Superman (2025)

I've been waiting for awhile now for a good DC movie, and I'm still waiting. In this movie Lex Luthor is not only will to start a war to get rid of Superman, but willing to use a blackhole rift that could destroy the planet to take him down. 

Some of the acting in this film was just painful. First off Nicholas Hoult, who plays Lex Luthor, is normally a good actor, but he can only do so much with the script he is given. He struggled with Nosferatu for similar reasons. When the script is bad and the production team makes certain choices, the film and actors suffer from their influence. In this specific case Lex Luthor was too one note, just obsessed with taking down Superman. Past portrayals of Lex has made the character much more complex. Gene Hackman brought some comedic moments to the character while Michael Rosenbaum made Lex a relatable villain with a fan base. Fine, yes Rosenbaum had a TV show that ran for many seasons to develop the character, but Lex never felt one note with him. The writers for this film just made the character too narrow with no breaks for character development. Then there was Superman...just bring back Henry Cavill. David Corenswet just didn't have the screen presence to play Superman, just the basic look. The only time when he felt somewhat right for the part was when he was barefoot on the porch at his parents house. 

The one actor that I think that did manage to do a stand out performance was Edi Gathegi, as Mister Terrific. This was the only character that had any real character development in the film. Also the fight sceen where he was protecting Lois Lane was an amazing blend of CGI and music. If the film producers would have spent as much time on the rest of the film as they did with him, then there would have been a chance for this film to have been something. 

SPOILERS. Please skip this paragraph if you do not want spoilers. I had a lot of issues with this movie. First, was them changing the message from his parents from one of Earth's Protector to Earth's Dictator. To me this doesn't make sense with all of the other lore previously established around the kind of people his parents were. To me this entirely destroyed the film for me. Then there was also the massive damage that he kept getting. I guess it sort of makes sense since he was fighting a clone of himself....yah... that was weird as well.., but it felt off. Even in the other films where Superman had to fight his own kind the damage was different. Then you have the whole stupid clone thing. It wasn't stupid because I think so, it was stupid because the movie itself made the clone stupid with an even below child level of intelligence. His movements were actually controlled during fights by Lex like a videogame character because the clone wasn't smart enough to even do a basic fight. This made Non in Superman 2 look like a genius by comparison. Then there was all of the weird creatures in Lex's pocket dimension. It made sense for him to put all the humans that caused him or his friends problems there, but there was no explanation of where all of the weird alien guards and prisoners came from. This was a huge gap in information and it didn't make sense in the story line. If Lex created the pocket dimension, then those beings had to come from somewhere.

Overall, this movie was just painful to watch. I'm not sure why people keep trusting James Gunn. None of the movies he has done since the first Guardians of the Galaxy have been any good. That was the height of his film making and since then he has been crashing with bad decision after bad decision. 2 stars out of 5 or a D-.  

Picture 1 From: https://www.reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/comments/1g4po94/superman_movie_2025_poster/

Picture 2 From: https://www.polygon.com/dc/612645/lex-luthor-vs-mysterio-james-gunn-superman

Picture 3 From: https://www.ebony.com/superman-2025-mr-terrific-edi-gathegi/

Picture 4 From: https://www.2ec.com.au/trending/movies/superman-2025-everything-you-need-to-know/

Picture 5 From: https://batman-news.com/2025/06/03/superman-hi-res-photos-2/

Picture 6 From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5950044/

Picture 7 From: Taken by Julia Bilderback at the Northfield movie theater.