Here is a film occupying the heartsinking Venn diagram overlap between franchise exhaustion and AI soullessness: a film fatally unconvinced of the reason for its own existence. We’d all hoped that writer-director James Gunn, who was in charge of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie series, might put some wind back beneath Superman’s wings – or in his cape, or under his boots, or at any rate somewhere near his costumed person. The Man of Steel needed a fresh start after his self-cancelling contest in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, and getting muddled together with a lot of other utility superheroes in Justice League a year later – though I will admit to enjoying the pure hubristic craziness of the lengthy Zack Snyder cut of that movie when it saw the light of day.
But this? If it was to be a reboot then really we needed to get back to basics, and be reminded why we liked superheroes in the first place – and I do – and remember why they were exciting and escapist and fun. We needed the clarity and simplicity of something like the origin myth of the infant Superman arriving here from his doomed planet, like Moses, destined to put heart back into an America hit by the Great Depression, hokey though all that may be.
Yet from the very beginning, this new Superman is encumbered by a pointless and cluttered new backstory which has to be explained in many wearisome intertitles flashed up on screen before anything happens at all. Only the repeated and laborious quotation of the great John Williams theme from the 1978 original reminds you of happier times. Superman, played with square-faced vanilla dullness by David Corenswet, has recently taken it upon himself to intervene in a war between two fancifully named fictional nation states. Why this war in particular, and none of the many others happening all over the globe, you ask? Perhaps because these countries are so palpably made up and without inconvenient political associations and implications.
The evil aggressor Boravia (conceivably like Putin’s Russia but not really) has invaded the nice people of Jarhanpur (possibly resembling Zelenskyy’s Ukraine but not so as you’d notice). Superman had flown in to help the Jarhanpurians out, stalling the Boravian advance, but at personal cost to himself. He had his superhero ass mortifyingly kicked by some sort of “metahuman” being, occasioning another of his very uninteresting crises of confidence. His opponent was ostensibly from Boravia but possibly under the control of the wicked Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who insultingly affects not to know what planet Superman comes from, and has perhaps contrived the whole Boravia/Jarhanpur contest to undermine his arch-enemy.
Meanwhile, in his civilian persona of Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, Superman finds himself in serious relationship difficulties with fellow journalist Lois Lane, in which role Rachel Brosnahan channels Courteney Cox’s Monica Geller from TV’s Friends with such eerie precision it’s difficult to believe it’s not deliberate. Skyler Gisondo tries his best with the role of junior reporter Jimmy Olsen; that formidable actor Wendell Pierce is underused, or in fact simply not used, as Planet editor Perry White, and as Green Lantern, head of the subordinate semi-comic “Justice Gang”, Nathan Fillion raises some smiles.
Yet whatever machinations Lex Luthor gets up to, the ironic truth is that what undermines Superman in the eyes of the whole world is not anything he plans but a belated revelation about what his parents Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafyan) really intended for Superman on Earth – which leads to his facing a terrible crisis, exploited by the loathsome Luthor.
But what is the point of a film so stymied in its digitally encoded and generically prescribed world that it can’t even go through the motions, as that would imply some level of activity and signs of life? How many more superhero films in general, and Superman films in particular, do we need to see that all end with the same spectacular faux-apocalypse in the big city with CGI skyscrapers collapsing? They were fun at first … but the thrill is gone.