re: superman 2025

it's cool that a lot of people enjoyed it! even i walked out of the theater feeling totally struck by it and i think i might've been crying. i've been re-watching it on cam rip for the past few days and my appreciation for the incredible cgi has gone way up, but i'm starting to realize how messy the story actually is. ouch

i think the message is good. the takeaway being less specifically about the good that superman does, and more that the good that he does inspires others to be good, but the way they deliver it is completely botched. comics like 'all star superman' and 'superman: for all seasons' were constantly cited as huge inspirations for this movie but i never got that impression both visually and narratively. it's much more reminiscent of john byrne's 'man of steel' from 1986, with superman sort of dismissing his kryptonian heritage and embracing human values as his inspiration to do good, and it almost comes off as specifically american values. i think the movie tries to circumvent this with the dialogue in the farm scene where pa kent telling clark that his job as a parent isn't to tell him to act a certain way or who they're supposed to be but rather to give him the tools to help him discover himself who he was supposed to be himself. it just feels very inconsistent.

anyways my consensus is that it was a good enough start to a dc cinematic universe. i pray that through some rube goldberg sequence of events the sequel is filmed by a different director.