if you asked me to come up with a diplomatic way of describing DC on film lately I'd say it's cluster it's been somewhat mismanaged I want to be rival to the MCU that arrived late to the party and tried to catch up by FASTT tracking half a decades worth of World building plot and character development into a single movie and as anyone who's arrived late to a house party and tried to play catchup can tell you that's never a good idea only to spend the next 10 years lurching drunkenly from disastrous failure to inexplicable success
and Back Again plagued by a panicking and interfering Studio that couldn't seem to make up its mind what it wanted and a revolving door of Executives who each stuck around just long enough to undo the work of their predecessors before getting fired but even Warner Brothers can only tolerate so much failure and by 2022 it was obvious that something had to change someone with an actual Creative Vision had to be put in charge of DC on film and they had to be given the time money and power to get the franchise back on track and
well that man was James gun and his first big test was Creature Commandos Superman now I'm not kidding when I say that pretty much everything is riding on this movie not just James gun's career or DC on film I mean the entire superhero genre the past few years have given us an almost endless stream of embarrassing failures from every major Studio never give up hope though Sony Deadpool and Wolverine was a big hit to be sure but one successful movie can't change the fact that superhero movies have been on a downturn ever since Avengers endgame
Superman needs to succeed which means that all eyes were on the first teaser trailer when it came out yesterday so what's it actually like does it Inspire confidence in a movie that's going to save DC and put the entire superhero genre back on track or is it an embarrassing and ridiculous spectacle of pure cringe well it opens on a somber note with Superman lying injured and bleeding in the snow and if ever there was a perfect metaphor for the public perception of the character after being Zack sned to within an inch of his life it's
this but okay sure it establishes a sense of urgency and drama because really if someone or something can beat the out of Superman it must be a pretty major threat I have to say though I'm not exactly loving the suit it looks cheap and padded and I know it's unfair to compare him to Henry caval but David Corin sweat does seem like a bit of a downgrade in the physicality Department you get to see little vignettes of him as Clark Kent at the Daily Planet and apart from the awful gen Z bird's nest hairstyle it
all looks pretty good we get to see Lois Lane and Jonathan Ken and it's a neat Whistle Stop tour of all the things and people that are important to him I'm not sure about the electric guitar rendition of the John Williams score [Music] though like I know James Gunn really loves his 80s music but damn man turning an iconic score like that into a sad guitar solo is like drawing a on the Mona Lisa yeah you can do it in theory but the question you have to ask yourself is should you but just when you
thought things were getting a bit too somber and serious and not James gunny enough the dog shows up oh yeah the dog no I like dogs as much as the next guy I have two myself but I'll be honest here I'm not sure that I want to watch a superpowered one Dragon Superman through the snow by his Cape it rather ruins the ver similitude for me don't you know and yeah I know this is supposed to be crypto from the comics but it was a goofy idea even then and it looks even worse on film
which is probably why no other big screen version of Superman has ever used it I've got to admit though the anarchist in me would love to see Zack Snider's take on it as for the rest of the teaser Lex Luther looks decent even if he's a bit on the young side hot girl Green Lantern Mr terrific and metamorpho are all there and that's a lot of characters to work in but I'll come back to that one shortly I'm not entirely sure why there's a Kaiju in a Superman film but okay fine and lastly there's plenty
of focus on the romance between Superman and leis which is nice to see in a modern Hollywood movie where functional heterosexual relationships are rarer than female apologies so what's my overall opinion was it an embarrassing disaster or a creative Triumph well it's neither of those things really what it is for the most part is safe a cautious kind of trailer that hits all the predictable superhero beats doesn't try anything particularly crazy or controversial and seems almost desperately eager to please from a studio that's clearly nervous about this film James gun's usual confidence and artistic flare
is kind of lacking here and I can't quite decide if that's a good or a bad thing in this case see I've always had reservations about gun doing a Superman film reservation the first is that I don't think is quirky snarky subversive sense of humor is all that compatible with a character like this don't get me wrong he's good at what he does but what he does Falls within a very specific Niche that includes Guardians of the Galaxy and uh his irreverent sense of humor and a clear preference for angsty morally ambiguous anti-heroes works just
fine for the Guardians movies but Superman is a very different Beast he's a throwback to a more innocent idealistic and earnestly honest kind of superhero a man who proudly stands for truth justice in the American way and doesn't do it under a dozen layers of post-modernist subversive deconstructive irony and I could be wrong but I feel like such a straight up interpretation of the character is like the antithesis of everything that gun stands for as a Creator reservation the second is that gun clearly has a strong preference for teamup movies with big Ensemble casts of
likable Misfits having to learn to put aside their differences and work together that basic formula has been at the core of Suicide Squad all three Guardians movies Peacemaker and Creature Commandos and that's just swell but here's the thing I don't want that in a Superman movie I don't want to watch Superman bickering with a bunch of trading quips and insults and having to slowly win them over I want to see him being a hero and standing on his own two feet because this is supposed to be his movie not some Launchpad for half a dozen
spin-off characters but now that I've seen the trailer I think one of those reservations has been put to bed while the other's pretty much been confirmed crypto aside the overall tone actually looks pretty Earnest and straight up and I get the impression that gun's actually taking this thing seriously ly say what you want about the guy but he understands comic books so I'd imagine he very much understands what makes Superman work as a character on the other hand the glut of supporting characters tells me he's probably going to run straight back to his team of
Misfits comfort zone which feels like a big misstep here I don't want every James Gun movie to be just another Guardians clone trying to impose the same formula on characters and worlds where it's not needed or wanted ultimately though a lot of this is still guesswork at this point it's only a teaser at the end of the day a lot of things can change between now and July and the film itself might still end up being the best superhero flick in years as a teaser design to get us pumped up for it though I'm not
convinced this one quite hits the mark it definitely wasn't a failure but I suspect that whether you love or hate James guns work you're probably going to find something in it to back up your position as for me I'm going to try and keep an open mind on this one and just hope that gun can deliver because really a lot depends on it anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
