How can I take you seriously when you completely ignored my point about domestic audiences? You seem genuinely incapable of being honest when discussing this film. Either that, or you're horribly anti-American and are asserting that American audiences don't count and/or don't matter.
Yeah, and it's the same with Black Widow, essentially Steve Rogers, T'challa, etc. If the MCU is gonna try for a linear continuity through time then they should really avoid reincarnation, reanimation, time stone shenanigans (like with Loki), or multi-verse stuff. It's fine for fan service like what they are doing with Spiderman or Evans reprising Johnny Storm but it would be a DISASTER if Dr. Doom is "evil Tony Stark" and they start in with reversing death across the board.
I told you, that comment was about superhero movies in general, and domestic audiences are down too. It is not exclusively a loss of foreign audiences which is harming superhero movie box offices.
Speaking domestically, Superman isn't down. It's surpassed certified hits like Aquaman and Joker already, and it's still in theaters. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Superman is the 5th highest grossing DC film domestically, so the assertion that the "normal audiences aren't enjoying it" is just nonsense. Foreign audiences didn't show up, but that's a separate issue from the narrative you're pushing.
Remember to adjust MoS's production costs too. To me 605M seems pretty good after how DCEU has been after 2017. Few good movies but seemed very aimless most of the time. If Man of Steel started a cinematic universe with that then I'm sure this will do too.
It should have made back its production budget, and marketing budgets are often part financed by partners. We also have to consider PVOD, streaming and merchandise/toy sales.
And all of those partners want a cut. We're also far beyond the point where the home video market makes up for underperformance at the box office. You could have a movie not make much money at the box office in the 80s through the 00s, but become a hit on home video, so much so that they actually would make sequels. The most ideal situation when you're creating a cinematic universe is to have your movie make enough to at least finance the production of the next one.
Wishful thinking. Where's your source?
Almost assuredly yes. Gunn more or less implied that already, and given that they're fast-tracking a sequel, it would be silly to believe this film has lost money.
Perry White is barely even there, waste of a good actor.No one can actually count money on these things, the scope and scale is too massive. There are books making the expenses as high as possible for tax rebates and denial of profit based back-end payments and then there are books making the cost as LOW as possible to justify exec bonuses based on the revenue they brought in. But even on the film, no one can possibly track every penny as it all gets filtered through shell companies, paper production houses, and a series of kickbacks and upcharges.
Superman 2025 (so far) has sold millions fewer tickets domestically than MoS and generated far less at the domestic box office in real terms. How is this not 'down'? Oh right, by pretending there has been no inflation since 2013. Well done, Superman, you did it.
The 'it' in that sentence was not even Superman, as you probably well know. It was in response to the comment 'Welcome to comic books, enjoy your stay.'
Half of the worldwide box office minus the reported $225m production budget leaves ~$110m. If the reported $200m for marketing is true then we're at minus ~$90m. If the $160m in product placements is true then we're at ~$70m profit. This is all unadjusted. Whatever it makes after that is anyone's guess.
Cast Sydney Sweeney and it's doing $1bn.
She REALLY should get cast in an Empowered show, shredding that costume over and over
By virtually every conceivable and quantifiable metric you can think of, the movie's reception isn't extreme at all. Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Cinemascore, IMdB, user reviews on Letterboxd and digital stores like Amazon and others all skew positively.
Things are different in 2025 than they were in 2013, right? Like, you keep mentioning inflation (and presuming it only applies to box office, not the costs of making and marketing the film), but the overall landscape of theatrical releases is wildly different now, both because of COVID, and also because of the DCEU (and arguably MCU as well) flopping. There's no real apples-to-apples comparison here without a bunch of asterisks, which you seem keen to leave out.
Awesome well thought review. I think you put more thought into the movie than the actual writer/director didThis movie, uh, exists. Initially I left the theater rating this a 4/10. Just another mediocre comic book movie. However, the more I think about the movie the worse it gets.
SPOILERS:
Musical score was completely forgettable outside of the variation of the Donner theme.
Cinematography? Just look at stretch armstrong Superman posted above. That was this movie's gimmick, the thing that helped set it apart from other movies visually and it looks like shit. Simply spinning the camera with a wide angle lens does not make an action scene good. It was shot on digital instead of film as well, so that wonderful film grain texture is absent.
The humor was predictably juvenile and I only remember laughing once. Guy saying "justice gang!" wore out its welcome the second time he said it and yet they kept that gag going until the last scene he was in. I actually laughed more times watching 28 Years Later, a horror movie.
Costume design.
I am sure Corenswet got into good shape for this role but you will never see it with that baggy ass suit. He did not even have a shirtless scene. No Homo They did him worse than Brandon Routh in terms of hiding his physique with his suit. I did not like the New 52 influences or the trunks but I recognize that is personal taste. The only thing I like about Superman's suit is the Kingdom Come S shield (on the chest only, never liked it on the back of the cape) and the colors. CW Superman, with it's lower tv budget, has better suits (multiple) than this one.
Guy's outfit is not green enough and the justice gang standard style sucks.
Hawkgirl. Good Lord. Her mask looks like something I could get at a costume store in the mall. No idea if her wings are a part of her body or her suit either.
Ultraman gimp suit LMFAO!
The only people with good costumes were Mr. Terrific and Lex. Lex's suits were good and Terrific's costume was good by virtue of the justice gang styling actually being close to his comic counterpart.
The action was as ho hum as ho hum gets for a comic book movie in 2025. Man of Steel set the bar too high, I get that but this is not even on the level of 10 year old Avengers movies or even something like Black Adam. I have seen everything this movie did before, and it was done better. The most hyped action scene where Superman "pops off" is against a bunch nameless mook humans in power suits that Terrific can knock out with his punches, aka cannon fodder. Maybe if this came out in 1998 I would have been impressed, but I doubt it, and a big reason for that is:
There were virtually no stakes in this film. At no point do you feel anyone is in any actual danger, except for one scene when Superman is being depowered. If he is up and able to walk, Gunn will not put him in a position where he can fail. When Superman fought the Kaiju, the moment he stopped it from falling over and his back cracked that window any tension in that scene entirely evaporated. He also battles it in a part of the city where it has space to move around and not break anything. The only reason people are in pretend danger is that they are too stupid to leave, like those retarded crowds in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Oh no! A giant inter-universal rift is going to rip Metropolis in half? No biggie we'll just evacuate the entire city in <20 minutes. That was an insult to my intelligence. It takes me 20 minutes to move 3/4 of a mile on the interstate during rush hour. Gunn just seemed to write shit and not care about the details in this movie.
Characters. Hoooo-leeeeee shit. Where the fuck does one even start?
Straight up character assassination: Jor-El/Lara Lor-Van and the Kents. Superman's biological parents basically say "Fuck bitches, get money son. And kill anyone who not only opposes you but is unable to serve you (cripples)." Gunn shit on this character for a cheap plot device. People turning on Superman felt entirely unearned after he has been shown to be not only entirely selfless for the last 3 years but also completely beloved by the public. Enhancing the cheapness is the realization that they never resolve this at the end of the film so the people should all still hate Superman. Just because Lex is a piece of shit that should not completely invalidate their feelings on Jor-El's message. But everyone just forgot about it at the end, and this film spans less than a week. Lazy ass writing. Narratively, as the story goes, it would have actually made more sense for the message to be fake but Gunn goes out of his way to make sure you know it is real.
The Kents are a trust fund kid from the Upper West Side's idea of what people from the midwest are like. Do people from Kansas even talk like that? Ma Kent laid that accent on way too thick, to the point it took her like 5 seconds longer to say a sentence than a normal person. She seemed to barely know how to work a cell phone. Why is Pa Kent so fat? He is a small time farmer, they do physical labor for a living. He had one good moment where he give Superman a pep talk but even that feels hollow as it is not as though he is actually going to follow Jor-El's directive. Superman is just going to keep doing what he has been doing for the last 3 years regardless of whether or not he talks to Pa Kent.
Throwaway: All of Lex's henchmen, Metamorpho and Krypto. We never get a real backstory on Engineer/the raptors/the computer people and why they want to help Lex kill a guy who has been nothing but a community servant for 3 years. Ultraman is literally an unthinking automaton.
Metamorpho is a plot device, designed only to imprison and then save Superman. The movie could have at the very least show us Lex kidnapping his son or how he even knows Metamorpho exists.
Krypto is just a dumb dog whose only purpose is comic relief (it was not funny) and to save/annoy Superman.
Lame as fuck: Everybody at the daily planet, Guy and Hawkgirl, and Lex. Outside of getting the scoops from Eve these people are a waste of time, even Lois. That entire interview seemed like a good scene until you realize she is not even going to publish it. It was a boyfriend/girlfriend argument dressed up as something meaningful. BvS already did the intervention has consequences scene between Clark and Lois and it was far more concise without Superman whining like a kid. Lois also goes from saying she was thinking of breaking up with him to saying I love you in the span of about 3 days. Yeah, Lois, I am sure you can do better.
The daily planet includes Superman. This whole film is half baked and his characterization is no exception. He says he gets scared. We never see him get scared. He says he wakes up every day not knowing what to do. We never see that kind of day to day uncertainty in him. He virtually refused to even consider any alternate course of action in Boravia valid while arguing with Lois. The only time he seems to have doubts it is over a once in a lifetime event (Jor-El's message). Even losing his first fight, badly, does nothing to diminish his confidence or make him fearful. "Kindness is the new punk rock!" Literally tortures a politician and laughs at making him piss himself in fear. Whines about the justice gang not exhausting all options to subdue the kaiju. Kills Ultraman despite having the resources to depower Ultraman (Metamorpho) and contain him (pocket universe with no sun). Loving Lois and his parents are the only thing we actually see him do that he mentions in his "I'm human!" speech and Lois is the most uninteresting aspect of the Superman mythos imo and who the hell does not love their parents if they were raised well? He does genuinely try to do good but that is the bare minimum for a superhero.
Guy Gardner is James Gunn with a power ring: Annoying as hell. "Justice Gang!" Fuck off.
Hawkgirl. She would have been better off not even being in the movie, it is not like she did anything Terrific/Guy/Superman could not. Lame costume. Annoying ass screeching. 5' 1' little girl cosplaying as a warrior. Damage has been done to this character. This only a half-step up from what they did to Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey.
I was originally going to put Lex down as decent but then I started thinking about it again and realized how lame the character was, separate from Hoult's performance. Him being jealous of Supes and trying to kill him as a type of overcompensation for his own inadequacy is fine. That does not mean he has to be a completely over the top manbaby and moustache-twirlingly evil. His cartoonishness clashes with the scene where he is questioning Superman and says he would have killed him already but the government wants to ask him questions. I am supposed to believe that Lex is kidnapping people and imprisoning them in a pocket universe that the government does not even know exists and murdering them but he does not want to run afoul of the government? This is Joker doesn't want smoke with the IRS levels of silliness. He is planning to create his own country, likely complete with non-extradition, but he is afraid of what the government will say if he kills Superman during questioning? Needless to say that there are a million excuses he could come up with (Supes tried to escape and we used too much force and he fell in the black hole/we got the kryptonite dosage wrong and it killed him, etc.) to kill him right then and there. He even has a black hole to dispose of the body into. This was like a parody of the Bond villains that do not kill Bond when they have the chance. And the thing that completely undercuts this explanation: Later in the film, even though Superman has answered exactly 0 questions, he orders his henchmen to kill him. The government wants answers excuse is completely forgotten. Hell, the Raptors said to kill Superman before he even escaped the pocket universe. Gunn wrote himself into a corner and just forgot about the corner. All this does is make Lex look incompetent. He did not even post henchmen to watch over Superman's cell. The guy holding Metamorpho's kid hostage does not even do anything when Metamorpho stops complying.
They seemed like they were going to go into some more depth than Lex just being a hater with the line about Superman being bad for humanity. This is explored in other versions of Lex where he believes an alien coming from space and solving all of humanity's problems will retard our development. But they don't go any deeper than that and just have Lex go back to calling out commands for Ultraman.
Lex cries at the end of the movie lmao. What a bitch. Eisenberg Lex was a spaz and I did not like his mannerisms but the actual actions he took made him competent. He actually killed Kal-El through his machinations. He was not cartoonishly evil, he was sinister.
Rosenbaum's version remains the undisputed king of the live action Luthors.
Decent: Mr. Terrific, I guess. He was competent and did not do anything overtly annoying. I am not a fan of how they had him speaking in a borderline 70's jive accent but that is more down to what the director wanted. No idea how he came to be who he is or how he relates to other characters but that is universal throughout every aspect of this movie.
This movie's biggest sin: World building. Or, I should say, the almost complete lack thereof. Everything suffers as a result. A perfect example is the Engineer: We only get about 3 sentences explaining who she is. Lex tells the government he made her entire body out of nanites. Fine, that explains her abilities. After that she has two lines that essentially say "I agree with you that we have to take out Superman. That is why I gave up my humanity and let you modify my body." That is all you will ever know about her from this movie. Why does she agree with Lex on metahumans/Superman? Did she or someone she loves suffer trauma at the hands of a metahuman? Does she just hate aliens? What could make her go so far as to sacrifice her human body fort his mission? How did she and Lex meet? We have no idea.
Compare this to the villains in Fantastic Four: She-Surfer and Galactus have fleshed out motivations and even though She-Surfer's backstory is basically exposition dumped by Johnny the film gives us the bare bones of a visual accompaniment. Same for the FF's backstory at the beginning of the film.
Rinse and repeat for everything else in this movie. The Justice Gang is sponsored by Maxwell Lord. What does that even mean? Does he pay them? Just cover any damage they cause? What does he get out the deal? What the hell does a Green Lantern even need money for when they can create anything? Does anyone in the gang maintain a secret identity? How did any of them meet? The movie does not tell you. Do not tell me they are sponsored by Lord if you are not going to explain at all what that entails.
When did Superman tell Lois he is Clark Kent? Or did she figure it out? Seeing their starting point would have gone a long way to helping build their relationship in the mind of the audience and make the argument they have feel significant. Of course it never shows us this.
What makes Jimmy Olsen so irresistible to so many women? You'll have to read Silver Age comics to know.
Why does Lex use monkeys to slam Superman on social media instead of people? Why are they smart enough to type this stuff? Where did Lex even find them? Their inclusion just raises questions and of course none of them are answered.
People keep making excuses for this saying that this like picking up a random comic issue and reading it. Let me tell you something: That is a terrible way to tell a story. This is not issue #22, this is issue #1 and there will be no real prequel. Imagine if, when DC rebooted the New 52 this was the story they started Superman off with. It would be awful. I am not saying I need to see the full origin story again, but I need the background for the characters you are introducing in this story, even if it is just exposition. The Batman, for example, does not show Bruce's parents getting shot and him falling into a cave or anything, however it does set up all of the characters within it. The one exception being Gordon and Batman's trust and how that developed when none of the other cops trust him. It would have been nice to see that.
A lot of the best comic stories are relatively self-contained, even huge crossovers. I read and enjoyed Crisis on Infinite Earths/Flash Rebirth without feeling like I was missing out because I did not have the backstory. A common criticism is that this movie feels like a sequel to a movie that was never made and I agree with it. It felt like you walked into the theater 25-40 minutes after the movie started.
Another thing: A lot of comic book stories suck. They have to stretch characters out over decades. I have a few issues of pre-New 52 Supergirl where there was a story arc about some phantom zone origin plot and there were crystals coming out of her body. Very comic booky. Very not good.
I cannot believe how loose Gunn was when writing this. It is a shame because I really like GotG 1 & 2 (have not seen 3 yet), Dawn of the Dead and The Belko Experiment. It is just bad storytelling.
Acting. Solid across the board. Hoult turned in the best performance. Just like Routh, Corenswet is not the reason I do not care for this Superman. What a waste of Bradley Cooper. Throwaway role that could have been done by anyone.
Plot. Lex wants to kill Superman and goes through a bunch of schemes to facilitate that. Fails at the end (of course he does). This was like the plot of a 30-minute Saturday morning cartoon stretched out over 2 hours.
Special effects. The CGI was solid but unimpressive. I have no complaints. Krypto was very obviously full cgi but it was done well.
2/10. I honestly cannot think of anything I liked about this movie outside of the remixed John Williams theme.
By virtually every conceivable and quantifiable metric you can think of, the movie's reception isn't extreme at all. Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Cinemascore, IMdB, user reviews on Letterboxd and digital stores like Amazon and others all skew positively.
GAF as a whole is just very negative these days, but I'm not going to act like I don't contribute to that negativity sometimes, as my recent posts in the Alien Earth threads can attest
By virtually every conceivable and quantifiable metric you can think of, the movie's reception isn't extreme at all. Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Cinemascore, IMdB, user reviews on Letterboxd and digital stores like Amazon and others all skew positively.
GAF as a whole is just very negative these days, but I'm not going to act like I don't contribute to that negativity sometimes, as my recent posts in the Alien Earth threads can attest
There's some of what you're saying, but also a lot of less reasonable critiques, like "look at how he puts his arms out when he flies!". I think there's room for valid criticism while also disregarding what can only be described as hate mongering a film (probably a lot of which is driven by affection for Snyder's version).
He yelled too much but I mostly liked his performance. Great Luthor. I would have cast Billy Zane though.
Bro I started reading your post. Then after 10 minutes I realised it didn't end. I agree with most things you were saying, but a forum post shouldn't take this long to read.This movie, uh, exists. Initially I left the theater rating this a 4/10. Just another mediocre comic book movie. However, the more I think about the movie the worse it gets.
SPOILERS:
Musical score was completely forgettable outside of the variation of the Donner theme.
Cinematography? Just look at stretch armstrong Superman posted above. That was this movie's gimmick, the thing that helped set it apart from other movies visually and it looks like shit. Simply spinning the camera with a wide angle lens does not make an action scene good. It was shot on digital instead of film as well, so that wonderful film grain texture is absent.
The humor was predictably juvenile and I only remember laughing once. Guy saying "justice gang!" wore out its welcome the second time he said it and yet they kept that gag going until the last scene he was in. I actually laughed more times watching 28 Years Later, a horror movie.
Costume design.
I am sure Corenswet got into good shape for this role but you will never see it with that baggy ass suit. He did not even have a shirtless scene. No Homo They did him worse than Brandon Routh in terms of hiding his physique with his suit. I did not like the New 52 influences or the trunks but I recognize that is personal taste. The only thing I like about Superman's suit is the Kingdom Come S shield (on the chest only, never liked it on the back of the cape) and the colors. CW Superman, with it's lower tv budget, has better suits (multiple) than this one.
Guy's outfit is not green enough and the justice gang standard style sucks.
Hawkgirl. Good Lord. Her mask looks like something I could get at a costume store in the mall. No idea if her wings are a part of her body or her suit either.
Ultraman gimp suit LMFAO!
The only people with good costumes were Mr. Terrific and Lex. Lex's suits were good and Terrific's costume was good by virtue of the justice gang styling actually being close to his comic counterpart.
The action was as ho hum as ho hum gets for a comic book movie in 2025. Man of Steel set the bar too high, I get that but this is not even on the level of 10 year old Avengers movies or even something like Black Adam. I have seen everything this movie did before, and it was done better. The most hyped action scene where Superman "pops off" is against a bunch nameless mook humans in power suits that Terrific can knock out with his punches, aka cannon fodder. Maybe if this came out in 1998 I would have been impressed, but I doubt it, and a big reason for that is:
There were virtually no stakes in this film. At no point do you feel anyone is in any actual danger, except for one scene when Superman is being depowered. If he is up and able to walk, Gunn will not put him in a position where he can fail. When Superman fought the Kaiju, the moment he stopped it from falling over and his back cracked that window any tension in that scene entirely evaporated. He also battles it in a part of the city where it has space to move around and not break anything. The only reason people are in pretend danger is that they are too stupid to leave, like those retarded crowds in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Oh no! A giant inter-universal rift is going to rip Metropolis in half? No biggie we'll just evacuate the entire city in <20 minutes. That was an insult to my intelligence. It takes me 20 minutes to move 3/4 of a mile on the interstate during rush hour. Gunn just seemed to write shit and not care about the details in this movie.
Characters. Hoooo-leeeeee shit. Where the fuck does one even start?
Straight up character assassination: Jor-El/Lara Lor-Van and the Kents. Superman's biological parents basically say "Fuck bitches, get money son. And kill anyone who not only opposes you but is unable to serve you (cripples)." Gunn shit on this character for a cheap plot device. People turning on Superman felt entirely unearned after he has been shown to be not only entirely selfless for the last 3 years but also completely beloved by the public. Enhancing the cheapness is the realization that they never resolve this at the end of the film so the people should all still hate Superman. Just because Lex is a piece of shit that should not completely invalidate their feelings on Jor-El's message. But everyone just forgot about it at the end, and this film spans less than a week. Lazy ass writing. Narratively, as the story goes, it would have actually made more sense for the message to be fake but Gunn goes out of his way to make sure you know it is real.
The Kents are a trust fund kid from the Upper West Side's idea of what people from the midwest are like. Do people from Kansas even talk like that? Ma Kent laid that accent on way too thick, to the point it took her like 5 seconds longer to say a sentence than a normal person. She seemed to barely know how to work a cell phone. Why is Pa Kent so fat? He is a small time farmer, they do physical labor for a living. He had one good moment where he give Superman a pep talk but even that feels hollow as it is not as though he is actually going to follow Jor-El's directive. Superman is just going to keep doing what he has been doing for the last 3 years regardless of whether or not he talks to Pa Kent.
Throwaway: All of Lex's henchmen, Metamorpho and Krypto. We never get a real backstory on Engineer/the raptors/the computer people and why they want to help Lex kill a guy who has been nothing but a community servant for 3 years. Ultraman is literally an unthinking automaton.
Metamorpho is a plot device, designed only to imprison and then save Superman. The movie could have at the very least show us Lex kidnapping his son or how he even knows Metamorpho exists.
Krypto is just a dumb dog whose only purpose is comic relief (it was not funny) and to save/annoy Superman.
Lame as fuck: Everybody at the daily planet, Guy and Hawkgirl, and Lex. Outside of getting the scoops from Eve these people are a waste of time, even Lois. That entire interview seemed like a good scene until you realize she is not even going to publish it. It was a boyfriend/girlfriend argument dressed up as something meaningful. BvS already did the intervention has consequences scene between Clark and Lois and it was far more concise without Superman whining like a kid. Lois also goes from saying she was thinking of breaking up with him to saying I love you in the span of about 3 days. Yeah, Lois, I am sure you can do better.
The daily planet includes Superman. This whole film is half baked and his characterization is no exception. He says he gets scared. We never see him get scared. He says he wakes up every day not knowing what to do. We never see that kind of day to day uncertainty in him. He virtually refused to even consider any alternate course of action in Boravia valid while arguing with Lois. The only time he seems to have doubts it is over a once in a lifetime event (Jor-El's message). Even losing his first fight, badly, does nothing to diminish his confidence or make him fearful. "Kindness is the new punk rock!" Literally tortures a politician and laughs at making him piss himself in fear. Whines about the justice gang not exhausting all options to subdue the kaiju. Kills Ultraman despite having the resources to depower Ultraman (Metamorpho) and contain him (pocket universe with no sun). Loving Lois and his parents are the only thing we actually see him do that he mentions in his "I'm human!" speech and Lois is the most uninteresting aspect of the Superman mythos imo and who the hell does not love their parents if they were raised well? He does genuinely try to do good but that is the bare minimum for a superhero.
Guy Gardner is James Gunn with a power ring: Annoying as hell. "Justice Gang!" Fuck off.
Hawkgirl. She would have been better off not even being in the movie, it is not like she did anything Terrific/Guy/Superman could not. Lame costume. Annoying ass screeching. 5' 1' little girl cosplaying as a warrior. Damage has been done to this character. This only a half-step up from what they did to Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey.
I was originally going to put Lex down as decent but then I started thinking about it again and realized how lame the character was, separate from Hoult's performance. Him being jealous of Supes and trying to kill him as a type of overcompensation for his own inadequacy is fine. That does not mean he has to be a completely over the top manbaby and moustache-twirlingly evil. His cartoonishness clashes with the scene where he is questioning Superman and says he would have killed him already but the government wants to ask him questions. I am supposed to believe that Lex is kidnapping people and imprisoning them in a pocket universe that the government does not even know exists and murdering them but he does not want to run afoul of the government? This is Joker doesn't want smoke with the IRS levels of silliness. He is planning to create his own country, likely complete with non-extradition, but he is afraid of what the government will say if he kills Superman during questioning? Needless to say that there are a million excuses he could come up with (Supes tried to escape and we used too much force and he fell in the black hole/we got the kryptonite dosage wrong and it killed him, etc.) to kill him right then and there. He even has a black hole to dispose of the body into. This was like a parody of the Bond villains that do not kill Bond when they have the chance. And the thing that completely undercuts this explanation: Later in the film, even though Superman has answered exactly 0 questions, he orders his henchmen to kill him. The government wants answers excuse is completely forgotten. Hell, the Raptors said to kill Superman before he even escaped the pocket universe. Gunn wrote himself into a corner and just forgot about the corner. All this does is make Lex look incompetent. He did not even post henchmen to watch over Superman's cell. The guy holding Metamorpho's kid hostage does not even do anything when Metamorpho stops complying.
They seemed like they were going to go into some more depth than Lex just being a hater with the line about Superman being bad for humanity. This is explored in other versions of Lex where he believes an alien coming from space and solving all of humanity's problems will retard our development. But they don't go any deeper than that and just have Lex go back to calling out commands for Ultraman.
Lex cries at the end of the movie lmao. What a bitch. Eisenberg Lex was a spaz and I did not like his mannerisms but the actual actions he took made him competent. He actually killed Kal-El through his machinations. He was not cartoonishly evil, he was sinister.
Rosenbaum's version remains the undisputed king of the live action Luthors.
Decent: Mr. Terrific, I guess. He was competent and did not do anything overtly annoying. I am not a fan of how they had him speaking in a borderline 70's jive accent but that is more down to what the director wanted. No idea how he came to be who he is or how he relates to other characters but that is universal throughout every aspect of this movie.
This movie's biggest sin: World building. Or, I should say, the almost complete lack thereof. Everything suffers as a result. A perfect example is the Engineer: We only get about 3 sentences explaining who she is. Lex tells the government he made her entire body out of nanites. Fine, that explains her abilities. After that she has two lines that essentially say "I agree with you that we have to take out Superman. That is why I gave up my humanity and let you modify my body." That is all you will ever know about her from this movie. Why does she agree with Lex on metahumans/Superman? Did she or someone she loves suffer trauma at the hands of a metahuman? Does she just hate aliens? What could make her go so far as to sacrifice her human body fort his mission? How did she and Lex meet? We have no idea.
Compare this to the villains in Fantastic Four: She-Surfer and Galactus have fleshed out motivations and even though She-Surfer's backstory is basically exposition dumped by Johnny the film gives us the bare bones of a visual accompaniment. Same for the FF's backstory at the beginning of the film.
Rinse and repeat for everything else in this movie. The Justice Gang is sponsored by Maxwell Lord. What does that even mean? Does he pay them? Just cover any damage they cause? What does he get out the deal? What the hell does a Green Lantern even need money for when they can create anything? Does anyone in the gang maintain a secret identity? How did any of them meet? The movie does not tell you. Do not tell me they are sponsored by Lord if you are not going to explain at all what that entails.
When did Superman tell Lois he is Clark Kent? Or did she figure it out? Seeing their starting point would have gone a long way to helping build their relationship in the mind of the audience and make the argument they have feel significant. Of course it never shows us this.
What makes Jimmy Olsen so irresistible to so many women? You'll have to read Silver Age comics to know.
Why does Lex use monkeys to slam Superman on social media instead of people? Why are they smart enough to type this stuff? Where did Lex even find them? Their inclusion just raises questions and of course none of them are answered.
People keep making excuses for this saying that this like picking up a random comic issue and reading it. Let me tell you something: That is a terrible way to tell a story. This is not issue #22, this is issue #1 and there will be no real prequel. Imagine if, when DC rebooted the New 52 this was the story they started Superman off with. It would be awful. I am not saying I need to see the full origin story again, but I need the background for the characters you are introducing in this story, even if it is just exposition. The Batman, for example, does not show Bruce's parents getting shot and him falling into a cave or anything, however it does set up all of the characters within it. The one exception being Gordon and Batman's trust and how that developed when none of the other cops trust him. It would have been nice to see that.
A lot of the best comic stories are relatively self-contained, even huge crossovers. I read and enjoyed Crisis on Infinite Earths/Flash Rebirth without feeling like I was missing out because I did not have the backstory. A common criticism is that this movie feels like a sequel to a movie that was never made and I agree with it. It felt like you walked into the theater 25-40 minutes after the movie started.
Another thing: A lot of comic book stories suck. They have to stretch characters out over decades. I have a few issues of pre-New 52 Supergirl where there was a story arc about some phantom zone origin plot and there were crystals coming out of her body. Very comic booky. Very not good.
I cannot believe how loose Gunn was when writing this. It is a shame because I really like GotG 1 & 2 (have not seen 3 yet), Dawn of the Dead and The Belko Experiment. It is just bad storytelling.
Acting. Solid across the board. Hoult turned in the best performance. Just like Routh, Corenswet is not the reason I do not care for this Superman. What a waste of Bradley Cooper. Throwaway role that could have been done by anyone.
Plot. Lex wants to kill Superman and goes through a bunch of schemes to facilitate that. Fails at the end (of course he does). This was like the plot of a 30-minute Saturday morning cartoon stretched out over 2 hours.
Special effects. The CGI was solid but unimpressive. I have no complaints. Krypto was very obviously full cgi but it was done well.
2/10. I honestly cannot think of anything I liked about this movie outside of the remixed John Williams theme.
