Superman (2025) | Review Thread

No. The job of a critic is to offer their judgements ... Not decide for you.
But you utilize that judgment to make a decision to see the film or not.

For example, I am HIGHLY unlikely to see some romcom about a country western star who falls in love with a rap star. Almost nothing about that pitch interests me.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut if a buncha folks whose judgment I TRUST say its awesome and worth watching, well then maybe I'll fire it up. If the reviews are absolutely mindblowing, then I'll elevate it to a theater watch. So they affect my decision. A flick like "The Substance" was like this, the stellar reviews made me see it in theater (to my delight).

Conversely if there is a flick with, say, Ana De Armas and Syndey Sweeney in it and there is supposed to be a hot sex scene in it, then a herd of clydesdales wouldn't stop me from seeing it. UNLESS the reviews are so astronomically dire that its not even worth watching the good bits off the internet.
 
So you're letting someone else decide for you?
Not to decide for me, but to help gauge whether it's worth the hassle. I value my time and money.

If he had absolutely trashed the movie, there's no way I was going to pay for two tickets (me and the missus), popcorn, soda, and waste over two hours of my life.
 
Not to decide for me, but to help gauge whether it's worth the hassle. I value my time and money.

If he had absolutely trashed the movie, there's no way I was going to pay for two tickets (me and the missus), popcorn, soda, and waste over two hours of my life.

He's not the only critic... So using just his singular take shouldn't hold more weight than multiple viewpoints.

But you utilize that judgment to make a decision to see the film or not.

For example, I am HIGHLY unlikely to see some romcom about a country western star who falls in love with a rap star. Almost nothing about that pitch interests me.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut if a buncha folks whose judgment I TRUST say its awesome and worth watching, well then maybe I'll fire it up. If the reviews are absolutely mindblowing, then I'll elevate it to a theater watch. So they affect my decision. A flick like "The Substance" was like this, the stellar reviews made me see it in theater (to my delight).

Conversely if there is a flick with, say, Ana De Armas and Syndey Sweeney in it and there is supposed to be a hot sex scene in it, then a herd of clydesdales wouldn't stop me from seeing it. UNLESS the reviews are so astronomically dire that its not even worth watching the good bits off the internet.

i utilize multiple viewpoints to make my decision to see it or not OR I make my decision based on the trailers. NEITHER critics or audience decides for me but I take their views under consideration.

"I take everyone's opinions but the decision is mine alone."
 
He's not the only critic... So using just his singular take shouldn't hold more weight than multiple viewpoints.



i utilize multiple viewpoints to make my decision to see it or not OR I make my decision based on the trailers. NEITHER critics or audience decides for me but I take their views under consideration.

"I take everyone's opinions but the decision is mine alone."
Season 3 Wow GIF by Outlander


How about we let people do whatever the fuck they want?
 


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So Gunn really turned DC into this... thing.

Ummm... Ok? Never said they couldn't. It's all good tho.
I'm talking about this:

So you're letting someone else decide for you?
It was really surprising to see you write that. You're usually very moderate in your discussions and don't jump into conclusion, even if your opinions differ from those of your interlocutor and that seemed like a low bow.

But you are one of the few genuine member in there so yeah maybe i overthought this <3
 
I'd probably give it a 6 as well. I just got out of the theater, and I can't help but feel a bit disappointed.

It's not bad, but man this movie is way overstuffed. There's like 4 hours worth of movie here, cut down to a little over two hours.

The fundamental issue for me is that there's not a single, meaningful throughline in the film that gives it the feeling that things matter. There's no weight, no stakes, no meat on the bone. It tries to be serious like, two or three times, but it never follows through and usually goes for a joke instead.

Despite a lot of creative character designs, cool tech, bright and colorful visuals, and plenty of nods and deep cuts from comic books, I just didn't care that much.

No single character is on screen long enough for me to feel like I know or care about them, including Superman. It's as if we skipped an entire trilogy of movies and started with Justice League Part 1.

There's just so much going on and so little time. You've got Lois and Clark's relationship, Krypto, his parents, the Justice Gang and it's three members, Lex Luthor and his group, Ultraman and The Engineer, The Daily Planet and all it's members, a Kaiju, black holes, anti-proton rivers, mutated monkeys, a war between Israe... two fictional countries and a crazy dictator, interdimensional floating eyeballs...It's all just too much. The tone is all over the place and the writing isn't strong enough to overcome that.

The jokes were sadly very hit or miss in my theater, only about three or four got some laughs. And you can tell that the film really wanted to be funny.

The soundtrack was also very mixed. The classic theme is great, but there's a lot of punk rock here that clashes with the tone of the film. Not bad, but more suiteable for Guardians.

That's not to say it was all bad. The visuals are nice and bright, which definitely invokes classic comic book superman vibes. The film is overall well casted and there are a few touching moments here and there, along with plenty of action. It's not boring or bland, it keeps things moving, and Superman does feel human and somewhat relatable.

It's big and bold, a swing in a totally different direction, and I do commend that, but man it just did not come together for me. It does lots of weird shit, but I felt nothing.

If you really want to see a 200 million dollar saturday morning cartoon on the big screen, you're going to love it. Especially on a big IMAX screen. But if you want an actual movie, with actual characters and arcs, you might be disappointed.
 
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Stand Up What GIF by 800 Pound Gorilla Media


So Gunn really turned DC into this... thing.


I'm talking about this:


It was really surprising to see you write that. You're usually very moderate in your discussions and don't jump into conclusion, even if your opinions differ from those of your interlocutor and that seemed like a low bow.

But you are one of the few genuine member in there so yeah maybe i overthought this <3


It's ok. I don't come across the way I intend sometimes. I meant nothing bad.

And I'm not reading any reviews since yesterday... Too easy to be spoiled. I'm trying really hard not to click play on that video.
 
It's ok. I don't come across the way I intend sometimes. I meant nothing bad.

And I'm not reading any reviews since yesterday... Too easy to be spoiled. I'm trying really hard not to click play on that video.
It's clearly not for me, but I hope you love it. Don't look, stay strong you are close now!
 
Just came back from the cinema, very messy and frustrating in some parts but damn if this isn't the most Superman has ever Supermanned.
 
I remember old rumours the movie was supposed to be kinda stupid where some of the plot had to do with Superman getting ragged on by people on social media.

Is this true?
 
Just got home from it, went in completely blind, great movie, really enjoyed it.

Love that they dont waste any time and that its not yet another origin stories for a character everyone knows already. Theyve nailed it creatively, but most of the action really didnt do it for me, felt lower budget relative to previous James Gunn superhero movies, it was pleasant to look at tho.

The villain is hyper competent in a way he completely steals the show for me. For a movie called Superman, that happened a lot and he didnt really feel all that super, which id like to a degree, but they way overdid it on that front.
 
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A 6/10 is a real score for this one. Not good, but not bad. People just need to accept there will be no Batman: Dark Knight level movie from DC anymore.
 
Saw it in IMAX

It wasn't exciting at all, heck I don't even know why it's called superman, he just gets his ass beat each time while the justice gang gets to do cool shit.
There's only about one scene that involved supes where I thought alright that was pretty dope, and it's all the way at the at with "the raptors" ..
Visuals where alright as well, same here with only one stand out scene, but it's kinda ruined by the dumb way he resolves the situation there.
Actually there's one more scene with supes rising from some smoke that looked cool as well.

They also changed his origin to basically be brightburn for some reason and it's lame.

Mr terrific and lex are the highlights, had no idea isabela moner was in this so that was a little joy as well.

Honestly think I enjoyed the suicide squad better than this.
 
He's not the only critic... So using just his singular take shouldn't hold more weight than multiple viewpoints.

i utilize multiple viewpoints to make my decision to see it or not OR I make my decision based on the trailers. NEITHER critics or audience decides for me but I take their views under consideration.

"I take everyone's opinions but the decision is mine alone."

I had already watched Jeremy Jahn's review and some others, but still felt like I wanted to see Joe's take as a mega fan of the original material.

Like I said earlier, this movie was giving me very mixed vibes, and the people whose opinions usually match up with mine are overall saying the movie is not bad, but not great either and that some things in it are big misses. I'll still probably end up giving it a try because it is after all the start of the new DC Universe.
 

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I will watch it

But man, every single scene that they've released so far have been ... something

It's probably the sum of its parts, but wow

Lex massaging the henchman's shoulders, and him feeling it was unexpected, to say the least
 
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Has anyone seen it? Is it overtly woke?

Not at all honestly.

Though the international background going-ons are certainly reminiscent of current matters 🤔

I loved this flick. Loved how bright it was. Loved Krypto. Appreciated the humor. And Corenswet is just great at making Supes relatable. Very earnest performance.
 
Super woke. "Superman is is an immigrant that came from another places..." James Gunn

What a joke

Yeah, can't believe they would connect Superman to anything remotely political, take me back to the good old days, like 1949, where:


this-poster-from-1949-v0-brne978o1f6b1.jpg




Oh, uh, well, how about a Superman radio show, that knew to not get remotely political, and certainly didn't air episodes from a writer who infiltrated an infamous hate group and used the Superman radio show to expose their secrets-




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What's funny is anyone can tell this new film won't be anywhere near as overtly political (if at all) as either of those two things, yet certain people are going to get triggered anyway.
 
Has anyone seen it? Is it overtly woke?

No. People are just far more sensitive these days to anything political. The past decade has absoulely cooked people's brains to the point where they now see red everywhere. This ain't exclusive to one side btw. The internet has turned so many people into fucking pyschos who can't relax and enjoy something anymore.
 
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Although I am not a big fan of Superman in general, I like superhero movies and would be willing to go watch it if the trailers didn't look stupid….i was already being a pathetic loser salty that it isn't Henry GetInMyTrousers Cavill but the trailers have really done me in, it doesn't look interesting at all. I will probably watch it when it's on tv but I'm certainly not paying to see this in a theatre.
 
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Brandon is 6 4.

Okay nvm he is 1.89m as per Google which is 6 2. I thought he was 6 4.
 
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Every time some one says "its a bird, a plane, Its superman" someone in the back says "Don't misgender, did you ask for pronouns"?
 

David Corensweet is so tall he was having issues sitting on the Daily Planet desk

No. People are just far more sensitive these days to anything political. The past decade has absoulely cooked people's brains to the point where they now see red everywhere. This ain't exclusive to one side btw. The internet has turned so many people into fucking pyschos who can't relax and enjoy something anymore.

Agree, there's nothing political in the movie, people complaining have clearly never played a true woke game like Dragon Age: Shitguard

Heck, have peolle seen Cat Grant?

HSMkLTI.jpeg
 
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Obviously if something were to happen here, it's not like he has to direct something specifically involving a kaiju or a massively towering character, but if he were, of the announced projects so far, the first Teen Titans movie using Trigon seems like a possibility (though I feel they should save him for a second if not third movie given the scale of his threat plus that story hits harder if Raven has had more time to develop).


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Hmm, very different than what I expected. I didn't hate it but I didn't like it either. It's worse than Man of Steel. My thoughts:

- The plot ain't engaging or interesting.
- Great casting, Superman, Lois and the Justice Gang are great.
- I like Krypto.
- Superman gets beaten up all the time.
- Too many characters fighting for screen time.
- I like the wacky comic book feel to it, but wonder how that will translate into the other DCU films.
- Wanted better Superman action scenes.
-- The entire pocket universe thing felt dumb.
- Lex Luther is way overpowered and got too much shit going on.
- I didn't like the clone story.
- It lacks a proper throughline, I feel like in one week, I will forget the plot.
- The ending where they introduced his cousin didn't fit at the end and made the end feel incomplete and washed out.
 
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Hmm, very different than what I expected. I didn't hate it but I didn't like it either. It's worse than Man of Steel. My thoughts:

- The plot ain't engaging or interesting.
- Great casting, Superman, Lois and the Justice Gang are great.
- I like Krypto.
- Superman gets beaten up all the time.
- Too many characters fighting for screen time.
- I like the wacky comic book feel to it, but wonder how that will translate into the other DCU films.
- Wanted better Superman action scenes.
-- The entire pocket universe thing felt dumb.
- Lex Luther is way overpowered and got too much shit going on.
- I didn't like the clone story.
- It lacks a proper throughline, I feel like in one week, I will forget the plot.
- The ending where they introduced his cousin didn't fit at the end and made the end feel incomplete and washed out.

Ok but from what I hear:

Superman does get beaten up a lot, but towards the end he's able to pop off and wrecks everyone's shit. Is that how it goes?
 
Ok but from what I hear:

Superman does get beaten up a lot, but towards the end he's able to pop off and wrecks everyone's shit. Is that how it goes?
He does spend most of the movie getting beaten up. He wins the final battle but "wrecking everybody's shit" might be too grandiose a way of saying it. He gets pretty roughed up in the battle as well and does get help in order to win the fight.
 
He does spend most of the movie getting beaten up. He wins the final battle but "wrecking everybody's shit" might be too grandiose a way of saying it. He gets pretty roughed up in the battle as well and does get help in order to win the fight.

Well just seeing the moments in the trailers where he punches a dude's teeth out, and heat visions the shit out of multiple enemies, I figured he does pop off in this film.
 
This is why mining 80 years of comics to find an example of something as a defense for doing it in a current film isn't always a great idea :P

Not really, the flimsy defense most people try to use when they whine about any sort of political element is that it's only modern writers doing it and wasn't present throughout any of the rest of a character in question's history.

No one's saying a few actual jackasses, or even just people who simply fail to get even the remotest level of accuracy of a character, don't stick their hand in the pot every now and then. Frank Miller in his worst works wrote Superman as an arrogant psycho who considered almost all of humanity beneath him. As for the other poster who posted that panel in post # 138, the term used in the panel is an actual racist slur used by racist people in the 40's.

I would hope no one here is so far gone that they think James Gunn saying, "Superman is an immigrant" or anything like that (and possibly not even saying it in the film itself, but I feel some of the people who used to constantly cry, "separate the art from the artist" have ironically gone as hard a 180 on that stance as they possibly could) is on any sort of similarity with another person just flat out writing a racist slur.

Like, come on, people.

Make It Stop The Office GIF
 
Well just seeing the moments in the trailers where he punches a dude's teeth out, and heat visions the shit out of multiple enemies, I figured he does pop off in this film.
This is the moment I mentioned vs "the raptors", but it's very short; also lol at them putting that in the trailer, nice spoilers.
 
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Not really, the flimsy defense most people try to use when they whine about any sort of political element is that it's only modern writers doing it and wasn't present throughout any of the rest of a character in question's history.

No one's saying a few actual jackasses, or even just people who simply fail to get even the remotest level of accuracy of a character, don't stick their hand in the pot every now and then. Frank Miller in his worst works wrote Superman as an arrogant psycho who considered almost all of humanity beneath him. As for the other poster who posted that panel in post # 138, the term used in the panel is an actual racist slur used by racist people in the 40's.

I would hope no one here is so far gone that they think James Gunn saying, "Superman is an immigrant" or anything like that (and possibly not even saying it in the film itself, but I feel some of the people who used to constantly cry, "separate the art from the artist" have ironically gone as hard a 180 on that stance as they possibly could) is on any sort of similarity with another person just flat out writing a racist slur.

Like, come on, people.

Make It Stop The Office GIF
I'm saying you could pull a panel to say "WOW, superman is suuuuper racist to japanese people" just like you can pull a panel to say "WOW, superman is suuuuuper in favor of immigration". Over the near century of iterations on a character as massively popular and prolific as superman you can probably find panels to support damn near anything. But what SHOULD be important is the stuff that gains traction and then persists to then define the character for long periods. Superman isn't a real person, he is just the mouth piece for the writers, of which there have been many. So I think you can judge what the audience finds "appropriate" by what resonates and then gets incorporated into the core character.
 
No. People are just far more sensitive these days to anything political. The past decade has absoulely cooked people's brains to the point where they now see red everywhere. This ain't exclusive to one side btw. The internet has turned so many people into fucking pyschos who can't relax and enjoy something anymore.
It's a cause/effect thing.

Movie writing (and this applies to game and even journalist writing now) has largely eschewed nuance and subtlety in their viewpoints to instead bash viewers over the head with their intended point.

Yes, 20 years ago you had movies, games, and shows with political messages and themes all over the place, but they largely focused on writing a good story with the message to compliment the story.

The Sopranos is an excellent example, Tony is a character with a lot of charismatic attributes but is ultimately a murderous criminal, but he's so subtlety written that you can't help but want to like him sometimes. He's sort of racist, sort of homophobic, but he's actually significantly more accepting than most of his crime family. Plus with his real family, he genuinely tries to be good to his kids. He's a bad person, but he's written in a way where he's likable.

Nowadays, though, you'd never have a character written like that, because writers seem to think that likeable characters need to be morally upstanding and preachy (and also snarky which is fucking annoying) and any socially negative attribute immediately means they need to be a complete unlikable jerk. It's basically like every "good" character has a Lisa Simpson complex without having any genuine character flaws of their own. There's just no depth and it's usually an obvious mouthpiece for whatever the writers were intending. So the preaching and shallowness of said preaching has gotten so annoying that it has birthed the "woke" response.

I hate the term woke but it's ultimately what shit-tier writing deserves.

On topic with Superman: I really was not sold on the whiney interpretation I saw in the trailers (that interview with Lois Lane is honestly cringe), I really liked the idea of a more humble and lighthearted Superman but it seems like the film kinda takes the piss out of the character a bit which is disappointing. I might go see it, but I'm let down.

Richard Donner's Superman and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man still seem to be unbeatable in properly characterizing comic book symbols of hope. Please, enough of this tired insincere jokey shit.
 
He does spend most of the movie getting beaten up. He wins the final battle but "wrecking everybody's shit" might be too grandiose a way of saying it. He gets pretty roughed up in the battle as well and does get help in order to win the fight.

Yea should have gone a bit more
like he gets a beat up a lot. I don't like the clone bit. So unearned, was hoping at the end he just overpowers the 2500 moves and combination shit. Like before he was pulling his punches, but once he got pissed and saw it was a fake, he just one taps it faster than any kind of remote control can deal with
 
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