Superman (2025)

“You have a dog???”

Despite resistance from a healthy heaping of naysayers and supposed Snyderverse supporters, James Gunn’s vision of Superman took flight on July 11, 2025. I managed to watch it today, July 13th, and have to admit, it’s a great film. It’s hilarious at times, full of action and witty dialogue, and takes a couple of extremely violent and dark turns that reminds the audience that villains are evil.

My review is spoiler-free, so read on with confidence if you haven’t seen the film.

The movie opens three years into Superman’s public life, when his actions to prevent a war between two nations has many of his supporters losing faith in him. Lex Luthor, ever the opportunist, decides to use Superman’s drop in popularity to attempt to finally put an end to his alien menace. Of course, Luthor’s true intentions are much more sinister, and it’s up to Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and the Justice Gang to find out what’s really going on and put a stop to his plans.

Superman is portrayed as honest, loyal to a fault, and almost too trustworthy. He’s the Big Blue Boy Scout in all of his fresh-from-the-comic-page glory, and I’m all for it. The Justice Gang provides additional muscle and plenty of laughs as well, with Mr. Terrific stealing almost all of the scenes that he appears in and Guy Gardner being the lovable douche we all expected him to be in this film. Hawkgirl has a limited role in the film, but she does deliver one of the coolest lines in the film. Metamorpho also appears in the film and is involved with quite possibly the darkest scene in the movie. Krypto is also in the film, and as hilarious as he is, he never gets to be too annoying or overused. Lex Luthor’s cohorts, Ultraman and the Engineer, provide plenty of action in the movie and feature in some excellent action sequences.

The entire cast is excellent. David Corenswet pulls double duty as Superman and Clark Kent, although we don’t get a lot of Clark in the film. His portrayal reminds us of the classic Superman that is both funny and just. Rachel Brosnahan delivers a spunky performance as Lois Lane, calling back to the character as portrayed by the legendary Noel Neill, the original big screen version of Lois. Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific is, well, terrific! He’s funny and cool all at the same time. Nathan Fillion was perfect as Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced swooped in and out of scenes with class as Hawkgirl. Maria Galbriela de Faria does fine as the Engineer. The rest of the cast, which includes Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag, Milly Alcock as Supergirl, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, and many, many more, all do fine jobs.

As excellent as the cast is in this film, two actors in particular deserve special attention. Nicholas Hoult is, in my opinion, the best live-action version of Lex Luthor ever to hit the screen. He utilizes his devious mind to best Superman on a number of occasions and also knows when to tuck tail and run. He’s both sinister and funny at the same time. I expected Hoult to do a fine job, but he blew me away with his performance. Even more shocking was the portrayal of Eve Teschmacher by Sara Sampaio. Sampaio was AMAZING in the role, making an oft-ignored secondary character into one of the most important pieces of the film.

The film’s special effects are very good. There are some limitations to the CGI, especially during sequences involving a black hole, but they are no worse than the best CGI in recent Marvel films. The music was very well done and honored its roots by calling back to John Williams’ legendary score. My only issues with the film are that Ultraman is something of a dullard and I don’t like a certain plot twist involving Superman’s biological parents.

Overall, the film is a bright, loud action film with hilarious moments and a couple of very disturbing dark moments. There’s a bit of strong language at times, but for the most part the film is friendly to fans ages seven and up in my opinion.

I highly recommend this film. It’s the best DC/Warner Bros. film to come out in a long time. It reminded me of the innocence of the Christopher Reeve films but features action above and beyond the recent Snyder films. Go see it now!