Superman — it's my five-star movie of the summer

Times

11 hours ago

He stumbles, he falls, he bleeds — occasionally he even sneaks a look at his social media mentions. How telling that, after 20 years of mis-starts and misfires, vulnerability would be the key to making Superman work on screen again.
James Gunn's new Superman is not perfect but it has wit, smarts, pace and the same sardonic, goofy humour that Gunn brought to Guardians of the Galaxy. How strange that a film about misfit mutants would prepare him for the straight-arrow Superman — but Gunn seems to understand what we want: hope, heart, a dash of silliness and the same sense of up-and-at-'em adventure that made the original comic strips buzz. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the summer movie we've all been waiting for.
Superman has always represented a distinct type of corn-fed American optimism — McCartney to Batman's Lennon. The creation of scrawny, short-sighted, Jewish ghetto kids from Manhattan's Lower East Side who dreamt of being Douglas Fairbanks, Superman recalls a balmier, more innocent time in American history when the mission to 'smack down the bullies of the world', as one of Superman's creators, Joel Siegel, put it, didn't send everyone diving for their Chomsky.
The problem that has bedevilled adaptations since the 1978 original is: how do you make that optimism work for more cynical times, now that 'the bullies' and 'America' are no longer mutually exclusive categories?
Here's how: no origin story. We don't need to hear again how the planet Krypton blew up and Kal-El crash-landed in Mom and Pop's backyard before heading to the big city to work for The Daily Planet. Instead Gunn sets us right down in the thick of it: Superman (David Corenswet) has just taken a beating from an armoured monster let loose by the rogue republic of Boravia.
'Did you consult with the president?' Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) demands to know during a date that quickly turns into a combative interview. 'You seemingly acted as a representative for the United States of America.'
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'I wasn't representing anyone but me,' he protests. 'And … doing good.' So much for truth, justice and the American way. Go tell it to a congressional committee.
Such hand-wringing over the burden of power is par for the course in superhero movies these days, but critiques of American unilateralism only go so far when your hero wears red underpants. Superman's saving grace has always been his slight silliness because it has kept him from the solemnity that clogs up the works with Batman and all the other edgier heroes, so intent on giving us a guided tour of their dark sides.
The most radical thing about Gunn's film is not that it nods to the Washington bearpit, but Superman's insistence that kindness is 'the real punk rock'. Whether shielding a girl from exploding debris or a dog from a falling building, he would Make America Kind Again.
Arrayed against him is Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) trying to turn the US Department of Defense against its most famous illegal alien so he can make a mint from arms deals involving his latest batch of superheroes, or 'metahumans' as they are known. He's like a cross between Tony Stark and Elon Musk. Metahumans are everywhere these days, including a gang of do-gooding showboats who call themselves the 'Justice Gang' — Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) — and whose exploits explain at a stroke why people might flock to a boy scout like Superman. He spends half his time preventing the collateral damage from his fellow superheroes' interventions. More than just reinventing his star, then, Gunn has invented a universe in which Superman makes sense, which is almost as important: the DC Universe is go.
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Corenswet is pretty much perfect in the role. After the stony severity of Henry Cavill labouring under his saviour complex in Zack Snyder's humourless Man of Steel — a film so embarrassed by the Superman mythos it couldn't even bring itself to say his name — Corenswet has the casual, locker-room vocab ('Hey, buddy') and underdog gallantry of a gentle-giant athlete. Dimpled and decent, he plays Superman with a slight bee in his bonnet about being thought too much of a Pollyanna and even has a dog named Krypto who tears up the Fortress of Solitude when Superman is not around, hurtling into action like a speeding bullet when needed. He's one of the best things in the film: Gunn knows how seriously to take his story and when to cut loose and have fun.
Yes, the plot is a little busy with portals and black holes and all the usual interdimensional malarkey, but there's none of the lumbering heaviness that usually accompanies such plot devices. At just over two hours Superman has all the zippy action you want — the flying sequences come with Top Gun-style G-force buffeting and sonic booms — as well as the humour and heart that will get people coming back for more. In some ways the stop-start development process that has plagued Superman has paid off: Gunn took his time, got it right and has been rewarded with a bullseye. ★★★★★12A, 129min
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