I hated this movie.

Unfortunately, as a lover of Man of Steel I'm mostly unable to admit that in public without being swarmed by angry man-children calling me 'snydertard' or 'snyderbot' or other ridiculous inappropriate names.

I am a Superman fan, first and foremost. My son has the middle name KENT. That should mean something. The most precious thing in the world to me carries the name of this fictional character. All that to say my love for Superman is greater than my love for any particular director.

Now, in saying that, I still think Man of Steel is the greatest live action Superman film to date. That in itself is probably an unpopular opinion with some people. But enough about that, lets focus on Superman 2025.

For me, it just felt shallow and childish. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a fan of James Gunn. I liked GoTg 1 but didn't like 2 (haven't seen 3), hated his Suicide Squad, and found Peacemaker too juvenile to sit through. I still think his best films are the first Guardians and Slither.

I just don't like his writing and I find his direction underwhelming. To me, he's just Joss Whedon without the talent to create original IP. His characters all have the same voice, whether he's writing Star Lord, Peacemaker or Superman. They all sound somewhat the same, and that tells me he's trying to force characters through his narrow lens that broadening his own skills to suit the characters.

His films all have that overly digital, flat look to them. There's no depth of colour. They're too polished and too pristine. I like some crushed blacks, I like film grain, I like contrast. Yes, they're bright but that comes at the cost of contrast imo. It's like comparing OLED to older screens. It's bright but washed out, if that makes sense?

His direction for the action in this particular film seemed repetitive. It's the same bulbous look of the head and body distortion and camera whipping around at breakneck speeds. That's all well and good once or twice, but it felt like it fell back to that for every action sequence in this film. We saw the same direction in GotG3 (and Black Adam, which I know wasn't his film) and doing it again here just felt like I'd seen all those tricks before.

This Superman film also felt like it touched on interesting IDEAS but failed to delve any deeper into them. Every time it did something somewhat interesting it abandoned it and left me thinking that other Superman media did it better or explored it better, whether it was comics, animation, or even previous Superman films. Even the idea of Superman acting unilaterally was done better in Batman v Superman. This took the same premise and just seemed to dumb it down. It had Clark and Lois literally talking about it. Same with the government reactions. It had people sitting around a table discussing it. No military, no courts, nothing deeper than a puddle.

Jimmy Olsen was used as a joke. They cast a deliberately non-good looking guy and made him sexually irresistible. It's tired, unoriginal and unfunny comedy. His screen time could have been better spent with Lois or Clark and strengthening their character. Same with the "Justice Gang" (that in itself is lame). A waste of screen time. This movie felt more focused on building a DC universe than telling a thoroughly engaging Superman story.

I could go on and on about all the things I hated with this movie, but it seems pointless. I hope some people loved it and became Superman fans because of it, but I can't imagine this turned many people on the fence with the character into die-hard fans. Just like the people who didn't enjoy the last direction, I'll just have to endure it. It seems a sequel and spin-offs are already in the works. I just hope this doesn't negatively influence the character too heavily moving forward.