| Rami Ezzeddine |
Superunderwhelming Movie
It was not as bad as I thought it would be from the promotional material. The CGI was actually (surprisingly) solid most of the time. The only real issues were...Read more the Kaiju, which looked fake, and some flying shots where the cinematographer insisted on zooming way too close into Superman’s face, which just felt awkward.
What bothered me wasn’t the humor, or even the overstuffed cast, or even the VFX. It was how spoon-fed and juvenile the plot felt. Half the script was just characters explaining what was going on, what they were feeling, what they wanted, and what obstacles they had to overcome. It was all tell, no show, which left little to no room for actual interpretation or layered themes. The whole “anti-imperialist” subplot was laughably hamfisted too. At one point it becomes so on-the-nose you’ve got the “poor helpless brown people” crying out for the white American superhero to save them. It just reeked of white savior energy.
Compare that to something like Black Adam, which for all its faults at least centered its narrative on an indigenous resistance led by one of their own. Here, you’ve got Superman moping around too depressed to help out with an intergalactic alien invasion, then turning himself in over a dog. I mean, come on.
Anytime the film looked like it was building real momentum, tension, or emotion, it got derailed. A dumb one-liner. The dog crashing through a scene. It happened multiple times and started earning groans out of me by the end. There’s a bit where Superman saves an Asian lady and a squirrel, then gets helped up by some random Indian guy. It’s like they were checking off diversity boxes. Not saying it was “woke,” in the slightest; just not very subtle.
The tone was all over the place. The camera work had that weird YouTube vlog or sitcom feel where it would follow the actors and spin around with them as they spoke. Instead of this making the cinematography feel “dynamic” it instead caused it to feel soulless. The score was ambient background noise except for Superman’s main theme, which was just a recycled Williams knockoff.
The fight choreography was great at other times and then wonky at others with just people flying around with Mr. Terrific straight-up copying Yondu’s style with his little gadget things. And for a movie supposedly about Superman, he takes an increasingly back seated role the more the film progressed especially as more and more side characters got involved.
Lois and Clark had great chemistry though, way better than Henry Cavill and Amy Adams ever managed. Guy Gardner was hilarious and probably the best part of the movie. Lex started out promising, but by the end he turned into this loud, over-the-top cartoon character whose line delivery just got progressively more annoying. I get “it’s a comic book movie,” but that doesn’t mean it has to be this “out there” to the point that it becomes immersion breaking.
Also the fact that Jimmy Olsen was played by such a chopped looking guy not even someone who has a quirky look to him but just plain ugly with minimal charisma yet had all sorts of girls swooning over him as a running gag was less funny and more Redditor fan fiction with incel wish-fulfillment cringe.
Overall the film wasn’t bad by any means, just very juvenile. Especially when everything resolved itself in five minutes with no real payoff. It’s just… off. Especially when the implied lesson of the story apparently is “abandon your parents and your Kryptonian heritage.” Yikes… isn’t the character all about being sent to earth for good?
This isn’t quite “Supersh*t,” but it’s definitely Supermid. A 2/5 film. Slightly below average, but not painful. If this ends up launching a whole cinematic universe, I’ll probably check out early just like I did with the MCU. Of those 36 movies, I only watched like 15. Same deal here, most likely. After all, this film really just felt primarily like “DC for MCU fans.”
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(Superman): Official Trailer
