Superman (2025) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm talking about the 2025 Superman movie, which I picked up on Blu-ray and watched for the first time last night. There might be some spoilers, but I won't be talking about every plotpoint or character in the movie. So, let's get into it.

After the decade of broken promises, constant change in direction, lack of interest from the people at the top, and the absolute mismanagement that plagued the DC Extended Universe, I was extremely skeptical when it was announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran were chosen to be the heads of the DC Studios (formerly DC Films). I'd never heard of Peter Safran before, and I wasn't a fan of James Gunn's work. I liked the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but the second one left me unimpressed, and Gunn is a director I haven't generally been interested in going back and watching the back catalogue of. Also, knowing how badly Warner Bros. managed the DCEU, between rushing through a Superman movie to doing a Batman vs. Superman movie, with Wonder Woman and Doomsday killing Superman immediately, and then going right into a Justice League movie, I did not have high hopes for this new Superman movie or Gunn's plans for the new DC Universe movies.

Superman is a great movie. Unlike Man of Steel (2013), this movie understands who Superman is and what he, as a character, embodies, not just for the DC comic book Universe, but for everybody who has ever picked up a Superman comic or seen any of the previous movies and TV shows. This is the case, not just because the people at the top, in this case, James Gunn and Peter Safran, are fans and understand the character, but because everyone else who worked on the movie, from the cast to the visual effects studio, to the music composer, is a fan as well. Even if their fandom comes from watching the original movie made by Richard Donner, which came out in 1978, or watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997) and Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000) in the '90s and Smallville (2001-2011) in the 2000s (as I did). Which really does make for a better movie when everyone involved is a fan of the character they're making a movie about, but also isn't so attached to a certain previous version of the character that the movie ends up being an homage to that version, like Superman Returns (2006) ended up being.

David Corenswet is not just a great Superman, but also an amazing Clark Kent. One of my biggest criticisms of Henry Cavill's version of the character in Man of Steel (2013), Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017/2021) is that we never got to meet Clark Kent. Even in BvS, where we got the most of Clark Kent. It always felt like he was Superman and Clark Kent was just a facade that he played when in public. Corenswet, even though we didn't get a whole lot of him as Clark Kent, always made Superman and Clark Kent feel like one person, a singular character that we see throughout the movie, which is how I feel that Tyler Hoechlin portrayed the character on Superman & Lois (2021-2024). To paraphrase Batman in Batman Forever (1995), "I'm Superman and Clark Kent. Not because I have to be, but because I want to be".

I love Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. Having been spoiled by a great Lois Lane on TV with Elizabeth Tulloch's version first in the Arrowverse with the Elseworlds and Crisis on Infinite Earths crossovers on Arrow (2012-2020), The Flash (2014-2023), Supergirl (2015-2021), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (2016-2022), and Batwoman (2019-2022), I was relieved to see that Rachel's version was as close to the comic book version of Lois as Elizabeth's portrayal was, but also stayed away from just homaging what Margot Kidder did in Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), Superman III (1983), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), and staying away from the version played by Amy Adams in the DCEU.

Lois needs to have chemistry with both Superman and Clark Kent, whether she knows they're the same person or not. Which means that whoever is playing Lois Lane has to have chemistry with whoever is cast to play Superman/Clark Kent. Which David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan have in abundance in this movie, and Henry Cavill and Amy Adams did not in the DCEU. It almost felt like the Corenswet/Brosnahan versions could easily meld right into the Hoechlin/Tulloch versions on Superman & Lois because each version is at different ends of the lives of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Which I love.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor is the most unapologetically evil version of the character that I have seen in a movie or on TV since John Shea played the character on Lois & Clark. Not to say the versions of the character we've had in those mediums since then have been bad portrayals but they haven't always been good either. Hoult's version isn't as scary as Michael Cudlitz's version in the fourth season of Superman & Lois, but he's just as dangerous, which Lex Luthor should be, rather than the sympathetic version that we got on Smallville.

The rest of the cast was great. I don't like Guy Gardner as a character, nor am I a big fan of Hawkgirl (or Hawkman for that matter), but I loved Mr. Terrific in this movie. He's not a character that I've ever encountered in the comics, only in seasons 5, 6, 7, and 8 of Arrow, and that version was...interesting to say the least. As for the staff of the Daily Planet, they were awesome. They were also the classic '80s and '90s version too. Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Steve Lombard, Cat Grant, and Ron Troupe. The Daily Planet was noticeably absent from Superman & Lois, the Arrowverse, and had very little screentime in the DCEU, which is most unfortunate, so I'm glad that Gunn included them here.

I've talked a lot about the characters in this movie, but I'd like to talk about the way the movie was filmed and the special effects. Gunn and his crew filmed on location, they built complete physical sets, including the Fortress of Solitude, did wire work for the stunts (embellished with some CGI for things like Superman flying, among other more difficult stunts), and practical suits for Metamorpho, the rest of the Justice Gang, and Superman, as well as the villains. They shot the exterior shots of the Fortress of Solitude/the Arctic in Norway like Lucasfilm did for Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), they had Cleveland, Ohio, where Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster first created Superman back in 1938, stand in for Metropolis, and built the offices of The Daily Planet inside a bus station. So I thought that was really cool considering most movies don't go to that much effort to produce the film, preferring to do everything on the computer in conjunction with the big holodeck like device known as the Volume, which was first used on The Mandalorian (2019-).

I'm glad I got Superman on Blu-ray because there are several really cool bonus features on it. One of them is a 58 minute documentary on the production of the movie, including the casting. I don't think I've ever seen a movie, that wasn't a Star Wars movie, where everybody who worked on the movie was a fan of the franchise the movie was based on. I mentioned this earlier in this blog post that even the people who composed the music for the movie are fans of Superman. But you can really see it when the production designer talks about designing and building the Fortress of Solitude interiors, or the costume designer talks about how the decision to include the classic red trunks to the Superman costume came about, or how the music composers talk about using John Williams's "Superman Theme" from the 1978 movie as the main theme for this one, along with composing new pieces of music for the movie.

There aren't any deleted scenes or commentaries on the Blu-ray, unfortunately, but what we got in the documentary and the other featurettes is pretty spectacular. It felt like watching the DVDs that we used to get in the 2000s, that, even if they were only a single disc release, it'd still be full of bonus features. So I thought that was really cool. Superman is also available on DVD and 4K Ultra HD for those of you who are physical media lovers, and it's streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. and on Crave here in Canada, AND is available for rental on Amazon and Apple TV.

Overall I had a great time watching Superman. It was a really good movie, and I recommend giving it a try if you haven't already seen it. Parts of it made me feel like I was watching the 1978 movie, parts of it made me feel like I was watching episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, parts of it made me feel like I was watching episodes of Superman & Lois (not just because I watched it on a Tuesday night), and parts of it made me feel like I was reading a Superman comic. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more blog posts coming your way. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.