Marcus on James Gunn’s Superman

Managed to sit through James Gunn’s Superman reboot last night. And I wish I had not wasted my time. It is such a mess.

Not sure how this film is doing 80+% at RT. It has some hints of positives, but is reluctant to dig deeper in any direction. It is a superficial farce that offers nothing new in this already overdone superhero genre. The storyline and screenplay is a big mess. No attempts are made whatsoever to develop the characters (and there are too many of them here). It seemed like a mindless amalgamation of set pieces and non-stop action sequences.

After the relief of a good night’s sleep, I only remember one dialogue from Superman (that went somewhat like this) – “I wake up in the morning not knowing what to do. I try each day to make the best decisions. But I screw up more often than not. And that makes me human.”

I guess this dialogue will touch the hearts of all recent Superman film-makers. After the first two films featuring Christopher Reeve (1978 & 1980), the rest of the Supes films made have all been screw-ups of different orders.

I will any day take Man of Steel over this, with all its flaws. Despite Snyder’s excessive action sequences diluting the impact of the story, that film at least tried to project Superman’s search for identity (although in a serious and grim manner), which I think is the core of any story revolving around an outlier (in this case an alien).

Also, I don’t think one can start or reboot a franchise without a good origin story. DCEU started well with Batman Begins, although it could never compete with MCU. And the super successful run of MCU (i am referring to the Infinity Saga or the first three phases), started with multiple origin movies that were personal stories of the lead characters, which connected very well with the audience.

Gunn has shunned away from Superman’s origin story and has tried too hard to introduce as many DCU characters as possible. A middling success of this film will give him the job of taking these characters forward. However, without audience connect, it may all turn out to be futile efforts.

This entry was posted on July 11, 2025 at 10:45 PM and is filed under reviews, the good with tags Superman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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