Superman: A New Starting Gun(n)
James Gunn dials down the superhero hysteria in the DC Studios debutante
I went into James Gunn’s Superman with ignoble intentions, I admit. I have little to no interest in the superhero genre of cinema, which has been assaulting audiences on an all-too-regular basis since the late noughties, nor do I care about Gunn as a filmmaker. My interest centred around lead actress Rachel Brosnahan, she who played the titular character in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, the period comedy-drama by Amy Sherman-Palladino about a New York City housewife who becomes a stand-up comedienne after her husband walks out on her and their children. Not Nicholas Hoult, he of Nosferatu, nor David Corenswet, who I genuinely could not pick out of a line-up. Not even Nathan Fillion, who I’m old enough to remember from the original broadcast run of Castle.
Even so, I came away from Superman impressed by Edi Gathegi, who plays Mr. Terrific, and Corenswet, who has an affable charm about him as Clark Kent and plays Superman with earnestness. Much of the film is about Gunn hitting the reset button on the DC Universe, and his choices, even the questionable ones, are a marked shift from Zac Snyder’s: the dourness that most of the Snyderverse embodied is absent and Gunn clearly intends to move towards a more vibrant aesthetic. The blue in Superman’s suit is appropriately brighter and the red less bloodlike, the vibe about Metropolis, despite it being the site of multiple battles from first frame to last, is decidedly upbeat. Superman is thus clearly designed to return the DC superheroes (except Batman as helmed by Matt Reeves and portrayed by Robert Pattinson) to a setting that is more widely appealing: notwithstanding the gargantuan box office takings of The Dark Knight Trilogy and some of the DCEU productions, they were clearly directed at an older audience. Appetites today are arguably more tribal (evidence: the “SnyderCut” movement), in light of which a calmer film doesn’t feel like a bad idea.
Except Superman, despite all the right noises it makes, has some major shortcomings: it has things to say about the state of the world today, chiefly the Palestine-Israel conflict, the othering of minorities, and the naked greed of corporate America. All of which is too much to stuff into a two-hour-long film. Gunn can’t tackle any of this stuff in depth, so he goes for broad sloganeering, which is also fine except it doesn’t land any of its punches convincingly save the one about institutional confinement, which has some heart to it.
Other flaws include an insipid villain (Hoult), choppy visual effects, and serviceable, functional filmmaking which lacks distinction in all shapes and forms. There are some who have used the lack of definitive filmmaking tics and developed whole careers out of being malleable to the world of each specific film, but James Gunn is not a pseudonym for Steven Allan Spielberg. Superman looks standardised in the vein of 2000s mainstream American cinema: save the climactic kiss between Lois and Superman, the film’s visualisation leaves much to be desired.
‘What works then, Varun?’ you might ask. Well, some of the writing is actually pretty interesting, at least in structural terms: rather than treat viewers to another origin story, Gunn presents this reset as a crisis of identity for the Man in the Red (Outer) Underwear. The film opens with Superman going toe-to-toe, and getting smacked around a fair bit, with a nemesis. The approach to the broader story liberates Superman from the shackles the genre has forced upon itself and allows it to just be. Corenswet plays a younger version of the character, thus making his lack of clarity and need to define his identity a palatable arc. Sidestepping the origin tale also lets Lois and Clark/Superman have a somewhat lived-in relationship: she knows he is Superman but is unsure of where they are at. Brosnahan channels her wonderful Maisel chops to turn in a performance that is brief but winsome, not even letting up in the somewhat stereotypical moments that Gunn saddles her with.
The filmmaker also brings out some lesser-seen characters from the DC paeti: there is the aforementioned Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, a straight-laced superhero who does some of the heavy lifting to support Superman, Fillion plays Green Lantern as a whacky douchebag, and Anthony Carrigan has a hearfelt turn as Rex Mason aka Metamorpho.
Superman isn’t the sort of earth-shattering film audiences now demand each production be (and rightly so, ticket prices are nuts!) but it gets the job done inoffensively and is momentarily enjoyable, so I just soaked that part up and walked out into the hot summer sun cheered up by Rachel Brosnahan’s smile and by a computer-generated dog who is a real merchant of chaos.
If you enjoyed reading this issue of Dispatches from a Dark Room, consider hitting the button below to subscribe so you receive every new post in your email as soon as it’s out!