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StitcherBrick Crisis Network Presents: The Monitor Tapes at the Movies: Superman
Brick Crisis Network Presents: The Monitor Tapes at the Movies: Superman
Join DC Dave, Doug Adamson, Captain Entropy and Rob Kelly as they review James Gunn’s 2025 film, Superman
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The whole movie felt like a sequel, and I mean that in the best way possible. Get in, tell the story, don’t explain everything because you trust the audience to know a bit about what’s going on.
I recall one of the most famous screenwriter/directors always said when you write a scene you want to arrive at the middle of the conversation and leave before the end. I want say that it was Robert Altman but probably lots of people have something similar.
So while yeah it’s comic booky its also good script writing rules. But giving it a sequel feeling is a great way to describe it! Brilliant idea thank you!
Hey Dave and Doug,
A wonderful, timely and positive discussion! I found myself nodding along and agreeing with most of what was said. Plus I’m terribly jealous of your movie-going experience! Renting a theater… WOW!!! One thing I cannot say enough… I feel Nicholas Hoult is the best live action Lex Luthor we’ve ever seen! He was like the post-Crisis Luthor stepped right off the page! Again, great episode and thanks for the timely episode that was not about something 40 years ago! Bwah-ha-ha!
Keep up the great work and can’t wait for additional episodes!
Hey, can I come to the end of screening of the sequel in Scotland, if it happens – mind, if it’s a public show I fear any of you lovely Americans there will think the cinema is full of deaf-mutes… British audiences are very different to most American film viewers.
Rob, do get the Matt Fraction/Steve Lieber Jimmy Olsen collection, I think you will like it a lot.
In response to something someone said at some point, I’m not sure all this comic readers DO think Mr Terrific is great, he never seemed to live up to his reputation, being more Mr Braggart than Terrific, but in this film he was just excellent.
I absolutely hated the presentation of Supergirl as a regular drunk; I’m no fan of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but at least writer Tom King’s first issue justified Supergirl wanting to get rat-arsed because she was having a fit of mopiness, her many friends and family members having decided to ignore her birthday, as you do. The one bit of hope the scene gives me is that if Kara IS starting out as a mess, her character arc in the upcoming film is likely to be a more positive one.
Oh, and the wonderful Krypto is NOT Supergirl’s dog!
I just recently discovered your podcast, so I’m coming to this a year late (I’ll comment on the Crisis episodes (which I’m really enjoying) on another post).
Not a huge fan of this film. I thought it was…fine. Mostly forgettable.
My biggest issue with the movie is how poorly written it was. James Gunn is just not a good screenwriter. Too much (mediocre) dialogue, not enough visual storytelling. Almost every scene was clunky exposition. Movies are a visual medium. Show, don’t tell. The entire time I’m watching that (inexplicably) much lauded conversation scene between Lois and Clark in Lois’ apartment in which they’re describing things that happened off screen, I kept thinking, “Why are you describing all of this stuff that happened off screen? Why are you not showing us these events happening in real time?” The entire movie was like that for me. At the end of the movie when he gives his “I’m human like everyone else speech,” why is he telling us this? We should have been able to get that from the character’s actions throughout the story. So if you have to have your lead character literally spell out the theme of the movie in a speech, then I think you’ve failed as a storyteller (again: show, don’t tell).
I also don’t think that James Gunn is a very good visual stylist. His design aesthetic is very literalist. When I watch one of these movies, I want to see the material refracted through the lens of the director’s imagination. With James Gunn’s movies, everything feels like it was lifted directly from the source material. Which, you know, fine. But I can see that in the comics. Give me a compelling reason to want to go to the theater. Show me another angle on this material that is unique unto itself.
And maybe I’m in the minority on this, but I do not find Gunn to be funny at all. I can tell that he’s trying to be funny, but every time a character makes a joke, I just sit there cringing. Humor is about the unexpected. Punchlines should puncture the audience’s expectations. But with Gunn’s attempts at humor, I see the punchlines coming from a mile away. And for someone who makes comedies, that’s kind of an important component to not be very good at.
All that said, despite my criticisms, I didn’t hate the movie (like I did his Guardians movies and (especially his Suicide Squad movie)). But I didn’t love it either. Frankly, it felt like the 2025 version of Superman III–mediocre to the core. When I go to a super-hero movie, I want it to feel like a prestige, Absolute Edition, graphic novel experience. This film felt like issue 42 of an ongoing series that was on its third creative team.
Since I’m writing this a year after you recorded this, I have since seen the Supergirl movie, the semi-sequel to Superman 2025. And despite the vitriol directed at that film, I actually liked Supergirl 2026 more than Superman 2025. It wasn’t a great movie, but it felt like a more cohesive narrative to me. It felt more focused. It felt more cinematic. It felt like the character had an actual arc (unlike the Superman character in the 2025 movie who was a good, earnest guy at the beginning of that movie, and who was a good, earnest guy at the end of the movie). I also liked how Supergirl 2026 showed the Superman origin in a non-traditional way from Kara’s perspective. I know you guys are dismissive of origin stories in these movies, but when the origin is integrated into the narrative itself (like with Man of Steel), it adds resonance to the story (unlike, say, Superman 1978 where the first 45 minutes of that film felt like it was from a completely different movie than the last 90 minutes of the story proper). Tying Superman’s origin (e.g., the destruction of Krypton) to Supergirl 2026’s underlying themes of loss gave it a resonance that it likely would not have had if they had included it in Superman 2025.
You guys don’t seem like you’re fans of the Zack Snyder DC movies (which is fine–different strokes for different folks), but his Justice League trilogy (MoS, BvS, and ZSJL) is my preferred interpretation of this material. As a post-Crisis Gen-Xer, I feel that his JL trilogy feels most reflective of the deconstructed approach that the comics (not just Superman comics specifically, but all post-Crisis DC comics in general) took from roughly 1986 to 1990-ish (my prime reading years). Not that that is the only way to present these characters. As I said, I mostly like the Supergirl 2026 movie, which is 180-degrees different from Snyder’s interpretation of the DC material. And I love the two Tim Burton Batman movies. I even really like the much maligned Superman Returns. So I’m open to different ways of interpreting this material. But Superman 2025, while not bad, just mostly left me cold.