LOOK UP! It is finally upon us. The Summer of Superman is reaching new heights as audiences slowly but surely flock into theaters to watch James Gunn’s “Superman” film. A weirdly momentous moment for a whole platitude of reasons. Of course for starters: Hopefully it’ll turn the public’s perception of the blue boy scout around after a few years of middling wide-spread success – but, maybe more importantly, it’ll also kickstart a brand new Cinematic-Superhero-Universe, something DC, under the WB umbrella, has been trying to accomplish for a decade now. After their first attempt slowly fizzled out into increasingly confusing course corrections, leaving the entire brand tarnished in a ditch, James Gunn now holds the reins to the DC universe and his take on the “Man Of Tomorrow” is set to start it all off in a big way. But is “Superman” enough to get audiences back to the big screen for one of comics’ oldest and most iconic universes? Having seen it, I am not so sure…

Before I get into why, maybe we should look back to the past, back to where it all began. Back to 2008. Back to Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man”. The movie that started it all – the movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a monumental achievement in blockbuster film-making that studios have tried – and failed – to replicate ever since. The MCU seems to be this unobtainable gem to these conglomerate studios, time and time again they try to launch their own universes, releasing spin-offs and remakes and big-budget-blockbusters to absolutely no success. Valiant comics tried to start up a universe with Vin Diesel’s “Bloodshot” film – an attempt so laughable I had to take a minute to recoup after finishing typing the previous sentence. Sony Pictures really did try their hardest to make the SPUMM universe work (Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Movies) – releasing a whole slate of critically, and often commercially, panned films for almost a decade – and Universal will always live in infamy over their Dark Universe announcement photo. Yet Marvel somehow managed to avoid that, they managed to create this incredible sprawling universe, surviving even after steadily releasing unimaginable levels of MID for half-a-decade.

DC does have a lot of good faith going for it at the moment, it seems like audiences are excited to see more of this universe and “Superman” is projected to do good; this is the closest I think we’ve ever gotten to a studio replicating that MCU formula for success. Yet it’s the general audiences that need to be onboard the most, and that’s where I’m afraid “Superman” will lose people. 

Gunn’s “Superman” is a comic book movie. It is the silver age brought to life, not only in design and feel but also in story structure. The entire thing plays out like a series single issues played in rapid succession, you can almost see where each issue would end and the next would start if this were a 6 issue mini-series instead of a big Hollywood blockbuster; a quality the film both suffers from as it does excel in. Because yes, it’s so refreshing to see a movie actually respect this medium that is often only used to be gutted for parts and “inspiration” – giving us scenes that feel like their ripped straight out of a comic book – silliness and wackiness included, yet it can also feel out of place at times. All the wackiness takes up screen time that I would’ve personally much rather seen used on other more important things like… I don’t know… characterization maybe!

CHARACTERIZATION

See, when a comic book consistently throws characters at me like Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Mr Terrific or even Jimmy Olsen, I’m totally down to roll with that. I know what I can and need to expect in a big-two/canon comic book – them’s the rules and I love the medium for it – but that is a completely different way of storytelling, the medium makes that work, when you apply that same story-structure to the first movie of your big franchise it becomes convoluted, stuffed to the brim with characters that I cannot imagine general audiences would be into at first glance. I’ve seen many people compare the films narrative to that of a random single issue in a 30+ issue comic book run and I totally get that, there’s so much lore and story that is only being hinted at or referred to but never actually shown that it can become convoluted – even for someone like me, who is aware of all this stuff on a not-so-normal level.

Here’s where Iron Man comes in. Iron Man is a comic book film, yes; it has most of the things that make Iron Man who he is and is as faithful as I think time allowed it to be. But it is also a movie. It’s a film that uses the language and structure of said medium to adapt the comics – and I don’t think “Superman” does the same. “Superman” is so faithful to the comic book medium that, at times, it ends up feeling like less of a movie because of it. At times it can feel more like a series of Rick and Morty episodes strung together, with all the characters and all the different settings pulling the movie in so many different directions making the entire thing feel messy and detached from one-another. 

Imagine a version of Iron Man 2008, with the same cast and the same runtime, but it also includes Whiplash and The Crimson Dynamo as henchmen for Obadiah Stane. That’d already be a pretty stacked film right? But then, when Iron Man keeps running into the West Coast Avengers for some reason, things become even more convoluted. Instead of the great moments between Tony and Rhodey, you’d instead get a scene where Tigra rips apart bad guys or instead of getting the cheeseburger scene with Happy and Tony, Hawkeye shows up instead to get made fun of for his bow and arrow skills. Yeah it’s fun on paper but when you think of what you get instead – what these characters are replacing in the runtime – you realize it might not make for a more satisfying final product. “Superman” is that film.

Take the Daily Planet. A staple of the Superman mythos attached to a plethora of iconic side characters to the Superman expanded cast and vital to understanding the character of Clark Kent. I was so excited to see what Gunn was cooking with the Daily Planet. All the casting was great, I know Gunn can handle a group of big colorful characters like the Daily Planet crew and we’ve been sorely lacking a nice faithful adaptation of this side of the DC world for decades now. Yet, in the final film, they’re kind of… absent. Sure yeah they’re in the film and they have like a funny scene… but that is it. They have a scene. One maybe two scenes dedicated to the entire group. They are not in it nearly enough for how important their subplot is to the main story. Most egregious of all, one member of the Daily Planet, maybe the most vital member, is only in the film for about 2 minutes total (if not less)…  and that is Clark Kent. 

Yes, Clark Kent is in the film for mere moments. The rest of the film is entirely dedicated to Superman. In a way I can appreciate that the film doesn’t ever make the audience believe Clark and Superman are different characters – Clark is Clark, no matter if he wears the costume or the glasses – yet characters in the film don’t know that obviously. There is an entire investigation in the film led by Lois and Jimmy that then directly ties into the final act of the film and guess what! Clark does not help a single bit. He’s so absent from the Daily Planet no one is even really concerned about him not being there. The entirety of Metropolis is evacuated in the third act, the whole crew evacuate the Daily Planet building together (that’s the only scene in the film that features them all interacting by the way) and no one is like… “Where’s Clark?”. Not a funny remark from Steve calling Clark a wuss for sitting this out or Perry White yelling out for him during the commotion. No, Kent’s presence is barely acknowledged throughout the whole film? WHY? Because instead I’m watching this weird alien creature Lex Luthor created for some reason. There’s a huge disconnect between plotline: Superman and plotline: Daily Planet – which makes the latter feel weirdly inconsequential given how much it ties into the third act. 

And it’s not like the Justice Gang gets enough shine because of it. The exact same issues I have with the Daily Planet arise with the Justice Gang. I know nothing about these characters, about what makes them tick, what they’re like and what having them here adds to the final story beyond what I already knew about them going in. Yes, Mr. Terrific leaves a lasting impression sure, but I wouldn’t say he’s a really fleshed put character. Again, general audiences don’t have the luxury of having comic-book-brain-worms that make you store useless capeshit information in your head like some of us do. They will just be left wondering who they just saw flying around the film without ever getting an answer (until some of these guys ultimately get their own HBO miniseries or whatever). 

It’s an even bigger shame because Gunn is clearly gifted at characterization. He made audiences fall in love with Rocket Raccoon of all characters and even in this film it’s obvious just how good he is at it. Jimmy is really fun, he might be the only supporting character that actually works in the entire film. There’s also a really nice moment where Perry White listens to Lois’ story as the entire office melts down in a panic. Character beats like that work so well but the movie just doesn’t have enough of those moments to engage you fully. 

INTENT V EXPECTATION

But where I think Iron Man and Superman differ the most, where I think these films’ paths leading to Cinematic Universes diverge most is with Intent and with Expectation. Superman is being released in a completely different cultural landscape compared to Iron man. The movie industry, fandom, culture as a whole has so drastically changed since 2008 (a lot of that stemming from the existence of the MCU) and audiences expectations have shifted alongside that change. “Iron Man”, unlike all the other attempts we’ve touched on so far – including “Superman” – didn’t know what it was capable of doing. Not Feige, Not the studios’, not even the audience knew what this could grow into (I’m sure there were hopes and dreams of course, but no one could’ve expected what happened). That’s the difference. Now everyone knows what Superman is gonna become, they know they can expect more – as do the studios and filmmakers. They’re launching a cinematic-universe knowing full well that, post “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, you can get away with putting a bunch of colorful stuff in your film. But I don’t think you wanna start by going at a 100 percent, “Iron Man” barely started at ten and the MCU didn’t go to one-hundred until like 5 years later.

You need to set that foundation first. You need to grow your world from the characters, not the behind the scenes chitter-chat and background easter eggs – audiences want fully realized main characters and side characters they can really sink their teeth into, that’s how you get them onboard, that is how you get them to come back. Think of that first wave of MCU films and how those side-characters, still to this moment in the MCU, are relevant and fan favorites. Bucky, Pepper, Happy, Loki, Rhodey – these characters are the backbone of the universe and I just don’t think the DC Studios universe is starting off strong in that regard. 

I’m not just saying this about the DC universe to be a prick, Marvel is suffering from the exact same thing at the moment (fans had to patiently wait on Karen Page to return in the Born Again finally before they could finally get some engaging characters back, for instance). Fact of the matter is I want all of this to succeed. I want to see more DC projects get the greenlight, I wanna see The Justice League finally form in a meaningful way, I want Batman and Superman to team-up for once, I want more deep-cut characters to get solo projects. But it needs to be engaging first which is why I think this start is a little bit rocky. Luckily rocky isn’t disastrous – I’m not trying to bait people and say “JAMES GUNN FAILED, THE DC UNIVERSE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE DADDY FEIGE!!!” – far from it. Like I said, I think the cinematic future of DC is looking incredibly bright and i’m so excited to see more of it, I’ve just been burned so many times – I’ve seen so many off these films underperform and get destroyed by the general public that I really hope Superman comes out of this blockbuster-summer unscathed. 

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What do you think? Did you like Superman? And what’re you hoping to see from the future of DC movies? Let me know in the comments and follow Ghost-Writes wherever you can for more ramblings about DC, Marvel and the rest of the comic book industry.