FILM OF THE WEEK: Superman - Reviewed by Roe McDermott

We’ve seen Superman rebooted before, usually with a heavy heart and even heavier fist. But James Gunn’s new Superman doesn’t open with a punch. It opens with a plea. This is a film that tries - sincerely and sometimes beautifully - to reintroduce the Man of Steel not as an untouchable god, but as a kind man in search of his place in a messy world.

And for its first hour, that sincerity shines. David Corenswet brings a warmth and watchful humanity to Clark Kent with a performance that walks the fine line between awe and ache. His Superman not defined by power but by restraint, not by triumph but by struggle. Rachel Brosnahan, as Lois Lane, matches him beat for beat. Their chemistry, all quickfire intellect and emotional tightrope, gives the film its finest scenes, especially when the world falls away and it's just two reporters trying to talk honestly about who gets to save what, getting lost in the messiness of modern life that manages to complicate even the most basic moral truths.

Gunn chooses not to give an origin story, instead dropping us straight into the action. Clark is Superman, he’s already a public superhero, Lois knows his real identity, they are dating. This is a bold move, skipping over the chance for the audience to see Clark as a person and get invested in his story. An early scene of Lois interviewing Clark is works well by letting us know a huge amount about these characters: their world view, their belief systems, their connection, their tension points. It’s Superman as an adult, in an adult relationship with a smart, spiky woman and it’s glorious to see. But the film then immediately separates the two, instead of letting this connection build onscreen. Here is Gunn’s issue: for all his belief that Superman needs to be grounded in humanity, he is constantly distracted by big and shiny things.

For every moment of emotional clarity, Superman piles on another subplot. The film is so packed with global conflicts, holographic parental trauma, meta-human side quests, and Lex Luthor’s techno-fascist long game, that the simple emotional stakes blur. It’s a movie with twenty ideas and five endings, frantically checking in on everything from TikTok misinformation, to the privatisation of war, to an Elon Musk-adjacent villain with a disturbingly plausible fanbase. None of these ideas are bad, but Gunn’s script rarely gives them the space they deserve. They flit in and out, like tabs on an overworked browser.  It dilutes the message the film seems to want to send: that kindness, sincerity, and personal integrity are radical and indeed even a bit punkrock in an age of cynicism, spin and spectacle.

It makes it all the more frustrating that the spectacle swallows the soul. The inevitable third-act voyage into space - complete with a penal pocket dimension, automaton Superman drones, a crystallised kryptonite-fisted villain, and another collapsing city - lands with weightless obligation. It’s competent, expensive, narratively coherent, and utterly uninteresting. We’ve been here before, floating among the stars, wondering why our feet aren’t on the ground. Like so many superhero films that leave Earth behind, it mistakes scale for stakes. For all its cosmic circuitry, it forgets the thing that made Superman work in the first place: he chose to care about us.

There’s also an uncomfortable tonal dissonance that feels surprising for Gunn, who built a career making motley ensembles feel human. Here, he’s clearly more comfortable cutting between characters than sitting still with one. The emotional throughline falters as we ping-pong between the Justice Gang (some charming, some barely sketched), the slow-burning media smear campaign, and an overstuffed climax that plays like four movies at once. Gunn’s gift for playful chaos works in team-based stories, but Superman isn't a team player- he’s a symbol. Symbols need clarity. Instead, we get a haze of references and riffs.

Worse still is the film’s treatment of its female characters. Beyond Brosnahan’s terrific Lois (who, while underused, is written with spine, wit, and real emotional architecture), the women in Superman feel like punchlines from a movie made two decades ago. Nearly every other female character is bleach-blonde, breathy, and designed more for a Maxim shoot than a modern blockbuster. Some are literal sex workers, a deeply weird choice for the most PG superheroes out there. It’s a low note that lands with a thud in an otherwise high-minded film. Coming from Gunn, who has spoken publicly about evolving past the frat-house humour of his early work, it feels regressive and lazy.

There are still things to admire. The first hour zips by with real energy. There’s a tenderness to Clark’s Midwest roots and a genuine curiosity about what it means to be alien and American. Scenes with Clark’s parents (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell) are lovely, with the actors bringing an emotive naturalism that occasionally rises above the cliches in the writing. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor is good fun, equal parts smarm and menace, and the film wisely resists the temptation to make him camp. There’s even a sharp bit of satire buried in how easily Luthor manipulates public perception, weaponising half-truths and glitches to smear Superman’s legacy; and his video game approach to beating Superman, which implies a childhood of too many hours obsessing on a computer. But even this gets buried under one too many twists, too many planets, too many meta jokes that don’t quite land.

Ultimately, Superman is a film with heart, ambition, and a lead performance that deserves a better movie around it. It wants to remind us that being good is not boring, that being soft is not weak, that being human, even when you’re not, is still the greatest superpower. And for stretches, it does. But then the sky cracks open, another faceless alien army descends, and we’re back in the same old cosmic soup, drowning in lore, nostalgia, and pixels.

A bold beginning, a faltering middle, and a finale that forgets why we came. Superman flies - but somewhere along the way, the film loses sight of the ground.

• In cinemas now. Watch the trailer below: