I would like to read your "rebuttal" review to the 2 I posted above and tell me why I should invest $15 and more importantly 2 hours of my life, which I will never get back, on Superman 2025. I am still on the fence about it, although debating whether I should not first see the new Spike Lee movie which is a remake of the Kurosawa classic Highest 2 Lowest. I never felt like my money was wasted on a Spike Lee movie.
Generally, I am pretty open minded in trying movies, even when I suspect I will not like them. For example, last night I watched Emily The Criminal (2022) on Netflix. Based on descriptions of the movie I did not think I would like it and initially I passed, but after my sister told me she and my aunt liked the film, I decided to give the movie a chance. I liked it. It worked on a level I did not expect it to work at. I was expecting it to possibly glamourize criminal lifestyles but it did not do that at all. Instead, the main character of the film, saddled with student loan debt and unable to explain away some criminal convictions in job interviews, is forced into the criminal lifestyle as a means of getting out of the crushing debt. The film portrays her trying to make an honest living and failing miserably at it, and ultimately reallizing that the criminal lifestyle is her only way out of debt. It worked.
But with a Superman film, I need to be convinced that the main character embodies the values of Superman in the way he is going about his business in the film and that he picks his spots of going from C. Kent to Superman wisely and effectively.
Not sure I could change your mind about it, and that's what I was referring to initially. It's probably the most famous and done/redone superhero story so, by definition, everyone has an opinion already about how he should act in a movie, and that's before you account for fans predilection towards the previous iterations (and their actors/directors). Many people who loved the last Superman and Snyders' art style are by default going to have a tough time accepting a new one. I didn't read those 2 above so IDK what they're about but here's my 2-cent review nonetheless:
Superman is a story about a god that pretends to be human that we're somehow supposed to empathize with. Unlike the tales of Odin or Zeus, where their lust or greed or capriciousness reflects our humanity back at us, and makes them anti-heros (or even villians) we can't even do that with Superman. He's all-powerful AND all-good and that's all-boring, so instead filmmakers have had to either: Lean into his alter-ego, and the pitfalls of leading a double-life to protect family and friends, as the source of his humanity (IMO weak, but it might hit closer to home for some merbites living a double life lol); Submit him to equally powerful, world-breaking villians (IMO boring, bc there's no way to do this consistently without numbing the audience to the stakes); OR use a MacGuffin (IMO lame. And we call it Kryptonite? Come on). Every Superman movie has used all three, including this one, to make this singular god somehow relatable and they all kind of fail in that regard. This one is the only movie that says "we already know that you know" so we'll give him the friends/family to protect, insert the necessary super-villian, and add some kryptonite in there too BUT otherwise, let's just have some fun with it.
A dog, who is superpowered in the same manner as his owner (and cousin) but is also a piece-of-shit, comes to the rescue sometimes. Automaton robots programmed to keep a magical library and medical bay running in Antartica are irreverent and cheeky and fun. The villians are varied in skill and power and morality as are the heroes, who are sometimes dopey and vain and vengeful. The world, as occupied by metahumans, is in constant turmoil, as it obviously would be. Science is almost completely ignored for the magical and supernatural. Crazy shit happens and they don't bother to explain it, instead a guy who can become any material makes a jetpack out of his ass to save his similarly-afflicted son before the dimension they're in gets sucked into a black hole. A man with a T for a mask kicks a bunch of supersoldiers in the dick with his super spheres while another drops the embodiment of zionist Israel out of the sky and kills him dead. If that doesn't make you want to see it on a big screen, then I don't know what you're going to the movies for. It doesn't try and make Superman fit in OUR world, it brings YOU into THEIR world so you can watch how insane that would be.
You know, like a comic book would.