Superman (2025)

What is hope?
By definition, hope is believing in something that is so much bigger than yourself. Superman has always stood for hope. He is constantly the guiding light of what a hero needs to be—empathetic, kind, genuine, earnest—all the things America is supposed to stand for and currently does not represent. James Gunn, the director of Superman 2025, isn’t just trying to get us to believe in hope again; he’s trying to get us to be our own heroes by showing us the hero we grew up with.

Superman 2025 starts with Superman having lost the biggest battle of his life. This battle is against a man with very similar strength to Superman’s. What that means for our titular blue-and-red hero, we’ll find out later. David Corenswet embodies Superman with the ethos of: It’s not how hard you got knocked down but how quickly you get back up.Superman loses that battle once, but when he returns and gets stronger, that doesn’t stop him from believing in himself or the people he supports.

The next time we see Superman, he is arguing about a conflict in a foreign country—one where he managed to intervene and stop a war—something his partner Lois Lane does not agree with. In this particular standout scene, instead of being Superman, he is Clark Kent, mild‑mannered reporter from The Daily Planet. But in a twist that is a shock to everyone, she already knows that he is Superman and questions his journalistic integrity about interviewing himself regarding the conflict he was just involved in. It’s a standout moment for Rachel Brosnahan and particularly for David Corenswet, who is fairly new to the Hollywood scene. This scene shows all of Superman’s vulnerability as a hero trying to do the right thing, and it really showcases his dynamic with the one other person he cares about more than anyone else besides his mother and father.

We get all these lovely glimpses into who Superman is as a character, as well as the motivations of Superman’s arch‑nemesis Lex Luthor, played diabolically by Nicholas Hoult (of About a Boy and Skins fame). Here, his Lex is cartoonish and egotistical—which isn’t necessarily bad—but I much prefer a villain who is calculated and psychologically menacing rather than just angry and rich. I don’t truly believe the rivalry between Superman and Lex Luthor here because of how cartoonish this portrayal feels when contrasted with David Corenswet’s decency and empathy.

The problem I thought I was going to have with the film was that there are way too many characters, but those characters are utilized so sparingly that when they do show up in the story to support Superman, they actually enhance the good we already know that hero can do. Special mention definitely goes to Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner. That character may be an asshole, but he has a heart of gold buried deep beneath the surface. Mr. Terrific, portrayed by Edi Gathegi, is phenomenal in the role of the African‑American superhero. The actor finally gets justice for being unceremoniously killed off in X‑Men: First Class back in 2011.

Director James Gunn infuses the film with bright colors, because he and the rest of his film and television team at DC Comics know that previous iterations of the character lost that level of brightness, light, and jubilation. This is not to say that darker takes on the character don’t work—Man of Steel was an interesting and deeply detailed adaptation of the character—but there was no real, true heart in Zack Snyder’s film. That heart returns in Superman 2025.

This film has all of the trappings of a great summer blockbuster and succeeds because its message is not only about hope, but about empathy and care for your fellow man—something that Superman easily exudes in every minute of this movie, yet never talks about directly. In the end, that is represented in his humanity. In a world where humanity is so disregarded, we need movies like this to lift us up and remind us it’s possible to truly be kind, caring, genuine, and supportive.

Yes, the humor is silly and sometimes arrives at the wrong moments, but all that can be forgiven because the message of the movie doesn’t beat you over the head. Instead, it silently takes your hand and says, This is the way, without telling you which direction you need to go for that to happen. That is the film’s greatest strength: it tells you where the destination is, but makes you choose the direction you need to walk in to get there, coaching you lovingly along the way. That’s what good comic books do, and that’s why this film is the soaring success we always hoped it would be.

In the end, because of this character, we all want to fly higher and believe in ourselves more—because Superman dared to hope that we would. And the fact that we choose that path after watching the film makes us better people and Superman a better hero.