Superman

 

Superman

Writer + Director ~ James Gunn

Writers ~ James Gunn

Superman created by ~ Jerry Siegel Joe Shuster

2025, USA

Stars ~ David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult

   

No origin story here. In fact, there could have been one or two prequels before this point, detailing Lex Luther’s growing grudges and plans, Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s  (Rachel Brosnahan) romance and revelations, even the kidnapping and coercion of Metamorpho. Instead, Gunn wastes no time dropping us in midway through a fight that Superman has lost. In fact, the film spends a lot of time and is pretty good at making Superman vulnerable-adjacent. The first images we see of him is beaten and dabbed bloody. David Corenswet as Superman-Clark may have the looks and disarming charm, but where he doesn’t have the extra smooth cocksuredness of Christopher Reeve, he has a Twenty-First Century “I’m just doing my best”.

Mostly, it is obvious everyone is having a ball. There is an unmistakable party vibe to Gunn’s superhero romps, even as laced with darkness as they are. Actually, ‘Superman’ is markedly lighter than his earlier imaginings, deliberately brighter and positive in tone whilst still having a little time for the horror of war and vulnerability.  Superman can be, as ever with superheroes, accused of fascistic and imperialistic dogma, but I tend to see superheroes as a wish-fullfilment for the disenfranchised. As Superman was created by two Jewish nerds in the late Nineteen-thirties, how else were they going to punch Nazis? There’s room in the film for debate in how Kal-El’s good deed-doing is just as dogmatic and potentially blinkered as his opponents accuse, because there’s self-awareness; even The Justice Gang's more mercenary nature keeps his ethos questioned. We have Homelander and Omni Man to express our distrust and deconstruction of an invincible paragon. But ultimately it chooses Superman as the myth that we need – even with flags.

Gunn unashamedly posits super-heroes as a force for good to call on in warzones whilst the bad guy is a money mogul destroying the world from his own pettiness. Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult) is obviously modelled on the Elon Musk type, rich beyond imagination and unable to placate his own ego, playing at war and interdimensional black sites for his own perceived grudges. The analogies can’t be missed and pleasingly roused the wrath of the anti-woke types who have no understanding of the character’s origins and meaning. It’s not subtle. But there is again attention to the casting to give Luther’s team flickers of individuality, cheering on his success at besting Superman as they might a pal’s game-playing, elevating them above just mindless minions.   

Gunn is here for the comics fans that already know their stuff, and everyone else will catch up quickly. Fan service is satisfied by taking namechecking John Williams’ original score, by utilising lesser-known characters – Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) is fearsome with that battlecry, Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi, very cool and beguiling facial markings; Fantastic was taken) – as well as taking serious-ish the absurdities – scene-stealing Krypto the superdog, Metamorpho (an emotionally pained Anthony Carrigan), Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion; Gunn loves a lunkheaded, slightly misguided but ultimately good hero). As underwritten as Hawkgirl and Metamorpho may be, there’s the feeling that there’s other films happening with them elsewhere, that they have fuller stories that we’re not seeing (oh, Metamorpho has a family?). Gunn will make room for kaijus, and pocket universe black sites too but he knows how to root in the small stuff. The early Lane-Superman interview is where the film truly locks in after leading with the super-stuff. And in terms of giving and sidestepping a lot of exposition, the scene where Lois goes to the Justice Gang for help only to have Gardner spill the beans on Superman’s secrets is a masterclass, conveying so much under the guise of a funny interaction and goes down so smoothly you hardly realise the work it’s doing. Or he’ll make sure the Justice Gang is battling an interdimensional being while Clark and Lois are having a heart-to-heart.

Typical of Gunn, ‘Superman’ is overstuffed but always fun and light on its feet. It cracks along at a breathless pace, offering new details right until the very end (red suns make you drunk!). It is daft and heartfelt, committed, and lands its humanitarian anti-ego message with an almost naïve clarity totally befitting its hero. Perhaps it’s not up with the top-tier superhero flicks, but it’s colourful pell-mell entertainment and certainly demonstrates that a desaturated palette is not needed to get your points across.

BIG MONSTERS IN: 'The Suicide Squad', 'Gamera the Brave' & 'Superman: Man of Tomorrow'

 

BIG MONSTERS!

The Suicide Squad

Writer & Director: James Gunn

2021, USA-Canada-UK

 

Superman: Man of Tomorrow

Chris Palmer, 2020, USA

Writer: Tim Sheridan

 

Gamera the Brave

Chiisaki yûsha-tachi: Gamera

Ryuta Tasaki, 2005, Japan

Writer: Yukari Tatsui

 

Coming out of ‘The Suicide Squad’, my friend wondered if they had just chosen the stupidest monster they could think of. I had to explain that Starro the Conqueror had a long history in the DC Universe (since 1960). In fact, he was the adversary in the first comic I bought myself from a spinner rack during a caravan holiday: he was fighting The Justic League. I was familiar with comics because I had been reading the ‘Star Wars’ weekly comic, and then monthly, since the film came out when I was seven, so I was aware of Star Lord, The Watcher, Micronauts, Deathlok, Adam Warlock, etc. I mean, I knew ‘Whizzer & Chips’ and all that aimed specifically at kids, but it was ‘Star Wars’ and the support stories that burnt into my mind. I even have a soft spot for the alien attack story in ‘V/H/S/2’ because it reminded me of how unsettled I was by the origin of Peter Quill/Star Lord when the aliens blasted away his parents.  But when I just happened to pick up a comic from the spinner rack, which was my first true Superhero comic as a kid, it was a revelation. The apocalyptic nature of that story unsettled and blew my mind and, if I hadn’t been hooked on comics through ‘Star Wars’, I certainly was from then on.

But yeh, I did wonder why Starro for ‘The Suicide Squad’. But then I also read somewhere that James Gunn – charged with making Suicide Squad cool and saleable after the first botched attempt – felt that Polkadot Man was the most ridiculous DC villain, and then it made more sense: he was going for the naff, ridiculous villains too; for laughs, for the ridiculousness, because they were more expendable. The ones that the main franchises wouldn’t touch Not Harley Quinn of course, but…

‘The Suicide Squad’ starts dark and dangerously enough with Michael Rooker as Savant, leading us into a suicide squad of dodgy comic book villains (hey, I recognise Captain Boomerang!) that are going to be infiltrating an enemy island – but the joke is that they are just the distraction while the real squad is landing elsewhere. There’s a decent vein of dark humour from the start – detachable arms is probably the first big laugh – and the promise of something nasty, which the film delivers on a hit-and-miss basis. The initial competitiveness between Bloodsport (Idris Elba giving a textured performance of self-loathing which provides a lot of ballast) and Peacemaker (John Cena finding the conflicted humanity of a delusional scumbag) decimating what they think are the enemy but in fact are rebels is a typical delivery of black humour with a very sour punchline, for example. And then you have King Shark swallowing people whole, which the film doesn’t hold back from: voiced by Sylvester Stallone may make this a gag, but again the film insists on giving even King Shark pathos and a little misunderstood monster dimension. And of course, there’s Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn which, you know: she’s good. I like little highlights like Harley unlocking her shackles with her toes, showing how she’s formidable as she is unpredictable.

There’s a lot of good stuff here, a few surprises, a considerable cast that sells two-bit, two-dimensional characters, but for some reason there seems to be a magic ingredient missing. It’s too long where it should have benefitted from being snappier, for a start. When we get to Starro, it’s maybe a chapter too long. There just doesn’t quite seem to be the zing of Gunn’s ‘Guardian of the Galaxy’. He ought to be the guy able to elevate the underdog super-characters, but here the moments and incidentals are greater than the whole. But Rob Hunter’s conclusion that “‘The Suicide Squad’ is a Brilliantly Stupid Blast of Big Laughs and Bloody Chaos” also has a lot to it. It’s always diverting and I currently believe that, when expectations won’t interfere with the article at hand, I will certainly enjoy a second watch more, that I am likely to go with Hunter’s conclusion.

Starro has a mistreated monster aspect: he was taken from his normal astral habitat, brought to earth, incarcerated and experimented on. And when he fights back, the American forces accountable decide to bunk from responsibility and leave the natives to their fate. There’s plenty of barbs at the delusion and sheer inhumanity of political plotting here, not least in Peacemaker saying he doesn’t care how many men women and children he has to kill to achieve “peace”. It’s played as a gag, but it points at the wider plotting Amanda Waller leads in the schemes to use and sacrifice The Suicide Squad. It’s the political players that are worse villains than our proletariat villains. This is only reinforced as the film can’t quite avoid the idea that inside every bad guy there’s a good guy just trying to get out. A film of outright villainy will probably be as divisive as ‘I Care a Lot’, so here are a bunch of anti-heroes. Starro’s defeat is agreeably nasty and accents teamwork; and the other memorable moment comes when lots of mini-Starros swarm from the alien’s “armpit”.

But somehow, Starro the CGI creation is less fun than the last act of Kaiku mayhem in the animated ‘Superman: man of tomorrow’. This enlivens a sober if somewhat over-familiar origin story. The parasitic alien comes to Earth via one of crude anarchic bounty-hunter Lobo’s weapons: it possesses an unwitting victim and – with genuine horror edges – feeds on people and grows and grows. It’s big and pink and seems to nod at the Emmerich’s 1998 ‘Godzilla’ design. This is where comics and live-action may conflict: a gargantuan pink Godzilla and alien starfish may work on paper but may be a stretch too far for those not committed gleeful comic book absurdities, colour codes and suspension-of-belief. CGI makes anything and everything possible, but when it runs wild you get vapid ‘Aquaman’; at its overloaded best you get ‘Avengers: Infinity War’; with more focus you get the trippy ‘Dr. Strange’ set pieces that look like Jack Kirby panels come to life. It’s true that, for whatever reason, the animation of ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse’ will always feel more impressive and convincing than Starro’s rampage, although I have no doubt that it required just as much work and devotion by its architects.  It also helps that animation like ‘Superman: man of tomorrow’ feels decidedly cinematic: the shots of Parasite are designed and framed to accentuate its size and awesomeness. Also, the smartness and seriousness of intent, it’s horror and kaiju edges raised this DC animated feature above the perfunctory.

But, you see, Starro itself wasn’t quite as entertaining as the genuine fun of the kiddie kaiju, ‘Gamera the Brave’ either. So, the heritage of this film is the ‘Son of Godzilla’ lineage, but the “Monsters: Fight!” while stupid humans play geek chorus agenda was pretty much a given with the franchise by that point, far from any Atomic horror messages the seminal original may have had. But as far as A Boy And His Kaiju tales go, this kid is less annoying and cloying than many in this franchise. There’s also a fine eye on display by director Ryuta Tasaki – he monsters on the bridge, for example. But what really pleases, and what really matters, is that there are some considerably enjoyable effects. There’s no hope for Gamera – who is, after all, a flying turtle, although better looking that, say, ‘Gamera vs Viras’ (1968) – but his nemesis Zedus has an excellent monster suit, and watching them go at it and ploughing through miniatures is great fun. It’s augmented with CGI, but this is real monster suit and model work stuff, still rooted in the analogue, and for that it’s endearing. Of course, it is steers full throttle into mawkishness, but it is a decent enough, undemanding kid’s film. But it is probably a bit much when it hinges an emotional moment on a turtle butt sticking out of a skyscraper.

And I guess that’s the thing that CGI doesn’t possess. It doesn’t possess the call to goodwill where the audience is happy to make allowances for the shortcomings, in a way that is part of the charm. Perhaps that goodwill is sorely tested by, say, something like the giant plant-alien of ‘Dr Who and the Seeds of Doom’, but the sheer foolhardy ambition of Dr Who’s attempt is part of its entertainment. But I have never felt the inclination to give allowances to CGI in the same way I would Godzilla. Indeed, when we progress into the later instalments, I am often left enjoying just how good the suits are.

Now, there is no way ‘Gamera the Brave’ is better than ‘The Suicide Squad’, but just to say that Starro is less compelling that the practical designs of Zedus, and its absurdity less enjoyable than the animated Parasite. Perhaps its that CGI hues even closer to photo-realism and that we tend to reject the uncanny valley more in live-action films. Is Starro a bit too... goofy? But I never thought I would get to see something like a realist Starro on a rampage in a film when I first picked up that ‘Justice League of America #189’ comic off the spinner rack. So, you know: you kids don’t know how spoilt you are.