Superman

I might get flak for this but here I go What an intellectually lazy screenplay—genuinely astonishingly so. A stellar casting for Superman and Lois Lane is overshadowed by such a convoluted, tedious, messy story that I don't know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that there are parallels to Israel and Palestine, sure, but neither of the fictional nations nor Boravia's fictional, Serbo-Croatian(??) leader have any relevance to the story besides background conflicts to pretend like this film is about something. Characters like Lois Lane and especially Krypto are relegated to being "get-out-of-jail-free" cards for Superman that as the strongest being in the world, is consistently overpowered by almost every secondary character, device, location that is introduced. He is weakened for most of the movie, naïvely stumbles from one random, spontaneous enemy to the next, and kisses the girl with the forced will-they-won't-they that nobody could possibly take with any degree of seriousness. Continuing with the expositionary dialogue and actions, a pet-peeve of mine, which is relentless in this movie and aims to explain every little thing no matter how irrelevant it is, and believe me, 99% of this film is irrelevant. From the "I gave up my humanity to fight it" to "I need to stay here and make sure the portal is secure"—the screenplay is forced upon the audience in such hopelessly philistine manners that it genuinely is to throw your hands in the air in despair. Which brings me to the antagonist, proudly renditioning perhaps the worst Lex Luthor across all mediums in the Supes universe, which is a flat, pointless character that doesn't leave his office that somehow has one magical device after another, from pocket universes to clones to nanites; to hordes of faceless warriors (most of which somehow match or exceed Superman's power). His entire gang of goons are comedy relief characters that are playing a video game of "we've mapped our clones' powers to attack moves" which effortlessly and nonsensically counter anything Superman can do, until it doesn't, such as the pre-empted "Raptor Squad", with Luthor's reliefed grin falsely implying upcoming relevance, before being wiped out entirely in 8 seconds of screentime. Obviously Nathan Fillion is a gem and stands out as a green lantern, but is also relegated to a rather pointless side-quest secondary character, like absolutely everyone, including Superman himself. Superman's father, with his 25 seconds screentime, was maybe my highlight, somehow excreting a sincere performance in this incompetence-oozing theatrical release. The movie began with some inkling of character and potential, I loved the vibe of David Corenswet, but it rather quickly devolved into the most self-gratifying Gunn extragavanza so far. Random antimatter rivers and black-hole rifts that tears apart a part of the world, but then is somehow fixed with the press of a button; who thought "yeah, this is what Superman needs—just sprinkle in some saving of a squirrel from Temu Godzilla and the audience will root for our protagonist." An insincere and blurry CGI-a-thon wrapped in a screenplay cosplaying as a movie. An absolute charade. Someone take away Gunn's license to carry.

Lex Luthor unprovoked reaches new horizons of being a hater What the fuck leave him alone???

What a surprise! The way it goes about serious matters like immigration, war, boundaries and limits, namely power limits, control and responsibility, all in a fun, light way! Maybe not one of Gunn's best movies, but a great entertainment and making you think in a subtle way. Great cast.

This film gets superman right, he's so endearing in his naivety and reckless trustfulnes it's really refreshing in today's capeshit climate. There's a lot of good and a fair bit of bad, I'm having trouble deciding if it's a 3.5 or 4 but I did enjoy it more than Thunderbolts which is also a superhero movie I watched recently. The film tries to do so much and most of it works, but some parts are unfinished or unpolished. It bites off soo much and just barely manages to chew it all up and swallow. The stakes are unnecessarily high in the finale, there's themes of geopolitical issues, what it means to be human, nature vs nurture, media manipulation and propaganda, ethical journalism etcetera. It really touches on so many subjects while also introducing solo many characters. And introducing is putting it nicely, really we're really thrown into a completely established and populated world. Thankfully, Gunn excels at giving characters a lot of gravitas and soul in a small amount of screentime, and really most of the many many characters get their time in the spotlight. Nicholas Hoult as Lex is a particular highlight, Superman's certified biggest hater. As a ultra rich tech mogul it would've been easy to copy Musks or Beloz's mannerisms but Hoult does his own thing and his actions are more inspired by the real world than his personality. Anyways, it feels weird to write such a long review for a capeshit movie but there's just so much meat here I could really go on and on and on about it, and I think that's a good thing.