Posts Tagged Superman

David Corenswet’s Superman: Balancing Power and Humanity

July 17, 2025 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

588 words, 3 minutes read time

In the 2025 Superman film, David Corenswet takes on the role of Clark Kent/Superman, offering a fresh perspective on the iconic character. The film delves into Clark’s journey, balancing his responsibilities as Superman with his life in Metropolis. Rachel Brosnahan shines as Lois Lane, adding depth to their romance. The film also features a compelling performance by Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, a corporate head, whose envious and greedy nature raises questions about power and ethics.

From the moment the credits rolled it was clear that James Gunn’s 2025 Superman is more than a flashy reboot—it’s the heartfelt story we didn’t know we were starving for. Fans celebrated the film’s “different formula,” applauding its refusal to rest on blockbuster explosions alone and instead placing moral weight and humanity at the centre of every scene . Where previous DC outings often felt weighed down by spectacle, this Superman takes the opposite tack, weaving in the personal struggles of both hero and villain to create a narrative that resonates on a deeply human level.

David Corenswet’s portrayal of Clark Kent earned near-universal praise for bringing real soul to the cape. He is the best Clark Kent since Christopher Reeve balancing youthful naiveté with a gentle strength that makes his character profoundly relatable.

Opposite Corenswet, Alexander Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor emerges as a chilling, rational antagonist whose motivations mirror Superman’s own ideological dilemmas. Luthor is more than a two‐dimensional foil.

And of course, there is Lois. Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane and David Corenswet’s Clark Kent ignite the film’s emotional core with romance. Brosnahan infuses Lois with relentless intelligence and genuine warmth, challenging Clark’s earnest idealism and coaxing him toward emotional honesty. Corenswet returns her fire with a gentle vulnerability, admitting that beneath the cape he fears failing those he loves. When Clark falters under Lex Luthor’s reactor blast and Lois rushes to his side, her tears and unflinching resolve crystallize their bond: a partnership grounded in mutual respect, shared obsession with truth, and the belief that love itself can be the greatest superpower.

The plot centres on Superman’s battle to protect the world while facing personal challenges and difficult choices. The movie explores themes of identity, humanity, and the impact of one’s actions. With well-choreographed action sequences that don’t overshadow character development, the film delivers an engaging and positive message about the choices that shape who we are. It explores bigger questions about media weaponization, political power, and what it means for an omnipotent being to choose compassion over conquest.

Critics greeted the film with scepticism. Peter Travers dismissed it as “all spectacle, no soul,” and Alex Horton in The Guardian lamented that “the emotional heart never beats strong enough to justify the grandeur.” Yet audiences have embraced Corenswet’s earnest Clark Kent, propelling the film to an 82 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and earning it a B+ CinemaScore. I saw it at 11.20am and it was unusually busy for that time. Whatever reservations reviewers may hold, viewers seem hungry for a Superman who feels as human as he is superhuman. I think they are right and would have liked it to explore that more, even at the expense of cutting some action/fight scenes. In a time filled with troubles this Superman reminds us that there are forces for good in this world.

I loved Krypto the Superdog. Far from the obedient cartoon sidekick of past iterations, this version of Krypto is a chaotic, superpowered mutt based on Gunn’s own rescue dog, Ozu. From the moment he crashes into the film—literally jumping on a bloodied Superman while the hero groans in pain—Krypto sets the comedic tone. He’s not just unruly; he’s a walking disaster zone with heat vision and a stubborn streak.

The humour is classic Gunn: absurd, deadpan, and laced with emotional sincerity. Krypto destroys the Fortress of Solitude, flings Lex Luthor across a room in the climax, and prompts a robot to dryly remark, “The dog is unruly.” Yet beneath the slapstick chaos is a genuine bond. Superman, at his lowest, finds hope in Krypto’s loyalty—even risking arrest to rescue him from a pocket universe where Lex plans to euthanize him. Their relationship is messy, loud, and deeply felt.

In a mid-credit twist, it’s revealed that Krypto isn’t even Superman’s dog—he belongs to Supergirl, who left him in Clark’s care while she partied across alien worlds. It’s a clever inversion that sets up Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and repositions Krypto as a bridge between the two heroes. Through this scrappy, scene-stealing canine, Gunn delivers a film that’s both riotously funny and unexpectedly tender,

In an era of franchise fatigue, Superman (2025) stands out by asking big questions about identity, choice, and the true meaning of strength. The film reminds us that power untethered from compassion is hollow—and that even the greatest heroes need someone to bring them back to earth. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, it offers spectacle and soul in equal measure, proving that the most enduring superpower is the courage to stay human.

By Patrick Harrington

Picture credit: By “Superman Movie Poster (#26 of 26)”. Internet Movie Poster Awards. Retrieved June 22, 2025., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77337619

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Film review: Superman: Red Son

February 18, 2023 at 7:52 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews ·Tagged

What if baby Kal-El’s ( the future Superman) rocket landed, not in Kansas, but in the Soviet Union? That is the premise of this Elseworld’s tale from DC Comics. Review by Antony C. Green.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I watched this the other night, having picked up a copy in CEX for £6. I hadn’t actually realised there was a film version, though it’s been several years since I read the graphic novel.

I love the basic premise that baby Superman crash-lands into a small town in the USSR rather than in Smallville, USA, and thus ends up fighting for the cause of International Communism rather than for ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way.’ However, in the book, as with the film, the idea is much better than its execution.

Inevitably, this still being a part of the DC Universe, albeit an alternative version, Superman, in both the film and the book, ends up renouncing communism and embracing American ‘freedom.’

In some respects, the film is better than the book, although my memories of the graphic novel are admittedly hazy. We do see the terrible poverty of the United States, and the inequality, which led so many to embrace socialism, though in much greater numbers in the movie than in reality. And, through the use of ‘Brainiac, a form of artificial intelligence which allows for the central planning of the economy free from human error and the difficulty of micro-managing the complexities of a modern economy given the limitations of the human mind, we do see the Soviet Union make giant strides forwards, quickly surpassing the leading capitalist economies once Superman, disgusted by his discovery of the existence of the Gulags, eliminates Stalin and takes over the leadership of the Soviet Super-power himself. The creation of Brainiac, which I don’t remember from the book, is I think a particularly good innovation, with some basis in reality. In the 1960’s, during the Brezhnev years, the CPSU did look at the idea of using modern computing power to assist in the planning of the economy. Allende in Chie is also said to have looked into the feasibility of this, before his Popular Unity government was overthrown and replaced by the brutal proto-Thatcherite Pinochet government in the early-’70’s. In both these cases, computing was still at stage that was too primitive to be useful, but Brainiac does make one think what might be possible today, given the exponential growth in the scope and power of information technology…

There are some glaring weaknesses in the movie, however. Batman makes a rather pointless appearance as a sort of Soviet vigilante counter-revolutionary, and Wonder Woman is there only to mouth the words of uber-utopian-feminism, expressing profundities like: ‘Even a Superman is still just a man, and as long as men are in charge, there will always be violence and war.’ Haven’t we had enough equally war-like female world leaders by now to make such comments sound ridiculous: Thatcher, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Aung San Su Ki, Hilary Clinton, the super-hawk who fortunately never quite made it to the very top job?

Superman shows human morality in closing down the Gulags, but is also shown as possessing human frailties which illustrate the old truism that ‘…absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Given this, it’s never quite clear why he doesn’t simply use his superpowers to decimate the United States and with it international capitalism. Nor is it clear why, other than that it is led by a genius of a President in traditional Superman adversary Lex Luther, the United States not only recovers from its dire economic woes, but does so to such an extent that it begins to outstrip communism, leading to the type of demonstrations that result, as in the real world, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe. Superman accepts this and, like Gorbachev, is himself finally complicit in the dismantling of the USSR.

Thus, by the early ’90’s, we are back in a Universe that is recognisably our own (apart from the existence of Superman of course. Wonder Woman, giving up on men completely, has long since returned to her hidden women-only island).

Towards the very end though, we get a real laugh out loud moment when President Luther says words to the effect that ‘We will not act as victors in the Cold War, we will extend the hand of friendship to the Russian people, and assist them in building a land of freedom and prosperity.’ Yeah, right. In the real world, the ‘West’ imposed ‘Big Bang’ shock-tactics on the former people’s of the USSR, selling off their industries and public services for peanuts to multi-national, mainly American led corporations, assisted a few ex Soviet bureaucrats to become billionaire oligarchs, decimated living standards and caused a massive decline in life-expectancy. Within a decade, the Russian people had had quite enough of western-style ‘liberal democracy’ and turned to strong man Putin to set things right and restore a little national pride. We are still living with the consequences of western capitalism’s rape of the former Soviet economy, and it’s telling that the only serious internal opposition to Putin today comes from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation…

But I digress. Red Son is full of holes and weaknesses, but for anyone who combines some knowledge of modern history with an interest in the super-hero genre, it’s well worth watching, and might even make you think about how, in the real world, the geopolitical and economic order could have been, and could still be, so very different.

Reviewed by Anthony C Green

You can purchase Superman: Red Son here

Picture credit: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62626232

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