Superman

 "Let's try something different" we said. "It might be fun." And this was certainly different to anything I've been to see for, well, maybe decades. As for the fun... it turns out there was a good reason why I hadn't revisited superheroes for so long.

I grew up as a kid aware of Superman, and something of his story. I enjoyed all the Christopher Reeve film versions of the character. So what could possibly go wrong? As long as the cast and director recognised the inherent silliness of the concept, it should provide that fun we were looking for.

This 2025 version casts David Corenswet as the Man of Steel. He's got the looks, he acts well, and displays a vulnerability and a soft side to the character that this storyline tries to show. But there is something missing.

The plot, such as it is, has Superman being the good guy, everybody's hero, then the bad guy, framed by the evil Lex Luthor, and then, of course, the good guy at the end. He gets beaten at times, but ultimately wins. He works with other superheroes to defeat the baddies. He has his romance with Lois Lane, and a bit of father and son bonding. All within a framework of an evil billionaire influencing the US government (complete fantasy of course...?), a war between a big tech state and one that appears to only have farm implements to defend themselves with (complete fantasy of course...?), and something called a 'pocket universe' in some different dimension. Or something like that. It was all so daft and so messy that I found myself not really caring.

The Reeve versions were probably just as daft. But they had 2 huge advantages. There was no CGI back then. And they had Christopher Reeve. Whereas now we have something that looks like a bunch of nerdy kids have been given every CGI tool of their dreams, and told to go wild. Plot? Don't bother. So the hugely overlong fight sequences seemed utterly confusing - or maybe I really couldn't be bothered by then. Good cinema is about storytelling. If you want to understand how CGI can be a filmmaking boon, then see Life of Pi.

And then there was Reeve. As with the likes of Harrison Ford and Roger Moore, he had that ability to play these daft action hero roles straight, whilst also showing that he didn't take it all that seriously, that he recognised the inherent puerility of the character's concept. Corenswet is good, and manages some comedy, but he lacks that indefinable talent which is essential to avoiding these kind of roles looking ridiculous to all but the most ardent of fans.

It wasn't all bad. The dog was fun. And the best line was "So is Gary". But I'm grasping at straws. This was an experiment I don't see myself every repeating again.