Superman

[DJ Davis]

Really enjoyed this movie and thought it was a lot of fun - a sentiment shared with the group I saw it with. Took about the first 15-20 minutes to kind of get into the groove with what this version of Superman was going to be like and shake off the expectations ingrained from the last ten years of Snyder DC films. A lot of good casting choices and performances here: Lois Lane, Mr. Terrific, Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Lex Luthor and, of course, Superman.
Is this a perfect movie? Of course not, but what comic book movie is? I would certainly re-watch this one before any of the stuff Marvel has put out post-Endgame (Thor: Love and Thunder, anyone?). Definitely looking forward to seeing how this world is built out starting with the next season of Peacemaker.

Rumor has it that James Gunn may get Godzilla Minus One director, Takashi Yamazaki, in on the new DCU. That is intriguing.

If anything, this movie is better than F1 and light years better than the god-awful Jurassic World: Rebirth.

Agree. Some of the dialogue and the preachy speeches from Lex and Superman were a little cheesy. But the acting and characters were good. I especially liked the cinematography and vfx. They did some cool things with the camera, particularly during the flight scenes.

I also enjoyed Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, Mr. Terrific and Metamorpho. It was fun to see all of them in live action … deeper cuts than the characters we’ve seen a million times.

[Dicktar2023]

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Rumor has it that James Gunn may get Godzilla Minus One director, Takashi Yamazaki, in on the new DCU. That is intriguing.

If anything, this movie is better than F1 and light years better than the god-awful Jurassic World: Rebirth.

interesting.

I love Minus One. A lot. It’d be cool to see what he could do with DC.

I haven’t seen the new Jurassic World, but I enjoyed F1 a lot. Yeah, it was basically “Top Gun” with race cars, but that’s what I was expecting and I had a ton of fun with it. If Superman is better than that, then that bodes well for me.

Agree with the F1 take. The racing sequences were top notch and it is a fun movie. Take away the unnecessary love interest side-plot and it would have ranked higher in my book.

Of course, art is subjective. Everyone is going to have a different take depending on their personal taste. But, if you enjoyed Gunn's other movies (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) then you should get some enjoyment out of Superman.

Well, I enjoyed his other movies.

Didn't you get tired of Superman being such a liability? He spends more time in this movie flat on his back, waiting to be rescued by Krypto, Mr. T, even Lois Lane, than he does flying.

There is an old Seinfeld routine where he asks, "if you have Superman, what do we need the rest of the Justice League for? Superman has it covered." Gunn takes it so far in the other direction that it raises the question: If you have Green Lantern and Mr. Terrific and Krypto, what do you need Superman for?

You clearly don't. At one point, he pouts on Lois' couch while the Justice Gang fights a monster in the background.

[MikoTython]

What are the 'expectations' for a g.d. Superman movie - that he flies straight, tells the troot and saves the day ? Beyond that...

(yeah, all this DC & MCU jazz is, to me, strickly for th' kids)

If anyone wants to explain why a grown-up should be worrying about this stuff, maybe I'll get 'educated'.

[todd-parker]

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Rumor has it that James Gunn may get Godzilla Minus One director, Takashi Yamazaki, in on the new DCU. That is intriguing.

If anything, this movie is better than F1 and light years better than the god-awful Jurassic World: Rebirth.

interesting.

I love Minus One. A lot. It’d be cool to see what he could do with DC.

I haven’t seen the new Jurassic World, but I enjoyed F1 a lot. Yeah, it was basically “Top Gun” with race cars, but that’s what I was expecting and I had a ton of fun with it. If Superman is better than that, then that bodes well for me.

Agree with the F1 take. The racing sequences were top notch and it is a fun movie. Take away the unnecessary love interest side-plot and it would have ranked higher in my book.

Of course, art is subjective. Everyone is going to have a different take depending on their personal taste. But, if you enjoyed Gunn's other movies (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) then you should get some enjoyment out of Superman.

Well, I enjoyed his other movies.

Didn't you get tired of Superman being such a liability? He spends more time in this movie flat on his back, waiting to be rescued by Krypto, Mr. T, even Lois Lane, than he does flying.

There is an old Seinfeld routine where he asks, "if you have Superman, what do we need the rest of the Justice League for? Superman has it covered." Gunn takes it so far in the other direction that it raises the question: If you have Green Lantern and Mr. Terrific and Krypto, what do you need Superman for?

You clearly don't. At one point, he pouts on Lois' couch while the Justice Gang fights a monster in the background.

Sure, theoretically, Superman should be able to handle most enemies by himself but he does have the Kryptonite vulnerability, that pesky moral code of not wanting to kill anyone and keep civilians safe, plus

Spoiler

in battling the Hammer of Boravia and Ultraman (helped by Luthor), he is essentially going up against himself so it's an even fight

.

It would be a boring story if for every crisis, Superman just showed up to end it in 5 minutes. And you'd miss out on some quippy exchanges between members of the Justice GANG.

[Dicktar2023]

.

Rumor has it that James Gunn may get Godzilla Minus One director, Takashi Yamazaki, in on the new DCU. That is intriguing.

If anything, this movie is better than F1 and light years better than the god-awful Jurassic World: Rebirth.

interesting.

I love Minus One. A lot. It’d be cool to see what he could do with DC.

I haven’t seen the new Jurassic World, but I enjoyed F1 a lot. Yeah, it was basically “Top Gun” with race cars, but that’s what I was expecting and I had a ton of fun with it. If Superman is better than that, then that bodes well for me.

Agree with the F1 take. The racing sequences were top notch and it is a fun movie. Take away the unnecessary love interest side-plot and it would have ranked higher in my book.

Of course, art is subjective. Everyone is going to have a different take depending on their personal taste. But, if you enjoyed Gunn's other movies (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) then you should get some enjoyment out of Superman.

Well, I enjoyed his other movies.

Didn't you get tired of Superman being such a liability? He spends more time in this movie flat on his back, waiting to be rescued by Krypto, Mr. T, even Lois Lane, than he does flying.

There is an old Seinfeld routine where he asks, "if you have Superman, what do we need the rest of the Justice League for? Superman has it covered." Gunn takes it so far in the other direction that it raises the question: If you have Green Lantern and Mr. Terrific and Krypto, what do you need Superman for?

You clearly don't. At one point, he pouts on Lois' couch while the Justice Gang fights a monster in the background.

Sure, theoretically, Superman should be able to handle most enemies by himself but he does have the Kryptonite vulnerability, that pesky moral code of not wanting to kill anyone and keep civilians safe, plus

Spoiler

in battling the Hammer of Boravia and Ultraman (helped by Luthor), he is essentially going up against himself so it's an even fight

.

It would be a boring story if for every crisis, Superman just showed up to end it in 5 minutes. And you'd miss out on some quippy exchanges between members of the Justice GANG.

How about one time where Superman shows up and solves a problem on his own? Even saving that squirrel took the help of Green Lantern.

I cheered when Gunn said we weren't going to have to sit through another origin story. But if you're going to cut out the backstory, you have to spend that time you save somehow establishing stakes. It's like we skipped the good part, the movie where Superman is a hero, and only drop in as he begins a mopey mid-life crisis.

I mean, yes, every writer of Superman has to deal with the Kryptonite Problem: how do you establish meaningful conflict for a guy who is either 1) totally invincible or 2) utterly helpless? But Gunn's solution is to just forget #1 and turn the "Man of Steel" into a damsel-in-distress.

Also. the CGI effects are terrible. Everything from the "set pieces" to the stupid alien baby look like video game cut-scene garbage. And we've come to the point where you can't even have a shot of people in a friggin board room without painting in all of the backgrounds with green-screened AI slop. It's disgraceful. 25 years ago, I cringed my way through the first Spider-Man movie, thinking "is this the future of action sequences? we're going to have to just pretend it looks real?" Yep. A full generation later, the technology is apparently more expensive, but it's not a (bleep) bit more convincing.

[Armchair QB]

Appreciate the commentary, I didn’t get to see it. Looks like it performed pretty well world wide opening weekend. We’ll see how it does from here on out.

If Superman isn’t “super” enough, to me it betrays the original story and that’s a big thing for me. Not saying every movie has to be a remake, but consistency is important. And if politics were injected, that’s a huge turnoff as well. I guess we’ll see.

[Pink Freud]

This is not a complaint, just airing a curiosity:

Boomer-age boys grew up idolizing George Reeves in "Adventures of Superman" from 1953 to 1958, and it's still in syndication on the Heroes & Icons Network (handitv.com). There are still big fan clubs of the series, and those fans idolize George. (Full disclosure: I visited his cemetery niche in Pasadena.)

Yet, in nearly every movie iteration of the character I've seen, there is virtually nothing referencing the TV character or the series so many of us old farts cherished. It's all from the comic book character; no trace of those 104 TV episodes or of that Superman/Kent.

In the Christopher Reeve versions, Clark Kent is portrayed as a buffoon, socially awkward and insecure. George Reeves never played Kent like that; he was always self-assured and grounded. I always thought Reeve was a terrific Superman, but otherwise just a terrible actor.

In the movie versions, phone booths serve one purpose: As Superman's changing room. In the TV series, they serve as a phone booth to make calls. Just for realism, doesn't it make more sense to change in a newspaper tower's store room than in a cramped, glass-enclosed public phone booth?

Despite six seasons on TV, there was never one recurring uber-villain like the movies' Lex Luthor. In the TV series, the villains were always somewhat realistic.

The very first season of the TV series was dark, violent, and melodramatic --- two episodes, "The Evil Three" and "Mystery In Wax", were downright frightening ---, with Metropolis set in the Forty Acres backlot in Culver City, which later became Mayberry for Andy Griffith. The next five seasons, recorded elsewhere, were much less so, thanks to a new sponsor: Kellogg's, who didn't want their series to scare the kids eating their cereal.

Of course, the TV series was aimed at 1950s kids; the movies, at adults.

Living in Los Angeles, I was reminded of the old series dozens of times, every time I drove right past George Reeves' death house on Benedict Canyon Rd., driving my landlord's son to his TV/commercial auditions in midtown L.A..

All that being said, I'm still looking forward to the new "Superman" on a movie theater screen, which I'll watch with fresh eyes and an open mind.