Fandango’s streaming site had the new Superman film on rental for fairly cheap last night so I decided to spend a couple of hours checking out the movie folks have been raving about for months now. There’s a lot to rave about, I’ll agree. With that said, there are also some things to rant about and my brain simply refuses to leave them alone. Like a dog worrying at a chewtoy, one might say.

Please note that I’m going to have to spoil some major parts of the movie to talk about my issues with it properly. Also note that I’m not lambasting the movie as a whole. In general, it’s a fun flight of fancy with a lot of good stuff going on and it has great heart. (Most of the time.) It’s certainly an improvement over the dour, grimdark efforts of the last set of Supes movie outings.

But.

Let’s get into it.

I want to highlight the positives right out of the gate. Casting? Great. This Lois is great, this Clark is great, this Lex is great, I could go on and on. Nathan Fillion as the jerkiest Green Lantern in the Corps? Inspired. (Lantern-generated giant Digitus Impudicus coming out of the ground to ruin some baddies’ day? Absolute chef-kiss stuff.) Edi Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific? I would watch an entire movie centered on that guy, in fact I want that next, please and thank you. I could go on. None of this is really news.

The movie looks great! Most of the time it’s clear what’s going on, scenes are appropriately well-lit, that sort of thing. The CGI is as good as one would expect from a major studio tentpole film. Living spaces look lived in, working spaces look like places people actually do things. I’ll make a special note of the Supes flying bits, where it’s kind of stylized but also feels right in a way that’s hard to describe because… well, none of us can fly like Superman, can we? But if we could, it’d probably look and feel like that, wouldn’t it? Maybe. (And they make a point of showing that he enjoys flying. I mean, if I could, I would too!)

Starting off in a world where Superman has been doing his thing for some time, and in a world where he’s not the only “metahuman” (I’m always going to roll my eyes at the term but it’s a comics thing so… eh) was the right move. Yegods, please no more origin stories for household-name supers, and let’s have a fully-fleshed-out world from the get-go. Thank you! The movie drops references to worldbuilding details in a breezy, lived-in-world kind of way instead of pointing to each one in a “huh? huh? YOU GET IT?!?!” kind of way. Again, thank you!

The action set pieces are pretty good! Inventive, easy to track, and only somewhat hampered by the usual weightless quality you get from relying on CGI for most of what’s seen on the screen. They tried! And the mix of peril and amusement is well-balanced overall. Bonus points for Superman checking in on people. (And squirrels. Yes, I’m on Team Squirrel Saving Is Good Actually. Because it’s that kind of movie.)

(Hmm. Put a pin in that.)

Lois paired with Clark is pretty good! She Knows, which is great because it lets the movie show the world’s greatest investigative reporter grilling her boyfriend the superhero and really forcing him to shift his perspective a bit. He’s not in the wrong (the movie argues) but she’s also not wrong, and that friction is what gives real vitality to the pairing in this movie. I did get a laugh out of a just-before-the-credits-roll bit between Perry and Jimmy about how long this thing between Lois and Superman had been going on… while the pair in question thought they were being so clever and subtle.

Can I stop down and point out that Mr. Terrific is superb in this movie? It’s my website so the answer to that is absolutely, “Yes.” Seriously, he stole every scene he was in. I’m not even remotely joking about wanting a movie centered on that guy, ASAP. He had the skills, he had the attitude, he had the style, and he got his own superb set piece partway through the movie that might be the best visual feast of the entire two hours. (I didn’t recognize the needle drop and the scene worked anyway, so that’s something, I guess?) Terrific, indeed.

The main plot is pretty good… depending on what you consider to be the main plot. Lex Luthor tries to destroy Superman through any means necessary because he’s a megalomaniac? That tracks, yeah, and kind of keeps things simple. The details of the plot get a bit weird, but as a driving force for story events it’s fine. And it does highlight something that I think makes for a good take (if not the only possible take) on a Lex characterization: He will always rebuild, retrench, and try again… but boy does he hate being thwarted in the moment.

Two asides on the topic of Lex, actually:

1. I found it interesting that instead of the linguistic analysis being revealed later to be fake results that Lex ginned up to sway public opinion, the analysis is accepted in the story world as real and Lex just has this happy bit of circumstance land in his pocket, and he rolls with it. The audience expects, due to genre tropes being what they are, for it to get refuted at the last minute… but, no. Kal El’s folks said what they said and we all must make peace with that. (I… have qualms with Superman’s biological parents kinda being jerks, mind you. But the story did interesting things with it so, fine. Whatever.)
2. Have you ever watched the cartoon series Gargoyles? David Xanatos would plot circles around Lex Luthor. What’s more, in person? In direct competition? Xanatos would play Lex like a fiddle. It’d be the most fun Xanatos ever had in his entire life. Please, someone give me that crossover some day. Yes, I know that Gargoyles is Disney and the DCU isn’t. I don’t care. I want it. Is this aside directly relevant to Superman (2025)? No, and I don’t care about that either, I just wanted everyone to picture David “Gargoyles” Xanatos ruining Lex “Superman” Luthor’s entire life. Hopefully it brings you as much joy as it does me.

Anyway.

I have a few problems with the movie, and the biggest one centers on that rift. You know, the world-ending threat created when the pocket dimension that the “Lex made his own Boom Tubes” portals connect to goes haywire because Lex reacts poorly to his plans going sideways. The pocket dimension itself is silly but so is the whole movie, really. That’s the main tone of it. Fine. In fact, the movie feels deliberately like a throwback to the kind of “anything goes” wild-assed plotting from a particular bygone era of comic book storytelling. Which… again, that’s fine, in and of itself. But this is 2025 and there are limits to “just turn your brain off and enjoy it.”

The limit was crossed, for me, at the random black hole (which was kind of mentioned as a potential consequence of the pocket dimension but shows up anyway and doesn’t actually do what is predicted) and the rift marching its way across Metropolis like a… well, like a ticking clock on a time bomb, which is exactly its plot purpose. It yanked me right out of the movie every time it cut to that march of progressing peril, because that’s not how any of this works. Never mind the closing of said rift, which… oh come on now.

Yes it’s a silly popcorn movie, but no I can’t turn off my brain that much. Stop asking me to lobotomize myself to enjoy a film.

And then there are the bits that clash violently with the whole silver-age-silly of the rest of the movie. The parts that reject all the warmth and heart we’re shown through nearly the entire rest of the film. Did we need to see Lex murder a man with a handgun to conclusively show that he’s a villain? No, we absolutely knew that already. Did we need a secondary villain to get splatted in service of a joke punchline? Probably not. (And why does that guy die while Lex lives? Because Lex has to show up in a later movie!) Did we need to see a baby held hostage under threat of death to compel compliance with Lex’s plans? No, but I guess we needed that baby available for a ridiculous set piece in the… what was that, anti-proton stream or something? An entire sequence that could’ve been cut and nothing of value would’ve been lost from the movie, by the way. It was just an all-CGI cavalcade of visual noise that added nothing to the plot since Supes had already saved the baby from Lex’s henchman at that point.

Also, you do not evacuate Metropolis in a matter of minutes, or even within an hour or whatever, such that all those falling buildings don’t result in beaucoup deaths. Also, again, smushing the buildings together afterward when the rift re-zippered itself just… no, buildings don’t work that way, stop it. The rift idea just introduces so much utter nonsense. Other than the “ticking time bomb” aspect, the only other purpose it served was to get us at the black hole so we could kill off (possibly, this being a supers comics story I wouldn’t count on it) the Super-clone that Lex had made. (No, I didn’t get into that previously in this post and I’m not going to now, either. It’s fine. Pretty sure that’s a comics thing too, and, whatever. Don’t care.) But the black hole could’ve just been inside the pocket dimension or something and the rift could’ve been left out entirely. Writers are clever, I’m sure something else was possible.

Oh wait, without the rift we wouldn’t get that ridiculous scene of Luthorcorp Tower being split in twain, because of course the rift was aimed directly between its dual structures. Somehow. My eyes, they did roll.

We could’ve pared this movie down if we’d simply gotten rid of most of that rift thing, and maybe had fewer jarring shifts of tone due to casual murder. Just sayin’. What is this, Man of Steel or something? Please.

That’s a lot of ranting but please note that it’s centered on a few elements that just didn’t work for me. They may be fine for you, and that’s okay! Most of the movie is a delight! I got my money’s worth and hope that the actors involved keep getting work in this film’s timeline.

To cap this off, I’d like to add that based on her brief appearance to pick up her doggo, I have zero interest in the Supergirl movie they’re clearly intending to follow up this movie with. Holy yikes, Batman. I’m glad we got a final post-credits silly gag sequence to end the movie on a brief, terrific, note. (Even if the gag does center on that stupid rift closure thing.)