Superman

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … whatever you want it to be

I have it on good authority that heroes are dog people.

Superman (2025)

3 / 5

Watching this movie, I’m reminded of a Transformers movie from a couple of years ago. Some movies just aren’t made for half-a-century-old Gen Xers anymore. Understanding this is important. If you want to enjoy big romping PG-rated summertime movies, you have to meet them where they are. Superman is no exception.

It would be easy to be bothered by a lot of things about this go-round of the Man of Steel’s adventures on film. It is thankfully not another origin story, but still deviates from the character’s canonical details in ways that different people will have different levels of problems with (for instance, it dramatically changes his Kryptonian parents motivation for sending him to Earth). It also celebrates some of the things that make the character and the property so enduring and endearing, in ways that different people will have different levels of problems with (it maintains adherence to the classically corny DC comics world where the geography and culture are different from Earth but the same). It also nods regularly to the 1978 classic, in all the best ways; attempting to make a Superman movie without centering John Williams’s legendary theme should get you hauled out back and beaten, and this movie avoids that fate.

So what ends up on screen is something that’s going to appeal to different people in different ways. Any given viewer is going to see what he wants to see. If you’re somebody going into this looking for a hate-watch you can bag on in internet comment sections, you’ll find it. If you’re somebody looking for a rompingly fun summertime comic book movie, then you’ll find that. If you’re somebody nostalgic for the old-time-religion of painfully decent heroes doing unironically heroic things, you’ll find that. So you decide what you want Superman to be, and you’ll be surprised at the film’s ability to be that. It’s quite a trick.

3 stars of 5: I liked it, and tweens will love it, but it's a classically disposable summer product.