David Corenswet takes over the cape under James Gunn. Cast, what the film does differently, and why it had to work for DC's whole plan.
DC has spent a decade trying to build a film universe and repeatedly starting over. Superman is the reset that had to land — and James Gunn directing it was the boldest part of the plan.
Here's the cast, what the film does differently, and why the stakes were higher than one movie.
The official synopsis is deliberately small in scope: Superman, a journalist in Metropolis, embarks on a journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent.
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Note what's absent — no origin story, no destruction of Krypton, no world-ending threat in the logline. It starts with him already established and asks an identity question instead.
That's a meaningful choice. Every recent attempt at the character has opened with the same origin beats audiences already know. Skipping them buys the film time to actually be about something.
⭐ IMDb: 7.0 · Director: James Gunn · Studio: DC Studios
Rachel Brosnahan as Lois is the casting that signals the tone. She built her reputation on fast, verbal, comic performances — which is what Lois Lane actually is on the page and almost never is on screen. Recent versions have written her as a serious journalist in a serious film, losing the screwball energy the character came from.
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Nicholas Hoult's Lex is the other tell. Hoult plays intelligent menace without theatrics, which suits a Luthor whose threat is that he is simply smarter than everyone and knows it.
Casting a relative unknown in Corenswet was the right instinct too. Superman works better when the actor isn't carrying baggage from other roles.
Gunn made his name on Guardians of the Galaxy — irreverent, needle-drop-heavy, emotionally sincere underneath the jokes. On paper that is the opposite of Superman.
But the fit is better than it looks. Gunn's actual specialism is making sincerity land without embarrassment, which is the exact problem Superman has posed for modern filmmakers.
The character is fundamentally earnest — a genuinely good person who chooses to help. Recent attempts treated that earnestness as a problem to be solved, adding grimness and moral doubt to make him feel contemporary. It didn't work, because the thing being sanded off was the whole appeal.
Gunn's films are unembarrassed about emotion. That's the qualification that matters here, not tone.
Gunn is also co-head of DC Studios, which makes this an unusual situation — the director of the relaunch film is also the executive who greenlit it.
DC's problem has never been the characters. It has been strategy: films made in different tones by different regimes, continuity announced then abandoned, and a habit of chasing whatever Marvel did two years earlier.
Superman was the first film of a stated long-term plan. If it had failed, the plan would likely have been abandoned like the ones before it — which is why the reception mattered well beyond one weekend's box office.
It's a genuinely different bet from the MCU's, too. Where Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday is built on a decade of accumulated continuity and multiverse mechanics, DC is starting clean and asking audiences to care about one character first.
For the year's other major releases, see our The Batman Part II breakdown — a completely separate DC continuity — plus Dune: Part Three and Wicked: For Good.
Did this Superman work for you? Let us know in the comments.
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