There is no point pretending we haven’t been living in Superman’s universe for the past 90 years or so. Still, it comes as a jolt when James Gunn’s sickeningly busy reboot – an attempt to launch a whole new DC Universe – throws us so unforgivingly in medias res.
Superman is already an established defender of the American way. Clark Kent is already a busy journalist. He is already dating Lois Lane, and she already knows of his double life. Lex Luthor is already a scheming maniac. Sorry if that spoils the first 10 minutes for anyone who’s been living in a cave since 1938.
Gunn might, reasonably enough, not have had the energy for rehashing origin stories, but the effect is of arriving halfway through the first season of a television series that, on the remaining evidence, will struggle for renewal.
Excising the story of Superman’s arrival on Earth, his courtship of Lois and his evolution as superhero doesn’t just deprive the film of useful structure; it also deprives it of vital humanity.
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How is David Corenswet in the lead role? It is hard to tell. Rarely has an actor appeared in virtually every scene of a film while barely being in the thing at all.
There is a lot of Superman action. Corenswet puffs and heaves as kaleidoscopic mayhem builds behind him. But there is precious little of the shy, bumbling Clark Kent with whom the late Christopher Reeve had so much fun. The similarly misused – though not exactly underused – Rachel Brosnahan has, as Lois, a modestly amusing scene opposite Clark early on.
Nothing after that point escapes the deafening tumult of a rolling apocalypse. Close your eyes and you could be listening to the aural torture once directed at General Noriega. Open them and the clench of vulgar CGI further increases the dislocation and confusion.
At least Zack Snyder’s earlier (largely terrible) takes on Superman for the DC Universe paused for breath. One unexpectedly finds oneself yearning for Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Clark’s calming human parents in Snyder’s so-so Man of Steel.
You may as well try to summarise a coastal typhoon as synopsise the mounting chaos.
Perfectly tolerable actors play supporting heroes called Hawkgirl (who?), Green Lantern (back again?), Metamorpho (what?) and Mr Terrific (cool name for a Mr Man).
There is some – I’m guessing here – well-meaning political commentary in a subplot about a tyrannical east European dictator who, with the assistance of the tech-bro Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, flailing), is threatening to invade a docile neighbouring country.
Evil Lex uncovers a message from Superman’s birth parents that seems to reveal he has been dispatched to conquer, rather than protect, Earth. Superman is eventually locked up in an ultradimensional detention area that could be an allegory for Guantánamo Bay.
Fair enough. Gunn deserves some credit for the effort, even if none of these parallels does little more insightful than acknowledge bad things are happening somewhere in the real world.
The tone is, as you’d expect from earlier Gunn efforts such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad, endlessly larkish and sophomoric. It is nice that he clears such space for Krypto the Superdog. It is a shame the mutt’s exploits are so blandly digital.
One welcomes the score’s occasional nods to John Williams’s theme from the 1978 film. One bemoans the failure to replicate the uncomplicated heroics that fanfare once greeted.
A few hilariously misguided references to “punk rock” are (to say the least) misplaced in an enterprise that cost north of $225 million – which is to say at least €195 million.
The cartoonish closing battles make it clear that, not for the first time, Gunn is striving for high trash, but what he achieves here is low garbage. Utterly charmless. Devoid of humanity. As funny as toothache.
In cinemas from Friday, July 11th
