Here is a film occupying the heartsinking Venn diagram overlap between franchise exhaustion and AI soullessness: a film fatally unconvinced of the reason for its own existence. We’d all hoped that writer-director James Gunn, who was in charge of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie series, might put some wind back beneath Superman’s wings – or in his cape, or under his boots, or at any rate somewhere near his costumed person. The Man of Steel needed a fresh start after his self-cancelling contest in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, and getting muddled together with a lot of other utility superheroes in Justice League a year later – though I will admit to enjoying the pure hubristic craziness of the lengthy Zack Snyder cut of that movie when it saw the light of day.
But this? If it was to be a reboot then really we needed to get back to basics, and be reminded why we liked superheroes in the first place – and I do – and remember why they were exciting and escapist and fun. We needed the clarity and simplicity of something like the origin myth of the infant Superman arriving here from his doomed planet, like Moses, destined to put heart back into an America hit by the Great Depression, hokey though all that may be.
