Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we run through the biggest new releases and why you should be excited for them. This week is all about truth, justice and the American way as Superman leads DC into a whole new universe…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Superman
The DC Extended Universe always felt like it existed in the MCU’s shadow. Kicking off in a post-Avengers world where every film franchise suddenly wanted to create a cinematic universe, many saw DC’s climb to an inevitable Justice League team-up as a blatant attempt to emulate what Marvel had achieved. But where Marvel took the time to give each of its heroes their own space and style before bringing them together to beat up some aliens, the DC films tried to make one cohesive series from the off. It didn’t entirely work, and Superman had a particularly rough time of it. After apparently mixing his normally brightly coloured red and blue costume in the wash with Batman’s black cowl and cape, Man of Steel’s overall tone and palette never quite suited the all American (/Kryptonian) hero, and nor did his method of dealing with Emperor Zod in the film’s climax. He next appeared in Batman vs Superman, which he did not come out of very well, before being brought back in the middle of Justice League just in time to make the climactic battle completely one-sided (and slightly dull as a result). Henry Cavill did a great job but he never had much to work with in the way of iconic lines or meaningful character development. The rest of the DCEU was a mixed bag, with some decent entries and a lot of filler. Meanwhile, the MCU’s phase 2 and phase 3 went from strength to strength, with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films being among the highlights – bringing a joyous, colourful tone that still knew when to take an emotional beat and pull at the heartstrings. Gunn was brought over to DC for the second attempt at a Suicide Squad movie, which was an instant improvement on the first one and felt like a breath of fresh air after the disappointing Wonder Woman 1984. It was successful enough that Gunn was hired to oversee a full reset, taking creative control of DC’s cinema arm and working out a clean slate of new films that would do justice to the Justice League, now referred to simply as the DC Universe. The DCEU is dead – long live the DCU.
Superman is the first film in the DCU, so there is a lot resting on his broad, cape-festooned shoulders. The first teaser trailer used John Williams’ iconic Superman score to nail its (bright primary) colours to the mast and recall the classic Christopher Reeve films, which already feels like a good start. Gunn himself is in the director’s chair for this one, and Twisters’ David Corenswet is the man squeezing into the blue spandex as Kal-El/ Clark Kent. The plot sees him reckoning with the consequences of his actions after intervening to prevent a war between two foreign nations, with a mistrustful public questioning his motives and a spiteful Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) looking for any signs of weakness.
The difficulty with any Superman story is finding a situation that presents a credible threat. He’s such a powerful character that he’s physically a match for most enemies he might come across. Even when he loses, he just needs a quick sunbathe to be right as rain again, and if he really gets stuck it’s cinematic canon that he can fly so quickly round the Earth that he rewinds time to undo a mistake. Instead of relying on physical threats, the best stories have baddies that attack his heart. Superman is the archetype of a good superhero who protects the world from evil villains, but that black and white morality starts to crumble when you introduce a little grey. Present him with a trolley problem where two innocent groups are under threat and he can only save one of them, and suddenly to the other group he becomes the bad guy. Do that enough times, with enough different groups of people, and his entire iconography shatters. It looks like this film is doing exactly that, throwing Supes into the middle of a political minefield that he can’t punch his way out of. That also has a lot of scope for drawing parallels with the real world conflicts going on today, the question of whether certain powerful Americans should be getting involved, and how easily the coverage of these sorts of issues can be manipulated to sway public opinion. In a world where truth and justice are no longer the American way, what does Superman stand for?
That’s not to say this is a hard-hitting political drama without any superpowered fisticuffs – there should be plenty of action here too. The trailer showcases clips of Kal-El taking on a massive kaiju, as well as battles with other superpowered beings. Because although this is a Superman movie, Gunn’s more comfortable when he’s got a ragtag group of heroes to play with, so we also have Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion, sporting a wonderfully silly bowl cut), Rick Flag Sr (Frank Grillo), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced, fresh from her star turn in season two of The Last Of Us), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Mr Terrific (Edi Gathegi), and several others. Gunn has brought in his Guardians alumni too, including Bradley Cooper (Jor El), Pom Klementieff, Michael Rooker (both playing robots, alongside Alan Tudyk) and Sean Gunn (Maxwell Lord). Plus all of Clark Kent’s more human friends and family are present and correct, including Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Ma & Pa Kent, and of course Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) who looks from the trailer like she has great chemistry with Corenswet and will have more to do than just being Superman’s love interest. The most important character though is Krypton the Wonder Dog, the goodest of good boys, who is ridiculously cute and bound to steal every scene he’s in.
The reviews from critics have been a little mixed, but it’s clearly gone down well with audiences who have seen the previews – at the time of writing it has a 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a creditable 85% critic rating. Whether you’re a fan of Superman, or a fan of James Gunn, or you’re just curious to see what the next decade-plus of DC films is going to look like, this is a must-see blockbuster and should be well worth catching on as big a screen as possible.
- Superman on IMDB
- Superman on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
It may be the only significant movie out this week, but let’s be honest, we’d probably be picking this even if it weren’t – our Film of the Week is Superman.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Jurassic World: Rebirth – Clearly not a patch on the original Jurassic Park (but really, what is?), but arguably the best of the Jurassic Worlds. Rebirth manages to do what Fallen Kingdom tried and failed to pull off – it references the earlier entries without shoving those references down your throat or relying on your nostalgia for thrills. There are several excellent set-pieces, especially the T-rex in the river and the spinosaurs in the sea, and the human cast does a perfectly creditable job of bridging the gaps until the next dino encounter. I’m still not sold on the need for mutant dinosaurs, but the D-rex (who looks like the result of an Alien facehugger getting its tendrils on a tyrannosaurus) makes one hell of an entrance in the final act. Definitely worth a watch.
- Elio – This hasn’t done as well as it deserves, so the ‘still in cinemas’ bit might unfortunately be a bit of a stretch here – I managed to catch a 9am showing on Saturday which was the only screening at Cineworld that day, and had the auditorium to myself. But if you can find somewhere that’s still showing it, Elio is a beautiful film. The plot is a little predictable in places, but the central characters are very sweet and the level of creativity on display is stunning. It also does an incredible job of capturing Elio’s sense of wonder at the vast, mysterious emptiness of outer space. If you have young kids and you want them to grow into the sort of person who feels awestruck every time they gaze into the sky on a clear night, you should absolutely take them to see this film.
- F1: The Movie
Trailer of the week
Normally I would embed a link to the trailer of the week, but in this case I can’t as it’s only out in cinemas for now (I’m sure there will be leaked recordings in some of the darker corners of the internet, but I’m not going to encourage those – go and watch it on a big screen!). With the release of Jurassic World: Rebirth came the first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, which stars Matt Damon as the legendary Greek hero Odysseus. It’s very much just a teaser for now, with Tom Holland’s Telemachus (Odysseus’ son) discussing the stories of his dad’s exploits with Jon Bernthal (likely a suitor for Odysseus’ wife Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway) over shots of the ocean and glimpses of a certain wooden horse. But any marketing for what is already promising to be the biggest film of 2026 is worth getting excited about. If anyone can give such a huge story the epic scale it deserves, it’s Christopher Nolan and his IMAX cameras. And the cast is crazy – as well as Damon, Holland, Hathaway and Bernthal, there’s Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Elliott Page, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, Lupita Nyong’o, Corey Hawkins and Benny Safdie.
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