Superman | Trailer Brakedown

Look Up, idiot

I care way too much about commercials. I talk about them a lot, and sometimes, I write about them. This is one of those times [Law & Order CHUNK CHUNK]

I have no jokes. I am so thrilled for this. There’s no way it can be as good as I’m starting to hope it will be, based on this trailer.

I’m way too cynical and snobbish to be moved by a movie trailer — except this one.

For background, the first uncomfortable conversation I can recall having to have in my life is my best friend Ben’s mom, Mrs. K., having to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn’t allowed to come over to their house anymore unless I stopped wearing superhero pajamas (especially Superman and Spider-Man).

Because that was all I wore. I had to literally change my whole lifestyle after that (was I homeschooled? How’d you guess?).

So I’m no Superman expert (and if I ever am or claim to be, please get me help), but it’s one of those rare properties — maybe the sole, rarest property — that moves me on sight. If you think I didn’t love Man of Steel’s trailer, you couldn’t be more wrong, m8. Ultimately, had very mixed feelings about the film, but it takes no more than the symbol and some regal, muted horns to get my eyes misty. Or in this case, Corenswet.

I’m not exactly objective or unbiased when it comes to Superman trailers. That said — holy shit, this hit nearly every note for me I would have wanted it to, I was crying almost immediately, the film seems to have the same ideas as I do about what makes this a resonant character and intellectual property, and I can’t think of one way I’d improve on the trailer or what I know of the film, and I’m just breathlessly waiting till juuuuust before my birthday (July 11) when the movie drops.

Let’s talk about the trailer

The Fortress of Solitude is typically depicted as being in the Arctic, which may be where this trailer opens. No Fortress, but we do see Superman plummet to Earth and probably ingest several (super)mouthfuls of snow.

Big explosion as the Big Blue Boy Scout barrels to the snowy ground, and lies in the famous Yamcha pose, surely a deliberate and cheeky, little James Gunn reference. I mean, it certainly didn’t happen by accident.

The ‘wheezing’ referenced by the closed captioning is from the opening scene, with Superman lying injured and bloody in the snow. But it’s funny to imagine it also applies to the bustling Metropolis city-street scenes. He’s Superman, but he’s asthmatic or has some sort of Kryptonian respiratory illness, so he’s just wheezing everywhere he goes. Not the case, though.

Since it’s inevitable that any Superman will be compared to Donner’s Superman: The Movie (1978) — at least until something definitively eclipses it in both quality and general public awareness — one question that will be fairly asked is: does the movie get both Superman and Clark Kent right?

Because Christopher Reeve nails not just being Superman or Clark Kent, but also how the singular character we’re watching transitions or switches between those two identities. They need to be distinct, and there needs to be some character reason or narrative reason or thrust behind why the (Kryptonian) man we’re watching invests himself into these personas.

It’s somewhat pat to say that Batman is really Batman, and Bruce Wayne is the mask he wears, but that’s kind of edgy and asinine. He didn’t grow up as Batman, did he? Bruce Wayne is the name his mother gave him, and one he shares with his father, as well. It is probably true in most versions that Bruce feels freer to be his vengeful, violent, adolescent, grieving self in the costume of Batman than as billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, but he’s both guys.

So the natural question is: why does Superman need Clark Kent, or more accurately, need to be Clark Kent? And keep in mind, Clark Kent (like Bruce Wayne) is how he grew up and Kent is the name he shares with his parents, one of whom is probably gone. They’re not so different, he and he…

In the above images, we see Clark navigating the Metropolis city streets on his way to The Daily Planet. He is a little bumbling, very concerned with getting in anyone’s way, and he flips a little hello to the guard at the revolving door, whom he probably knows.

He would. That’s very Superman, isn’t it?

There’s some details in this freeze-frame; whether they’re interesting or not, I’ll leave for you to decide. The Daily Planet is located at 44 Concord St. in Metropolis (which I’ve always taken as a stand-in for Kansas City or maybe Chicago; a decidedly midwestern city, not a coastal one). The font is chef’s kiss and Gunn seems to have nailed the retro look, unlike alleged-sex-criminal Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns [Boringly], which looked more like Sky Captain v Superman: Dawn of Sepia, amirite?

Another detail is the paper the guard is reading (presumably The Daily Planet), the headline and photo of which make reference to the ‘Boravian Hammer’ (Boravia being one of the dumb, vague, fictitious, ‘over-there’ countries DC has employed throughout the years so as to avoid doing research or offending whole nations of people). We’ll see more of Boravia later in the trailer, so that location will play a presumably significant role in the narrative, not that it matters which made-up country Superman is fighting things in.

The Boravian Hammer (upon a VERY cursory Googling) seems to have no direct comic counterpart, so that character or monster will probably be at best loosely tied to the comics, which by the way, I’m totally fine with. Slavish devotion to the source material serves no one.

Source material, which is beloved — by the by — but not, like, an absolute home run every time off the press, either; suffice it to say, some changes probably need to be made to a story produced by ten people when it’s turned into a story produced by hundreds of people, and that’s fine. Gunn has a proven track record of good storytelling and getting his characters through and through, so he has every ounce of benefit of the doubt from me right now.

Doesn’t look good for our plucky hero. A common criticism of the most modern incarnations of Superman is that he’s functionally invincible. That’s definitely not the case here. Someone has absolutely whooped the shit out of Supes, and that means we get to see what he’s willing to risk and why he’s willing to. Does he bleed? Certainly.

The music took center stage in this trailer, literally, as there’s several instances where there is nothing but black screen and the soaring, triumphant score. It sounds to be a modified, updated take on the classic John Williams theme, and it also seems to have flawlessly navigated the tightrope of calling back nostalgically and forging ahead. The whole trailer is tonally pitch-perfect, and the music is a big part of that.

I love fonts; sue me. This one mirrors the score, by presenting the cards in a familiar, recognizable style, but updated for the postmodern age. I’d love to have some snarky, glib things to say, but every frame of this thing gets me more excited to see the finished product, and more certain it’s in good hands and will be emotionally and narratively compellerkith.

Ooh, I love that wide shot of the Daily Planet newsroom. I used to work at a newspaper, and I love a good newsroom. Spotlight, the televisual program Newsroom, Broadcast News… it’s all like crack for me. And look how intrepid Lois Lane looks with that mug, reading a newspaper above the fold with her other hand. She’s dogged, she’s enterprising and she can’t spell either of those other things she is. That much I know for sure.

Keep in mind, this is who Superman chooses to be. All due respect to Visionary Director Zack Snyder, but I always wondered why THAT guy would bother being Clark Kent at all. I don’t think he would. I’m eager to see what kind of energy and personality Corenswet imbues mild-mannered, bumbling Clark Kent with. I just get the vibe already that it’s good and worthwhile, and we won’t have to wonder why Superman spends so much of his time being this guy.

This, I found quite interesting. DC’s flagship property and studio-head touted for his films in the Marvel canon. It’s a weird cost/benefit analysis from a marketing standpoint, but ultimately, those are his best credentials for being at the helm of this project, they’re beloved and what do you really lose by acknowledging those are great genre films by including them in Gunn’s bona fides?

Smallville Clark Kent is somewhere in between Metropolis Clark Kent and World-Famous Icon Superman. This scene probably takes place in flashback or earlier in the narrative, so Corenswet is playing a literally younger Superman here I bet, but Smallville typically serves as a safe place for Clark and a place where he can be himself, both Clark and Superman (at least when he’s on the Kent farm, where cows seem to adorably just wander loose near the house).

My number-one-with-a-bullet gripe with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was its depiction of Pa Kent, played by Kevin Costner. I think he could have been a totally-fine Jonathan Kent, but he was written so bizarrely, giving such odd, baffling advice to Superman (like suggesting yeah, maybe you let a bus full of kids die even though you could save them, because what do you owe them, really?) that I laughed aloud and in disbelief at a couple of points, and when he pointlessly sacrificed himself to a tornado in order to not-save a dog, I thought, ‘good.’

I think this actor (Pruitt Taylor Vince, whom I mostly know from confusing him for Vincent D’Onofrio) doesn’t look at all how I picture Pa Kent, but it took me less than two seconds to get past that, and I’m excited to see Clark Kent get sage, fatherly advice from someone who maybe isn’t as okay with mass child death. I believe we’ll get that.

It occurs to me in the moment that it makes sense narratively that Superman would be kind of an edgy prick since Pa Kent was kind of an edgy, prick and idiot in the film. But I’m doing head-canon gymnastics to make that work somehow, and it definitively does not work for me. I predict this father-son relationship will work for me when I see it onscreen.

Get hyped. What’s Superman whistling for?? What, is he calling for his dog? And what the hell is that huge snowspray headed towards us at supersonic speed?

Don’t discount the importance of this card. We’re essentially being told to forget all the stuff that came before, especially the part about Batman and Superman trying to kill each other, but stopping when they discovered their mothers had the same name. That’s some old shit. NOW it BEGINS.

D’awwwwww, Krypto seems to be fully-CGI, but as with your Babies Yoda or your Hellos Kitty, I lost my fucking mind when Krypto came bounding up with his tongue out and started licking Superman’s face. GOOD BOY, KRYPTO, YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD BOY!

This isn’t just a casual turn of phrase. Superman has a home, and it’s here. He’s one of us, because he chose to be. Sound familiar? Jesus much, anyone? Also — speaking of which — God help me, because I’m going to buy so much Krypto merch, I can already tell. GOOD BOY!

Iconic. Immediately iconic.

Hell yes — the orchestra hits its stride as Superman lunges in to save a little girl who is obliviously ambling through the path of a gigantic monster (headphones, I presume). It’s immediately iconic, and could not be more true to who I feel Superman is or should be. He’s going to stop the monster, obviously, but that comes after protecting this defenseless little girl, because it wouldn’t be a victory for him if he didn’t also save her.

I think maybe James Gunn gets Superman, guys…

First look at Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. I have no strong feelings about this casting, except that he couldn’t possibly do a worse job than Jesse Eisenberg if he tried.

The crowd is chanting for Superman, which is interesting, because we definitely have that juxtaposed sharply with later footage of Superman entering a building with a raucous, anti-Superman crowd throwing full soup cans at him and jeering in his face (pretty fucking bold — try doing that to Homelander). Here, he’s been trapped inside some kind of glass prison, which seems to be very little trouble for him to break out of. He’s Superman, after all.

In what I presume is Boravia (a Middle East stand-in, it would seem), a child erects a tall flagpole bearing Superman’s updated symbol. I don’t love the graphic design of the symbol, but I do love that we’re moving on from the symbol that Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel dragged through the mud and soiled.

Closer look at the costume as Superman trudges wearily into a building, accosted by protestors and rabble. I like it, don’t love it, don’t think it will ultimately matter that much in terms of how much I do or don’t like the film.

A man in the crowd behind Superman winds up to pitch a can at Corenswet’s Superman (look at the curl!). This guy is feeling himself, absolutely drilling Supes in the head with what seems to be a full soup can(?). Interesting reaction, too, as Superman absolutely feels it and winces ever-so-slightly, indicating (unlike Singer’s Superman Returns, with the eye-bullet) that while it certainly doesn’t injure or hurt him, he feels it. Not as much as the guy cranking that can at his head is feeling himself, but it doesn’t make NO impact. Thematically resonant. Presumably.

The protestors seem to be outside of — and Superman inside of — Stagg Industries,

For non-nerds, Simon Stagg (yup, another dumb, alliterative name!) is the wealthy industrialist villain responsible for turning… someone into the superhero Metamorpho. Metamorpho is definitely appearing in this film, played by Anthony Carrigan, who was fucking amazing on HBO’s Barry. I know little of the character, but I’m excited to see what Carrigan gets to do with him.

Stagg Industries plays some kind of role in the narrative, as does LuthorCorp, so we may see some corporate intrigue or Superman positioned as an antagonist to/opponent of powerful corporations. I mean, not to get political, but if you think about it, that’s what it would take to fight them effectively, at this point.

Big dork Guy Gardner (played by Nathan Fillion) is here to Green up the joint. Hopefully, that’s what was needed. Here he seems to be doing crowd control. The ring usually works based on his thoughts, so no idea why he’s making that face as he Greens away, unless he just likes to.

“Nothing to see here, people. Move along!” That seems to be Superman (left), Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern (center) and Mr. Terrific (right). Gardner being very helpful, with whatever useless Green shit he’s up to. Thanks, pal.

One Kendra Saunders, or the third incarnation (we know of) of Hawkgirl. The brief clip we see of her flying is pretty convincing, and it seems like she’ll be a lot of fun when she shows up onscreen.

Kaiju? I hardly know u.

Call me old fashioned, but when I see Superman locking eyes with Lois Lane in the upper floors of a skyscraper, while meanwhile between them is visible a city-threatening big, scary, eyeball-looking monster, I’m like… priorities, dude.

But maybe that big eyeball isn’t, like, killing people, but rather enslaving or mesmerizing or something. Or maybe he has roughly the same amount of concern for the average human life as Man of Steel Superman (that amount? possibly nonzero, but certainly rounds to zero). I think not, though.

We also see a big, fire-breathing kaiju monster absolutely unleash holy hell on a floating Superman. Great stuff. Nothing but green lights (that’s the opposite of red flags, btw, not green flags, which would still be flags) so far, every frame of this trailer.

A very passionate kiss between some mild-mannered dork and Lois Lane, and then Superman holding and comforting a… robot? Nerdier people than I am know exactly who or what that is, but I’m not Googling it

And I reckon there’s your Fortress of Solitude. It seems to be growing from the ice, as traditionally happens when you throw a Kryptonian computer crystal into a water source.

And here’s your first look at Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho (Rex Mason). He’s completely unrecognizable, but I hope he still gets to be funny, and I suspect he will. You don’t buy a Ferrari and then only take it on runs to the grocery store and back.

I don’t know much about Metamorpho, which is probably a good thing. Gunn is going deeper into the DC bag of tricks than Man of Steel/Snyderverse, which (to its own detriment, I think) kind of just played the hits. So no Batman, no General Zod, hopefully Pa Kent doesn’t senselessly sacrifice himself to a tornado in order to not-save a dog (generally speaking, I believe Jonathan Kent is usually killed by a heart attack, something Superman can do literally nothing about, which is thematically resonant for the obvious reasons).

Whoa. For those who loved the city-level destruction and mayhem in Man of Steel and the first 10 minutes of Batman v Superman, Gunn’s Superman’s got you, it seems like.

Just bald as the day is long, m8. So angry he’s crying, which is a thing Nicholas Hoult has done well in the past. Also, literally shaved/went bald for the role, which… yeah, you should.

Boravian troops means that boy is Boravian, so the scenes of the young boy planting the flag and calling out for Superman presumably take place in Boravia, which just sounds dumber every time I type it. Boravia. Also, if the highlight of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was Superman lifting a big thing, hoo boy, are you in for a treat. Superman’s gonna lift a big thing again. Not as big, probably, but it was continent-sized last time, so what do you want?

In all seriousness, I do think a scaling-back of Superman’s powers was in order. I sincerely hope that he cannot rebuild ancient masonry with his eyeballs, wipe memories with kisses, turn back time by flying around the world (?!) a bunch of times… whatever. I’m not a total purist. I’d like for the guy to fly, rather than leaping tall buildings in a single bound (he could certainly do both, though, couldn’t he?), but I’m intrigued and pleased by the shots of Superman struggling. It doesn’t inspire me or move me to watch a bullet bounce harmlessly off a Kryptonian eyeball or to see a man lift the largest gemstone island in the galaxy into orbit; maybe because they’re too far removed from my reality, or maybe because they’re both dumb and kind of suck. This is a Superman who struggles, and who gets beat nearly to death, and I can get behind that.

GOOD BOY, KRYPTO! GOOD BOY! And ‘good boy’ to Mr. Terrific too, I guess. Punches through a wall. That’s pretty good, I reckon.

One thing the Snyderverse and especially Man of Steel did well was showcase god-tier meta-human brawling. Preferably, this Superman won’t let it decimate (probably literally) the entire city of Metropolis, but the superhuman punch-for-a-bits seem pretty epic and scaled-up, still. I don’t necessarily need tons of action, but I’m going to get it, it seems. And it looks — at first glance — totally competent and fun to watch.

“You can call me Mr. Terrific. Did I pick the name? Yeah, sort of. Okay, you don’t have to call me that.”

The soldiers attempting to attack Mr. Terrific, et al. appear to be using wrist cannons or some kind of energy weapon worn on the wrist. Very chic. In fact, very mindful, very demure. Probably LuthorCorp or Stagg Industries goons, I’d bet.

When people give credit to Zack Snyder, it’s often for the tableaus or still images that seem to serve as narrative anchorpoints (that’s being generous) for the Visionary Director. I’d argue that, based on this trailer, Gunn also has an eye for the epic still shot, this being one example.

Superman pretty easily survives (thrives?) in the midst of a firestorm, presumably the fire breathed by the big kaiju from earlier in the trailer. Also, this Superman seems able to break the sonic barrier or fly at supersonic speeds like Man of Steel’s. He may be depowered somewhat, but he was pretty game-breakingly invulnerable before, so that’s a step forward, I posit.

The more I see that cape from behind, the more I’m loving it. It ultimately doesn’t matter that much, because we’ll all settle in or not based on the characters and story, but insofar as costuming matters (and it does), this is all good news and encouraging signs.

An early birthday present for K. Cook & Cats, Co. The cats aren’t that excited, but on average, our household can’t wait for Superman: The James Gunn Superman 2025: Not Called Legacy Anymore: Just Superman. Though they’ve really got to work on that title.

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K. Cook & Cats corp. (@iamkaymichelle.bsky.social)