There's a scene very early on in James Gunn's
Superman that is the best scene in the entire movie. And as good as the movie is -- and it's perfectly good! -- one wishes that one scene had been the template for all of the scenes around it. It's the scene where Clark Kent (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) fall into each other's arms in the comfort of her apartment, safe from prying eyes -- we quickly learn that the sarcastic banter the two have perfected at work in the Daily Planet is a cover for their downlow relationship (of three months), and the Lois in this movie is fully aware that Clark is Superman's disguise. She starts ribbing Clark for publishing easy interviews with his alter-ego in their paper, and so he playfully suggests she interview him this time.
This being Lois f'ing Lane though she chooses to ignore Clark's patronizing tone and snatch at the opportunity to interview the biggest story in the world, relationship or not -- she does warn him, but he's Superman right? We've already seen him at this point take mega-punches from flying monstrosities -- surely he can handle some questions from a mere lady reporter. (That's not me talking -- you can clearly, and to the film's benefit, see Lois bristle at Clark's condescension.)
What follows is a wallop of a scene where we watch two entirely game actors slapping dialogue and actual (can you believe it) ideas back and forth at one another like a verbal Wimbledon -- it's the best action scene in the movie and it's basically two people sitting on chairs the entire time. Corenswet and Brosnahan have mega-chemistry, and what the characters are debating -- the reality of what Superman's god-like powers mean in a complicated world with borders nad laws -- sets the and tone and the story's main thrust for everything that comes after it. Point being: whoever came up with this scene deserves an enormous raise.
If all of Superman had adhered to that emotional and intellectual coherence this film would be a stone-cold insta-classic -- it's sure got a pile of great ingrediants and ideas bouncing around. The cast is pretty much head to toe wonderful -- I'll admit Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder will always be the Clark & Lois I picture when somebody asks me to picture Clark & Lois but the two here are far and away the best iteration of the greatest couple in comic-dom that we've seen since then.
So it's truly a shame that after this scene the two barely share the screen again for the rest of the film! The Donner films (and a few television series since then) knew that Superman works best as a romance-story -- as much as the villainous Lex Luthor (here played with delightful relish by a spit-flecked Nicholas Hoult) has come to represent Superman's greatest antagonist it's the relationship with Lois, as our cynical but hopeful representative of humanity, that really beats the Big Blue Boy Scout's heart.
And it's not that Brosnahan doesn't get stuff to do in the meantime. While the hero is off fighting kaiju and slipping into pocket dimensions she's working with what she's got to straighten out the world and it ultimately integral to its saving. And perhaps Gunn didn't want the film to solely define her in relation to Clark & Supes -- I get that. But there's no denying the film feels its most alive and meaningful when all its extra stuff (so much extra stuff) gets swept aside and it focuses on that heart. And one does wish they'd found a way to really anchor the movie around that more consistently.
But still -- a perfectly good time. Whenever the John Williams' theme swept in my tear-ducts spontaneously erupted, and adorable Krypto more than earns his keep. It's not that there's anything absolutely terrible on hand that I can point to here -- well except that maybe a couple of girly girl characters on-screen come off as an eensy bit misogynistic. It's more just a lack of focus that turns out to be Gunn's Kryptonite. How much of that is the no-doubt-suffocating pressure to reboot an entire Cinematic Universe being heaped onto him I'll leave to the business-side pundits -- as for Superman, the movie itself, it's not a fatal glitch in the matrix. But it is a Trojan Horse that splits everything at its seams somewhat. I guess that's just the movies in 2025 though -- nothing can be just itself. Everything's gotta be everything to everybody. Superman most of all.
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