From the Vaults of the Fortress of Solitude

James Gunn’s Superman is one of those films that I didn’t have to worry about spoiling in any way, shape, or form because there’s just so much going on, any summary of the story, or discussions of characters or actions, could be limited to the first act of the film and what was revealed in trailers. Superman is a dense movie, with a lot going on, and it was easy enough to discuss what I liked and didn’t like about the movie without getting into the weeds. “Should you see it? Yes, and here’s why…”

With that said, there is plenty that can be discussed, and it’ll be interesting to see how all the things I couldn’t spoil in the main article play out over the next few films and shows of the newly relaunched DC UniverseThe successor to WB's failed cinematic universe, the DCEU. Headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran, this new DC Universe carries over some continuity from the former film and TV series while crafting a new, rebooted universe for the future.. So… let’s get into the weeds.

Superman

Let’s start with the main character. I think there are aspects of Clark that the film handles really well, but there are some parts that could have been better. I think the film really nails how kind, caring, and all around good-hearted Clark Kent really is. Corenswet, as I noted in my main review, really nails this side of the hero, finding a way to make him endearingly goofy and lovable. His Clark acts differently when he’s in his incognito mode versus when it puts on the tights and goes to work, but there’s a core to the character that feels like Clark, the “aw, shucks” farmboy with a heart of gold that comes through no matter which side of the character he’s playing.

And that works. I’ve seen people online say that Clark Kent is a mask and it’s only when he dons the cape and tights that he becomes his true self. He puts on an act when he’s Clark and he can shed that when he’s the superhero. I actually think that’s a misrepresentation, though. What makes Superman so special is that, at his core, he’s always that caring and considerate farm boy. The costume lets him show his powers, and he stands a little straighter and acts a little less goofy, but I think that’s the real performance. Clark is happiest when he gets to just be himself, to be Clark Kent, even if there are times where he needs to put on a costume and fight extra-dimensional threats. He’s good to his core, and this is something Corenswet performs well, but it’s also what the film understands and acknowledges.

This is a version of Clark Kent that was raised to see the good in everyone. He wants to help, to be the guy that saves lives. The one time he gets even a little angry in the film it’s because Lois challenges him on why he flew into Boravia to stop a war. She doesn’t question that he was attempting to do good, but she does wonder if the way he did it, taking the direct route in an attempt to save as many lives as fast as possible, was the right action. As Clark puts it, “people were going to die,” and that trumped everything else. That’s the Superman we get in this film, the one always worried about stopping every single death he can (even that of a squirrel) because that does the most good.

With all that said, I do think the film loses track of Superman at times. The film introduces him well enough (even if I think it needed to spend more time on the lead up to, the conflict in Boravia), and we get snippets of his life that are great to see, such as his time at the Daily Planet, spending a few moments with Lois, visiting with his adoptive parents, and some moments at the Fortress of Solitude. But for a film that is supposed to be all about Superman, we don’t really get to see him live all aspects of his life as much as we should. This is a Superman film primarily focused on the conflict between Lex and Superman, and while that’s a great driving plotline, and it uses up most of the two-hour runtime effectively well, there are aspects of Clark’s character that is, sadly, sidelined in this film to focus more on Lex, his machinations, and setting up the larger DCU.

Lois Lane

It tracks that if the film lacks focus on Clark’s personal life then Lois Lane would also take a hit. She is Superman’s best gal, after all, and with less focus on Clark then Lois will also see her role in the adventure diminished. That’s not to say she’s absent from the film completely, as she challenges Clark early on about his actions in Boravia, she keeps an eye on the situation brewing between him and Lex at various points in the film, she’s managed to convince Mr. Terrific to go and save Superman after Lex captures the superhero and confines him to a pocket dimension from which Lex swears Supes will never escape, and she works with Jimmy to bring out evidence that Lex has been manipulating the world, and unfairly imprisoning people, just because he can.

The issue is that if you removed Lois from most of these moments, the film would continue on as if nothing happens. For instance, when she convinces Mr. Terrific to go after Superman, we could have just as easily had a scene where Terrific decides, on his own, to go save his friend. As another example, Jimmy is actually the key person that discovers the evidence that proves Lex is a master criminal. And as for Lois challenging Superman early on about his actions in Boravia, well, the film eventually proves him right so while it’s a good moment exploring the characters’ dynamics, it doesn’t really add anything to the plot in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, Lois is spunky and played so well by Rachel Bosnahan. I want her in this film. Hell, I want her in several more films, and maybe even a Lois Lane: Superman’s Best Gal TV series, too. She’s fantastic. But the film really doesn’t know what to do with her here because she’s clearly part of a plotline that didn’t fit into the main story, one that put greater emphasis on Clark’s life, and when that didn’t make the final script, her role basically disappeared with it. When Jimmy is more consequential to the plot than Lois, you know we’ve lost a thread somewhere.

The Justice Gang

I like the fact that the film includes other superheroes. Superman hasn’t existed in a vacuum pretty much since the day both he and Batman had coinciding comics. Superheroes cross over all the time, even if it’s just a scene of two of them hanging out at a diner, talking about life. This is a populated world filled with superheroes, and Gunn makes that clear from the fact that the Justice Gang (name not yet decided, which is one of the good gags of the movie) lives in Metropolis and they frequently get in the way of Superman while he’s just trying to do his job.

I think the three core members of the Justice Gang are great. As I noted in my main review, I think the three actors – Edi Gathegi as Michael Holt / Mister Terrific, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner / Green Lantern, and Isabela Merced as Kendra Saunders / Hawkgirl – are well cast and they suit their characters perfect. I don’t think, though, that the film treats all of them as well as it could. It spends the most time on Mr. Terrific, which is fine since he hasn’t been featured in many (any) films before. Guy Gardner gets less screen time, but we’ve seen plenty of Green Lanterns over the years (including in that terrible 2011 film). Nathan Fillion makes the most of the screen time he’s given, and we know he’ll appear over in Lanterns on HBO MaxThe oldest and longer-running cable subscription service, HBO provides entertainment in the force of licensed movies along with a huge slate of original programming, giving it the luster of the premiere cable service. Now known primarily for its streaming service, HBO Max (formerly Max, HBO Max, HBO Go, HBO Now, et al). early next year. Having him established here is good.

I really wish the film gave more time to Hawkgirl, though. She has an interesting backstory (the reincarnated soul of an Egyptian princess, forced to live, love, die, and get born again over and over) that isn’t even hinted at in this film. Guy at least gets to say something about getting pulled away from the Guardians of Oa, so we get a nod to more of who he is, but Kendra lounges around at the Hall of Justice when she isn’t fighting people, and the most she can provide are some snarky quips and a few hawk screams. Do I like her? Yes, but I also want the film to do more with her because, like with Lois, if she had been removed from the film I don’t think it would have changed stuff at all. She’s a great character that is made inessential by the machinations of the film.

Lex Luthor

And then there’s Sexx Luthor… I mean, Lex Luthor (shout out to all the Robot Chicken DC fans). The film both gives him all the meaty parts but also, in a way, fails the character a little. Lex hates Superman, and that is made abundantly clear. The film even has a confrontation between him and Superman where they shout at each other about their feelings, and it helps us to see why Lex hates him the way he does. Unfortunately it’s a little of, “tell, don’t show,” in that moment. I also think, however, it’s not something the film could fix on its own.

The thing is that for Lex to hate Superman this much it’s had to build and build and build over the years. We’re dropped into the movie three years into Superman’s run as a hero, which is great for fans that have already seen so many origins stories and know all about Superman, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, et al. Unfortunately while we know all about that for these characters in general, we don’t know it for these specific iterations of the characters. Because the film drops us in, quite literally, to the middle of the action, we lose the years of character development that would inform us of all the feelings these characters have for each other. Nicholas Hoult does a phenomenal job of showing us, on his face, how much Lex hates Superman but it isn’t the same as us seeing that malice built over years of stories. You can’t replicate that with a text scroll.

As a key example, in Smallville (a show I never thought I’d reference), Lex and Clark grow up as friends before they have a falling out and become enemies. This is actually part of the Silver Age storytelling of Superman, back in the issues of Superboy, and for a long time it was part of the collective continuity (before, I’m sure, DC rebooted that away). Because of that, though, when Lex makes a heel turn away from Clark, you feel it. There were years of this fracture building before Lex turned against Clark and it hits you like a gut punch.

Here, in Superman, Lex just hates Superman because he’s powerful and an alien, and he’s able to recruit a bunch of like-minded people that hate Superman for the same reasons. It’s storytelling shorthand that works in the moment, but doesn’t feel as satisfying long term as it should. I want more development between these characters, and to get that we would have had to spend two or three Superman films before this seeing Lex slowly come to loathe Superman and all he stood for. His hate calcifies until it’s a black diamond of rage, and then he lashes out with a master plan to kill Superman, whatever it takes. That’s the actions we see in this film, and it makes sense in a general way, but it doesn’t ring true because we didn’t see the previous three years of development.

James Gunn pulled a narrative trick so he could speedrun building a new cinematic universe, and in the process he had to short sell many characters and relationships to get the job done. He does it, and I think long term it’ll work out so long as each of the successive works put in the effort and actually spends time with their core characters. But here, in the moment, this Superman feels less like the start of a solo adventure and more like the culmination of a bunch of cinematic storylines from other films we didn’t get to see, and it sucks because I really would have loved to see those movies.

What This Film Means for the Future

Since the cinematic universe is built though, where does the DCU go from here? Three works are already in the can, or nearly so, and Superman hints at all three of them within its runtime.

The first is Peacemaker: Season 2, the trailer for which is already out, so we knew that was inevitable. John Cena’s Peacemaker shows up in a little cameo in this film, bad mouthing Superman, which is on point for his character as he also did that in Peacemaker: Season 1 (when it was a different Superman). This scene doesn’t really show us anything about where the character is at, but it is at least nice that the film reminds us, “hey, this is a show that exists. Go watch it.” We also know from that trailer that Guy and Kendra will make an appearance in that show, looking for recruits for the Justice Gang, although it isn’t known yet if they have a larger role beyond that. Still, the cinematic universe grows and crosses over, and it already looks like DC is doing a better job building it than they ever have before.

After that we’ll get Lanterns early next year, and Guy Gardner will appear in that show as a regular. Details so far as sparse, although we do know the show focuses on Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, with Hal recruiting John to be his replacement, and then the two fall into some kind of mystery. Considering the Green Lanterns are usually called “space cops” this would seem like a story that could suit these characters.

Likely what this means then is that we’ll get a very serious superhero story that is livened up by Guy Garder’s antics, being a blow hard around these two more moderate characters. Setting up at least one lantern in Superman then just makes sense.

And then finally, so far, we have Supergirl (which was formerly known as Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow). The film will follow Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock), out in space when she discovers something that sends her on a murderous quest for revenge. What that entails is not known, but it’s clear that her character is going to be very different from her cousin’s. That does make sense and is part of comic lore as Kara has been shown to have less control over her rage, even becoming a Red Lantern for a time in the comics. She’s set up as a party girl in one of the last scenes of Superman, and likely this movie would take her from being a girl that wants to escape her troubles to someone that confronts them and uses it to become a heroine.

This is the next movie in the DCU and, notably, it’s one year out from Superman, showing that Gunn is not interested in rushing this universe. Yes, he dropped us right into the middle of it, but he’s letting the movies and shows flow and take their time without feeling like he has to get a certain number out every year just to meet studio mandates. I appreciate that.

In general, Superman does a great job of dropping these seeds in for the cinematic future, and I think that was really its job. It had to show it could have a lighter, friendlier tone than the DC Extended UniverseStarted as DC Comics' answer to the MCU, the early films in the franchise stumbled out of the gates, often mired in grim-dark storytelling and the rushed need to get this franchise started. Eventually, though, the films began to even out, becoming better as they went along. Still, this franchise has a long way to go before it's true completion for Marvel's universe., while also illustrating the path for the DCU’s future. It does that really well, and it does so in a film that is heavy on adventure, sci-fi weirdness, and comic book action pulled right from the pages of a Superman comic. It sadly shorts the main characters of the film a little too hard because it doesn’t just give us a Superman story, and I think, long term, that’s going to be a ding against this film even after it’s made a ton of money and gone on to launch a solid cinematic universe.

There’s so much pressure on this film, and on Gunn, that there was absolutely no way this film could be all things for all people, not without also being four hours long. It’s a testament to Gunn that I like the film even with all these issues… but it’s an even bigger point that if that four hour film did exist, and they ever did release it, I’d watch it too. I want more of this world, and this film, not less, so in that way, Gunn did a great job all the same.