JULY 19 — As an 80s kid, Superman was a major pop culture character during my childhood years.
The first two Superman movies, directed by Richard Donner and Richard Lester respectively and starring Christopher Reeve, were huge staples of my TV and VHS viewing diet back then.
They were exactly what the kid in me wanted and needed in a superhero film, although a case can clearly be made that there really weren’t that many of those back then.
I don’t remember much about Superman III and Superman IV, both of which I remembered as just being much goofier than the first two films (which were already goofy, in case you don’t remember!) and had a very memorable Richard Pryor in one of them.
I also remember liking both reboots that came much later on, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns and Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, both very different in tone and style from each other (as they are from the originals), yet with plenty of fresh new perspectives and flavours brought into a legendary and decades old comic book property.
As open as I was to both reboots back then, that same open mindset was also what I brought with me to the screening of the new Superman movie, this time directed by James Gunn (of the Guardians of the Galaxy fame).
I know that the internet is awash with insults and war of words between fans of Snyder’s version of Superman and Gunn fans, but as someone who’s enjoyed every screen iteration of the Superman character so far, I was looking forward to what this new one might offer differently from the ones that came before it.
Within just the first few seconds of the film, which opens with intertitles explaining what’s been happening in the film’s world, with the last sentence of said intertitles casually mentioning that Superman had just lost his first ever fight, the audience is thrown straight into what would usually be the middle of a Superman film.
There’s no origin story here, we’re just thrown straight into the story, just like how we’d go straight into an issue’s particular story when we open a comic book.
This is a Superman story where Superman (David Corenswet absolutely nailing the role as both Superman and Clark Kent) is a lot more “man” than the “super” that we’ve been used to seeing all these years.
Gunn makes us believe this by gifting us with the scariest Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult giving a brilliantly angry and unhinged performance) that we’ve seen yet in a Superman film, and since we’re meeting all these characters in media res, he’s already had years of spending his riches trying to figure out how to beat Superman, and that sense of jeopardy is right there from the film’s very beginning all the way to the end, as Superman faces all manner of batterings, broken bones and bruises, courtesy of Luthor’s dastardly machinations.
For those who miss the goofier and cornier parts of Luthor from the first two Superman movies, fear not, as that part of the equation is performed to perfection by the always goofy Miss Eve Teschmacher (played here by Sara Sampaio), his girlfriend.
And let’s not forget Clark Kent’s circle of friends like Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo), his love interest Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Green Lantern Guy Gardner (a hilarious Nathan Fillion), Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi stealing the show) and of course, the movie’s trump card, his dog Krypto, all of whom provide the film with Gunn’s trademark brand of lighthearted fun.
In between all this is Superman’s fierce commitment to doing good, and to being a good human, in the face of all sorts of injustice and prejudice, and it’s in this internal battle as he tries to uphold the principles of justice in the face of the sometimes fascist establishment that this new Superman movie really takes flight.
He goes out of his way to save helpless people, kids and even animals when battling evil or alien forces, and he even insists on trying to find the most humane way to deal with a giant kaiju threatening his beloved Metropolis, which in short shows that this iteration of Superman wants nothing more than to do the right thing.
If that means ignoring international law to stop a nation with a well-equipped army from invading a nation of defenseless people living behind a fence (with only sticks and rocks as weapons to defend themselves against the invasion), with genocide surely an unavoidable outcome of their plans, then so be it, because he believes that it is the right thing to do.
The fact that this scenario mirrors what’s been happening in our real-world geopolitics right now can only add value to what is still very much a popcorn comic book movie.
It feels much “smaller” in scale than the previous Superman movies, but in trying to make a more comic book accurate movie, I guess that’s also another achievement unlocked for this more colourful, more lighthearted, more fun, but clearly not more shallow version of a Superman story.
It’s definitely not a masterpiece, but it’s damn good fun!
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
