Tickets for Superman are now on-sale. I purchased mine through a special Amazon Prime / Fandango promotion for Prime members and get to go watch the new James Gunn movie two days early on July 8th. I’m genuinely hoping that this is a return to form for DC and the Man Of Steel, but every trailer released so far has me worried, and the latest two-minute spot has me more concerned than ever.
It’s hard to put into words exactly why this is, partly because there’s a lot to like about the film’s direction – or what we can tell about its direction – so far. I’ll start with the good.
First of all, I love the casting all around. David Corenswet is a great choice for Superman and Clark Kent, and every glimpse of him in action or delivering lines is pitch perfect. I also love Nicholas Hoult who plays the film’s main villain, Lex Luthor. The rest of the cast, from Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane to Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner/Green Lantern, is on-point. Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Wendell Pierce, etc. etc. I could rave all day about the casting.
I also like the more upbeat, positive tone of the movie. Superman is a beacon of hope. This is a character who feels at odds with so much of modern cinema and modern culture because he’s so optimistic and earnest. Even the one-liner in this trailer feels like upbeat banter rather than the snarky, sarcastic quippiness we find in so many superhero movies these days.
So what is it about this trailer that has me worried? Pretty much the same things I’ve noted in the past.
First, the visual effects are jarring. There are some cool moments here, but the overall effect is unpleasant. What’s with all the slow-motion, Mr. Gunn? If we wanted egregious use of slow-mo action shots we could just ask Zack Snyder to return to DC. The abundance of wide-angle, fishbowl shots is also very off-putting. And what’s with this shot of teeth bouncing off the camera? This just looks awful to me:
I don’t hate the color pallette but I don’t love it, either. I’m even glad to see such a colorful superhero movie given how inert and dark and lifeless, or just plain drab, so many DC movies have been in recent years. There’s a place for dark and gritty in DC and it’s called Gotham, but far too many other films in this franchise have felt colorless and bland. This bucks that trend. But perhaps it bucks it too hard, because at timesthe color-grading just looks cheap and makes the visuals look fake. Which reminds me of films like the recent Flash (though, again, more saturated and less bland).
I’ve gotten responses from fans who say something sarcastic like “oh no a comic book movie that looks like a comic book!” but this isn’t the problem. I’m all for comic book movies looking like comic books. I just don’t love how this one is shaping up. It looks more like a commercial than a movie at times, if that makes sense. Some of the scenes – like this one with Superman laser-beaming a bunch of baddies – looks like a weird cutscene from a video game.
The CGI is just . . . it’s not good, especially in shots where Superman himself is clearly almost entirely CGI. I’m not sure why people are defending it so passionately. You see fans saying things like “it’s a superhero movie with flying and superpowers and you complain that it looks fake?” But the trick with filmmaking is to create immersion, especially when you’re doing magical things, whether that’s dragons, magic or superhero stuff. If the special effects look fake or even too clean, you break immersion.
Then there’s the cast. As I said above, it’s a wonderful cast but it’s also just massive. This is a two-hour movie (which is a perfect runtime!) but we have so many characters, I can’t imagine any of them getting the screentime they deserve. I worry a lot about the pacing and this just turning into a frenetic mess with too much plot squeezed into too short a picture, like spreading far too much butter over too little bread.
Fans seem pretty hyped about Superman, so maybe I’m just overly cynical and need a dose of Superman’s effervescent optimism myself. I want to be wrong. I want all my concerns to be laser-blasted into oblivion. If the story is good, I can probably look past all the rest, and I’ve enjoyed plenty of Gunn’s work in the past, which assuages some of my fears. We’ll know one way or another in less than a month. Here’s the latest trailer:
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