Ibrahim Noir

Well. It’s certainly been a long time, hasn’t it folks? Not only have I not talked about a movie since Across the Spider-Verse in 2023, I haven’t talked about a bad one since Glass Onion earlier in the same year!

Whoops, did I just say that out loud?

Yes, Snyder’s films were edgy, pretentious garbage, and that’s not even getting into how Warner Bros. tried to speedrun the DCEU into becoming as big as the dominating MCU. I don’t need to tell you how that little project turned out. Of course, the sensible thing to do would have been to go back to drawing board and take a few years coming up with a coherent plan for the next attempt, with a priority focus on not repeating the same mistakes of both the predecessor universe and the currently-floundering MCU.

This is not what happened.

Enter James Gunn. That’s right, the guy who made Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad! However ill-advised it might have been to rush to create a new universe, surely the DCU is in good hands, right? Gunn’s vision has definitely got to be better than Snyder’s at least? This Superman is actually hopeful! He’s kind! He’s aspirational again! We have reconstructed the character after getting burnt out by so many different stories trying at an “Evil Superman” archetype.

I mean yeah, that all sounds sexy and cool. And I can’t lie and say this movie hasn’t revitalized Superman’s image to a significant degree…but that’s not the kind of thing we discuss on this blog.

I know what you guys are thinking: “Quit being coy and just give it to me straight, Ib-senpai. What exactly are we dealing with here? Is this movie better than current Marvel? Is it a good start to the new DCU? Is it better than Snyder at least? Is it just a plain good film?”

Well…no. To all of those. The movie does very few things well. But I need to qualify this, obviously! So we’re gonna hop into the play-by-play (as we do), go over it piece by piece (as we do), and see just where this movie succeeds and where it falters.

But, first things first. Some Frequently Assed Quibbles (FAQ) regarding this movie.

🤓☝️ “Ibrahim, such and such is the case because of the comics!”

This. Ain’t. The comics. As far as I know, this isn’t even an adaptation of a comic storyline. This is a brand new continuity in a brand new DC movie universe. And this is the first entry in a slate of movies and shows set in this universe (or so James Gunn says now…he previously said Creature Commandos is the first in the DCU). As such, this is essentially a brand new world with brand new characters and it’s this movie’s responsibility to start building it from the ground up. If there are gaps in the world or characters as they pertain to this film, it is the fault of James Gunn. Comics written by different people about different characters cannot be used to fill those gaps for him. It’s a hard rule on my film reviews. Information outside of X cannot and should not be used to understand X.

🤓☝️ “Ibrahim, such and such is the case because of [insert headcanon]!”

‘Round these parts, this is what we call “writing for the writer.” If your explanation for why something in the film makes sense isn’t present in the film, it’s a deficiency on the film’s part. Period.

🤓☝️ “Ibrahim, this movie is fun! Why are you trying to take away people’s fun? Where is your joy and whimsy?”

This should go without saying, but this is not an attempt to take away your fun and enjoyment of the film. I don’t actually have the power to do that, as much as I wish I did sometimes (Kidding! Mostly.) That being said, your enjoyment of this movie is not an indication of this movie’s quality. Those two things are independent of one another. If you think this movie is fun and you enjoy watching it, by all mean do so and be happy with yourself. I definitely enjoyed it the first time I watched it. This is not a criticism of you or your enjoyment of this movie. This is an attempt to prove my claim that this movie isn’t well-written.

Are we clear? Good. Let’s get started.

PLOT BREAKDOWN

Prologue (Gods and Monsters)

We open on some on-screen, textual narration over an arctic landscape. Now pay attention because this is important.

3 CENTURIES AGO, the first superpowered beings, known as METAHUMANS, appeared on Earth, ushering in a new era of GODS AND MONSTERS.

3 DECADES AGO, an extraterrestrial baby was sent in a spacecraft to Earth, and adopted by Kansas farmers.

3 YEARS AGO, the baby, now grown, announced himself as SUPERMAN, the most powerful metahuman of all.

3 WEEKS AGO, Superman stopped the country of BORAVIA from invading JARHANPUR, sparking controversy around the world

3 HOURS AGO, a metahuman called the HAMMER OF BORAVIA attacked Superman in the city of METROPOLIS.

3 MINUTES AGO, Superman lost a battle for the first time.

The purpose of this is to establish the state of the world and to make clear to the audience that this is not an origin story for Superman or the world he inhabits. We are beginning this universe in medias res, where metahumans have already existed for ages and are not new to this universe, and Supes has been an established hero for three years now.

I don’t want to frontload this review too much more than I already have, but I’m not kidding when I say the problems with the movie start here. And no, I’m not just talking about how most of this information is either inconsequential to this film or rendered redundant because the movie is just going to communicate it to us through dialogue anyway. And I’m definitely not saying it’s a problem to skip the origin and start the story of your superhero universe in the middle. That’s all well and good. What I am saying is that the contents of this opening text is going to create some serious implications for this movie’s worldbuilding down the line that it hasn’t prepared for.

For example, that last line. Bit of a doozy, isn’t it? In three year’s time, Superman has only presently lost a fight for the first time! This, coupled with the declaration that Superman is the most powerful metahuman (which he may or may not have declared himself as…the syntax doesn’t make it clear), should speak to Superman being an absurdly good fighter who is very tough to beat. Hmm…

For now though, this line is punctuated with Superman crash-landing into the ice, wounded and barely conscious. He barely manages to whistle and summons…Krypto! That’s right, Krypto the Superdog is in this film. He excitedly roughhouses with Superman a bit, which hurts Supes of course. He weakly tells Krypto to take him “home”, and the good doggy drags Superman by the cape to the Fortress of Solitude, which emerges out of the ice.

In the Fortress, we meet a team of Superman Robots. One of them is voiced by Alan Tudyk. And no, it’s not K-2SO. He might have the same actor, and humor, and mannerisms as K-2SO…but it ain’t him. His name is Four, after his number designation. He and a team of robots lift and carry Superman, and Four tells him not to thank them since they’re merely automatons with no feelings or consciousness whatsoever. Immediately after this, Twelve, a new bot, giggles and expresses excitement when Superman looks at her. Please do not ask how a robot that apparently has no feelings or consciousness can express emotion lest you be accused of lacking media literacy, as the good people on Twitter have made clear to anyone who dare ponder this. I think this is meant to be a joke? No one in my theater laughed at it, I can tell you that much. Not to worry, though. This is Twelve’s last speaking role and they’re not going to even attempt to explain this!

This is the exchange that immediately follows this:

[Four] I put your parents’ message on to soothe you.

[Superman] Thank you.

[Four] (to Twelve) He finds it soothing.

You think you wanna maybe give that one another look, James? Because this is you telling me three different times that Superman finds the message soothing.

Also, the robots somehow knew Superman was coming, and that he needed soothing, because they played the message pre-emptively. I want you guys to keep that in mind for later. It’s very important to understand that the robots are apparently aware of what happens outside the Fortress.

I suppose we should talk about the message itself. It’s half of a recording of Clark’s Kryptonian parents. The other half was lost in transit from Krypton to Earth, as Four exposits. The half we got is as follows:

“We love you more than heaven, our son. We love you more than land. Our beloved home will soon be gone forever. But hope vitalizes our hearts, and that hope is you, Kal-El. We have searched the universe for a home where you can do the most good and live out Krypton’s truth. That place is Earth.”

The message is playing in Kryptonian and Four translates for Twelve who asks what the message is. This is very blatantly expositional dialogue. It’s what we call “As You Know” dialogue and it’s possibly the worst kind of exposition because it has zero purpose in-universe, and is only beneficial for conveying information to the omniscient audience watching the movie. It’s very clumsy and amateurish writing, especially for someone as experienced as Gunn. All of this information are things everyone here should already be aware of. Twelve being a new robot is clear attempt to excuse this by having her act as an audience surrogate. But if you think about it for a few seconds, a) Twelve should obviously have all the knowledge of this pre-programmed, and b) Four can translate the Kryptonian, so the other robots should be able to as well. This can be very immersion-breaking, to say the least.

And there are better ways of doing this. You could write it so that Superman is still learning Kryptonian, or even better, you could have him ask if the robots have made progress in recovering the other half of the message. In fact, given later events, you really should establish that the robots can’t recover the other half (or that they have and are deliberately hiding it from Superman). Otherwise, the reality is that the robots have just been standing around being useless for the past 3 years…? 30 years? Potentially longer? It’s not clear how long the Fortress of Solitude’s been around.

In any case, the robots unnecesssarily exposit some more by telling us, the audience, that Superman heals when he’s exposed to a yellow sun. This could be established visually by, you know, showing us his wounds healing, but I guess this bit is for the audience members on their phones.

Anyhoo, outside the Fortress we see a new character marching towards it.

This is the Engineer. That is her name, title, job, and description. How did she get here from Metropolis? Well, the Engineer has control over NANOMACHINES, SON! With these, she can create, to quote the movie, “anything she can imagine.” She’s basically the T-1000 on steroids. It’s kind of ridiculous. She can morph her body into anything, up to and including a jetpack on her back. She can fly, but I seriously doubt she can fly as fast as Superman, and he took 3 minutes to land here. Then again, I don’t know where this place is in relation to Metropolis so maybe I should shut up in case they’re right next to each other. But I am allowed to complain that I have to ask because the movie doesn’t bother trying to explain it.

Superman decides he needs to jump back into the fray, despite only being 83% restored. He sees that the Fortress is a mess and chastises the Superman robots (yes, that’s what they’re called) for not watching Krypto better. Four responds that he is “unruly” and recognizes that “they are not flesh and blood and could not care less whether he lives or dies.”

Thanks, K-2SO.

Superman starts to leave and Krypto starts biting his ankles. I think it’s about here where you’ll decide whether you find Krypto annoying or not. Either way, this isn’t the last we’ll see of him. For now though, Supes flies off, leaving Krypto behind. He actually flies right over the Engineer, apparently unaware of her black bodysuit against the icy landscape. Lucky for her that he didn’t look down at all. And really lucky that this version of Superman apparently doesn’t have enhanced vision, hearing, etc.

At least, we can only hope James Gunn has the foresight not to establish later that he does have those powers…

Oh well. I’m sure it’s no big deal that Superman’s left the Fortress unattended. As we established earlier, the robots can tell what goes on in the Fortress’s exterior. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Cue mid-flight title card.

ACT I (The Hammer of Boravia)

We cut back to Metropolis, where the Hammer of Boravia (a mean flying guy in thick armor) is yelling at an office building.

[Hammer of Boravia] Your Superman has abandoned you! The people of Boravia will not ignore him inserting himself into our affairs.

He then lasers the building.

So Superman, presumably the de-facto American superhero, interfered with the affairs of a foreign country, and now a superpowered agent of that country has come to level buildings and citizens in Metropolis. We are going to learn that Superman did this on behalf of himself without consulting any governing body, Boravia is actually an ally of the U.S., and Superman did this because it was going to invade another forgeign country, Jarhanpur.

Holy hell.

Remember earlier when I said that opening crawl was going to come back to bite this movie? Here it begins.

Metahumans have existed in this world for 300 years now. I personally would advise against putting a hard date on this sort of thing but Gunn obviouly chose differently. What he neglected to think of is that this would almost necessarily mean there would be laws accounting the sort of thing Superman has just done. The mere existence of superheroes is going to invite questions about accountability, overight, jurisdiction, and management. The MCU’s Sokovia Accords were ratified in 2016, eight years after Iron Man revealed himself to the world, because superheroes hadn’t existed for 300 bloody years up to that point and so an Ultron-level event hadn’t happened before that point (inb4 the MCU retcons this, but my point stands).

This movie acts like superheroes getting involved in foreign affairs is completely unprecedented which…I just don’t buy. Sorry, James. You haven’t put in enough work to make this believable.

And no, the revelation that this is a false flag operation does not eliminate this problem because as of now, everyone believes a Boravian superhero has come to attack America because of Superman involving himself in Boravian affairs.

Furthermore, an event like this would surely attract the attention of other metahuman superheroes. In fact, we’re going to find out for fact that there are other superheroes in Metropolis. But because the writers want this to be a Superman scene, they simply don’t exist right now.

300 years, James.

Speaking of Superman, he is getting his ass kicked by the Hammer. This must mean, according to the movie, that the Hammer of Boravia is more powerful than Superman. The movie opened with the declaration that Supes is the most powerful metahuman, and followed this with the declaration that Superman has never lost a fight before. Therefore, the Hammer must be faster, stronger, and smarter than Superman. I sure hope (rhetorically) that it doesn’t turn out to be a dumb clone of Superman that is dependent on someone else’s orders or something.

Let’s pan over to Luthorcorp!

This is Lex Luthor (played by Nicholas Hoult). As we are in medias res for this universe, he is already a villain, and he is commanding the Hammer of Boravia. I’ll spoil now that the Hammer is just a suit piloted by Ultraman, a metahuman under Lex’s command.

So Lex controls Ultraman by calling out fighting moves to his team using corresponding codes like 12X, 14B, 1A, etc. The crew inputs those codes, and Ultraman acts accordingly.

What the fuck.

Do I need to explain how wildly inefficient this is? The movie is trying to communicate that Lex has spent a long time studying Superman’s moves and has developed a system to counter them. And because this movie thinks you’re an idiot, it tells you this outright three different times in succession through more expositional dialogue.

[Goon 1] It’s like he knows Superman’s every move before he makes it.

[Goon 2] He does. He’s been studying him for years.

[Goon 3] He’s developed over 2,500 fight moves for any situation.

Thank you, James. What, is Goon 1 new to the job too?

Getting back to why this is idiotic, the time it would take for Lex to watch the fight, pick an instruction, call out the instruction, and have his team send the instruction to Ultraman so he can implement the instruction is way too long to counteract a normal person, who is performing that same process at an infinitely faster rate in their brain, let alone a hero with goddamn super speed. One unpredictable move is all it would take to stunlock Lex in a rapidly-compounding game of catch-up. In fact, the only way this could work is if Superman is just flying headfirst into the enemy and letting himself get hit.

But that can’t be the case because Superman is the most powerful metahuman…right?

So anyway, Superman flies headfirst into the enemy and lets himself get hit…and promptly gets his ass beat.

Sigh.

I again have to say that I really really hope James does not establish Superman to have super hearing in a later installment because he should absolutely be hearing these instructions if that’s the case.

Also, while all of this happening, there is a shot of a woman inside Luthercorp taking selfies. I regret to inform you that this will be important later, so please do try to remember.

Superman, who is in a crater, is helped up a friendly civilian man named Mali. I’m telling you this because the movie will use him later for drama.

Another civilian, very subtly gives his views on geopolitics.

[Civilian] Maybe you shouldn’t have done that thing in Jarhanpur, Superman.

Thank you, James.

As Luthorcorp celebrates, the “Hammer of Boravia” flies onto an off-site camp thousands of miles away.

Sorry, did I say thousands of miles away? I meant just off the coast of Metropolis.

So yeah. No one has tracked this evil, apparently foreign superbeing flying onto a base with a goddamn Luthorcorp flag waving in its center. I’m not sure I believe you, movie.

The “Hammer” walks into a tent, enters a goddamn portal device which he uses to teleport back inside Luthorcorp, where the team congratulates Ultraman for his performance.

A goddamn portal. In the first movie of a new cinematic universe.

I’m calm, okay guys? I’m calm. I know what I just said sounds insane, but I’m sure this portal is just a simple two-way device that connects the compound to Lex’s skyscraper. Entirely above-board and legal…certainly nothing that risks tearing reality apart every time you use it, or anything.

And hey, maybe Lex has an agreement with the government where they just won’t ask questions if an apparently foreign superhero lands on the Lex Luthor Beach Camp just down the street from the city it just attacked. This is all believable so far. Great work, James! Keep it up!

So Superman assumes his “Clark Kent” persona and begins his day as mild-mannered journalist at the Daily Planet (you can tell this takes place in a fictional universe because people actually like and respect journalists).

Several of Clark’s co-workers congratulate him on his story making the front page, the story being his coverage on the Boravia incident and his “interview” with Superman afterwards. He gets a call from Ma and Pa Kent (Ma yells awkwardly into the phone like a lot of old people do which is funny) and the short version of their conversation amounts to “Congratulations on the front page! Don’t be a stranger!” The purpose of this scene is to introduce Clark’s adoptive parents, but there’s not much here considering how important they are (or should be) to Clark. The implication is that Clark is somewhat distant from then, but a very important scene later in this movie is heavily reliant on his relationship with them…and this is their only scene before then. You can make a statement about how seemingly little Clark thinks about his Earth parents, but they aren’t even mentioned between now and their final appearance.

Next we meet Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Jisondo) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan). We’re very quickly informed that Jimmy Olsen is popular with the ladies. I regret to inform you that this will also be important later, so please try to remember.

Lois Lane questions the origin and motivation of the Hammer of Boravia, (correctly) pointing that we have no idea what his true intentions were or even if he’s from Boravia. It establishes right away a dedicated, go-getter journalist. Which is great! And she follows a reasonable line of thinking here. However, it’s one she’s going to promptly abandon so the rest of the movie can happen. She also seems skeptical about the numerous interviews Clark seems to be able to land with Superman.

Hmmm…does she know?

On the TV is the president of Boravia, Vasil Ghurkos, denying Boravia’s involvement with the Hammer before stating that Superman has put in jeopardy the country’s good relations with the U.S. Lex Luthor is the richest man in the city with what we’ll soon learn are well-known ties to the Boravian conflict. But dedicated, go-getter journalist Lois Lane isn’t going to connect the obvious dots now because the movie would be over if she did.

At the Pentagon, Lex Luthor introduces his team of metahumans, called PlanetWatch. They consist of Ultraman, a superpowerful being created by Lex, The Engineer, whose blood Lex infused with NANOMACHINES, SON! and can create anything she can imagine, and his team of flying armored men called Raptors.

Excuse me, Lex? You have the power to make beings more powerful than Superman, Lex? You can turn people into the T-1000, Lex? Remind me why you haven’t killed the guy already, Lex? Why only one Ultraman, Lex? Why only one Engineer, Lex? One Ultraman beat Superman to a pulp. Imagine if you had two. Or an army of them instead of the Raptors. What the fuck is stopping you, Lex? Where is your fucking ambition?

Mind you, we haven’t even gotten to the fact that this man can create entire universes.

So Lex wants the government to enlist PlanetWatch to take out Superman because the Boravia thing proves he’s a big bad menace, but the government people are resistant, reminding Lex that Superman did still stop a war, a sign that he has good intentions. One lady also points out that since Lex is selling arms to Boravia, one might say he’d have a vested interest in Superman being taken off of the board. They’re absolutely correct, of course. Lex really doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on here. Superman has only done good things for the past three years. Meanwhile, Lex wants to eliminate this morally-good superhero, stands to profit from Boravia’s war with Jarhanpur, is able to create beings more powerful than Superman, and clearly has shady intentions. Lex is such a buffoon in this movie that the arguments he’s making here actually work better as arguments for a check on himself rather than Superman.

Let’s review, shall we?

Lex is stupidly rich, has insane technology up to an including portals, his own private superhero that can beat Superman, and, most importantly, is willing to commit illegal acts up to and including treason to aid his goals.

You may not have noticed, but the movie breaks here. Only fifteen minutes in! Lex is arguably the mot important character in this story. He pushes the plot because he is an active villain, while Superman is a reactive hero. Everything in the plot revolves around his goal and how he goes about maneuvering to achieve it. This movie would have you believe that Lex needs to manufacture some pretext he doesn’t need (the government’s permission), to do something he can already do (kill Superman). But as we went over, he has access to a metahuman that can do this already (make that two, actually, as we’ll find out the Engineer can do it as well). And he has goddamn reality-tearing portals that the government doesn’t know about that he can use to remove Superman from play altogether. And I’ll reiterate that all of this was incited by an act of treason (falsifying a terrorist attack by another country).

Why is there a second act?

I cannot overstate this: the movie is over. Which means the only reason this is going to continue is because, you guessed it, the villain is an idiot with an asinine plan and needs to do things in the most convoluted, moronic way possible. Stellar writing, James.

All of this, of course, also raises the question of why the government is even considering going into business with Lex given everything I just laid out. In all honesty, it should be enough to conclude that Lex is tied to the Hammer of Boravia, but they don’t even investigate him.

Sigh. It’s good to be back folks.

While trying to convince everyone that the supergood guy who pets puppies and helps old ladies cross the street is actually going to kill us all, Lex claims that Superman is unique among the metahumans for interfering with foreign affairs (300 years btw), having a hidden fortress in Antartica, being an ALIEN!

…Wait a damn minute. Guy Gardner is in this universe, and he’s a Lantern! Technically it’s not established that the Lanterns are based in a planet that isn’t Earth, but I don’t think James Gunn is going to change that bit of lore. Gardner is also part of a group owned by a private corportation. So let’s break this down: Superman interfering with foreign affairs should not be unique because it’s been 300 years of metahumans. Superman having a private base should not be unique because of the Justice Gang (and because it’s been 300 years of metahumans). Superman being an alien shouldn’t be unique because Guy Gardner exists, the Lanterns exist, and Supergirl is going to pop by for a visit later (which is going to cause problems of its own, lemme tell ya)…and because it’s been 300 years of metahumans.

It’s not convincing to the government people but it doesn’t even work as a motivation for Lex. Why does he hate Superman in particular so much? This is far too flimsy to convince us why Lex is convinced Superman is a threat to humanity.

Nontheless, Lex thinks this is enough to at least warrant PlanetWatch bringing Superman in for questioning, and even assures them that he can contain him. For some reason no one entertains the idea of just asking the guy for a chat. This is egregious since I’m pretty sure he’d be willing to oblige. Have they never tried this? Has the government and Superman never communicated before? There’s no reason force needs to be involved here other than the movie would prefer you don’t consider the obvious alternative.

Rick Flag, Sr. (he’s the father of Rick Flag from both Suicide Squad films) says that while he’s not comfortable with a powerful alien like Superman on the loose, he is popular and so detaining him would be bad for optics.

I’m assuming you’re not comfortable with Lex privately making comparably powerful beings like Ultraman then?

Lex counters that Superman is becoming less popular every day according to “online chatter” (as if real people exist on Twitter or something).

The idea of Kryptonite is floated before it’s established that there’s none left on the planet. The question of why and where it went isn’t raised, instead Lex says he has a workaround for this. Frankly, I find the idea of Kryptonite laughable at this point. It’s the one thing everyone knows can hurt or kill Superman but this movie isn’t aware that Lex doesn’t even need it to kill Superman at this point. Regardless, they all dismiss him, saying that without solid proof of malicious intent, they’re not going to do a thing. And do a thing, they do not! They don’t interrogate Superman, interrogate other metahumans that know Superman, hell, they don’t even investigate Lex’s claims about an ice fortress in the Arctic. The reason for this is…uh, well…don’t worry about it.

Back at Lois’s apartment we see Clark preparing breakfast for dinner for their 3-month anniversary. That’s right, not only have Lois and Clark been dating for that long, but Lois also knows she’s Superman. She (correctly) points out that Clark’s “interviews” with himself are highly unethical because he knows the questions in advance. Clark entertains the idea of Lois interviewing him and Lois very quickly becomes excited about the idea. She asks for one right now before Clark can back out of something he clearly has some reservations about committing to. Strangely, the ethical question of the interviewer and interviewee being in a romantic relationship with each other is never brought up. It’s probably about here that both of them should have realized this isn’t the best idea, but never mind.

Personally, I have a hard time believing that this is the first time dedicated, go-getter journalist Lois Lane would ask to interview Superman. If there was something unique about this time, such as Superman becoming divisive among the public, I could maybe believe it, but the movie is going to tell us later that Superman’s “haters” are nothing but highly-trained monkeys (yes, really), which means Superman is still pretty popular (other than Frank or whatever that one guy at the beginning of the movie’s name was).

This scene accomplishes very little for how long it is but I still have a fair amount to say about it, so we’re going to take this in chunks.

The two sit down. Lois turns on a voice recorder and starts off pretty directly. She tells Clark (as Superman) that the Department of Defense is ready to look into his actions in Boravia.

(Clark chuckles)

[Lois] That’s funny?

[Clark] It’s not “funny” funny, it’s just…come on. “My actions?” I stopped a war.

[Lois] Maybe.

[Clark] Not maybe. I did.

Clark goes on to explain that he smashed some tanks and jets, but there were no casualties and no major injuries. Lois asks if he interacted with Ghurkos at all, prompting Clark to remind Lois that they previously spoke of this in confidence. Lois turns off the recorder to remind Clark that he’s on the record, and insists that she would have asked the question regardless of whether or not she knew the answer already. At this point there’s some friction in the conversation. Might be a good time to abort this, but they continue.

Lois turns the recorder back on and Clark explains that his “interaction” with Ghurkos had him fly him out into the desert, place him against a cactus, and make a vague threat about Ghurkos having to “personally” answer to him if he tries to invade Jarhanpur again. He gets flustered and awkwardly defends his actions when Lois labels this as torture.

I’ll say here that I’m not a fan of how seemingly unprepared Clark is for these questions. Beyond the fact that Superman should know he’s done something incredibly serious and should be ready for questions like this, Clark is a journalist as well. He should know what kind of questions to expect and should have answers prepared, almost pre-practiced. He’s definitely aware of the “online chatter” to the point where it bothers him. Has he not seen basic questions such as “What does Superman think the government’s response to this is going to be?” or “What gives Superman the authority to decide what foreign powers have the right to do?” Surely he knew he’d be interviewed at some point, most likely by someone who isn’t in love with him? I understand the movie wants to imply that Clark is slightly naive, but there’s a line between naive and straight-up ignorant. If naive is the angle the writers wanted, I think it would better serve his character if he were staunch on positions based on fundamental principles of goodness (for lack of a better term). He did what he thought was right and he won’t abide a country starting a war that could result in the loss of thousands of lives if he has the power to stop it. He could even challenge Lois for seemingly getting to rest in a comfortable position where she can judge his actions because she doesn’t have his power, whereupon she can challenge right back by asking why he gets to decide what is good and evil. It could be a very interesting exchange! Instead it’s implied Clark hasn’t thought about any of this and the man is 30 years of age. He gives very juvenile answers along the lines of “but the Boravian government is evil!” and it takes no time at all for him to get stumped by the resulting questions. It makes me wonder how embarrasing his self-interviews are. And what’s more is that it becomes clear that the movie isn’t going to dig deeper on this topic, because if it’s not interested in doing so here, it’s definitely going to do so elsewhere.

By the way, I can’t wait till we get to the movie’s eventual answer to the question of intervention in foreign affairs because it is an absolute piss-take. So stay tuned for that.

Pressing on, Clark becomes less flippant at this point in the conversation. He reminds Lois that Ghurkos was going to kill people, but Lois interrupts, summarizing that Superman inserted himelf into a tense geopolitical situation, sided with a country the U.S. has a tense relationship with and against a U.S. ally, whose head of state he threatened with death. Growing more agitated, Clark strongly asserts that Jarhanpur being an “imperfect” country doesn’t justify its invasion. Lois retorts that Boravia claims to be liberating Jarhanpur from a tyrannical regime, and a very exasperated Clark states that Lois “knows that’s very silly.” Lois feigns confusion about this and Clark yells about the absurdity of Boravia’s justification for its actions before accusing Lois of “being dishonest.” Lois again reminds Clark that he’s on the record and he stops the recorder.

[Clark] You know as well as I do that Boravia is not well-intentioned!

[Lois] I think that’s almost certainly the case. But do I know that? No, I don’t. Can we go on now?

[Clark] Yeah, fine.

[Lois] You think this is going well?

[Clark] Do I think this is going well? Um…I think I’m doing a good job.

(Lois turns the recorder back on)

[Lois] Superman, did you consult with the President before entering Boravian airspace?

[Clark] (sighs) No.

[Lois] The Secretary of Defense?

[Clark] No.

[Lois] Or any U.S. official before you took matters into your own hands and decided unilaterally how to handle this extremely delicate situation?

[Clark] Ghurkos and his goons were going to kill people.

[Lois] Yes, but the results of you seemingly acting as a representative of the United States—

[Clark] (over Lois) I wasn’t representing anybody except for me! And-and…myself, and-and-and good, being good—

[Lois] will cause more problems around the world, more than a war that in all likelihood would have lasted between twelve and twenty-four hours and was, practically speaking, just replacing one tyrannical regime with another?

[Clark] You really feel like that?

[Lois] I’m not the one being interviewed, Superman, but I question it. Yeah, I would question myself in the same situation and hold off a beat and consider the consequences.

[Clark] (shouting) People were going to die!

The apartment falls silent. I expected Lois here to say that people are dying all the time, all over the world, and that this doesn’t give Superman carte blanche to do whatever he wants but she is stunned by this response. Oh well.

We get a pretty stark tonal shift after this because the topic changes to Superman’s presence on social media. Clark very quickly states that he doesn’t read up on social media and drops the line “Superman doesn’t have time for selfies.” Lois snarks about him referring to himself in the third-person. It’s pretty cringe, and it’s delivered like Clark was waiting for an opportunity to say it, which is embarrasing because it seems like he was more prepared for this than the interview. It doesn’t even make sense because taking selfies is not the same as keeping up with social media. I don’t know what we’re doing tonally either, because the mood becomes somewhat lighter but I feel like the previous conversation was getting pretty heavy and we’ve moved away before it got a chance to really conclude.

Nontheless, Lois says that people are suspicious about Superman since he’s an alien, but Clark retorts that he’s always been honest about this. He’s from Krypton, a planet that expired along with his parents and all his history. He says he was sent by them to Earth as a baby to save his life. When Lois asks specifically where on Earth he was sent, Clark tells her that she knows he isn’t going to reveal that. He says his biological parents sent him to Earth to make it a better place and serve humanity.

[Lois] They said that?

[Clark] Yes, they sent a message with me, that message is why I do what I do, I cherish it more than anything.

The fact that Lois asks this is to set up the idea that they didn’t say this specifically, but even before the reveal it’s very reckless of the movie to imply that the message is the only reason Clark does his heroing. It should be very obvious to everyone in the room that the people who actually raised him would have been the ones to instill in him the good values that he tries to embody, not the Kryptonian parents that he never got to know. It’s so strange how much stock he puts in a 30-second half-message from people he never met. This is just a little too clunky, but it’s because the movie just needs it to be this way, regardless of it makes sense. But more on this later.

Lois continues that the suspicion Clark is under on social media has prompted the creation of hashtags, referencing two of them: #Superspy and #Supershit. This causes Clark to leap out of seat and shriek that Lois knows Supershit specifically irritates him.

…Why?

“Superspy” is a much worse as a critique on Superman’s character because it implies he has nefarious intentions regarding his presence on Earth. It others him by highlighting the fact that he isn’t from the planet and accuses him of not having its citizens’ best interests at heart. “Supershit” is such a lame and desperate attempt at an insult. It barely even qualifies as a playground barb. Why is he so pissed off about that one? Why are we characterizing Clark to be so childish?

In any case, this causes Clark to crash out and ragequit the interview. He insists he’s not mad but he very clearly starts packing his shit to leave. Lois complains that he does this every time he’s faced with conflict, “this” being getting mad and pouty and avoidant. This is an interesting line both because this is the first time Lois has interviewed Clark and because Clark has only been shown to rush into conflict prior to this. He did so prior to the beginning of the movie with his actions in Boravia, he left the Fortress despite only having an 83% health bar, and you can’t even argue that he avoids personal conflict specifically because he rushed into this interview. But to be fair, the movie isn’t finished. I guess time will tell if this accusation from Lois holds true for the rest of the movie.

Lois mutters under her breath that she “knew this would never work”, “this” referring to not just the interview, but their relationship. She reminds Clark that she previously said she’s no good at this sort of thing. Oh dear, they’re having a fight. On their 3-month anniversary, no less!

So Clark leaves.

We then cut to Lex Luthor arriving at the Arctic with his top enforcers to infiltrate the Fortress of Solitude…and selfie lady is here too.

Why? Why here on this mission?

Thety approach where the Fortress was before it went back into the ice.

[Engineer] How are we going to gain access?

[Lex] Oh, ye of little faith.

The Fortress then rises out of the ice. This is what we in the business call a load of bullshit. Yes, this happens because someone on the evil team has Superman’s DNA, but Lex has no fucking clue how to Fortress works at this point. He’s only just located it hours ago. He gets to look cool and confident here because he’s read the script. This continues as he enters the Fortress, even though he really has no idea what could be in there or what he’s looking for.

[Four] Superman, I’ve preemptively put up the soothing message from your—

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course the robots have played the message preemptively, even though they don’t even know if Superman needs soothing. This is so the villains can discover that there is a message and so this movie can have its really clunkly “moral dilemma” later. Also, remember back in the prologue when I said that the robots must definitely know what’s happening outside the Fortress? Why the hell do they not realize it’s Luthor until he’s right in front of them?

Luckily for Lex, the robots are shit and don’t put up a fight at all. Ultraman and the Engineer neutralize them with ease. Even Krypto gets taken out by the Engineer, who covers his head in NANOMACHINES, SON! This is all while Lex strides through the carnage with all the confidence and swagger of a man who knows he’s in front of a green screen.

I’m sure to many this was just an ultra-badass moment for Lex. I think it’s pretty disappointing that he reacts this way. On one layer, Lex has infiltrated what could be considered a treasure trove of alien information, tech, culture, and history, and he just unga-bungas his way through it all, destroying everything when he could use take the opportunity of a lifetime to learn everything there is to know about his enemy. Even Zucker-Lex from the shitty Snyder movies showed more intiative in this regard. On another layer, the movie would have you believe that a big part of Lex’s hatred for Superman comes from his fear of his alien-ness. Yet he’s walking through this alien’s fortress not with trepidation or even disgust, but just kinda stoically like…well, like someone who’s read the script. Granted, I’m no super-genius but I figure the pragmatic thing to do would be send in Ultraman and the Engineer first to scope things out before Lex follows them in. I mean for fuck’s sake, what if one of these robots had a gun?

🤓☝️ “It was cool, Ibrahim! You’re just miserable!”

Yeah, yeah. God forbid we take the time to write a scene that’s both cool and character-building. What kind of hack would try to accomplish multiple things at once? Certainly not the writer of Guardians of the Galaxy.

But what am I talking about? The movie does give us character-building for Lex! And even the Engineer too as a bonus! Maybe I spoke too soon.

[Lex] I can’t stand the metahumans, but he’s so much worse. Super…man. He’s not a man, he’s an “it.” A thing with a cocky grin and a stupid outfit that’s somehow become the focal point of the entire world’s conversation. Nothing’s felt right since he showed up.

Putting aside that Lex can’t stand the metahumans despite having made a whole bunch of them, this is pretty much all we’re going to get for why Lex doesn’t like Superman. He doesn’t like Superman because he doesn’t like Superman. And if you want to know more, such as why Lex thinks Superman in particular is “so much worse” than the other metahumans, then you’re just a hater.

This is when someone who didn’t read the top of this post comes out and says something like “but in the comics, Lex is petty so this is accurate!”

Pettiness is fine as a characteristic to add onto a character with a motivation. It is not in itself a substitute for character or motivation. Pettiness is not substantive. It’s trivial by definition, which is why making it someone’s defining characteristic is saved for silly cartoon characters like Mr. Crocker or King Dedede. Trying to defend this by telling me the comics are also trivial and silly is nothing but a damning indictment of the comics, and shoots my interest in ever reading them down through the fucking floor. Everyone knew how to criticize Kylo Ren for being an angry manchild. Everyone knew how to criticize the Chameleon from Kung Fu Panda 4 for being shallower than a fucking puddle. But it gets a pass in this movie? Not on my blog.

But the real banger is the line that comes next.

[Engineer] I know, Lex. I’ve sacrificed my own humanity to help get rid of it.

(Pro-tip, James. If you have a character say the words “I know” to another character in dialogue, maybe think about how necessary the dialogue is.)

This is the most we’re going to get for the Engineer’s character, by the way. We’re never going to find out why the Engineer hates Superman enough to sacrifice her own humanity. It’s implied to be the same reason as Lex, which is itself vague and undefined. She is what she is and she does what she does because she is what she is and does what she does.

So the Engineer connects herself to the Kryptonian computer with the message on it (because this is something she can do) and she repairs the message, thus completing it (becuase this is also something she can do). Please do not ask me how she can interface her human-made technology with this alien technology, how she can repair a damaged message that not even the Kryptonian-made robots could, or how they could hope to translate it even if they can fix it, because I really don’t know how to help you there. Don’t ask James Gunn, either.

Lex assures the Engineer that he has a plan to keep Superman busy while she extracts the message. Luckily, Clark has decided not to fly back to the Fortress after his fight with Lois. It would be pretty inconvenient for Lex if he did because we know for fact that he can make the trip in three minutes. This whole trip honestly could not have gone better for Lex!

ACT II (A Goddamn Pocket Universe)

As for Lex’s plan, some of his goons back in Metropolis, open up the back of a van and release a baby kaiju into the city.

This is what it looks like the next day

The kaiju is inexplicably in the middle of the city with no buildings destroyed or people injured/killed. There’s a news report that even says the creature was spotted at seven feet tall in front of a coffee shop and has kept growing since then. And apparently no one’s noticed or done anything about it while it was growing to the point where it’s now the size of a skyscraper. Everyone reacts to it like it’s the first time they’re seeing it. It’s as if it’s been teleported into the scene for an action setpiece (perish the thought).

By the way, we can just go ahead and add this to the list of Lex’s illegal activities that he does in order to have a legal pretext to kill Superman. I’d like to remind you all as well that Lex considers the presence of one alien untenable, and this creature is definitely not from Earth.

Where the hell did he even get it?

Not to worry about any of that, though. The important purpose of the scene is to show Superman being a goodman and saving people, which I appreciate (he even saves a squirrel!) I think it’s important in superhero movies in general to show the heroes saving people (not in the general “saving the world” sense, in the personal “swooping in and pulling someone out of danger” sense) and a lot of modern superhero movies have forgotten that. The exception to this is the girl he saves from the bursting pipes (the iconic shot from the trailer). It’s a cool shot but the girl is just scuffing her foot, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, which makes little sense.

Anyway, the other purpose of the scene is to introduce the Justice Gang!

The convenient news report exposits who these people are even though everyone in Metropolis would know. The Justice Gang are a small team of superheroes owned by LordTech, making them corporate-owned superheroes. They consist of Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) who’s a Green Latern, Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) who’s self-explanatory, and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), who commands multi-purpose metal orbs called T-Spheres.

They team up to fight the Kaiju. A lot of Guy Gardner’s ring creations are pretty fun. He constructs a bullhorn to tell the public to clear the area, a muzzle for the creature, a giant pair of oven mitts for its claws, and my favorite is what I can only describe as a giant eye poker.

Superman catches up with Mr. Terrific and explains to him that he’s been trying to safely remove the creature, rather than kill it, so he can take it somewhere to be studied. Mr. Terrific scoffs disdainfully at this and tries to kill it with the rest of the team. The Justice Gang don’t show nearly as much care for reducing collateral damage as Superman, forcing him to clean up after them. Terrific eventually blows up the kaiju’s insides with his T-Spheres, ultimately killing it.

The Justice Gang then argue about their name.

[Guy] Just another day in the life of the Justice Gang!

[Hawkgirl] Not our name! It’s just a working name!

[Guy] Could very well prove to be permanent though!

[Hawkgirl] Probably not!

[Guy] Good chance, though.

I hope you found this funnier than I did because this joke is going to repeat in just about every scene they appear in. On that note though, this exchange implies that the Justice Gang are pretty new, which is weird since considering how well-known they are, they must have been a team for some time. This is actually in-line with James Gunn’s biggest worldbuilding issue: nothing feels established and part of the world. Everything just spawns in as they’re needed for the plot. The movie introduces the Justice Gang here because it’s convenient. They were absent in the opening fight with the Hammer of Boravia because it would have been inconvenient. They’re established be a team owned and assembled by Max Lord who have existed long enough to have their own headquarters, yet there’s only three of them and they haven’t even decided on a name. It’s so much worldbuilding as it is worldappending. It’s akin to hastily adding scaffolding for parts to a building that you should’ve added in the early stages of construction after the building’s already been constructed (and is currently falling apart) .

But anyway, a very important scene is about to take place. No one is clapping for the heroes for defeating the kaiju because they’re all looking at an all-important news broadcast concerning Superman.

I know we’re in the era of “Gods and Monsters” or whatever but I doubt the kaiju news story would be forgotten about so quickly. But never mind.

Lex Luthor is on a TV interview where he says he has the complete message from Superman’s Kyrptonian parents. I’m going to stress that this is 100% real as far as this movie is concerned. It’s not AI, or a deepfake, or a Luthor fabrication. The movie insists on and makes sure to reiterate the realness of this message about 4-5 times through characters of varying trustworthiness. James Gunn is desperate for you to understand how not-fake this is. He’s even talked about it in interviews.

The innocuous first half plays, and Superman asks what’s so wrong with it.

Then the next half plays.

“The people there are simple, and profoundly confused. Weak of mind and spirit and body. Lord over the planet as the last son of Krypton. Dispatch of anyone unwilling or unable to serve you, Kal-El. Take as many wives as you can so your genes and Krypton’s might and legacy will live on in this new frontier. Do us proud, our beloved son. Rule without mercy.”

So…yeah. Jor-El and Lara are totally evil and in their final message to Clark, they ordered him to…uh…rule the planet while claiming as many wives as he can.

Hoo boy. Where to begin?

How the fuck do you translate Kryptonian? Lex says he was able to translate the message with state-of-the-art Luthorcorp technology and 28 of the world’s top linguists confirmed it. Do these linguists have a degree in alien languages or what? The movie Arrival had the world’s top linguists tasked with translating an alien language and that shit took ages. Even taking the translation for granted, there’s still a big hole here, which is how does anyone know for sure that the source is what Lex says it is? Lex might have a hard drive with a Kryptonian message, and he might be able to get away with translating that message into English. But proving that the footage itself is real and that it’s definitely from Superman’s computer? No shot, buddy. James Gunn could have gotten around this by having the government join Lex on his trip to the Arctic (instead of, say, selfie lady) and corroborate the source of the message, but the government is really not an entity in this movie in the meaningful sense.

All in all, it’s incredibly, stupidly, inanely convenient for Lex (and inconvenient for Clark) that:
– It’s specifically this bit of the message that is completely different in content and tone from the other bit that got cut off
– The Superman Robots couldn’t fix it
– Clark has no living Krptonian kin he knows of and could ask about his Kryptonian heritage. Nope, not a single one
– The Fortress of Solitude has no cameras outside
– The Superman Robots aren’t armed and can’t fight for shit
– The Superman Robots played the message pre-emptively so Lex could know there was a message
– The Engineer could hack into the computer
– The Engineer could repair the Kryptonian message that the Kryptonian-made robots couldn’t for several years (all before Lex even knew this was something he could use her for!)
– The world’s top linguists could translate an alien language overnight so it can play on the news the next day.

If any (and I do mean any) of these points of failure, well, failed, there would be no movie. This is what we call an orgy of contrivances. I don’t think I need to say it, but this ain’t good writing, folks. The world, characters, and plot had to twist and contort itself into spaghetti to get us here. And for what?

Jor-El wanted his son to become fascist, build a harem, and kill anyone who gets in his way.

I have no attachment to the comics, or really any other iteration of Superman. I’m an appreciator of the 1978 Richard Donner movie, and that’s about it. I have no clue why James would depart from the source material so jarringly here in favor of…this, and frankly I don’t care. What I care about is that it’s precisely at this point in the movie when you will realize that it is going to do nothing interesting with its central protagonist.

The movie is going to pretend to have a moral dilemma for Superman, but the “dilemma” is “be good or be evil?” Where the writers fucked up is that Superman has no imperative to follow the mission put forth for him by his birth parents and the mission itself is so cartoonishly evil that it’s not tempting in any way or even worth considering. There is no dilemma here. Clark is going to feel sad for a bit, but this isn’t going to stop him from doing good things. And while public opinion is going to briefly turn on him, none of the people important to Clark are going to waver in their belief of him.

Speaking of the public, they all pretty much buy that Superman is sent to subjugate them hook, line, and sinker. How they can believe this so readily when Superman has done nothing but good for the past three years is beyond me. Luckily, James Gunn has accounted for this.

[Interviewer] What about the numerous kind acts Superman has performed over the years, saving people’s lives?

[Lex] He’s grooming us. Lulling us into complacency so he can dominate without resistance, forging a path for his superpowered descendants to rule the earth.

There you have it, everyone. Plot hole? Filled and sealed! The movie is communicating that public believe that Superman is sinister to the core and his good actions are pre-meditated to lull the planet into docility so he can take over. That’s all well and good, James…as long as you don’t write it so that later in the film the public warm to Superman again because of his good actions. That would be silly because that’s an avenue you’ve just closed.

So Superman enters an abandoned building, trying to process everything that’s just happened. The Justice Gang enters and Guy positions to fight Superman but Hawkgirl de-escalates the conflict. Mr. Terrific confirms once more that the message is indeed real before Hawkgirl asks where Lex even got the message. Superman realizes what’s happened a good five minutes after everyone else and books it to the Fortress of Solitude. There he find Four on the ground, dying (well, dying as much as a robot can die). He also sees that Krypto is missing!

Ghurkos, after making a statement on television, enters his own secret portal in his office to access the pocket universe where he meets with Lex. There’s not much to this scene. They confirm the message is real again, and it’s revealed that Lex will earn half of Jarhanpur once Ghurkos invades it. Of course, I already knew Lex was working with Ghurkos because obviously he would be, but it’s still not time for the characters to learn that yet.

Superman flies into LuthorCorp (literally through the glass) and starts shouting at Lex, demanding to know where his dog is.

[Superman] Where’s the dog?

[Lex] …Dog?

[Superman] The dog, Luthor! You took the dog!

[Lex] (to selfie girl) That’s right, Eve. Get all of this.

[Superman] (flips Lex’s desk) WHERE’S THE DOG!?

Lex successfully ragebaits Superman by pretending not to know what he’s talking about (one of the few laughs I got from the movie is Lex murmuring into his mug “Ugly dog in a cape?”). The footage of this makes this news and only serves to convince the public that Superman is a “rabid animal.”

Isn’t Superman reviled by the public right now? Why exactly is no one taking action against him?

That night, Superman has a pout in his apartment while the Justice Gang fights a “dimensional imp” in the background. You might remember that our very first look at this movie was a screencap of this scene.

A criticism made of the scene at the time was that Superman appeared apathetic while this creature was causing mayhem in the city. Defenders of the image responded that we didn’t know the context at the time and that we should wait…which is fair!

Now that we have that sweet, sweet context, what are some things that help this scene?

– The Justice Gang are currently handling it
– Supes described the creature as “mostly harmless”
– Superman is feeling down because he’s hated by the nation right now
– Lois has already said that Superman shuts down and runs off when he’s faced with conflict

Now, I don’t blame anyone if they wanna give this a pass. However, it should be noted that the Justice Gang have already shown not to care about collateral damage when they’re fighting, and as we’re about to see, Supes hasn’t completely given up on doing the heroic thing. I think he should be helping, but I’ll concede that there’s enough reference to explain why he wouldn’t.

Anyhoo, Lois arrives to comfort Superman. He tells her that he never wanted to rule over and enslave anyone, and Lois assures him that she never thought otherwise.

Me neither, Lois, which is the big issue with the alternative course of action given to Superman by his birth parents. If the movie had given an alternative course that was, well, plausible (like a benign, benevolent dictatorship), we could have enriched this story by giving Superman’s closest friends and loved ones a possible reason to doubt him, the world a reason to doubt him, and Superman a reason to doubt himself. The playful argument the two have about Clark being punk-rock could have won her back over; the idea that this country bumpkin who’s so innocent he thinks “The Mighty Crabjoys” are punk rock is too modest to rule, and that’s his strength. Oh well.

Anyway, Clark says that seeing the beauty in everyone and being nice is the real punk rock, which is fine in the context of the movie, but people have been absolutely corny about it online. They have been fawning over this line on account of it being just so heckin’ wholesome (if I ever pair those words unironically, shoot me). It just annoys me because people clearly just like the idea of this message because it sounds nice, but there’s no way they’re going to apply this to their daily lives but because there isn’t really anything of substance. The message is just “be nice” and that’s enough for people to latch onto because they want to show nice they are and how cool they are for being nice. And it taps directly into the fatigue with grimdark Superman we’re experience as a culture. But that’s enough soapboxing from me.

So Superman elects to turn himself in to Lex because he thinks he’ll take him wherever he took Krypto and Supes wants to save him. I think there many, many ways this “plan” of his could (and do) go wrong, but it’s noble nontheless. In response to this, Lois says “”it’s a dog” which is a strangely cold and callous thing to say about a pet. It sounds like something a villain from a John Wick movie would say. What is your problem, Lois? Regardless, this prompts Superman to concede that Krypto isn’t even a particularly good dog, but he’s alone and probably scared, so he’s gonna go save him.

The two hug, and Clark tells Lois he loves her. She doesn’t say it back, though, cause she hasn’t completed her arc yet.

The next morning, Supes is very harshly detained by the military, who don’t read him his rights because the courts have apparently decided he doesn’t have any as an extraterrestrial…

Okay.

Rick Flag Sr. tells Superman that his interrogation is being outsourced to PlanetWatch. And when I say “outsourced to PlanetWatch” I mean the military guys just hand Superman over to Lex for him to do whatever wants with, without any government oversight whatsoever, evne though Lex’ interrogation would involve questions that the government would very much want to know too. I shit you not, they don’t even send one guy to watch, even though they’ve shown suspicion of Lex’s intentions already! “How are you going to intimidate Superman, Lex?” “Where are you going to interrogate Superman, Lex?” “Can we check it out to make sure everything’s legal?” They don’t ask any of these questions.

This movie doesn’t even care it sucks.

So yeah, this should pretty much be game over for Lex but luckily for him the script conspires in his favor. Superman is handed off to a Luthor plane and flown to the Luthor beach camp with the goddamn interdimensional portal. He is then thrown into the portal by Ultraman and the Engineer.

Now, I’m no supergenius or anything like Lex Luthor clearly is, but I’m thinking if you want to get rid of Superman for good, and you have a pocket universe that you haven’t been arrested for yet, the best solution might be to put Superman in it and then just close and destroy the portal from the other end. Problem solved.

“Why didn’t Lex do this? Is he stupid?” I ask rhetorically.

Superman is placed in a cell with Metamorpho.

Metamorpho is an alien who can shift any part of his body into any type of matter. Supes is greeted by Lex, who begins giving him a tour of the pocket universe. The cell is piloted by whoever the hell this creepy fuck is supposed to be.

During the tour, Lex casually exposits that he created a pocket universe by replicating the Big Bang with a LuthorCorp mega-collider.

Do you guys remember a loooong time ago when I covered a really bad movie called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? That movie was stupid. Really, really stupid. It wanted to be a multiverse movie but had no idea of how the multiverse works. You won’t catch me making excuses for it, but come on, guys. Even that movie didn’t have a character who could create universes!

The throwaway manner this line is delivered is what really convinces me that James Gunn doesn’t realize what this implies about how much power Lex Luthor really has.

The Big Bang, the singular event that created our universe? The circumstances that created were very specific and there’s a reason we’ve never been able to re-create anything close to it. Lex, in addition to be rich beyond measure, is revealed to have been able to do this in a goddamn throwaway line.

Tony Stark using his money to build a cool lab is cute by comparison. This is god-tier physics we’re talking about. As I’m not a scientician, I talked to some people who are much smarter than me, and I learned that to even attempt this, you would need:

• Energy densities that make the entire output of human civilization look like a AA battery.
• Perfect control over spacetime, quantum fields, and inflation physics (basically the stuff that created our universe).
• The ability to punch a stable hole between realities without instantly destroying everything.

We’re talking about the final unlock on a tech/sci-fi skill tree after you’ve already maxed out the other unlocks, if the other unlocks were unlimited energy, matter fabrication, physics manipulation, etc.

Lex is a close to post-scarcity as one person gets. Lex should be able to print infinite resources and customize the laws of physics as he pleases. Mind you, this is in addition to the fact that he can make his own metahumans, including one that’s already been shown to fight Superman to a standstill, if not beat him outright. Kryptonite is a joke. It looks like a nerf dart compared. He shouldn’t even be scheming for real estate or starting wars to be honest. He could just make whatever he wants.

Killing Superman is beyond trivial. He could open a pocket universe with different physical constants where Kryptonians have the durability of a wet paper towel. Or just make a black hole dimension, or blender dimension, or a universe filled with Kryptonite raditiation, or one filled with an army of Ultramans. Hell, as I said earlier, the universe as shown in the movie is just a prison anyway. Just trap him there! He is holding onto the ultimate cheat code for the entire movie.

Oh well. Just another way this movie completely falls apart I guess.

Lex has Metamorpho turn his hand into Kryptonite which gives Superman Space AIDs and causes him to fall to his knees in a sick heap.

Oh dear.

Back at the Daily Planet, Jimmy observes Boravian troops marching into Jarhanpur and wonders aloud where Superman is. Lois is distracted cause she’s trying to figure out how Lex (known war profiteer) is connected to the war.

Journalists, man.

Apparently, she has a contact at the goddamn bank connecting Luthorcorp and Boravia and this contact is able to provide Lois the transaction history between them (somehow)! Lois discovers that Lex has been undercharging Boravia for the weapons he’s been selling to them? Why? Don’t know. It’s a total mystery.

Jimmy decides to investigate the whereabouts of Superman. He scrolls through his contacts until he finds one named “Mutant Toes”. This is the number of Selfie Lady, who Jimmy has a history with. Now before any of you start coming out of the woodwork talking about how convenient it is that one of the best friends of Superman’s alter ego happens to have a romantic history with someone on the inside of LuthorCorp, they set this up earlier by establishing how much rizz Jimmy has. So all of you zip it. This movie’s writing remains impeccable.

He sends her a text and she immediately texts him back with the info that Superman is being held in a pocket universe.

Now, again, I’m clearly not as smart as this movie insists Lex is, but Eve so far has been characterized as a ditzy bimbo who takes photos of Lex’s evildoing and spills important info at the drop of a hat. Supplementary material claims that she’s Lex’s girlfriend but this isn’t evident in the film at all. He says like two things to her in total and none of them come even close to romantic. He doesn’t even seem to like her very much, most of the time he acts like she isn’t even there. Why does he keep around such an obvious liability?

Because the plot needs him to, of course.

Jimmy doesn’t confess who his source is, but Lois celebrates the lead. I don’t know why Jimmy so readily believes this claim from Eve, known idiot who’s aligned with Lex (he even says he doesn’t know what a pocket universe is) but whatever. Eve sends Jimmy another text asking for a meetup.

Back in the pocket universe, the platform passes (and I’m gonna need you guys to follow me on this one) a workstation with hundreds of mind-controlled monkeys.

Lex has cracked animal mind-control.

You know what? Fine. On top of all the other crazy shit he’s accomplished, let’s let him have this. What does he use it for?

He uses them to farm outrage online by trashing Superman on social media. That’s right, everyone. This is the anti-Superman “online chatter” Lex was talking about before. This is where #Supershit comes from.

Man who can re-create the Big Bang needs mind-controlled monkeys to shitpost online. Just kill me.

Is this some 4D chess tactic I’m too stupid to understand? Why do you need mind-controlled animals for this, Lex? You’re the owner of Evil Inc. and you can’t get a team of interns to do it?

Why do we even need this in the plot? If this actually has succeeded in descrediting Superman in the eyes of the public, what was the point of revealing the second half of the message? If the fake outrage isn’t representative of the public’s actual opinion of Superman, then what’s even the point of this? Everyone knows Twitter isn’t real. No one has an opinion on that site worthy of consideration.

…Unless you’re James Gunn.

🤓☝️ “Ibrahim, the monkeys are supposed to represent Snyder fans!”

And now it all makes sense. Gunn is upset about Snyderoids being mean to him on Twitter, and so he obviously needed to take a jab at them in his film, at the expense of making the villain of the film look like a moron once more.

She-Hulk, The Boys, Deadpool & Wolverine…guys, we’ve been doing this for so long and it’s cringe every single time. Filmmakers of Hollywood, do me a favor and stop. Use your millions of dollars worth of resources and just tell your goddamn story. I don’t want to be a part of your personal therapy because you’re butthurt about internet trolls. Stop using movies and shows as your battleground for your internet spats and find a new way to cope, for fuck’s sake.

We then see Krypto trapped in some kind of anti-gravity chamber. He has CGI squirrels beamed into his brain so he can chase them infinitely.

Schlurpo turns the platform and we see hundreds of plexiglass containers not unlike the one Clark is currently trapped in, all filled with people. Lex explains that he traps his ex-girlfriends here, including one whose only crime is writing a mean blog post about him. Because I guess no one has noticed or investigated all these missing people who are connected to Lex Luthor in some way.

Also, for God’s sake, are we ever again going to have a villain who is just competent and menacing? How many fucking times are we going to do the Kylo Ren schtick of “haha look how petty and insecure the villain is”? Can we please stop? Get better material!

So Superman deduces that Lex is only telling him all this because he doesn’t intend on letting him live. Lex says he would be killed first thing if the government didn’t have questions they want answered. Never mind that the government isn’t even here and Lex could have killed Superman before the movie began. He could honestly kill him right now and tell the government that he had no choice. They’d have no way of knowing!

Alas, the movie continues to pretend Lex cannot kill Superman and Lex reminds Metamorpho that he has his son held hostage. They’re able to see a thug is holding him in a cell, ready to kill him at moment’s notice.

Elsewhere, Jimmy ambles into a dark alley to meet with Eve. She quickly gets pouty when it becomes clear that Jimmy isn’t so much here to see her as he is here to get information out of her, so Jimmy very reluctantly promises that they can be together if she helps him take down Lex. I’ll say here that Jimmy may or may not know Superman is Clark, but even if he doesn’t, this is information that could save the man’s life. It’s pretty frustratingly how lead-footed he’s acting around Eve. He’s even put upon about spending a weekend with her in exchange for information. Good God.

Eve promises to see what more she can dig up, even though she’s likely been through one of Lex’s portals, she definitely knows where at least one of them is, and she went with Lex to the Fortress earlier.

Back in the pocket universe, Clark weakly tells Metamorpho that he could save his son if he turned off the Kryptonite. Metamorpho screams at Clark to stop talking to him and puts the crystal right up to his face.

Alright, damn!

Lois walks into the Hall of Justice to talk to the Justice Gang. You read the correctly. The Hall of Justice, fortress of the corporate-owned superhero team, is a place anyone can waltz into. I think the hall should be filled with people, if only just paparazzi, if this is the case, but what do I know?

Hawkgirl is reading a goddamn newspaper article that Lois wrote about Superman being held in a pocket dimension. Lois heard it from Jimmy, wrote an article about it, and it got published and delivered on the same day even though there’s no one who can corroborate the story? Fuck right off, movie!

The team argues some more about their name, and you will find it about as funny as you found it last time. Mr. Terrific even says that the reason Guy Gardrner won’t allow Superman on the team is cause he knows he’ll vote to change the name. Doesn’t this dialogue just scream “metahumans have been around for 300 years”?

Guy casually reveals that he knows Superman is Clark Kent, which should raise the question of why doesn’t everyone know if Guy (and Clark himself) are so forthcoming about it. Bear in mind that Guy doesn’t know that Lois knows when he blurts this out.

Mr. Terrific surmises that Superman must really be in a pocket universe because he’s put nanobot GPS trackers in his bloodstream and his trail ends somewhere on Lex’s camp, called Fort Kramer.

Ex-fucking-scuse me?

Mr. Terrific has put nanobot trackers into Superman’s bloodstream (somehow) and he even says he does this to everyone. Remember when I covered Glass Onion and I said that every time something inexplicably stupid happens, it’s definitely to allow something else to happen? It’s pretty easy to guess why it was written that Mr. Terrific does this: it’s so Lois can learn where Clark was. Except “where Clark was” is a goddamn Lex-branded military camp just outside the city that the Hammer of Botavia disappeared to at the beginning of the movie anyway! Any moron would think to look there first!

So Lois asks the Gang to help save Superman and they refuse. Guy says that Superman is federally incarcerated and that part of his Green Lantern vows is not to get involved in politics. Never mind that Superman is absolutely not in the government’s hands at this point and the Gang will get involved in politics later in the movie. But it’s not later in the movie yet so they say nah. No reason is given for why Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific won’t help either, by the way. They took no such vows so they’re just assholes I guess.

So Lois storms out, but not before telling Guy that his “haircut should be against his vows.” Guy retorts that 348 chicks say otherwise. This didn’t get any laughs out of me. Sorry, James. I gotta say, your movie is not very funny. Which is strange cause you made Guardians of the Galaxy. There is a few laughs I got though! And we’re coming to one of them shortly.

As Lois stomps to her car, Mr. Terrific shows up and offers to help. Changed my mind, kid. To be specific, he says he won’t help save Superman but he’ll take Lois to Fort Kramer. But he’ll later help out on the basis that it will piss off Guy.

For now though, he says they’ll take his ride, and there’s a joke of his garage opener opening veeeeery slowly. This goes on for some time, and all the while I think about how much of it this movie is currently spending on shit like this instead of, oh I don’t know, characterization.

Thus, we arrive at one of the few moment in this movie that made me laugh. They buckle up inside Mr. Terrific’s flying craft, and Lois vents about her complicated feelings about Clark. Mr. Terrific cuts her off, saying he’s “not into people’s emotions.” Lois continues to ramble and he gives her a look that makes her shut up.

Mr. Terrific is pretty much my favorite character in this movie, but don’t mistake this to mean he’s a good character or anything. This movie doesn’t really have those. I just enjoy how Edi Gathegi communicates the character’s quiet exasperation with all the nonsense happening around him. Nontheless, he’s this movie’s MVP for me, and I’m far from alone on this.

Back in the pocket universe, we get a really stupid scene (relatively speaking). I need to go over this one before I explain why it was written by a fungus person.

Lex wakes Superman up for an interrogation and says a “guest” will be joining them. It’s Ghurkos! …Except it’s not, he’s just an observer. The guest is actually Mali! You guys remember Mali, right? He was the nice man who helped Supes out of a crater in the beginning of the movie.

The setup is that Lex has a gun with one bullet in it. Every time he asks Superman a question, he rolls the chamber and puts the gun up to Mali’s head. If Lex doesn’t like Superman’s answer, he pulls the trigger. He does this twice and the shot is fired, killing Mali. Lex then, I shit you not, says this:

[Lex] …I didn’t imagine that would go so quickly.

Hey Lex? Why the fuck are you using Russian roulette as an interrogation method? You know why the version of this scene in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is funny? It’s because it deconstructs hard-boiled detective tropes by having Harry try and fail to replicate something he saw on L.A. Confidential. It demonstrates that he’s faking his gritty persona, can’t effectively get information out of people, and is kind of a rube who can’t do math.

The main problem with this version is that Lex isn’t supposed to be a rube who can’t do math and should know how inefficient this is. The problem with Russian roulette is that it ends when someone dies and there’s a 1/6 chance of that happening. You can’t get any more information out of the person you’re trying to interrogate if you kill your hostage, you bald turkey. Why not torture Superman with Kryptonite? Why not torture the hostage? Why not rig it so the gun actually is empty, so that Superman always thinks the next shot could be one that kills the hostage? You could even do a straightforward “answer my question or I’ll kill this person” routine and show a whole line full of people Lex has abducted. This could give Superman an opportunity to, God forbid, make a moral choice just once in this goddamn movie. Instead he doesn’t really get a chance to before it ends. He just wails in anguish while Lex comments on how awkward this is.

Which leads me to my next point. What exactly are we supposed to feel when a completely innocent man has just been shot causing the hero to howl in pain, and the villain of the movie, instead of laughing evilly, just makes a “well, that just happened”-level quip? Are we supposed to laugh at how stupid Lex is or something? Cause I’m not. Balancing tone is really hard and this movie ain’t doing a great job of it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how much of a chad Mali is though. Even with the threat to his life, he is stalwart and tells Superman not to tell Lex anything and that he believes in him. Rest in peace, you absolute legend.

So anyway, Lex leaves to go find someone else Superman cares about (ironically, he says he’ll go after Clark Kent), and when he leaves Metamorpho starts crying. The idea here is that Mali’s death is going to give Metamorpho a change of heart and prompt him to help Superman. So seeing Lex’s cruelty first hand is going to cause him to heel-face turn, yeah? Well the problem is that he’s currently in a realm full of people that Lex takes prisoner and most definitely tortures. Presumably, the reason he’s here is cause he was kidnapped, along with his son! My point is, this is definitely not Metamorpho’s first exposure to Lex’s cruelty. But whatever.

Mr. Terrific and Lois arrive at Fort Kramer and he’s approached by several Raptors. What follows is a pretty fun fight sequence where Terrific puts a protective bubble around Lois while he takes out the Raptors with a combination of inventive use of his T-Spheres and his own fighting ability. If you’ve seen the Yondu whistle-arrow sequences from Guardians, you know what kind of sequence this is. The character systematically takes out a ton of bad guys while contrastingly happy, fun music is playing in the background. This is a standout scene of the movie that solidified a lot of people’s love for Mr. Terrific and I can see why. My only criticism is that I wish the camera would actually follow Terrific instead of swiveling around Lois. I get that we’re meant to be experience her POV and share her awe at what’s happening around her, but I’d trade that to be more directly part of the action. Good stuff overall though!

Mr. Terrific opens the tent with the portal in it and exposits that if you’re one picometer off when creating a pocket universe you’ll have a black hole where Earth used to be. And every time you enter and exit the portal (Yes, every time you merely use the portal) you risk tearing all of reality apart.

[Mr. Terrific] It’s the type of reckless science Lex Luthor specializes in.

Sounds like the kind he wouldn’t be able to keep secret and should go to several jails for, too.

I’ll remind you guys that the stakes in Avengers (2012) involved Loki trying to use an army of aliens to subjugate Earth. This is the first movie in a new universe and we have all of reality at risk of getting torn about.

The blueprint was right there James.

Back in the pocket universe, Metamorpho is still big sad that Lex killed someone and he didn’t do anything about it. So he decides to help Superman. He deactivates his Kryptonite hand, and though this should realistically result in the death of his son, nothing happens because there are no cameras or guards around because Lex is a fucking moron. To be honest, Metamorpho shouldn’t even get to have his son in view. He should be left in paranoia that any deviation from his script will result in his son getting sent to Belize. He even does all of this in view of the other prisoners, who immediately tattle!

So because this movie doesn’t believe in consequences, we continue. Superman is able to breathe properly but he still isn’t up to full power because he doesn’t have the power of Sunny D. I don’t know how to describe what happens next. Metamorpho says he can’t make a sun, says he can only make something kind of like a sun, and then proceeds to make a fucking sun.

What the juju fuck?

As I said before, the other prisoners try to alert the guards and they do fuck-all until Metamorpho has finished forming a miniature sun to heal Superman.

Outside the portal, Mr. Terrific’s T-Spheres finish hacking into the portal, allowing him and Lois to enter. He notes that there are “black hole vortexes” throughout the dimension and an “anti-proton river” that will tear them apart in seconds (add those to the list of things Lex can seemingly create on a whim). So he sends a couple of T-Spheres as reconnaisance.

Superman returns to full power and punches his way out of his plexiglass prison. He makes a beeline for Metamorpho’s son and saves him. His reunion with Metamorpho is brief, however, because Metamorpho can’t carry him when he changes form, so he tells Clark to take him. Clark frees Krypto, who promptly tackles him (ha ha).

Back to Lois and Mr. Terrific, the portal they entered through begins collapsing in on itself because it’s been open for too long, meaning Supes has a ticking clock to get out. He and Metamorpho are attacked by Raptors, who tackle Superman into the anti-proton river (which is apparently made out of voxels straight out of that ugly-ass movie Pixels).

It doesn’t do anything to Supes or the Raptors, even though Mr. Terrific said it would tear them apart. Granted, Clark is Kryptonian and the Raptors wear armor but it’s still strange. The name implies it tears apart matter on a cellular level. That armor must be really good stuff.

Except it’s not because the Raptors surrounding Metamorpho see him very clearly turn his body into bubbling acid, and they do the really dumb version of the Tempting Fate trope where they say something moronically cocky like “What are you gonna do? Splash us?” and laugh as if they don’t know what his powers are. So Metamorpho does indeed splash them. With acid. And it melts through the Raptors’ armor, killing them.

The armor can sustain anti-proton goo, but not acid. Right.

The portal continues to crumble just as Mr. Terrific finally finds Krypto. Unfortunately for him, Krypto sees the floating T-Sphres and takes a chunk out of one.

The river carries Superman towards a black hole. But with help from Krypto, Metamorpho, and his super breath, they’re able to pull away from it. Sure, movie.

They follow Terrific’s remaining T-Sphere and make it through the portal just in time, where Krypto destroys the T-Sphere (Terrific: “Those things aren’t cheap!”)

Superman wants to go back and save the other prisoners, because that’s what heroes do! But he’s still badly poisoned from the Kryptonite, so Terrific tells him he needs a day or two to heal. He tells Lois to take Superman in his T-Craft, which he says has controls that are “easy and intuitive.”

Well they really must be if a journalist can fly it!

Terrific stays behind to make sure the portal is secure. Maybe now is a good time to call in the government? Or the rest of the Justice Gang at least? Or Batman?? He does exist in this universe already, according to Creature Commandos.

No? Okay.

Back at LexCorp, Lex is very, very, very angry. You might even say he’s crashing out.

Lex throws down a mug full of pencils and orders his workers to pick them up. He even does it a second time (because Lex is angry and petty, you see). He even throws a pencil at Eve while screaming at her to leave (the second and last thing he says to her in the entire movie btw).

[Lex] How the hell could he have gotten free? Hmm?

Gee, I dunno Lex. Maybe cause you left him unattended in a cell with the one person who could help free him? Maybe cause you had that guy’s baby held hostage within easy reach of their cell? Maybe cause you didn’t seal the portals after leaving him? Maybe cause you didn’t just kill him when you had every opportunity? Simply put, Lex, he got free because of you.

So because the script now calls for Eve to be really upset with Lex, she calls Jimmy and tells him she has everything he needs to destroy Lex. She’s calling him from a server room that is pretty much right next to the office she just got kicked out of, and Ultraman can hear her. Not with super-hearing, mind you. There’s a shot from outside the closet that indicates she’s just that loud.

Eve, what the fuck?

Eve makes Jimmy promise they can spend the weekend together if she does this, and Jimmy is frustratingly hesitant once again, but he ultimately agrees. Lex opens the door just then and drags her out of the closet just as she manages to hit the send button. Jimmy on the other hand receives the “evidence.” They’re all selfies, causing Jimmy to groan in frustration.

More on this later.

Back in Kansas, Lois parks the T-Craft in the Kents’ yard. They come rushing out to tend the Clark, carrying him back into his bedroom.

Clark, delirious, tells his mom,

[Clark] Ma, they sent me here to rule over everyone… They sent me here to kill people…

[Martha] Clark, that ain’t—! That ain’t…

Ah, so we’re addressing that, are we? Well not quite this second because we pan over to Lois. She looks at Clark’s childhood bedroom and realizes he really is an innocent country bumpkin from an innocent country bumpkin background…which would be effective if she had any reason to think otherwise. But she already stated that she never doubted Clark for a second so…whoops.

But even with how tonally quiet and contemplative this scene is, Lois’s phone rings, dragging her back into out incredibly compelling plot. It’s Jimmy with the big news! We get some jokes as Lois asks Jimmy how he has so much rizz, but then Lois starts to dismiss the selfies Eve sent as useless until…

In the background of one of Eve’s selfies is damning evidence of Lex’s evil plan to claim a piece of Jarhanpur, with the implication being that there’s more evidence in the other selfies.

It’s time to have a chat about Eve.

I think the movie wants us to conclude that Eve is more cunning than she lets on, and has been disguising her evidence-collecting as selfie-taking right under Lex’s nose the whole time. The problem with this is, she acts like a genuine ditz 24/7 even when she has no reason to keep up the “act”, does things that are actually stupid (like phone Jimmy within earshot of Ultraman), and the majority of her selfies really are useless pictures with nothing else to them.

The other possibility is that she really is a ditz, sent Jimmy a scattershot of selfies, some of which just happen to have incriminating evidence in the background. This is what I personally think is the case. The problem with this is, it’s incredibly lucky for the protagonists.

You’re going to have to pick your poison on this one. Either the character is selectively stupid, or the plot is unselectively stupid.

Anyway, Eve is sent to the pocket dimension prison, and one of the raptors says this:

[Raptor] Sending sexy selfies behind the back of Lex Luthor? She has to be the biggest idiot in the world.

I’m afraid you’re wrong, my good man. The biggest idiot in the world is the one who let her do it. And now that we have the pocket dimension, he’s actually the biggest idiot in two worlds.

Elsewhere, Lex decides to remotely re-open the closed portal in Fort Kramer to draw Superman out. The Engineer and one of his scientist loudly protest this decision since the portal is unstable and could tear a dimensional rift in the surrounding area, but they will eventually go along with his plan anyway so I don’t really know what the point is. At the fort, Mr. Terrific tries frantically to stop this process, to no avail. Wouldn’t you know it, a rift starts to form

[Scientist Lady] Can you…can you stop it?
[Mr. Terrific] Can I stop it!?
[…]
[Mr. Terrific] This is why you don’t create a damn pocket universe.

I can think of about a hundred reasons why you don’t create a damn pocket universe. This is actually pretty low on my list. But credit to the movie for recognizing it’s own faults.

What follows is this movie’s best scene! (asterisk)

Clark wakes up with Krypto lying on his stomach. I’ll admit, it’s sweet.

Outside, Clark is joined on the porch by Pa Kent, characterized as being a softy, especially when it comes to Clark. He makes some small talk by talking about a burrito place the family used to visit, as well as saying that Lois “seems nice” (though he accidentally calls her Louanne). Then he notes that Clark doesn’t seem himself. Clark mopes about the second half of his parents’ message and Pa tells Clark that what he wanted the message to mean says a lot more about him than the message itself. But Clark says he’s not who he thought he was.

Pa Kent then says:

[Pa Kent] Parents aren’t for telling their children who they’re supposed to be. We are here to give y’all the tools to help y’all make fools of yourselves all on your own. No. Your choices, Clark. Your actions. That’s what makes you who you are. I’ll tell you something, son. I couldn’t be… (sniffles, voice breaks) more proud’a you. (They embrace)

This scene is beautifully acted. The soundtrack helps to sell the emotion, and the message is nice. So why do I have an asterisk? Because of two big problems.

The first is that this is simply what would be a great payoff in a different film. This scene only serves to underscore how absent the Kents have been in this movie up to this point. The first question that would go through your mind when watching it is “where the hell has this been?” We have had exactly one scene with the Kents before now and all it really establishes is that they love Clark to death but Clark doesn’t think about them all that much. Any emotion you can derive from this scene is going to come from (besides Pruitt Taylor Vince’s acting) meta information, i.e. your existing knowledge of Clark’s relationship with his adoptive parents from other Superman media. This movie, in its desire to skip backstory, failed to do the legwork that would have made this scene meaningful in its own story.

Which leads me to the second big problem, which is that this scene isn’t very meaningful anyway because the lesson that your actions define who you are really ought to be something Clark already knows. I cannot emphasize how strange it is that Clark would put so much stock into a 30-second half-message from people he never met for determining who he is when he would have been raised by the Kents for the better part of 30 years up to that point. Surely he’d know that his Earth parents have shaped who he is far, far more than his Krpytonian parents. Superman is not the Iron Giant. He is not an automaton who was made and programmed to do evil. He is thinking agent with the ability to choose, and he has chosen time and time again throughout this movie to do the right thing. Learning the other half of the message doesn’t stop him from doing the right thing. So why is this treated like such a big stumbling block for him? We’re supposed to believe that Superman has become reaffirmed in his beliefs in time for the third act but what exactly has he learned here?

I see what you were going for here, James, but those six months you took to write this thing were clearly not enough. This needed a heavy amount of re-drafting before this could have been a meaningful payoff. For those who think I’m being too hard on the scene, I’ll say again that I think it’s great, but it’s only great in isolation. And I’m afraid movies are not just collections of isolated scenes. How they connect is precisely where the meaning comes from.

But I suppose we can move on now.

Clark sees a news report expositing that Boravia is minutes away from Jarhanpur’s doorstep. You guys remember the Boravia conflict? That’s still happening. We then see a small Jarhanpurian child raising a Superman flag while a rendition of the John Williams theme plays, and everyone cheers his name. We also see Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Metamorpho all separately watching the same report.

Okay?

ACT III (Something About Being Human I Guess)

Mr. Terrific through one of T-Spheres communicates with Superman, telling him to get his ass to Metropolis, saying there won’t be a Boravia or Earth if he doesn’t handle the urgent shit happening over there. Luthor’s big ass-rift is about to tear into the city! Oh no!

A city-wide evacuation is called for the ensure none of the civilians are around for the climax. Don’t worry about anyone who might have ignored the alarm, or slept through the alarm, or couldn’t get out in time, or any of the other possible reasons why they couldn’t have evacuated. All of them leave in time. All of them.

Back at the Daily Planet, Lois basically explains Luthor’s plan in full to Perry, saying he wants half of Jarhanpur to create a technological utopia. When asked for a motive she says the petroleum deposits alone are worth multiples of his investments.

Man who can create entire universes is worried about petroleum. For fuck’s sake, James. Lex could make LuthorLand right now if he wanted and he’s settling for half of a desert. Mind you, this isn’t even his actual goal. This is all a front for his “kill Superman” plot, and even it is thoughtless in scope and execution. He might be the most shit villain in any superhero movie.

So on the T-Craft, Lois dictates the story to Jimmy so he can post it. This will be her only contribution for the rest of the film. She’s basically not a participant until the very end.

Lex’s rift begins tearing Metropolis apart. As it approaches LexCorp, he has the middle part of his building converted into a flying box. A building is about to fall on a highway full of cars but Superman catches it. It’s a really tall building and Supes is only one small point of resistance so he shouldn’t be able to hold it up wholesale like he does but whatever.

Superman meets up with Terrific and they agree they need to get to LexCorp to find the code to stop the rift.

Hey Terrific? Don’t you think the rest of the Justice Gang should be involved here? I know they’re about to go help out in Jarhanpur now for no reason but I feel like the rift about to tear the world apart might be a little bit more important? No? Okay.

The two heroes are attacked by the Engineer and Ultraman, and Terrific is knocked out, leaving Supes to fight the two baddies alone. Ultraman is still able to whoop Superman’s ass even though he’s a dumb clone who needs to take orders from Luthor (oh wait, we haven’t gotten to the reveal yet. Whoops.) Superman briefly tries to appeal to the Engineer’s humanity, but clearly he missed the scene where she said that she sacrificed her humanity to kill him. So because this movie isn’t interested in character, the Engineer rejects this and Superman immediately pivots to mashing her into the ground repeatedly! I thought this was funny as shit.

Unfortunately, the two are able to get the drop on Clark and Lex orders Engineer to fill his lungs with NANOMACHINES, SON! in order to kill him. Superman tries futilely to keep them out of his orifices (he doesn’t close his mouth though) but they end up filling his lungs completely.

I’m sorry, this was an option? Well go ahead and add it to the many, many ways Lex could have achieved his goal of killing Superman and saved us two hours of movie-film. Imagine if he had done this to him when he was in the pocket dimension. Movie over. Any idiot could have come up with it. But Lex isn’t your average idiot, you see.

One of his scientists exposits that Superman can hold his breath for two hours, but another exposits that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have air going in. I would have sent the nanites to his heart or brain, myself. But what do I know?

So to the surprise of everyone, Superman gets to his feet and flies up. I thought he was going to enter space and do the Iron Man payoff, but no one at LuthorCorp even seems to have an inkling of an idea of what Supes might be up to. The Engineer and Ultraman catch up and latch onto him, with the Engineer enveloping him completely in nanites. Once Supes gets to space, he turns around and cannonballs back to the Earth. Still, no one has any idea what his plan, even though it’s obvious by now to the audience, the majority of which aren’t super-geniuses. Superman is now covered in nanites which will protect him from impact with the ground. Nanites the Engineer doesn’t have. It’s only when Supes is a few hundred meters before impact that they realize this, but it’s too late. The Engineer is dead (actually unconscious but whatever. She’s out of the fight either way). So it was that Angela Spica, the Engineer, was undone by a direction: down.

It’s not many times I’ve seen the villain be taken down by a direction, but this would be second. Is this better or worse than the enemy ships on Exegol from Rise of Skywalker being incapable of going up? I’ll let you decide.

Superman’s remaining opponent is Ultraman, who unmasks and turns out to be…a clone of Superman! That’s right, everyone. On top of all the other crazy shit Lex Luthor can do, he can make clones of Superman. I want to emphasize the word can because like all of Lex’s innumerable resources, it’s marked by untapped potential. He only made one.

WHY?

Remember how Ultraman was whopping Superman’s ass in the beginning of the movie? Imagine if there were two. Movie over! To make this so much worse, Lex even says cloning him was “relatively simple” and he was able to create Ultraman from a single strand of Clark’s hair. The clone is stupider but “easier to control and stronger.” Excuse me? How can you call it an “imperfect match” if it’s stronger than the original? Why don’t you have several Ultramen working off a mind-chip with a “kill Superman” algorithm? What, is it one clone per hair or something? Jesus fucking Christ, I’m going to have aneurysm. Why are you so incompetent, Lex?

So Lex starts ordering Ultraman with his stupid verbal commands that are able to outpace Superman somehow again and beats the shit outta him. Lex shouts “My brain will always win! Brain beats brawn!” even though there’s nothing “brainy” about what he’s doing. He’s commanding a mindless super-ape to punch his opponent in the face repeatedly. This is all brawn. Oh, well. Points for trying, James.

Superman crashes Ultraman through a window and tells Lex his plans in Boravia won’t work because he’s “called in some friends.” Cut to Boravia where one of the soliders is getting ready to fucking gun down the small child with the Superman flag when the Justice Gang show up! Remember them? They didn’t want to help before but now they do because…uh…wait, why are they here now? We haven’t seen them since they refused to help save Superman from the pocket universe. Guy Gardner said he specifically is bound by his Lantern vow not to get involved with politics! What the hell changed between then and now? When did Supes call them? What did they witness him do that inspired them?

…James? Are there pieces of your movie missing?

Joining them is Metamorpho, who kinda sorta does have a narrative reason for being here, I guess. So that’s cool.

What follows is probably my favorite scene in the movie. We cut to Ghurkos panicking in his office and trying to get to his bunker. Then, bursting through a window, comes Hawkgirl. She grabs Ghurkos and flies him over the city. Ghurkos taunts her, saying she won’t kill him because she’s “too delicate and weak, like Superman.” Hawkgirl smiles, denies this, and drops Ghurkos to his death.

Hawkgirl commits a war crime!

To recap, Superman got in trouble at the beginning of the movie for recklessly intervening in foreign affairs. He and Lois have a whole-ass conversation about the ethics of this. Then the movie’s resolution has a corporate-owned superhero kill a world leader and this is treated like a good thing by the film.

What…the…fuck?

To put this into perspective, imagine if Tesla sent people to go solve the problem in the Middle East. How in hell’s bells did we go from “interventionism is bad” (or at the very least “interventionism has serious consequences”) to “interventionism is cool and fun actually”? This is what we call a narrative dead-end. Why bring up the dilemma at all if this is your conclusion, James? Will you address the consequences of this in a future movie, at least?

What am I saying? Let’s move on.

Lex tells Superman that Jarhanpur is secondary to what he really wants. It’s nothing but a front for his real goal: killing him.

And the audience gasps in shock.

A bewildered Clark asks why, and Lex shouts “Because you’re destroying us!”

What do you mean by this, Lex? The first “wrong” thing Superman has ever done was forcefully stop a war the government wanted stopped. Before (and after) this he’s only ever helped people. And if you actually think this about Superman, why the fuck did you make a clone of him?

I need to stress this, guys. There is zip, zero, nada in the movie to support Lex’s claim here. In a GOOD movie like The Incredibles, Syndrome has a discernible reason for hating Mr. Incredible and Supers in general, even if he is also childish and petty. He felt betrayed by his idol, belittled for not having powers, and so he set out to destroy Mr. Incredible and superheroes as a concept, first by killing off every superhero, and then by making superpowers redundant by selling his advanced tech. All while seeking the recognition and praise he wanted as a child. His actions have a tangible basis, and his childishness flavors the character as a dispositional trait. It’s not used a substitute for motivation.

(And he manages to be intimidating because he actually uses the tech at his disposal)

Lex hates Superman, we have not been made privy to any reason at all until now, and the reason is nonsense. Lex doesn’t care about “us” at all. If he did, he wouldn’t be currently trying to tear in a hole in “our” reality right now.

Superman retorts that Lex is driven by envy. What follows is a lengthy monologue from Lex.

“No shit. I’m not dim. I’m aware envy consumes my every waking moment. I know when they mention Galileo, or Einstein, or one of those other twits in the same breath as me, I feel a tide of vomit in the back of my throat! But at least Galileo did something. He wasn’t some dopey Venusian, catapulted onto this planet just to have the world fawn over him because his strength illuminates how weak we all really are! So my envy is a calling! It is the sole hope for humanity because it is what has driven me to annihilating you!“

This makes no sense, and it’s extremely wordy to obfuscate the fact that it makes no sense. It’s a bunch of words.

Just for fun, let’s take it piece by piece shall we?

“I’m not dim.”

No one accused you of being dim, Lex. This would imply the lights are on at all.

“I’m aware envy consumes my every waking moment. I know when they mention Galileo, or Einstein, or one of those other twits in the same breath as me, I feel a tide of vomit in the back of my throat!”

Lex makes it sound like Galileo and Einstein are far inferior to him. And they are! Lex re-created the Big Bang. He has created black holes and anti-proton rivers. He’s created superpeople in his lab! He has far-outclassed everyone throughout history in multiple scientific fields. So what the hell does he have to be envious of?

“But at least Galileo did something. He wasn’t some dopey Venusian, catapulted onto this planet just to have the world fawn over him because his strength illuminates how weak we all really are!“

So Lex hates Superman because he came out of nowhere and everyone loves him because…he shows how weak we really are? Huh? I think this could have done with a second draft, James. It’s incredibly over-written, and it doesn’t track from anything we’ve seen in the movie so far. From where does this stem? People like Superman plenty because he uses his strength to protect them from harm. He used his strength in this very movie to try to end a conflict that people were/are happy to see ended. In fact, the point where people stopped liking Superman is when Lex exposed the other half of the message where Superman’s evil racist parents told him to rule without mercy, an expression of strength targeting the weak. What I’m saying here is that people like Superman for his strength. If they fear him for his strength, that is entirely Lex’s fault.

“So my envy is a calling! It is the sole hope for humanity because it is what has driven me to annihilating you!“

So there we have it, guys. Lex is envious and his envy has driven to him to kill Superman in order to save humanity…even though he’s currently tearing reality apart.

Great character.

What happens next made me laugh my ass off because Lex starts shouting “1A!” over and over to command Ultraman to punch when “punch” has fewer syllables and doesn’t sound fucking stupid. I seriously love this bit. It alone made the movie worth the price of admission.

So Superman smirks and mumbles “brain beats brawn…” Then he whistles to summon Krypto. Once again, this is not brains, this is calling your dog to beat the shit out of your opponent. Sorry, James, another miss. Maybe you’ll get it the third time?

Also, Clark whistles for a good while and Lex just lets this happen. Why did you stop shouting “1A” Lex? Clark can’t whistle if he’s being punched in the face repeatedly.

So Krypto shows up and tackles Ultraman. Clark orders the superdog to take out the drones that hover around Ultraman and act as the communication channel between him and Lex.

Hmm? Why am I bringing this up now? Well it’s because Clark just now becomes aware of this. Apparently he didn’t notice throughout this fight or his first fight with Ultraman when he was the Hammer of Boravia.

So because Lex’s ultimate weapon has no other visual/audio feed other than the drones, Krypto takes them all out. Ultraman can’t act independently so Superman beats his ass. Raptors show up and Superman beats them up with ease. Like, a lot of ease. He spins with his laser and takes out all of them. I thought the Raptors were relatively powerful but we have like 20 minutes of movie left so I guess we just do not have time for that.

Ultraman isn’t out of the fight yet though! He tackles Clark and holds him at mercy by standing on his arm. Clark dislocates his own arm (???) and this gives him the strength (?????) to pivot Ultraman into a falling bus and gets sucked into a black hole. How Ultraman loses to a bus when he has Kryptonian biology is anyone’s guess. I would think the bus would break on collision with his body but whatever fuck off film.

RIP Ultraman.

Hey, do you guys remember earlier when Clark randomly decided to try to appeal to the Engineer’s humanity? Do you guys remember how Clark is motivated in this movie partially by his lost Kryptonian lineage and wanting to know more about his people? Do you guys remember how Clark didn’t want to kill the kaiju? I don’t expect this movie to explore anything this deep but Ultraman is a clone. This essentially makes him his genetic brother. Isn’t it weird that Clark is so ready to dispose of him by way of black hole? If Clark would try to appeal to anyone, wouldn’t it make more sense to try with him? Sure, it’d probably be a doomed attempt and Clark probably would have had to kill him anyway, but it’d be more interesting than his aborted attempt with the Engineer (as funny as that was).

Oh well. Another missed opportunity to throw onto the pile.

So Mr. Terrific and Superman group back up and uh…oh. I didn’t mean to gloss over this. There is a black hole ON Earth. Not a black hole separated by a dimension portal or anything like that. It’s here on the planet. Look, I’m no prude about this stuff. I don’t need my comic book movies to meet real-life standards. I’m not a physicist! But I know what black holes are how they generally work. What I’m saying is it’d be nice if my comic book movies didn’t invite real-life comparisons to stuff I do understand. If my understanding of black holes is correct, the previous levels of over have been shattered by how over it currently is.

So something very strange happens (in this movie? Say it ain’t so, Ibrahim!) The rift starts heading towards Bakerline, the next town over. By this I mean it’s right across the lake from Metropolis. There are people in this city, who all panic at the rift heading towards them to kill them all. One of Lex’s goons declares he’s going to close the rift, but Lex says:

[Lex]: No! They chose him! Let them die! We’ll close it from the bunker before it gets to a city I care about.

There’s a lot to talk about here! Let’s discuss plot first, and then I’ll get to character.

So, plot. First of all, what was the point of evacuating Metropolis if the story is just going to endanger a city full of people anyway? What’s the narrative difference between putting one group or the other in danger? It’s the same ticking clock. Secondly, why weren’t these people evacuated? The rift is going in a straight line. Everyone can see where it’s going. So why didn’t these people get the memo that there’s a reality-destroying rift headed their way when they live right across from Metropolis? Is this where the disposable minorities and second-class citizens live or something?

Now, character. Why in the world does Lex’s goon decide now that people are in danger, he’s going to close the rift? People were in danger when the rift was on its way to tear Metropolis, nay, the world apart. Truthfully, people were in danger every time the portal was even used. All of the goons have been so on board with the atrocities Lex commits in this film that I just assumed Lex selects for purely evil people to work for him. This guy was complicit in the Hammer of Boravia’s terrorist attack, the kaiju, and all of Lex’s portal-related shenanigans.

Now onto Lex himself. He just got done saying that the reason he wants to kill Superman is the (real or imagined) threat he poses to humanity. Now he’s happy to let a whole city’s worth of people die because they “chose” Superman. I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean because they didn’t “choose” Superman anymore than they “chose” to be murdered right now. I’m sure the defense for this is going to be that he’s angry and petty, which you’ll notice is just a catch-all to account for everything the character does. He can’t be out of character if he has none, right?

This movie really is terrible. It just cannot help itself.

Lex opens the portal so he and his people can evacuate to I don’t fucking know where since the pocket universe is now part of our universe thanks to rift. Before he can “escape” though, Superman crashes through his window. Mr. Terrific gets to work stopping the rift.

[Goon]: The code is in here…I can help—!

[Mr. Terrific]: (pushes him aside) I don’t need your help. I’m goddamn Mr. Terrific.

Cool line, Terrific, but you do need help. That was the whole reason you needed to go to LexCorp, remember? To get the code?

Oh, whatever. Anything to get us out of here faster.

The movie then tries to summarize its theme and does so with the grace of an eagle…piloting a blimp. Made of lead. Covered in rust.

[Lex]: You piece-of-shit alien!

[Clark]: That’s where you’ve always been wrong about me, Lex! I’m as human as anyone! I love! I-I get scared! I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I try and put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time. But that is being human! And that’s my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.

Like the “being a woman” speech from Barbie, this is just someone’s Tumblr post copy-pasted into the script, but everyone loves it because they agree with the general sentiment. Well I’m here to ruin everyone’s fun because we need to talk about how it fits into this movie. Answer me this, guys:

Has Superman been scared at any point in the movie?
He was briefly scared for his dog but he found him soon after. Other than this, not meaningfully.

Has Clark ever screwed up in this movie?
I mean he lost to the Hammer of Boravia but that’s not really his fault, that’s because the script is stupid. And the thing he did in Boravia didn’t have in real consequences other than getting his dog taken to the pocket dimension.

Has Clark ever doubted himself?
I guess he did when he heard the second half of the message but was there ever really a possibility that Clark was going to make a planetary harem? I guess that leaves the emotional dillema of his actions in Boravia. We hit another wall here because like the Kryptonian “dilemma”, there is only one correct answer. Clark isn’t even around for the conclusion of the Boravian conflict! It’s handled off-screen by a separate group of characters with no connection to it.

Come on, guys. Are we ready to admit that the “moral dilemmas” presented in this movie aren’t dilemmas at all? Has enough time passed?

Anyway, Lex begins to retort by boasting that he still has authority from the government to kill him (yeah, right. After this?) but Krypto cuts him off by biting his face and thrashing him. It’s the first good thing the dog’s done the entire movie, even if it feels a little too similar to the “puny god” payoff from Avengers.

This is Lex’s exit from the movie, by the way. Krypto thrashes him and then he’s arrested next we see him. He might leave this movie with his life, but Mr. Gunn is on the weed if he expects me to take this version of this character seriously ever again. Holy hell.

Mr. Terrific inputs the code or whatever and closes the rift. And there was much rejoicing. We then a news report exposing all* of Lex Luthor’s crimes.

*This is a lie.

They mention one of his crimes, and arguably his least offensive one: selling weapons to Boravia.

Uh, hello? The man has a prison universe and he just tried to use it to tear Metropolis in half!

The news anchor then says that the world owes Superman an apology for turning its back on him.

Huh??? How does exposing Lex’s least offensive crime exonerate Superman of anything? Not only are these things unrelated to each other, but the message was confirmed to be 100% real. Several times, actually! And before you say the public has realized they’re wrong about Superman because he’s just saved everyone’s lives, I’ll ask you to scroll back to when I foreshadowed this outcome back during the message reveal. That avenue is closed. This movie has already established that the public thinks Superman is evil to the core and only saves people to lull the citizens of Earth into a false sense of security. If he’s been sent to rule the planet, he would obviously be invested in saving it. It’s like the movie thinks that because we just saw Superman doing the right thing, he is cleared of in-universe suspicion, which is not how that works.

It is so obvious that the movie is trying to wrap up every lingering plot thread right here because it just wants to be over. I want it to be over too, but that doesn’t mean you can just ignore what you wrote, James.

Back in Jarhanpur, the brown people cheer and celebrate with the Justice Gang. Hey, how about one more “Justice Gang” name-related joke for old time’s sake? Hawkgirl recommends Metamorpho to join the team (yeah, there will be an opening after you’re imprisoned for committing a war crime), and Guy Gardner objects. Metamorpho says the Justice Gang is a cool name and Guy immediately reverses his decision.

Wasn’t that funny? Did you laugh? I did.
Silently.

We then cut to Rick Flag Sr. watching the news with one of the government guys. The government guy says this:

[Secretary]: Glad you’re not concerned about the metahumans, Rick. Cause now they’re the ones making the rules.

That’s right, everyone. Metahumans have been around for 300 years, and now they’re the ones making the rules.

Back in the city, the “characters” reunite. The pocket dimension prisoners are freed. Krypto chases some monkeys. Eve squeals and hugs Jimmy, saying now they can be together forever. Superman offers Lois an interview only to duck into a building and make out with her. She finally says “I love you” back. I look longingly at the exit.

Outside the building, Perry asks Jimmy how long they’ve been hooking up and Jimmy casually replies that it’s been about three months. I can’t tell if we’re meant to conclude that they know Clark is Superman, or if they merely know that Lois is dating Superman. I can tell you who doesn’t care at this point.

We cut the Fortress of Solitude and Clark commends the Superman Robot Four for fixing the place up and…

Wait a damn minute.

The Engineer sliced up all the robots when they arrived earlier! I saw Superman hold Four in his arms as he died. How did the robots fix the place up? Who in the hell fixed them? You have some explaining to do, movie!

But no time for that now. Do you guys hear that? It’s the sound of a cameo crashing into the movie!

It’s Supergirl (played by Milly Alcock)!

What are you doing here? Like, in this universe? James doesn’t know this but Kara’s existence creates massive problems for this movie. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me spell it out. Clark’s “conflict” in this movie concerning the message relies on him not having any other Kryptonians to talk to, thus having no way of knowing what his people (especially his parents) were really like. Kara is his cousin and most iterations of this character spent time on Krypton before it ended. If she knew, why didn’t she tell Clark? If she didn’t know, why isn’t Clark telling her now? At the time of writing this, Supergirl is out. I haven’t seen it so I don’t know how it tries to address this. I can guarantee it will fail though (even though I think it will inevitably be better than this movie) because there’s going to be a contradiction no matter what.

Anyway, it’s revealed that Krypto is actually Kara’s dog and Clark was just dogsitting for her. He tackles her and slams her repeatedly and it’s pretty clear she’s the reason the dog is so poorly-trained.

The Superman Robots play footage of Clark’s parents to soothe him, only this time it’s a montage of home videos with his adopted family, the Kents, which it should’ve been the whole time. I can’t appreciate this payoff because of the implication that Clark just didn’t give enough of a shit about the people who actually raised him until he learned that his real parents were assholes. I’d be pretty pissed if I was them.

Anyway, some worthless punk rock song plays and the movie ends.

Thank God.

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SUMMATION

Let’s summarize the disastrous beginning of the DCU in detail before I do my thing as evaluate this thing’s worth as a story.

WORLD

I made a comparison to Incredibles already, and while it seems unfair given just how well-written it is, it does have a lot of parallels to Superman. For example, The Incredibles has the task of introducing to a world where a world of superheroes where not only do they exist, but they’ve existed long before the story takes place. Incredibles arguably has an even harder task because it isn’t an adaptation, and thus doesn’t have source material to draw from.

Incredibles has an 11-minute prologue that accomplishes many things, but for now we’ll focus on one fairly obvious thing it accomplishes very well in terms of making the world believable: superheroes existing as a regular, everyday part of this world. Our window into “the glory days” shows us the Supers’ relationship with the world and with each other. The Supers have a celebrity status in the world where they can be interviewed as such, citizens call on Supers for their troubles ranging from the dire to the mundane the same way they would the police, Supers have a working relationship with the police, Supers work independently towards the same goal of stopping crime to the point where arguments can happen over who caught the bad guy first, but their friendly co-worker-like relationship means that a bunch show up to Bob’s wedding…it’s really great stuff that helps the audience believe that this has been the status quo for a long time. The movie then makes the wise decision of providing a narrative reason for the absence of most of the heroes later in the movie, which happens to coincide perfectly with the movie’s narrative goal of focusing on the Parr family. We can zero in on the titular family without need to ask questions like “if heroes have existed in this world for hundreds of years, where the hell are they? Why isn’t Dynaguy or Metaman or Gazerbeam helping with this?” We know that they exist, and continue to exist, but they live anonymously.

But it goes further than this. Because Incredibles has infectiously good writing, the good worldbuilding feeds into the other aspects of the story. The superheroes from the old days who Luscius notes he lost contact with? They didn’t just go dark after living anonymously. They were killed off by Syndrome, something we learn later that dramatically alters the plot. The normal lives heroes are forced to live now? Their dour mundanity provides the low point we find Bob in and the basis for his character arc. The systematic elimination of superheroes as a concept following the Registration Act? It’s a direct parallel to a recurring theme, starting with Dash’s grumbling about the suppression of exceptionalism and later, more drastically, Syndrome’s own idea of bringing everyone on the same level to eliminate exceptionalism altogether. Even the “no capes” bit isn’t just a joke. It supplies the viewer with vignettes and anecdotes of the past that help to establish a lived-in world with an entire off-screen cast of heroes unrelated to our main characters (on top of being a setup for Syndrome’s demise). The movie never misses an opoortunity to imply context and history for its world, even the parts we don’t get to see. Bob’s reaction to seeing the heroes killed by the Omnidroid makes the scene so powerful because of the implied past relationships. These were people he knew and cared about.

The list goes on and on. I can’t write it all here. Incredibles is a really good movie, guys. Go watch it if you haven’t. If you have seen it, go watch it again.

So what about Superman?

Well, this too is a world where superheroes have existed for a long time. 300 years, to be exact. The movie treats a single line of text as sufficient communication that this world has effectively been in motion since then, when you’d never know by actually watching it. There are no references to the 300 years of metahumans. Nothing represents it. The humans in this world still seem relatively unfamiliar with it. There are no systems in place to govern it. This last point is especially egregious because the MCU’s Sokovia Accords were ratified eight years after Iron Man hit the scene, and they were arguably a long time coming even then.

Why is everyone complaining about Superman taking policy into his own hands as if this is the first time something like this has ever happened, as opposed to him breaking an existing law governing this sort of thing?

We’re told the U.S. government exists in this movie. We’re shown the U.S. government existing in this movie. Why don’t they act as meaningful agents in this movie? Why have they no response to a supposed superhero from one of their own allied countires attacking one their biggest cities?

Why not have the Daily Planet report on the exploits of other heroes?

Why is the Justice Gang a newly formed team as opposed to one that’s been established for ages and these are simply its newest members? You can even keep the name joke but make it a point that people have left because it’s a silly name and have gotten into arguments with Guy Gardner.

Why is Lois just now looking into LuthorCorp in this movie’s second act when Lex has a dubious reputation in-universe?

Why establish Superman as the de-facto strongest metahuman, instead of giving him a rivalry with other powerful metahumans who have been in the game longer and are fed up with the newer hero calling the shots?

Why have Lex trap ex-girlfriends and political rivals in his stupid pocket dimension as opposed to other minor heroes he’s gotten a hold of? You can even write it so he researched their powers to create Ultraman and give him abilities approximate to Superman without making him a goddamn clone.

Why give Lex a unique and baseless hatred of Superman as opposed to a specific hatred of him for something Superman did that took something vital from him?

Why have Eve turn on Lex due to new and contrived grudges as opposed to seeing the extent of just how evil and ruthless Lex is, like Mirage from Incredibles? Imagine how much richer the drama in this movie would be if she were the one Lex threatened to shoot in order to get information from Superman?

You’ll notice that these aren’t huge, top-down changes in the story. These probably wouldn’t even be enough to fix this horrendous script. What I’m trying to highlight here are opportunities. Missed opportunities. All of these changes keep the existing functions of these plot elements, while telling us something about the history of this world through implication.

It’s all in the little things, guys. Joining a new universe in the middle of its history requires bits of references, small lines of dialogues, even things like newspaper headlines, or old conversations being revisited to create the impression of a living universe. Lines like this:

[Mr. Incredible]: Weren’t you just in the news? Some show in Prague?

[Edna]: Milan, darling. Milan.

Makes it feel like Bob and Edna have a relationship that existed before we met her and that Edna was up to other things in the interim. Something that feels like more than sum of its parts.

Lines like this, however:

[Lois] Are you being serious right now?

[Clark]: Yes.

[Lois]: You’d let me interview you as Superman?

Make it seem, despite celebrating their three-month anniversary, like the relationship between Lois and Clark didn’t exist until the camera started rolling. Intrepid journalist and known skeptic Lois Lane has apparently never asked to interview Superman before, despite knowing exactly who he is and having dated him for three months. In other words, it feels exactly like the sum of its parts. A world that didn’t exist until this story started.

The difference, ladies and gentlemen, is history. It matters.

Oh, uh, I guess I should touch on the impossible tech once more. If your first villain can re-create the Big Bang, tear reality in half, create black holes, clone Superman, you do not have scalable stakes. Nothing Lex or any antagonist can do going forward is going to be as credible a threat. This is the kind of thing you save for the endgame. Instead, James Gunn carelessly blows his load in his first entry. This is not worldbuilding, this is applying scaffolding to fix a world that’s rapidly falling apart already. It’s just a bunch of stuff haphazardly thrown onto the screen depending on what the plot needs at the time. The stuff it doen’t establih break verisimilitude and immersion, and the stuff it does establish is so broken that future movies are going to have to find ways to write around it or just ignore it.

World: 2/10

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PLOT

This movie has a textbook idiot plot: a story that only functions if everyone is an idiot. Let’s go rapid-fire here. Lex has the resources of a god but has the intelligence of a waffle because he needs to for the movie to justify its runtime. This is why he doesn’t dispose of Superman with the numerous ways he could, including but not limited to:

• Having the Engineer fill him with nanites in the pocket universe
• Keeping him isolated in the pocket universe with kryptonite that’s not attached to someone who could betray Lex
• Weakening him with kryptonite in the pocket universe and filling him with nanites. Or just shooting him in the head
• Honestly, just trapping him the pocket universe and leaving him there
• Making more than one Ultraman and having them beat him up in the pocket universe

But oh I forgot, Lex needs permission from the government to kill Superman, which he absolutely does not because Lex has a universe-destroying portal in his backyard.

The man does not care about breaking the law.

What else? How about contrivances and conveniences?

• Lucky for the Engineer that Superman didn’t see her heading towards the Fortress in the beginning
• Speaking of, lucky the half is irreparable for Kryptonians but is reparable by humans(???)
• Lucky for Lex that the Fortress isn’t armed and that he brought the perfect person to repair it
• Lucky for Lex that he could translate Kryptonian within like a day
• Lucky the uncorrupted half of the message is entirely innocent
• Lucky that Jimmy has a past relationship with someone intimately involved with Lex and has so much rizz he can convince her to betray him
• Lucky that Eve took selfies that just so happen to contain evidence that can incriminate Lex
• Lucky Superman was trapped in the pocket dimension with Metamorpho, who not only has enough of concience to betray Lex when one kill becomes too many, but also has the ability to heal Superman
• Lucky that Metamorpho’s son was within flying distance
• Lucky Mr. Terrific and Lois came to save Clark just before the portal collpased
• Lucky Krypto is such an easy and reliable threat elimator when anything becomes too much for Superman

Luck, luck, luck, luck, luck. There is so much of it in this movie, ooh baby.

I have a question: What do you lose if you remove the Boravia/Jarhanpur conflict from the film?

Is it what gets Superman in trouble with the government?
No, the message is.

Okay, has the message got anything to do with it?
No.

Is it the reason he gets captured?
No.

Does he go to stop it in the final act?
No, not even that.

What the hell makes this relevant to the A plot? It feels like James Gunn added it for some half-assed political commentary. But what’s the point if it all turns out to be a big ol’ red herring anyway? All it does is make this script feel even more bloated with nothing. Did you just add this because you literally only have half a film, James?

Next we have sidelined agents in the plot, along with abandoned plot threads. Come join us down here. We have:

• Another group of superheroes that don’t do anything plot-relevant until the movie decides that they’re going to help stop a war.
• Journalists who don’t do anything
• Earth parents that are inexplicably shoved out of the movie despite being key to one of its biggest payoffs
• A clone who gets no consideration
• Robots that are stated to be non-sentient but are clearly shown to be sentient
• The interview scene which has zero follow-up considering how much screen time it eats up.

Then of course we have the movie eagerly wrapping itself up by pretending everyone trusts Superman again because Lex is outed as a war profiteer (as if those two have any correlation) and everything is okay.

James Gunn took a year to write this movie. Maybe he should have taken two.

Plot: 3/10

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CHARACTER

This movie features entities I am told are “characters.” It has more of them than most good movies and the non-Clark and Lex characters can each be summed up in one sentence.

Jimmy is a ladies’ man who’s entirely too lead-footed about saving Superman, whether or not he knows his secret identity.

Lois is a journalist who is entirely too slow on the uptake in terms of investigating Luthercorp, only figuring out what the viewer could in the first hour because the plot requires her too.

Hawkgirl, Guy Gardner, Metamorpho and Mr. Terrific are here, I guess. Terrific might have the most lines, but that doesn’t mean he has a lot of character. Hawkgirl has the least characterization of the three until she commits a war crime.

Eve is a ditz who saved the day because of plot convenience.

The Engingeer sacrificed her own humanity to get rid of Superman.

Jonathan and Martha Kent don’t want Clark to be a stranger. Aw shucks, aren’t they wholesome?

CLARK KENT/SUPERMAN

Superman is especially important to write well as a character because his power-set makes him difficult to write as an agent in the plot. In the 1978 movie, we had meek and timid Clark Kent contrasted with the confident, commanding and majestic Superman. That Superman was faced with a choice. To act in accordance with his birth father’s warning against interfering with human history, or to answer the call to action presented by his adoptive father Jonathan Kent, who told him he was sent here for a purpose. In the end, he’s able to marry both ideas by turning back time, choosing to intefere in human history for the better, thus fulfilling his extraordinary purpose and using his powers to repair rather than break.

It’s pretty great stuff.

Superman in this movie seems designed to elicit no thoughts from the viewer at all. David Corenswet plays the character well, but it is one character. There’s a reason I’ve been using both names interchangeably throughout this review. There is no duality between Superman and Clark Kent, which is what made the 1978 character really fun to watch. With Clark Kent usually representing the human part of Superman, this is a part of the character that’s sorely missed. This isn’t even an adaptation argument because this Superman yammers on about humanity being his greatest strength.

The movie understands in theory that the subject of parenthood can be a rich source of drama, but it fails to capitalize on this, instead placing all of this focus exclusively on the Kryptonian parents for some bizarre reason. Clark Kent doesn’t have fears or vulnerabilities. He doesn’t have weaknesses for the villain to exploit. We don’t get a chance to see Lex Luthor threaten Clark’s Earth parents because the movie doesn’t give a shit about Clark’s Earth parents. Not even Lois is in danger because she’s safe outside the A-plot throughout the story.

Outside of being indistinguishable from Clark, Superman’s traits can be summed up as: nice dude, bit naive, means well. This is how he starts, this is how he is in the middle of his joruney, and this is how he ends. No arc. Like Lex, he is more disposition than values.

Clark is never meaningfully shaken. He never has to make a complicated moral choice. His birth parents are conspicuously uncomplicated in how evil they are. I made a brief comparison to the The Iron Giant before and I’m going to elaborate here (because Brad Bird is fucking goated).

The Iron Giant, the actual best Superman movie, nails the kind of profound moral choice this movie pretends to have. The Giant is explicitly built as a weapon of mass destruction. Despite being a passive robot by nature, his programming kicks in involuntarily when he senses threats, and he nearly destroys everything he cares about in a panic. It’s through Hogarth (and actual Superman comics) that he learns about humanity, empathy, and free will. Thus, when he thinks he loses Hogarth in the climax, the Giant is presented with a genuine fork: give into his destructive programming and attack those he feels are responsible for the threat he’s currently under and the death of his friend, or choose to be better. When the nuke arrives, he makes his choice. He overrides his programming, flies up, and declares that he chooses to be Superman. The lesson of “you are who choose to be” carries real weight here becaue the alternative—becoming the destructive monster he was designed to be—is plausible and terrifying.

Clark’s alternative, on the other hand—make a planetary harem—is something no one believes for a second and just sounds stupid. Clark’s “choice” is so stark that it’s essentially no choice. The conclusion is just reaffirming what he already knew: that he was never seriously tempted by his Kryptonian parents’ fascistic directive because it’s so over-the-top and alien to his earthly upbringing. Clark is shaken for a bit, has a talk with Pa Kent who tells him what he already knows and…that’s basically it. He saves the day and ends the movie the way he began, the only difference being that he watches home videos of his adoptive parents instead of the Kryptonian message. There’s no doubt and no crisis. I personally just can’t believe that Clark went several years of his life apparently without knowing that it was obviously the people who raised him that would have instilled his good values in him, not a 30-second half-message from people he doesn’t know and never met. By the time he gets the second half, Clark is a fully-formed adult in his fucking 30’s who’s spent his entire life up to that point choosing kindness and restraint with a plucky, folksy attitude to boot. He’s not an impressionable kid, or a robot made with a specific purpose like the Giant. “Your choices, your actions. That’s what makes you who you are” doesn’t come across as meaningful in this movie. It comes across like redundant noise worthy of a “well, duh.”

It’s like telling a 30-year-old vegan that their long-lost birth parents wanted them to eat meat.

The Giant could have reverted to a weapon at any moment. Clark was instructed by a voicemail from people who died while he was an infant.

Outside of this, Superman is a personification of the phrase “aw, shucks.” It’s his default reaction to everything, even when faced with things that conflict with his values. The exception to this is the interview scene which shows that he can get angry when faced with complications. The movie could have explored this or made it a flaw for him to overcome but the only other time he gets angry is when Lex kidnaps Krypto. But nothing comes of this. Instead he flips a desk, then goes home so he can say “aw, shucks”. He doesn’t get angry at the Justice Gang when they kill the kaiju; his reaction is “aw, shucks.” His reaction to being brutally arrested is “aw, shucks.” He seems devastated by the death of Malik but this seems to make more of an impression on Metamorpho than Superman, who defaults to “aw, shucks.” Lex tearing apart reality gets an “aw, shucks” from Superman. His reaction to the Engineer not responding to his attempt to appeal to her humanity is “aw, shucks. Better use you as a battering ram.” His reaction to learning Ultraman is his clone is “aw, shucks” even when he resorts to killing him. His reaction to Lex’s big speech is a big speech of his own that amounts to “aw, shucks. I’m only human, Lex.” His response to Krypto interrupting and promptly mutilating Lex is “aw shucks.” His reaction to seeing Kara, his cousin who may or may not have known things about his parents is “aw, shucks.” Even his reaction to the shoddy repair job in the post-credits scene is “aw, shucks”! And his reaction when Mr. Terrific gets angry and storms off is, you guessed it, “aw, shucks. I can be a real jerk sometimes.”

Look guys. I’m sick of edgy, evil Superman too. I’m all for positive, plucky, hopeful Superman! But characters, like people, that are unfailingly, uncomplicatedly nice all the time are boring. It’s like James Gunn saw the reaction to Zack Snyder’s Mass-Murder Man and instead of giving Superman a better character, he opted to give him none at all just to be safe. There need to be some emotional flaws for this movie (or future movies) to profit off of to make this iteration of the character interesting. Superman displays none of the pitfalls of being human that he humblebrags about in his big speech. He is unfailingly nice, invincible, and right…and very, very boring.

LEX LUTHOR

This has been a long time coming. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor has to be the most non-functional villain I have seen in anything in a long time.

What does Lex give us in terms of motivation?

Well, he sure does hate Superman. Why though? There seems to be resentment over how much the world loves him, as he vomits in his big speech. His rant about Galileo and Einstein suggests he wants to be seen as the best, and he hates Superman because everyone loves him. But this isn’t really tied to anything Superman has done to Lex (besides exist). It’s just a preemptive loathing Lex has towards anyone who he thinks is better than him. This itself is a conclusion you have to reach for because all of this is entangled with some contradictory nonsense about Lex apparently looking out for the good of humanity, which he provably doesn’t give a damn about.

I said this way back in the beginning and I have to repeat it here: this is not the comics, an adaptation of a specific comic run, or a continuation of a comic storyline. This is a new continuity meaning Lex is essentially a new character. Metaknowledge cannot be used a substitute for character. Superman relies on the audience to take the characterization and histories of other iterations of Lex to fill the gaps left by this one, under the guise of “skipping the origin story.”

Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War similarly skips the origin story, but this is a special case. Peter Parker is arguably the most popular superhero in the world and he has had several relatively recent live-action movie adaptations before his introduction into the MCU. But even then Civil War makes an effort to imply a history of what Peter was up to before Tony Stark recruited him, and Civil War gives him a foundation for his own story within the MCU.

My point here is, it’s one thing to skip an origin story. It’s another thing entirely to skip giving your character an origin.

We have no context for where Lex’s world-destroying levels of spite come from. He hates Superman for being a powerful metahuman from space, but he lives in a world full of metahumans (some of whom are from space, like Guy Gardner). They’ve existed for centuries! What is it about Superman in particular that drives Lex to kill the planet in order to kill him? Why not have him target and eliminate the world’s heroes like Syndrome? Why not have him sue Max Lord for the Justice Gang’s existence? Why not have him lobby to overturn the law allowing superheroes to act in the world and replace them with his PlanetWatch? Why not give him an ideological reason to be opposed to superheroes in general, and a focus on Superman because he’s the epitome of the concept? Unlike Mr. Incredible, Superman didn’t create Lex, so he can’t be a reflection of something Superman has to learn from Lex. Superman didn’t take credit for something Lex did, or take something important to Lex from him, or foil something Lex was trying to do

Lex is not grounded in the universe he’s a part of, and he has no strong reason for his worst traits being brought out by Superman in particular. What we have is a villain who is evil because this is a movie and we need an evil villain. The resources Lex has at his disposal serve to similarly depersonalize him. And it takes away what I thought was his primary motivating emotion: envy. If we’re meant to believe Lex has an inferiority complex, why write it so that he can easily beat Superman and could positively affect the world faster and more effectively than Superman ever could? In what respect is Lex inferior, other than the obvious moral one? The only reason he has anything to prove is because he hasn’t already used his crazy technology to prove everything anyone could ever want to prove.

People will say Lex does what he does because he is envious or petty or angry or egotistical or some combination. And to be fair, there are many people in history and in fiction who are driven by these traits. But the best ones establish where these traits come from and tell you something about the villain.

Elle from Kill Bill is jealous of The Bride for being a better assassin than her and for being the object of Bill’s affection. It drives her to a paradoxical feeling of equal hate and respect towards The Bride. She wants her dead, but she wants to be the one to drive the sword through her heart. She wants to best her, and she kills Budd because he would have given her a death far less dignified. She ultimately bites off more than she can chew when does face off against the Bride because she’s forced to fight her one-on-one with no underhanded tactics allowed, he faces her in an environment where she can’t efficiently use a sword, and she gloats about having killed The Bride’s master, which pisses her off.

Director Krennic from Rogue One and Andor is an ambitious, arrogant man who wants recognition for his accomplishments because he represents a hand in the Empire, where if you’re not on your way to the top, you’re on your way out the door. He is territorial and obssessed with receiving what he believes is proper credit on the Death Star project because he is under constant pressure and ultimately fears for his life. He needs a reason to justify his continued existence within the Empire if he wants to keep living. He meets his demise wounded and incapacitated on Scarif, where the order is given to fire the Death Star’s superlaser on the planet to stop the transmission of the stolen plan. He’s obliterated by his own weapon along with his life’s work.

Azula from Avatar is calculating and power-hungry because she is the princess of the Fire Nation, born during wartime and bred to be a weapon by her war-mongering lineage. She demands absolute perfection from herself because her nation views anything less as weakness, and thus absolute failure. She fails to keep her closest friends in line through fear and intimidation and unravels because she isn’t a weapon, she is a human girl who wasn’t taught how to properly be one. She has emotional vulnerabilities like anyone else, but can’t deal with her own intense desire for validation that is brought to the surface. Nor the realization that her father doesn’t love her any more than he loves her brother, who she was prided for being better than her own life.

Godmother from Fleabag is duplicitious, passive-aggressive, and self-obsessed, but wraps these venomous traits in a thin, sickly-sweet veil to endear herself to others. She’ll deliver the most malicious and biting insults with a warm smile so she can be the most interesting and important person in the room. She works to subtly maneuver and re-shape the family dynamic to secure her spot as the replacement of Fleabag’s late mother, taking advantage of the family patriarch’s passivity. Where she regularly hits a wall is with Fleabag herself, who can’t be shamed for her life choices because she feels she’s made the most shameful decision of her life already, ignores her needling because she has an easy retreat in the audience, and reliably rebels and fights back because she’s past caring what anyone thinks of her.

I could keep going. Scar, Voldemort, Walter White, Sarumon, Denethor, Light Yagami, Loki, all of them have Lex-like traits. But when it comes Lex, these traits only make up his disposition, and disposition is not a substitute for motive. You can’t defend this with tautology. Lex can’t be envious/petty/angry/egotistical because he’s envious/petty/angry/egotistical. Characters, like people in real life, need antecedent causes for their personalities and worldviews. What happened that informed Lex’s hatred towards metahuman. Why does he think Superman is destroying “us”? Why is he afraid of humanity’s weakness in comparison to Superman’s strength? Even Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor from Batman v. Superman has a more discernible motive than this iteration, as cringe as that character is. I brought up Syndrome earlier because he’s a perfect example of how important it is to pull this off if you want a worthwhile villain in your story.

More ideally, though, none of those characters I mentioned are stupid. Lex is the most important character in this movie. He is the entire reason this movie happens. The whole movie is not Superman acting. It is Superman reacting to Lex Luthor, who drives the plot. This makes the fact that has the intelligence of a ham sandwich his most egregious trait. Thrawn, Sister Sage, Samuel Sterns…we’ve had so many examples of alleged “supergeniuses” in fiction being actual idiots that I’m starting to think being a genius isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Of course, with the awesome power he wields, it’s pretty much necessity that he can only be beaten by making mistakes that not even Dr. Doofenshmirtz would replicate.

In summary, we have a Lex who is envious/petty/angry/egotistical, and he hates Superman because he’s supposedly a threat to humanity, even though Lex is also willing to destroy humanity, even though Superman regularly saves humanity, even though Lex himself has a power-set and list of achievements that hilariously surpasses the vast majority of humans, even though Lex has put none of his superior powers and achievements towards the benefit of humanity, even though this fear of metahumans because of their threat to humanity has led him to create at least two, including a clone of the same Superman from whom Lex is trying to save humanity.

Great character.

Character: 1/10

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THEMES

It’s hard to address the themes of this movie because they are so simple in concept, but so inept in execution. The two discernible ones I can find are those of humanity and foreign interventionism.

Snyder identified that humanity is important to the core of the Superman character. He failed to put his own spin on it, but he did try, which is more than can be said for Gunn’s Superman. The words are certainly spoken. Superman insists he’s human and faces human trials, but as I said already, this is not presented meaningfully within the movie. Remember when I said there’s no duality between Superman and Clark? I wasn’t just expressing a preference. This is actually very detrimental to the theme of the movie. As stated, no one he loves is ever put in danger. He never has to choose between two irreconcilable choices.

Clark stops a war before the movie begins, he’s criticized for this for reasons the movie isn’t very clear on, but he just keeps on keeping on because that’s what humans do. This inspires the Justice Gang to go fix the Middle East. Even if you screw up, if you keep doing your best, you are good people and you can inspire others to be good people too.

This is where we run into intention vs. execution. Because I’m sure this is what the movie wants us to take away from it. But in actuality, what on Earth inspired the Justice Gang to go to Jarhanpur? They’ve shown nothing but apathy towards the issue for the whole movie. There’s more credibility to the cynical idea that they saw a PR opportunity and went to take advantage of it than the idea that they were inspired by Clark, who they had zero contact with since the Kaiju fight. Not to mention the fact that a corporate-backed American superhero team went and did the exact same thing Clark was criticized for at the start of the film, only for the film to treat this like a triumphant payoff.

Are we meant to take away that corporations can do what governments can’t? Are we meant to take away that nations should send private armies to end wars and murder foreign leaders if we feel that they’re inconvenient? Are we meant to take away that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply if the (unarmed!) foreign leader in question happens to be a dick? How is this going to affect Boravia’s relationship with the U.S.? If they retaliate can Hawkgirl just go kill them as well? What does it mean that Hawkgirl was inspired by Superman if she’s, in her own words, “not Superman”?

🤓☝️ “You’re thinking too deeply about it, Ibrahim! These things don’t matter.”

If they don’t matter than why are they in the film? I didn’t read the ideas of Middle East foreign interventionism into the film. They were there when I got here! We’re clearly meant to think about them. Gunn just wants us to think about them in the way he intended, not in the way executed them. Unlike the theme in the 1978 Superman movie, this is not a theme that is simplistic nor universal. It is tangled in American partisan politics. And when you look away from it, it has very little else to offer. Where is the humanity? Where are humanity’s strengths? Its weaknesses? How are each represented in the movie’s protagonist?

Is there anything to take away or does the movie think a generic speech is sufficient?

Themes: 2/10

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OVERALL

Back in 2014, James Gunn released Guardians of the Galaxy. Even with the MCU juggernaut pushing ahead, the movie carried a pretty significant of alienating the audience with its bizarre name, premise, and characters. And it took place entirely away from the world we knew and into the cosmic side of the MCU. But you know what? Guardians introduced a strong set of characters that have become household names, it expanded the world of the MCU by introducing new cosmic factions, weapons, and mechanics, it has a straightforward plot, and it has strong themes of finding the courage to do the right thing and healing through an unlikely chosen family. It was great!

Guardians of the Galaxy is basically an MCU’s side story. 2025’s Superman by James Gunn is the first page in the first chapter of a brand new book and it fails in basically every way a story could. This movie had everything going for it, too. Capable and willing actors, a clean slate, and nothing but goodwill from fans. But the story has themes that are bungled in their execution, a lazily-written plot with canyon-sized holes, characters that range from safely bland to horrendous in their writing, and reckless worldbuilding that feels stapled on in post.

Again, this isn’t meant to take away anyone’s enjoyment, but in terms of writing this movie is pretty awful, guys. Feel free to disagree in the comments. I’m tired. See you guys in another three years, probably.

Overall Assessment: 2/10