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Spoilers Superman (2025) Grade and Discussion

How would you rate Superman?

  • You'll believe a man can fly

    Votes: 27 25.7%
  • A

    Votes: 17 16.2%
  • A-

    Votes: 16 15.2%
  • B+

    Votes: 22 21.0%
  • B

    Votes: 8 7.6%
  • B-

    Votes: 5 4.8%
  • C+

    Votes: 3 2.9%
  • C

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • C-

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • D+

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • D

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • D-

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • F+

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • F

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • A pocket full of Kryptonite

    Votes: 3 2.9%

  • Total voters
    105
I will admit that that's one thing I did like about Snyder's take. Lois figured it out like a good investigative reporter should.

There are things from the Donner films that I wish people would stop copying all the time, like the crystalline Kryptonian architecture and the use of Otis and Eve as members of Luthor's inner circle (the new film's Eve and especially Otis bore no resemblance to the originals beyond their names, so why even bother), but their best lasting addition to the Superman mythos is redefining Lois Lane from the "girl reporter" with a perpetually unrequited crush on Superman to a Pulitzer-winning star journalist who discovers his identity and enters into an active relationship with him.
 
A fridge-logic consideration occured to me overnight. If this is the modern version of Supergirl who was already a teenager or adult when Krypton exploded, who has personal memories of her homeworld, then why didn't she tell Clark that they were really a race of conquerors? Maybe that was just Jor-El & Lara's secret scheme that she didn't know about, but still, the rest of the movie implied that Clark had no knowledge of his homeworld except through that message. Although the very existence of all the advanced, presumably Kryptonian technology in the Fortress also seems inconsistent with that. If that tech came with Kal-El in his space pod, wouldn't it have had records and data files to allow building all that stuff?

Gunn has addressed the point about Kara not saying anything about Jor-El and Lara on a number of occasions -


You’re assuming that everybody on Krypton is the same! And how would she know? She’s younger than him, so she wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t know anything about his parents.
 
Gunn has addressed the point about Kara not saying anything about Jor-El and Lara on a number of occasions -


Kara is younger than Kal-El, who was an infant when the planet blew up? So are we reverting to the classic origin where Argo City survived on an intact chunk of Krypton?
 
funny if true
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Have we ever had a Superman film where he had so few scenes as Clark Kent? I think the only time we saw him in the glasses putting on the public persona of Clark was in the newsroom scene; otherwise we just saw him being himself in civilian clothes with Lois and his family, which is arguably closer to being Superman than being "Clark Kent" as he's publicly known. And technically he was acting as Superman for the interview, mostly.

My other question is, in that final scene where we saw that Perry and Jimmy totally know that Lois and Superman are hooking up, does that mean they totally also know that Superman is Clark? Hard to see how they'd catch onto one without the other, since they've probably seen Lois interacting with him in his Clark persona more often than in his Superman persona. Unless the hypno-glasses are really a thing, but we only have Guy Gardner's word for that, and, well, he's Guy Gardner.
 
Kara is younger than Kal-El, who was an infant when the planet blew up? So are we reverting to the classic origin where Argo City survived on an intact chunk of Krypton?
That would seem to be the implication.

It’s definitely a “cleaner” version of the origin for a general audience than the complications introduced in later reboots. Kara looks and acts younger than Clark because she is. Boom.
My other question is, in that final scene where we saw that Perry and Jimmy totally know that Lois and Superman are hooking up, does that mean they totally also know that Superman is Clark?
That was not my assumption.
Unless the hypno-glasses are really a thing, but we only have Guy Gardner's word for that, and, well, he's Guy Gardner.
The dialogue seems to suggest that Lois and Terrific both know about the hypno-glasses, too.
 
It’s definitely a “cleaner” version of the origin for a general audience than the complications introduced in later reboots. Kara looks and acts younger than Clark because she is. Boom.

She didn't really strike me as younger, just drunker. I'd assumed that was because she had more memory of the home she'd lost and was trying to dull the pain, but I guess not.

Let's see... Alcock would've been 23-24 when the movie was filmed, and the opening captions said Clark is 30, which was also Corenswet's age at the time. So they're not that far apart.

That was not my assumption.

Not an assumption, just a possibility. It could go either way, but it's hard to see how they could've seen through one secret but not the other, given how closely they work with Lois & Clark on a daily basis.

On the one hand, I kind of love the idea that Clark's colleagues have known all along but just humor him about the secret, but on the other hand, it's hard to believe Perry would be comfortable with the ethics of Clark reporting on his own exploits.

The dialogue seems to suggest that Lois and Terrific both know about the hypno-glasses, too.

Or simply that they don't think it's worth the effort to refute it. Lois is more concerned about Guy's carelessness about Clark's identity, on top of her greater concern about finding him, and Terrific might just be tired of arguing with Guy about it. As with the above, there's room for more than one interpretation.
 
I'd assumed that was because she had more memory of the home she'd lost and was trying to dull the pain, but I guess not.
There’s still plenty of room for pain, even if she was born on Argo. The source graphic novel for the movie lays it out in excruciating detail (though it also includes the loss of Krypton, just to pile on the poor girl).
 
My other question is, in that final scene where we saw that Perry and Jimmy totally know that Lois and Superman are hooking up, does that mean they totally also know that Superman is Clark? Hard to see how they'd catch onto one without the other, since they've probably seen Lois interacting with him in his Clark persona more often than in his Superman persona. Unless the hypno-glasses are really a thing, but we only have Guy Gardner's word for that, and, well, he's Guy Gardner.

I think the hypnoglasses are supposed to be real in-universe. From the scenes we got of Lois and Clark, it seems like they are having a secret office romance and nobody knows the two reporters are an item. To make it work going forward--Superman and Lois will have to have a public break up before Lois and Clark can become a couple.
 
The specific comic next years movie is based on Supergirl : Woman of Tomorrow has flashbacks to her on Argo City in space. It’s a major part of her character and motivations in that. Kara and her father on Argo when everyone is slowly dying around them from Kryptonite poisoning. If my memory is correct as the flashbacks start her mother has already died.

I am glad they are going back to this because all other revisions are very contrived. We do not know in these movies how long she has been on Earth since escaping Argo. But at her age it would still be fresh memories. Which explains her reckless behavior as trying to deal with the trauma. Clark has none of those memories.
 
I think the hypnoglasses are supposed to be real in-universe. From the scenes we got of Lois and Clark, it seems like they are having a secret office romance and nobody knows the two reporters are an item.

Unless they were just pretending not to know, like they were pretending not to know Lois and Superman were an item. There are a lot of scenes in this movie that should tell us not to take what we see at face value (like Eve seeming to be shallow and selfie-obsessed while she was cleverly spying on Lex right under his nose, or the twist about Jor-El & Lara's message, or the reveal of Krypto's owner). I mean, Lois and Clark were bickering so pointedly there that I think many observers could've easily guessed they were covering for being an item.

As for the glasses, I don't think they're necessary in-universe, since Corenswet's change of hairstyle really makes Clark look different. The resemblance he fails to hide is in his voice. Hardly any later Superman actors have ever managed to differentiate their Clark and Superman voices as well as Bud Collyer did. Beau Weaver did a similar "octave higher as Clark" thing in the 1988 animated series, but his Clark sounded like a deep-voiced man faking a higher pitch, while Collyer was fully convincing in both ranges. Christopher Reeve didn't modulate his pitch much, but he distinguished the personalities quite well. Superboy's John Haymes Newton did a good job differentiating the voices, but his Clark was awkward and never felt like a real person. Gerard Christopher went the Reeve route and didn't change the voice much, but did quite well playing the characters differently. But Corenswet's resonant baritone is as far from the average vocal range as Dean Cain's reedy tenor was in the other direction, so it's just as hard to believe that anyone hearing both voices would have any trouble recognizing they were the same. (Although Cain did at least adopt a more formal, measured delivery as Superman and a more natural, relaxed one as Clark, not unlike Adam West's Batman vs. Bruce.)
 
Guy "...They make his face look different in your brain when he wears them so that you don't know who he is."

Lois "Yes I know this, first of all. But second of all you really shouldn't be telling me this..."

Okay, then. Well, I'd rather they hadn't revived an idea so dumb that the comics abandoned it almost immediately.
 
Dean Cain's reedy tenor
I think this was one among several reasons I never found Cain very convincing in the guise of Superman (though I thought he was a great Clark). Though to be fair, Christopher Reeve’s voice was not particularly deep either.
Okay, then. Well, I'd rather they hadn't revived an idea so dumb that the comics abandoned it almost immediately.
I did not like the idea of referencing it in the movie when I first heard about it — it seems to me ploddingly literal-minded to think the glasses trope needs to be “explained” — but the way that Gunn used it, basically as a throwaway gag, worked just fine for me.

In fact, Gunn managed to overcome pretty much any doubts I carried about his choices going in. I think the movie was a triumph.
 
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