Blog: You'll Believe A Man Can Be Nice

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On Tuesday night I went to see SUPERMAN with my pal Mr S Carter. Executive Summary: it was GRATE!

To be honest I was pretty sure it was going to be - I AM a bit worried about whether "Fantastic Four" is going to be any cop, but for this one I felt pretty safe. I'd seen the trailers, read loads of the source material, enjoyed all of Mr Gunn's previous superhero movies, and OF COURSE been reassured by eminent academics in ESQUIRE magazine hem hem.

One of the many ACE things about it was that pretty much the entire main trailer for it (with Krypto in the snow) was the first couple of minutes of the movie, so after that there was TONNES of new stuff I wasn't expecting as it piled on LOADS of FUN THINGS. Even to one such as I, who is USED to the fast pace of this kind of storytelling, it did feel like there was a LOT going on, but then that is kind of the point. In Olde Tyme Filmes you would have to keep stopping every ten minutes to explain someone's origin or Tragic Past, but now we're so USED to superhero movies that they can just go "This person is THAT sort of character" and we can take it from there.

GENRE EXPECTATIONS is what I'm talking about, and this movie deals with them perfectly. There are so many examples of dull superhero films where they go "AH! We will DEFY your expectations of what a superhero movie is by making it GLUM and BORING and full of GITS" that nowadays a superhero movie that embraces the DAFTNESS of the original genre and shows is superheroes who are ACTUALLY GOODIES is - as it says in the film (NOT A SPOILER) - "the real punk rock."

And crumbs but this film is SILLY and also full of LOVELY characters. Superman is SO LOVELY that when the film ended EVERYBODY carried their rubbish out with them to be collected by staff, because a) they'd asked us to at the start and b) after watching Superman be SO SUPER we would all have felt guilty if we hadn't. Also, Rachel Brosnahan is FABBO as Lois Lane - I mean, it was pretty certain to me that she was going to be, but then I have watched all of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel with her in it so it was obvious (NB if you have not watched The Marvelous Mrs Maisel I would HIGHLY recommend it).

A criticism I have read of the film is that there are too many characters in it who don't get a chance to really do anything, but as above this feels to me like a misunderstanding of how this sort of storytelling works - the fact that you get flashes of ENTIRE HISTORIES of things that have happened that don't get explained is there to make it feel like a vast and exciting WORLD of fun, some of which may get picked up in other movies OR INDEED in other transmedia ventures.

Most of all though it was a LOVELY LOVELY film where someone trying to do the right thing was shown to be ADMIRABLE rather than a MUG to be laughed at. Laughing at someone being uncynical is EASY and celebrating UNPLEASANTNESS is SAFE, but actually being brave enough to say "this is the right thing to do" and sticking with it is difficult - especially in a world where being horrible and mean seems to be the way to get on.

Er... that went a bit further than I was expecting! What I mean to say is that SUPERMAN is dead good and I for one look forward to seeing it about a HUNDRED times more! HOORAH!

posted 16/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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