It’s clear that Gunn understands Superman, but I am not convinced he understands Clark Kent. It’s also too bad he can’t help himself from adding twenty miscellaneous characters, an inter dimensional space prison, and a group of ragtag antiheroes who threaten to undermine the entire premise of his central character.
The tonal whiplash is constant: Superman is a good guy who wants to do good things. He wants to be good because it’s just the right thing to do. But he’s surrounded in this film by a bunch of cynical, jaded good guys who don’t seem impressed by or interested in his idealism. I love that Superman is a good guy who wants to do the right thing. I get the impression from talking with other people that he’s generally admired for this quality. And yet we still don’t have a filmmaker who really believes it.
That tonal whiplash, along with the frenetic and frantic pacing and structure, is the biggest reason this doesn’t totally land. (I am fine skipping the entirety of the origin story, but dumping us into the middle of season 3 and asking us to keep up means there’s never going to be enough time for character introductions or character growth.)
Despite that, it’s so refreshing to see a hero who believes in doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. The MCU films have been about quippy, self-obsessed, nihilistic, and jaded heroes for so long that I nearly forgot what a bad idea that is.
A couple weeks after Superman came out, I picked up some groceries. The checkout clerk was a teenager. He asked my wife and I if we’d seen Superman yet. We told him no. He told us it was easily the best movie of the year, almost perfect, a 9.9÷10. (He said we’d know the .1 deduction when we saw it, and I’m afraid I’m not sure what he meant.) We told him we’d definitely check it out.
What I love about this is that a teenage kid told me this version of Superman is his favourite movie of the year. These movies aren’t made for me, a dude in his thirties who thinks the whole genre peaked with Sam Raimi. They’re made for him. And for the first time since those Raimi movies, I think there’s a possibility that maybe the younger generation will find an on-screen comic book hero who also acts as a role model. Because if those young people all decide they want to be like Superman when they grow up, that’s probably not a bad thing.
I don’t know what we’ve been doing for 17 years, but it sure does feel nice to have a superhero movie with a lead character worth rooting for.