Superman (2025) Review

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What’s up Basement Dwellers, The Dace Man is back in the written form to bring you a new review, well, more so a thoughts and feelings piece on the DC Universe’s relaunch, under the leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. That’s right, my first review back and we’re talking about the 2025 blockbuster Superman!

I would like to preface this writing with the note that yours truly is not the biggest fan of the Superman character. When it comes to Superman, and to be fair usually Captain America on the Marvel side as well, I was never drawn to reading the run of comics associated with the character. Unless it was a special event such as Superman: Red Son, his appearances in Justice League comics or a brand team-up event my knowledge of Superman is not the greatest. The character never appealed to me as he came out the gate over powered with his greatest weakness being a rock. Characters that appeal to me are often flawed and have internal struggles to overcome that add to their intrigue, in Superman’s case he too often is the gold standard or ‘boy scout’ if you will and those characters often bore me.

Fast forward to this iteration of the character on the big screen and I think James Gunn knocked it out of the park. For starters Gunn approached this story from the point of time that Superman is established in the everyday life of Earth. I think it’s fair that even if you are not a huge comic book fan, you probably know Superman’s origin story by now, an over simplified back story is, he’s an alien that arrived as a baby from a planet that went boom. James got that out of the way real fast with a few blurbs at the beginning of the film. These blurbs cementing the fact that Superman has been operating and protecting the Earth for three years at this point is refreshing and frees up a good thirty to forty minutes of the film reimagining the origin that has been played out on screen multiple times over the past eighty plus years of the character. 

The other breath of fresh air with this movie is they made Superman more relatable. James Gunn has an incredible skill of making you care about characters, even ones that you may not necessarily be open to care about and/or know about. Think about it, Gunn’s roster so far for the DCU is primarily composed of characters who have not made a live-action debut prior to this movie. The Justice ‘Gang’ is comprised of Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl and the third Green Lantern, Guy Gardner. Being the head of the DCU creative, you have open access to the entire DC roster and the choice to bring in these lesser known characters and make them entertaining, important and not distracting to the plot was well orchestrated by Gunn. The only down note I had about his inclusion of characters/actors was that did we really need Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord? And to be honest I don’t care enough to let that ruin the movie.

Superman however was the biggest win for me when it comes to the character presentation. Like I had said earlier in this article the character never appealed to me and often I found him boring. This film made me enjoy the character. David Corenswet’s portrayal of the character mixed with the writing of James Gunn made this godly figure more human. Adding well timed humor with the true struggle of trying to do the right thing in a very complex situation. His frustrations were absolutely relatable especially given the social and political climate we live in today, where good intentions and the clear choice of right and wrong is not always easy. 

For those folks that are claiming Gunn’s take on Superman is too ‘woke’ cough Dean Cain cough, I’m calling straight up b.s. First of all, given the little I know about the characters, it feels pretty on par for the comic retelling. Superman was never supposed to be the symbol of America, you want that head over to Captain America and even he used to challenge the questionable calls of the government and the direction of America. Sure Superman is influenced by America and the vision of what  core American values should be but ultimately he’s a story of what the best of humanity can be. If you are complaining that it is too ‘woke’ you probably should be doing some self reflecting on your levels of empathy and maybe readjust your course. 

As for Lex and the conversation of immigration in the film, honestly I feel like the viewer is really making a stretch here. Let’s just look at the practical time line of the filming of this movie. Gunn finished writing this movie almost three years prior to its debut in theaters. This is well before the chaos and strictness we’ve seen on immigration in the United States we see today. The issue has really only hit its boiling point within the last year and a half, when it became a primary talking point of the 2024 election cycle and then amplified by policies in 2025. Gunn wrote this movie between 2021-2022. Lex, across all iterations of the character, has always hated the fact that Superman was not on this planet. It is even clarified by the third act of this film, he is primarily driven by his jealousy of Superman and his relationship with humanity, he even makes comments to the fact he is not a particular fan of anyone who is a metahuman. 

This is Lex by design. Lex’s intellect in a real world scenario without meta human’s would make him THE Superman, the best of the best when it comes to humanity, With Meta Humans and Superman in his world it knocks Lex to the middle of the pack because of his physical limitations, of which is his drive in most story arcs. Lex wants to be the best, and using his brains and whatever chess pieces he can move on the board he plans to achieve that. To claim the focal point of the movie is based around the immigration policies of today is just trying to apply fiction to justify real world intention. Really the viewer should enjoy Superman for what it was meant to be.

James Gunn’s Superman felt like a love letter to comic fans. The same way he took a rag tag group in Marvel and made them a household name, he gave life and energy into a comic publisher’s movie franchise that has not had many high points since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. He placed a profound number of easter eggs throughout the film, but in away that is not distracting at all to the casual viewer. You don’t need to know who Guy Gardner is to enjoy Guy Gardner, the same way with the addition of all the Kaiju’s and lower level villains that appear in the film. He brought enough to the table to appease hardcore comic fans while at the same time not excluding the casual viewer, a negative that has been slammed against Marvel since Avenger’s EndGame.

As a purveyor of trash talk against DC films for the last decade, this film made me excited for DC’s future. The crazy thing is, this film realistically did not tease an expanded DC Future, simply that an expanded universe does exist. If Superman ultimately was a one and done, even though we all know it is not given interviews and plans, the film stands on its own as a very good and solid film. The right balance of James Gunn humor, action and seriousness needed makes this a top tier comic book movie. There’s a reason the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is one of, if not the best in the MCU. With the return to our articles and reviews we here at Basement Protocol will be debuting a new ranking system we are debuting here on our website called ‘BPP Stairs’. The BPP Stairs rating is as follows: ‘0 Stairs’ meaning leave that garbage out of the basement and ignore its existence to ‘10 - Stairs’ meaning this glorious piece of media needs enshrined in the Basement for the Basement Dwellers to enjoy for generations to come.

The Dace Man gives James Gunn’s DCU introductory film Superman starring David Corenswet an 8 out of 10 stairs! Go out and see this movie in cinema’s where it needs to be experienced to enjoy all the action and humor of a strong foundation into a new cinematic universe!

As always, check back regularly to see what Chris "The Dace Man" Dace is looking at (and no, not just porn), as well as all of the other bloggers here at Basement Protocol. Remember, Basement Dwellers: leave your feedback! Until the next time, for the few, the proud, and, of course, the Dacetacular, grab a Celsius, The Dace Man stopped drinking since his last writing stint—and in this case your Hypno Glasses—and check out what's going on here in the Dace-Sphere at Basement Protocol. Until next time!