"Superman" Gets Hurt, Tortured, Imprisoned, and So Will You

To sum this movie up: "Metahuman Defeats a Thing"

I used to have quite the imagination back in my bedroom, circa 1986, with my toys. I envisioned interplanetary wars with my Go-bots, Transformers, MASK, and Star-Wars action-figure armies.

I gave all that up about 1990.

Little did I know that the entire American movie industry would predicate itself on that almost twenty years later, children playing with toys, blowing stuff up, having fun with fantasy destruction.

That’s how the first Avengers movie struck me, that’s how all of the third acts of these superhero movies go, if not their second acts as well, and that’s how this “Superman” movie goes.

Almost all of this juvenile feature depicts a Superman chased, hunted, hurt, tortured, imprisoned, wrecked physically and emotionally, as he runs away from Lex Luthor, the Wile E. Coyote of this movie. Replace “Acme” with “Luthocorp” and you’ll see the parallels.

That sounds like the movie will be about human suffering, but it’s not like “The Dark Knight Rises,” which is faux-Homeric at its best.

This 2025 Superman’s about a hero’s pain and suffering *while* the director and the DC studio play with their toys on screen.

In this Superman reboot, the “Man of Steel” — which he is never called here — already has established himself as an arbiter of Earth-justice.

He, and other DC superheroes who appear in the film, are saving the day time and again — from, among other things, floating interdimensional octopi imps. (One of the only Superman/Lois Lane scenes has them making up romantically while said interdimensional imp battles other DC figures in the background nightime skyline.)

Beginning in medias res, “Superman” opens with Superman losing a battle, then hospitalized in the arctic lair crafted by his dead Kryptonian parents. His robots attend him. His dog, depicted with kitschy CGI, knocks him down while greeting him — one of the movie’s never-ending running gags.

Yep, all forty pounds of SuperPooch exceeds Superman in strength.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent gets the scoop on Superman at his Daily-Planet job, with a front-page story. Lois Lane, who is not suspicious, has already fallen for Superman.

Lex Luthor is after Superman, because he wants — follow along please — the DC-universe country of Moravia to invade Jaranduphar, so that he can create a tech utopia in a desert wasteland. For reasons that remain a bit vague, Superman’s in his way, even though we see the Blue-Caped Metahuman spend most of his time fighting giant dragon-things and arguing with Lois about his politics.

I almost have no time for the plot, because thirty minutes in, it becomes clear that everything sets up for one after another setpiece in which big giant CGI things attack other CGI things.

Early in the movie, a TV-news chiron declares that “Metahuman Defeats a Thing,” meaning a giant dragon-monster. That chiron sums all up.

To prove that, I wrote this down in my notes during Act 2. Please try to follow this, although I understand if you cannot. I barely can.

Superman battles mechanized prison guards to save a weird alien baby while floating down an antiproton river in a pocket universe to help a metamorph squiggly man.

Those are descriptions taken entirely from the movie, including “pocket universe” and “squiggly man,” terms straight out of my 1986 bedroom battles with my toys.

Meanwhile, this movie lacks linguistic artfulness, character development, and villain motivation. I pick on the latter because Nicholas Hoult, in my strong view, is miscast as Lex Luthor. He’s not menacing; in fact, he’s just punchable. Any man who looks as if he could be harassed and made to cry is not fit for such a role. My apologies to Mr. Hoult, who is presumably enjoy his bank account. He can play Billy Corgan in a future Smashing-Pumpkins biopic.

Luthor can not only create entire universes with his amazingly advanced tech, he can clone Superman.

This might be straight out the DC Comics for all I know. If it is, any thinking adult should notice how that straight-up signals that the movie is not intended for them.

“You mean a guy can make as many Supermans as he wants, but cannot defeat Superman, and he can create any universe he wants, but he’s obsessing over Superman and a piece of remote desert land?”

Yes, that’s what James Gunn and his crack team want you to suspend your disbelief over.

To sum up, we have giant dragon-things, interdimensional floating octopi imps, Mr. Terrific and his spheroid bots, Ultraman, a flying Engineer and her black nanotech, a metamorph squiggly man, an alien baby, the Green Lantern, Lex Luthor’s pocket universe, an antiproton river, Superman’s robots, and his Superdog.

That would make for a great set of toys for a little kid to play with.

Again, I stopped playing with my toys in 1990.