I've been a superhero fan basically since I could hold a comic book in my hands. My dad read them to me when I was little. I learned to read from superhero comics. I've been collecting them on my own for close to 40 years at this point. You could say I'm a dyed-in-the-wool superhero fan. And so, I've seen just about every superhero movie in theaters since 1989's Batman (even Shaq's notoriously awful '90s Steel movie). But I've never seen anything on the big screen like James Gunn's Superman.
I could gush about the pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast, the love story at the movie's core, the way the cinematography breathes life into the action sequences - but what really makes James Gunn's Superman reboot so unique, and what makes me so hopeful for the direction of the DC Universe, is that it's the superhero movie that feels the most like reading a comic book of any I've ever seen.
Instead of taking a comic book and trying to adapt it into the pacing and story format of a standard blockbuster film, Gunn is reinventing the superhero genre by approaching Superman through the opposite lens of trying to make a feature film more closely resemble the pacing and storytelling style of comic books themselves.
Who knew that the freshest take on the genre in years would come from just plain turning back to the comic books that inspire superhero movies to begin with in a way that goes deeper than simply mining them for vibes?
Building a universe
Basically since it was announced, James Gunn's Superman has been saddled with the lofty burden of having to launch a brand new, totally fresh, compelling superhero universe from the ashes of one of the most contentious string of comic book movies ever made, in the previous DCEU.
Love or hate the movies of the DCEU themselves, it's hard to argue that they didn't quite manage to chart the same path to a successfully interwoven superhero universe as the MCU, not for lack of trying.
What Gunn does with Superman is sidestep the building-a-team vibe of the original Avengers era Phase One MCU, and focuses instead on having Superman inhabit a world that is already full of superheroes, villains, and sci-fi adventures - a world of Gods and Monsters, to borrow the DC Universe's moniker for its 'Chapter One' era of films and series.
The Justice Gang, Metamorpho, and others are already in Superman's world, a DC Universe where people are no stranger to seeing superheroes on the street, and where costumed crimefighting is an increasingly common pursuit.
We're not waiting to see a superhero show up in Gunn's Superman movie. We're not holding our breath to see Superman cross paths with even one other hero. We're already in a living, breathing DC Universe.
Embracing comic book storytelling
For me, as a lifelong reader of superhero comics, that feels just like home. When I was first starting to more actively collect comics in the late '80s and early '90s, there were very few options to read the comics that came before the latest issues on the stands at the grocery stores and magazine racks where many of us most often purchased them.
There were few collected editions of standard monthly comics, unlike now, where you can walk into a comic shop or a bookstore and find shelves of the latest collected volumes. Even in comic specialty shops, at their height in the mid-'90s, your best option to read older comics was to dig through bins of individual issues hoping to find the ones you were after.
What this means in practice is that, when I first got into the X-Men, I just started picking up the ones that were on the racks at the time (the legendary Uncanny X-Men run by writer Chris Claremont and artist Jim Lee, luckily enough). I learned about the characters and the world by joining them in progress, uncovering their secrets as I read.
Nowadays, that's seen as a less preferable way to start reading a comic like, say, Superman, than starting at one of the many on-ramps that have been created through collected editions and online reading services.
That's not to sound like an old person shouting at a cloud, because believe me, I would not prefer to go back to a time when comics both old and new weren't as widely available as they are now.
But it's an ethos of the long tradition of comic reading, and how comic readers have traditionally met and fallen in love with characters, that has seeped its way into James Gunn's Superman in a way that feels like the most effective way possible to have launched an entire universe of heroes and villains without starting at the basic square one.
A living, breathing Metropolis
While plopping us down right in a living, breathing superhero universe, James Gunn's Superman also employs many of the same tricks that have traditionally helped comic readers acclimate to jumping into a long running title.
Instead of long exposition hallways, or endless conversations around a hologram table that put everyone's personalities on pause while some big macguffin is explained (both things that were the sloggiest spots in Gunn's otherwise generally breezy Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy), Gunn takes a more comic book-y approach by peppering bits of explanation into the existing scenes through dialogue.
Even to this day, when you pick up any old issue of most superhero comics, you'll be treated to little bits of introduction through dialogue and captions that help quickly establish the characters and their world, complete with references to other things happening in that universe.
Comics have thankfully evolved beyond the Silver Age tropes of characters announcing their powers every time they're used, but Gunn deftly uses a more contemporary take on these old faithful comic storytelling tools to help establish the new DC Universe.
Likewise, Gunn doesn't hesitate to offer a handful of adventures to bring us deeper into the new DC Universe. Every chunk of Superman feels like a new issue of comics, complete with guest stars, and transitions between narratives that stand alone while still linking each chapter.
Superman hangs out with the Justice Gang. He encounters Metamorpho. He deals with multiple crises and enemies, all while still anchoring the broader story around the relationship of Superman and Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor's villainous schemes. That's a lot like in comics, where stories are told across multi-issue arcs in which each entry has its own problem to solve, all adding up to a cohesive narrative.
When characters like the Justice Gang aren't onscreen, we're unobtrusively reminded that they're still out there, dealing with problems without Superman - something that feels all too uncommon in most mainstream superhero movies where it tends to feel like the heroes are just kind of hanging around doing nothing until the latest supervillain forces them to get back to work.
Superheroes as a fully realized genre
This all adds up to a superhero movie that truly does feel like something new in a genre that's become mired in the same old formula again and again. And it's done not by trying to adapt the concept of Superman into a separate film genre or blockbuster framework, but by attempting to create a new way to truly embody superhero comics on the big screen - a more fully realized genre unto itself.
Gunn himself recently told GQ that he doesn't believe in superhero fatigue, he believes in "mediocre movie fatigue," citing the superhero genre's current over-reliance on the novelty of introducing yet another new hero, or bringing characters together only after years of build up between each crossover event.
For example, while Gunn's Superman does have a post-credits stinger scene (which I won't spoil, even though it's not crucial to the plot), there's no moment at the end where, say, Amanda Waller shows up to bring someone into the Suicide Squad - no Nick Fury moment, if you will.
Instead, these connections simply already exist right in front of us. They're not held back in favor of turning every project into nothing more than an appetizer for the next (a sad trend of some of the least interesting MCU streaming series), nor are they used as cheap hooks to make the viewer clap just cause they recognized another character named after a totally unrelated comic book hero (something even I've been guilty of).
Can Superman save superhero movies?
Not only does this work as a pitch perfect way to establish a steadily growing DC Universe, it has the instant effect of making the MCU's take on a world of superheroes feel downright grounded and dull.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps does have me hoping that the impending new direction of the MCU follows a similar approach to allowing its creators to build a fully living, breathing, unique world without simply falling back on the promise of yet another new character or plotline next time as the only trick available.
For now, James Gunn's Superman has not necessarily reinvented the wheel with superhero movies, but he's stopped fighting against the idea that superhero movies should resemble comic books, and instead embraced the trappings, visuals, and pacing that has defined the medium for decades.
He's also set the new bar for superhero films - so Marvel, the ball's in your court.
Superman is in theaters now. For more, check out our guides to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows and how to watch the DC movies in order.
