After a lot of hype and a great deal of promotion, promises, and planning, the day has finally come. James Gunn’s Superman released last week as the latest torchbearer for the Man of Steel on the big screen as well as for the future of the DC Universe. A good deal was riding on this movie’s success, which will determine much of the DC slate over the next decade. No pressure!

How did it fare?

I saw Superman with my wife last weekend after patiently enduring the ups and downs of the character’s big screen journey for the last twenty years. There was the misfire of Superman Returns, then the mixed reception for Man of Steel, and many years of questions about Zack Snyder. There was the “almost reboot” by Dwayne Johnson, followed by the “soft reboot,” then “hard reboot” by James Gunn and Peter Safran, all the promo clips, fan speculation, studio indecision and everything else.

In reforming the DCU and making a Superman movie that is all his own, James Gunn has mentioned that the story comes first on several occasions. He has been adamant that every aspect of the film needs to be just right to launch the DC brand into the future and do justice by the character. All of that, I agree with and love hearing, but many have said similar things in the past about a variety of properties, with the oft-repeated “I’ve always been a fan of (insert property name here).”

I had tempered expectations for this film, and was not expecting a masterpiece, so my feelings are not the result of buildup in my head going in, I can promise you that. I was, however, hoping for a decent, fairly standard adaptation of Superman that was middle of the road, at the very least.

I was very disappointed. Like, very, very disappointed.

And confused. Still processing what the heck I just saw. I mean… harem? It’s going to take me a while to get over that one.

The brilliant casting, which I have praised all along, had extremely little chemistry, or material to work with, or both. The three main characters- Superman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor- all just felt off to me.

Let’s go into each one a bit, shall we?

Superman

Let’s start with the very basics. Superman gets his butt kicked in this movie basically from start to finish. Gunn has said he thinks this makes Superman more relatable, a trap many have fallen into and which can ruin the impact of the character if done excessively. When he does have a heroic moment in the film (saving the dog from the kaiju was nice)- a rare occasion- it is usually undercut by something goofy or strange that follows.

David Corenswet was well cast for this role, and is a fine actor who looks and acts the part on and off the screen. No issues there. Unfortunately, his director doesn’t do him any favors. In addition to getting his lunch handed too him throughout the movie, his suit looked much too campy for me (although better than the trailers, admittedly), and his hair color looks like it was dyed far too jet black in every scene. It was almost as if the filmmakers wanted to scream “THIS IS THE SUPERMAN YOU RECOGNIZE, WE PROMISE!!!” A bit more subtlety would have gone a much longer way.

He also yells and loses his cool far, far too much. Superman, like any competent hero, should be self assured if he feels he is making the right decision, which with him is most of the time. I know he is still young in this timeline, and on occasion has gotten angry in the comics, but Gunn has him do it in a big way a good 3-4 scenes.

Ultimately, the first image of Superman that was released a year ago was a true harbinger of what was to come. Superman should help fight a giant eyeball that’s attacking the city by the way, not ignore it while whining. Just a thought.

Lois Lane

Gunn promised that this movie would not have a Guardians soundtrack playing throughout, but that didn’t stop him from making Rachel Brosnahan a grungie Lois Lane, who wears hipster outfits, has extra piercings and dumps half a bottle of sugar into every cup of coffee she drinks.

She has no problems flying spaceships and going into other dimensions in this movie, almost with a ridiculously calm demeanor. While I have no problem with her boldness, which should be a staple of her character, it just looks too far fetched in this movie and also eliminates any sort of reliance on Superman.

Even if modern filmmakers don’t believe that the damsel in distress trope works, okay, but how do you expect her and Superman to have any sort of relationship if they don’t need to rely on each other in some way? If you want to talk about a character being too powerful, poor writers have made the decision to make Lois Lane so strong that I just have a tough time seeing them as a couple at all (and for the record, I didn’t think Brosnahan and Corenswet’s chemistry was anything special).

All of that still might not have gotten in the way with a different story, but here, for me, it did. Another fine casting choice, but interpreted in such a way that was simply much too “out there” for me.

Lex Luthor

Of all the castings I was looking forward to the most, Nicholas Hoult was the tip of the top for me. A brilliant actor who has a chameleon quality he brings to his roles, I think he was a perfect choice and should have been the best actor to play Lex ever.

But yet again, Gunn’s eccentricities really got in the way. Lex’s plots, henchmen, dialogue, and really everything felt less like a Superman story and more like I was watching a Despicable Me movie with my children.

He has one tone- angry- for basically the entire movie. Gunn writes him as manipulating two countries into war to destroy Superman…. while he has conquered a pocket dimension which can also kill the Man of Steel, and nearly does… so why go through the trouble of one if you can do the other? It just didn’t make any sense.

Lex needed to be much more in control and Machiavellian, as all great Luthor stories demonstrate. He is also obsessed with the city of Metropolis- his one true love- and would hardly be indifferent when a dimensional rift tears the city in half. I also hated how he goes to jail at the end without saying something along the lines of “my lawyers will have me out in a week.” None of the usual qualities that make Lex an exceptional menace were present.

Shaving an actor’s head doesn’t make him Lex Luthor. While there was a germ of a good story somewhere in this film, and again, maybe could have been in more capable hands, it didn’t happen here.

Misc- Pros

I don’t want to waste everybody’s time by tediously nitpicking everything else in this movie, so I’ll just throw out a couple of quick hits:

– The special effects were good

– There were a handful of cool Superman poses

– Lastly- and I can’t believe I’m saying this- the best thing about the movie for me may have been Guy Gardner, who was played very capably as his usual annoying, yet funny self and whom I actually recognized as a character from the comics.

Cons

Hoo boy.

– Gunn basically destroys the legacy of Jor-El and Lara in this film by giving them a new motivation. Which was terrible.

– Krypto was unbelievably annoying, but maybe that was just me. I’m not looking forward to Tom King’s drunk, deconstructed Supergirl in her own movie either, which apparently Gunn adores.

– The plot holes in this movie were many. Why are the people- including other heroes- so quick to believe Lex Luthor and turn on Superman after one broadcast, and then immediately again at the end? It would have been much nicer to show a people who were worthy of the trust Superman himself puts in them.

– While the Fortress of Solitude was cool, how the Engineer can hack Kryptonian technology makes no sense, and the Fortress robots were played too much for laughs.

– Casanova Jimmy Olsen was funny at times. But it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen.

– The take on the Kents was kind of bizarre, and for the record, people in Kansas don’t talk like that.

– Perhaps most criminal of all is I didn’t really feel that there were heroes in this movie. Superman seemed to be on his way to becoming one, but as such he was essentially Superboy. Hawkgirl killed a head of state, and Mr. Terrific was useful in the movie but Michael Holt is so much more dignified in the comics. He speaks intelligently, not condescending and foul-mouthed.

Conclusion

I have read some positive reviews for this movie, but most of them are either big James Gunn fans already, or praise the tone for being more light than Snyder’s. Both of those reasons are just fine, but neither of them for me make this a good Superman movie automatically.

I believe there is still an appetite for the superhero genre, and I for one was really hoping this movie would be successful. With Marvel’s demise of the last five years or so and DC being rebooted, I felt the time was right for another quality superhero universe that audiences could get excited about.

The sad thing is, there already was a near perfect adaptation of the character and his universe on the small screen with Superman and Lois (which next to this seems like a masterpiece). Clearly, someone at WB knew how to do right by the character, and I’m not sure why that has not transferred over to the big screen, first with Snyder and then with Gunn. Maybe too much individuality? Certainly Gunn’s excessive tendencies were on full display here, and they weakened the film significantly, which is really too bad.

Looking back now, I think I would have preferred to see what Dwayne Johnson and Henry Cavill could have come up with together, because this felt like one step forward, three steps back. I’m sorry to say it, but if I’m being honest, I think that James Gunn is the wrong guy for this property, and that this is the worst Superman movie that has ever been released.

Going to go watch Superman ‘78 to cleanse my pallet now. Yeesh.

Capeage Meter: 2 out of 10