I've now watched Superman 2025 and would like to share my thoughts. I'll preface it by saying following Gunn's comments and history tanking my enthusiasm I happily read other takes, spoilers, the lot. I avoid spoilers like crazy if it's something I care about but here I did not. That negative start said up front, here are my thoughts.
I recalled a comment here about how people were just taking selfies whilst Superman fights in front of them and when Eve is doing that I thought this was someone unfairly exaggerating because she was actually safe and it was in character. But then later on I saw what that person meant - other people start doing it too. I don't mind entirely that there's no sense of danger in this movie. Not every movie that's good is good because of tension. But here it became a little grating. And this despite the rather bold choice to open the movie with Superman being defeated.
People weren't kidding about the frenetic pace of the film. By the 20 minute mark we've had Superman defeated, introduced a dog, revealed Lex doing evil things, had interactions with the Daily Planet characters, a meeting at the Pentagon, TV shots of the president of Borovia and a make-out scene between Lois and Clark. And by the 26 minute scene we have Lois and Clark breaking up as she says she warned him she was no good at relationships and he walks out. I think a Justice Gang cameo might have been squeezed in there somewhere too.
I generally like an efficient movie but this is both rushed and leads to every second line being some heavy-handed exposition. E.g.
Lex: "We need to stop Superman".
Engineer: "I know, Lex, I sacrificed my own humanity to be rid of him." (pretty much word for word).
It's not good. What is good? Well the interview scene that precedes their row is interesting. I see what
@dick brain meant about it and it's an interesting insight about how men have to be more restrained because the same outburst is much more frightening to a woman than the reverse. And I enjoyed Lois in this - she came across very well and a good reporter. Clark? Well as I said the scene was interesting but is this the version of Superman I want? That I'm less sure of. I prefer Reeve's calmer portrayal. It had a lot more authority and a quiet authority as well. I wont go so far as to call this Superman petulant but it got a little too close to that for me to relate.
Casting generally was only so-so for me. Lois stood out as did Mr. Terrific's actor. He made Mr. Terrific both charismatic and arrogant at the same time. I like that combo. His emotions were very understated like the little uh-oh as he sees Krypto zooming in on a t-sphere or the vague irritation in which he says "Spheres. Circles are two-dimensional". Although the set up line like a fair bit of this movie is quite forced. Who would ever actually call them "circles". Still, Lois and Terrific were the best casting. Guy Gardner is one of my two favourite DC heroes (other is The Question. Don't read two much into the fact that my favourite heroes are all assholes, please) but Nathan Fillion as him was, okay-ish. He was somewhat the Guy Gardner from the comics, but nothing special. And Corinswet is adequate I guess. In a weird way he's better as Ultraman / Bizarro than Clark, just for the contrast. And I appreciated Cat Grant's decolletage. But the worst casting is probably Jimmy Olsen. And it's not because the actor is bad, I thought he was quite good actually. But what the Hell were they going with in the woman-magnet thing? It was utterly over the top. If some women have a crush on him that's fine. But it's random girls around the office and elsewhere swooning over him. Is it supposed to be humorous because he doesn't look the part? I think the whole thing was a running joke which just didn't land. At all.
Incidentally I thought the worst casting would be Hawkgirl because she's about 5'1 and in every physical sense wrong for the character except for being female. But she just squeaks ahead of Olsen by virtue of the actress being likeable. Still terrible casting though. Also, I couldn't not laugh at her hawk cry. Also, now I think about it - are her wings detachable in this movie? In some scenes she doesn't have them or is my memory playing tricks.
And to finish up on casting, lets talk about Lex. He had his good points. Hoult has energy and is entertaining. But he veers too much towards the Snyder Lex and he lacks stature and authority. I don't see Lex having tantrums and throwing coffee mugs to the floor. And I certainly don't see him crying and giving a speech about how much he envies Superman. That's just not Lex.
What else? The politics, I guess. I didn't see this as Israel and Palestine though a case could certainly be made. For me the more natural fit was Boravia = Russia and Jahandapur seemed more India inspired from the names and ethnicities. Though it was a deliberate and focus-grouped hodge-podge. And given Russia and India have some minor conflict history but are currently on better terms than the West would like them to be, I can see some subtle poking of that bear.
The whole plotline with the bad real parents I just flat out did not like. I've written elsewhere how I don't like the suspicious degree to which Found Family gets pushed by Hollywood but even aside, I just think it's not a pleasant twist and I do not like it. I will concede it works for the film and I do disagree with some posters who found it a flawed plan. I could see it being exploitable the way Lex played it. I just don't like it for what it makes his parents. I guess a Krypton like that sets up Zod's mindset pretty well if he appears (if there are more movies).
The rest is just a grab bag of odd and jarring things. The way one of Corenswet's eyes seems to stare off to the side when he's flying at the camera. He reminds me bizarrely of the mutant version of Sentator Kelly in the old X-men movie. Where he's squeezing his face between the bars. Incredibly forced stuff like the front page spread of "Metropolis's True Hero" with a picture of Mali the falafel guy. The completely over done stuff with the kid with the flag chanting "Superman!" in the face of Borovia's invading army (incidentally one of the worst military deployments ever depicted on film - it's just half a dozen tanks and some soldiers standing out in the open walking about). The abrupt Peacemaker cameo. Hypno-fucking-glasses. Oh, and why if John and Martha Kent have such thick whatever-they-were accents, why doesn't Clark have an accent anything like them?
Lots of the film just felt undercooked, really.
Out of five? I'd give it a two. It feels like a film put together by focus group going through YouTube comments about Marvel and Snyder movies, ticking things off and saying "more zany monsters" mixed with James Gunn's personal issues. We get it - you characterise your critics as monkeys and you were put in Twitter jail.
I feared this movie would be a bad movie done well. That is a movie which is fundamentally not good in morals, structure or characters, but which is sprinkled with enough things people do want to make people like it. For me, I was almost right except it wasn't sprinkled enough.
I did like seeing a brick bounce off Superman's head, though.
EDIT:
Apparently The Batman is confirmed to be its own thing, which makes me think WB's lost faith in Gunn and don't want their only profitable franchise outside of Harry Potter connected to his failing Trainwreck.
In that case, I wish Gunn had been prevented from sabotaging Reeve's sequels. He setting things up very nicely for a strong follow-up, I thought and I'd love to have seen it. If we even still get a sequel it will no longer be Reeve's original intent.
