The DCU is off to a bizarre start
Director and Writer of Superman (2025) James Gunn CREDIT: by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
The biggest problem with Superman (2025) is simple. It wants it both ways.
It claims to be anti-imperialist. It pretends to question intervention. It even sets up a moral dilemma about whether Superman should step into conflicts between sovereign nations.
Then it immediately undercuts all of that.
Superman is told not to intervene because that would be too direct, too messy, too imperialistic. Fair enough. That could be interesting. Except earlier in the movie, he straight up threatens a world leader with physical harm if he steps out of line again. So we are already playing fast and loose with the rules.
The movie even has Lois Lane call him out. For a second, it feels like we might actually explore this. Then Superman fires back with, “People were going to die. What was I supposed to do?”
Good question.
The movie does not have an answer.
Instead, it sidesteps the issue entirely. Superman stays out of the war while doing other things.
And then other heroes step in anyway.
A group of very clearly U.S.-aligned heroes swoop in, wipe out the invading military, and kill the despot. This is framed as a win. So, intervention is bad… unless it is done by the “right” people.
The movie even says the quiet part out loud. One character in a quick scene basically admits that the world has handed control over to superheroes. They decide what happens now.
So, Lex Luthor was sort of right in his pentagon pitch earlier? Superheroes need to be put on a leash otherwise they’ll do whatever they want? Hawkgirl ended the life of a foreign political leader because he crossed the line. But what happens when it’s a leader closer to home?
The film knows this is messy. It just does not care.
And that ties directly into the bigger issue.
This movie does not understand Superman.
Superman is supposed to try everything else first. He is restraint. He is patience. He is the last resort, not the first threat.
Here, he threatens early, hesitates later, and lets other people do the dirty work. The “nuclear option” is not avoided. It is outsourced.
Take the kaiju scene. Superman spends forever saving civilians while the monster keeps tearing the city apart. The movie makes it clear he has the strength to move it. He just does not. Not until it is basically too late.
Then Mr. Terrific kills it, because at that point there are no other options left, and Superman gets upset about it.
You had options earlier.
This kind of inconsistency is everywhere. The power scaling works on vibes.
Superman can pull himself, Krypto, and a weird CGI gremlin baby out of a black hole while poisoned.
But in the same shared universe, over in Peacemaker Season 2, a regular human almost gets sucked into a black hole and is just… pulled back out. No consequences. No damage. Totally fine.
Meanwhile, Superman’s own clone gets knocked toward a black hole and that is suddenly a permanent solution.
So black holes are unstoppable forces of nature… unless you have a rope and a couple of friends?
Alright DCU. Same writer and director for that show as this movie too.
The action looks great. It just does not hold up the second you think about it.
And neither does Lex Luthor’s plan.
He orchestrates an international conflict… to get at Superman. That is it. A conflict Superman shuts down in seconds, and his friends clean up the resurgence of the conflict in minutes.
Maybe he wanted to get at Superman legally since he gets the US government involved, I can hear you say. Lex Luthor wanted to do something legally? The guy who started a war, is running illegal weapons trades, cloned superman, and is housing an illegal prison full of prisoners? That Lex Luthor?
Well, it’s not like Lex Luthor is meant to be smart, right?
Which brings us to another major issue. The Man of Steel does not actually solve anything.
Even stopping his clone was accidental.
Lex gets handled by Krypto. The war gets handled by the definitely-not-the-Justice-League team. Mr. Terrific puts back Metropolis. Superman’s reputation gets fixed by the Daily Planet running pro-Superman coverage (with Lex Luthor did something bad evidence) that the entire world just accepts overnight.
No rebuilding trust. No long-term fallout. Just “our bad Superman was good actually” and we move on.
That could have been a great arc for future films. Superman learning to rebuild his trust with the public. It is gone in minutes.
Even his relationship with Lois gets wrapped up instantly because she visits his childhood home and realizes he is just a normal guy.
Yes. These two have been implied to be dating for a while now. Superman is the costume not the other way around. That should have been clear already.
And throughout all of this, Superman never gets his moment. You keep waiting for it. The defining scene. The one where he steps up and fully is Superman.
It never comes.
He feels like an underdog in his own movie.
And emotionally, the film leans hard into him being driven by his feelings. Which is fine in theory. Superman should have emotions.
He just is not supposed to be led by them.
Here, it feels like feelings come first and doing the right thing comes second. He yells. He snaps. He spirals. The movie treats that as “more human,” but Superman has never needed to scream at Lois to feel human.
He just is.
Even Lex feels off. Instead of being cold and calculated, he is constantly loud and emotional. The only time he shows restraint is the one time that it showed his true character. Now both him and Superman are operating the same way, which kills the contrast that usually makes them work.
And the supporting cast does not help. Lois is reduced to love interest and “reporter”. Jimmy is just kind of there and is kind of a terrible person.
When the movie does not understand Superman, it ends up not understanding anyone around him either.
To be clear, this is not a bad movie. It is fun. It looks great. There are moments that absolutely land. I laughed at any scene that included Superman having to deal with Krypto being an untrained super mutt.
You can like it. You can love it.
But the more you think about it, the more it falls apart.
And at the center of it all is one problem.
Superman is never allowed to be Superman.
He does not solve the main conflict. He does not define the outcome. He does not fully embody what he is supposed to represent.
So yeah, Superman (2025) is a good movie.
Is it a good Superman movie?
No. It’s just about okay. It’s like eating pasta from a frozen dinner brand that’s slightly more expensive than the “I only have $4 to my name” brand.
It looks right. It sounds right. It just does not understand the character it is built around.
Not to mention the whole thing smells like a redressing of Guardians of the Galaxy.
Final Thoughts
This problem is not isolated to just Superman. You can already see it bleeding into other parts of the DCU. Take the upcoming Green Lantern show. This is a property built around one of the most visually distinct heroes in comics, a character literally defined by a glowing green power set, and yet early presentation choices seem almost allergic to that identity.
When a Green Lantern project hesitates to lean into the color green, of all things, it sends the same signal as Superman (2025). There is a lack of confidence in what these characters fundamentally are. Instead of embracing the core traits and iconography that made them work in the first place, the approach feels like it is sanding them down or dressing them up as something else. It is the same pattern. If the foundation is misunderstood, everything built on top of it starts to feel slightly off, no matter how polished it looks on the surface.