-universe war.
This is where the film starts to lose some people, as it is an obvious allegory for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Boravia is a country with close allegorical ties to America, currently running a campaign in which they claim to be freeing the Jarhanpuriuns from their own tyrannical leader.
Viewers hear the news clearly state that Boravia is a heavily armored country, and the Jarhanpuriuns have little. There is also the very obvious casting choice of the president of Boravia being fair-skinned, where the Jarhanpuriuns are brown.
Through Lane’s questioning, the audience learns that Superman kept Boravia from invading Jarhanpur without any consideration of the geopolitical ramifications. In the argument, we have Superman stanchly in support of Jarhanpur, a stand-in for Palestine. He also states again and again that he is not a government entity, that he represents no one in his actions, that people were going to die and he wanted to stop that.
To some, Superman’s support for a Palestine stand-in may seem jarring as Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, two Jewish men, created him. However, they created Superman to inspire hope, as a protector of the weak and in response to the rise of Nazism and the rise of fascism.
I would certainly say the Jarhanpuriuns are weak, in need of hope and protection from a fascist leader. Who better for Superman to save? There is also something to be said to the importance of Superman saving people of color. Of course, Superman saves everyone (at one point, he even saves a squirrel in the film), but it is not often we see a superhero save someone who is not American and not white.
In doing this, we establish that Superman saves everyone, period. As a black person, and a longtime superhero enthusiast, it means the world to see and know we are all worth saving. Tangentially, I would also like to give props to Alexis Leggett Casting for creating one of the most robust and diverse background character casts I have seen in a while. Metropolis had people of every shade in every role, from background character to villain.
Speaking of villains, I would be remiss not to mention Nicholas Hoult’s performance as Lex Luthor, who is firmly hateable in this movie.
He is calculated but passionate in a way I feel the audience had yet to see on film. He has times where his character is over the top, but he is always so believable. His envy—his anger — is palpable in every microexpression. He and Superman serve as foils to each other; they are the best and worst of humanity.
In other standout performances, we have Edi Gathei as “Goddamn Mr. Terrific,” another underrated comic book pull from Gunn. His character plays as serious until the most dire of circumstances, which allowed Gathei some seriously funny one-liners, and to be a standout character from his fellow Justice Gang members.
I would also like to mention Guy Gardner, played by Nathan Fillion, and Hawk Girl, played by Isabela Merced. Both of which have their fair share of funny moments and screen time but pale in comparison to Mr. Terrific’s larger role in the narrative.
What every character has in common is a colorful costume. Every costume has bright colors with comical aspects, from Green Lantern’s bowl cut to Superman’s high-waisted bright red outside underwear. This is a decisive difference from the DCU’s previous take on superheroes, with Zach Snyder going for a more gritty, realistic appeal. This difference is what makes Superman (2025) not just the superior Superman movie, but worth the watch.
Superman (2025) is about what makes us human. It’s about the positive impact of radical kindness and what we can all do when faced with political turmoil. It is a film with homage to the past Superman and hope for the future.
In the current climate of the world, after seeing this film, we should all be asking ourselves: “What would Superman do?”
