The new Superman film is derivative nonsense

Anyone looking for the resurrection of an innocent, joyful Superman full of wonder at the world he is sworn to protect will be delighted with David Corenswet. Yes, they’ve stuck him in very tight red pants again, but this star of the rebooted DC universe led by Guardians of the Galaxy director/writer James Gunn is the best Superman since Christopher Reeve: sweet, gorgeously dimpled and, when in Clark Kent mode as his bumbling journalist alter-ego, deeply nerdy. (There is even an unmistakable homage to the original 1978 film as Clark struggles with a revolving door.) Gone is the dark brooding of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. This is Kal-El as comic fans originally knew him: youthful, kind and very hot for Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan).

A shame then that Corenswet finds himself in such a confused film, packed to the rafters with too many villains (Lex Luthor, Ultraman, the Engineer), superheroes (Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and Mr Terrific) and complex geopolitics.

There is no long preamble with superbaby pinged to earth from Krypton, nor his teenage years with Jonathan and Martha in Smallville. Gunn gets straight to the point, introducing us to Superman at age 30 when he has just lost his first-ever fight. Krypto, a superdog bound to appeal and appal in equal measure depending on your tolerance for effusive on-screen canines, drags his master to the Fortress of Solitude, where C-3PO-esque medical bots patch him up, and then it’s straight back to business defeating a Lex Luthor minion in Metropolis and exchanging flirty banter with Lois in the Daily Planet offices.

Brosnahan and Coronswet have a lot of chemistry, particularly in an early scene in her apartment celebrating their three-month anniversary, where Lois “interviews” her boyfriend. They are in love but they are also at odds, because Lois isn’t sure about the ethics of Superman’s unchecked meddling in global politics (she has a point). The tension, both sexual and narrative, simmers.

Lex Luth0r is played here by Nicholas Hoult as an evil tech bro trying to persuade the Pentagon that Superman is an errant vigilante who needs to be locked up. From here the movie descends into an unruly muddle of plots and side-plots, including a fictional Middle Eastern war that is at best patronising and at worst offensive.

Superman fights a Japanese Kaiju monster with the Justice Gang led by the Green Lantern (Firefly’s Nathan Fillion with a bowl hairdo) before Luther finds footage suggesting Superman has messianic ambitions and is given permission to lock him up in a “pocket universe” prison. There’s coding and hacking and a mindless black hole issue. It all starts to feel horribly nonsensical and derivative.

Thank God for the moments of quiet when Lois takes an injured Superman back to Kansas to recuperate and we get to see his humanity again: a bruised Clark who likes to eat cereal out on the porch with his pa. A Clark questioning his own identity, and a Lois attracted to that vulnerability too.

If only more of the movie were like this. I salute Gunn, who was poached from Marvel, for trying to infuse this reboot with humour and vitality, dragging it out of a gloom that no longer suits viewers plagued by enough real-world problems. With an amusing Milly Alcock appearing briefly as a wayward Supergirl ahead of her 2026 film, one can only hope that Gunn will streamline his plots for the next DC outing and give this very likeable Superman more of a chance to shine.

In cinemas 11 July