‘Superman’ is fun, but lacks an emotional core worthy of its hero

David Corenswet in “Superman” (Photo provided by Warner Bros.) Early on in James Gunn’s “Superman,” Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) sits down for an interview with Superman himself (David Corenswet). AKA, Clark Kent. Her boyfriend.  Lois and Clark have been dating for several weeks by this point, and she knows the truth about his Kryptonian origins and his super alter ego – a great choice from this reboot, which thankfully forgoes any sort of origin story for a superhero who has been around since 1938. Clark usually “interviews” Superman himself (a conflict of interest if I’ve ever heard one), but Lois has been angling for her own interview for quite some time, and he’s finally ready to give it to her.  Superman is a bit under the gun here. He just lost his first fight ever, and he’s in a bit of hot water with multiple governments because he stopped a U.S. ally, the country of Boravia, from invading the neighboring nation of Jarhanpur. This raises a question that comes up over and over in superhero movies: not a question of whether Superman was right or wrong, but rather of how unchecked his powers should be.  This discussion between Lois and Clark is written quite well, the extra layer of the pair’s romantic relationship adding tension and humor throughout. It also gives Corenswet a chance to really flex his moral center and an “aw shucks” brand of earnestness, which slots perfectly into who we all know Superman to be. He may be Krypton-born, but he is Kansas-bred, through and through.  This is the core tension at the heart of Gunn’s “Superman,” and probably its best selling point – a man stuck between two worlds, going up against a villain (Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor) who firmly believes that he should go back to his own planet. Superman has always been an allegory for the immigrant experience, and Gunn has been more than open about the fact that this version is no different (and if you were confused, the way Luthor spits out the word “alien” should clear things up). But, as sincere and entertaining as “Superman” is, it tends to shoot for platitudes and allegory over character, lacking an emotional core worthy of its hero.  We meet Superman three years after he’s taken up the mantle, and just three minutes after he loses his first battle against a villain called the Hammer of Boravia, a mechanized terrorist controlled by none other than Lex Luthor himself. From this inciting event, Lex’s hatred of Superman leads to the discovery that Superman’s parents didn’t send him to Earth to be its savior, as he once believed. Instead, they sent him to pillage and conquer. The movie, then, becomes about Superman’s reconciliation with who he believes himself to be and where he came from.  One of the largest problems with superhero films today, at least in my estimation, is that they rely too much on what has come before. It’s not a task I envy – for the heavy hitters (the Batmans, Supermans, Spider-Mans of the world), the general populace is not only overly familiar with the beats of the plot, but the beats of the emotional arc as well.  The decision to not make “Superman” an origin story was a good one, but the movie suffers from an overreliance on the idea that the audience intrinsically understands the emotional journey this character will go on, and so the filmmakers think they don’t have to waste time showing us that journey. One of the movie’s key emotional moments takes place between Clark and his father, Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince). But up until this point, the movie has given us no reason to believe that Jonathan would be the person best able to break through to Clark – it just assumes that the audience will accept this based on our prior knowledge of the Superman story.  That’s not strong emotional storytelling. It’s a shortcut – a shortcut that the film takes in plenty other instances, most notably with Lex Luthor. Luthor is motivated by his jealousy of Superman, and while that can be a strong driver, it’s the only thing that defines their relationship whatsoever. Without other ties between the two, that envy rings hollow, and Luthor comes across as little more than an annoyance. Perhaps this is on purpose – Superman makes a quip about Lex’s strange obsessed with him, and it’s hard to deny that seeing him get punched in the face is pretty satisfying. But, for as much as Hoult tries to give the character inner life, there is next to nothing to work with. Gunn relies on humor more so than he does on sentiment, and the movie is funny (Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) steals the latter half of the film, and the whole premise of Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) – a superhero who screeches like a hawk while hitting bad guys with a mace – is pretty incredible stuff). Sometimes, that humor works well in tension with Superman’s innate goodness. There’s a wonderful moment where, after Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and the Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) defeat a giant dinosaur-like creature, Superman laments the fact that they couldn’t have taken it to an intergalactic zoo.  But despite the movie’s most sincere efforts, the humor can also get in the way of that goodness, sometimes to cruel effect. In perhaps the film’s lowest moment, Lex uses a falafel vendor named Mali (Dinesh Thyagarajan) as leverage against Superman. We meet Mali before this moment, but he is characterized as little more than a Superman groupie (in general, the masses of Metropolis seem unable to think for themselves). Mali begs Superman to let him sacrifice himself, saying he has no family, no friends – no life, essentially, outside of worshipping Superman. The movie insists on humanizing Superman, but it has little to zero interest in humanizing any of the people he works so hard to save.  The post ‘Superman’ is fun, but lacks an emotional core worthy of its hero appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.