James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn Drops Full Trailer

James Gunn’s DC Studios just dropped the official trailer for James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn, directed by James Gunn, which he wants to make sure you know it’s by James Gunn according to previous promotion and shoving himself into the intro for Creature Commandos. All of that has made me a bit weary about the former Superman: Legacy, and critics suspect the Legacy part is so you have to call it James Gunn’s Superman. That’s why here at the Spotlight it will be known as James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn. He wants you to know it so bad, might as well let him have it. He can also take the “L” if this turns out to be bad. The recent plot leak involving him taking vengeance on his critics who found his past tweets of poor attempts at humor that cost him working for Marvel, but we had let that go away until the leak news clearly showed he was taking the Dixie Chicks approach and being “not ready to play nice”. If the leak turns out to be true he hasn’t moved on even though nobody brought those comments up until the leak.

So now we have the full trailer, an idea of why everyone hates Superman beyond Luthor’s mutant monkey led smear campaign against him. Now we get to see some of the actual performances and now we actually get to see if their acting is any good. I have not watched any of the usual critics I follow responding to the trailer, or any of the Easter Egg videos that pop up because references are no longer fun for me since so many directors use them poorly. You can’t replace good adaptation with “see, we remember this from that one story you liked, isn’t that what you want?” references. This is all my thoughts, though I am going to check those out after I finish writing this article. So what do I think? Let’s watch it and see.

Soooo….that was a trailer.

If this was supposed to get me beyond my current state of neutrality when it comes to this movie, that didn’t happen. Let me see, the plot is Superman decides to stop a war and causes an international incident. Superman wouldn’t do that or he would have done it a bunch of times. Even in “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, the story that was adapted into Superman Vs. The Elite, Superman only interferes in a war when the break out the genetic monster. Superman knows better, not because it would cause an international incident, which once led to this panel:

Instead, Superman knows that he can’t stop war from happening. Let me remind you of one of my favorite comics scenes.

I can put a stop to the fighting, but that doesn’t do anything about the cause of the war…

Superman cannot stop all war. He can get rid of the weapons but he can’t fix why they want a war or stop them from making new weapons. He is not that powerful unless he takes over the planet like in the Injustice universe. Even that doesn’t deal with some of the causes, like religious differences such as the current Israel/Hamas situation or the Crusades in the past. It might keep power mongers at bay, but given all the supervillains in the DC Universe that wouldn’t last long unless he goes into Justice Lord Superman mode and lobotomizes all the villains or kills them off. He still couldn’t stop them all or stop new ones from coming and getting the people to their side against this tyrant version of Superman. If Superman isn’t a tyrant? It took Manchester Black and the Elite killing the leaders of two warring nations to stop the war, and we’re not even sure that happened. They threatened to kill every leader who went back to the war. That could be a pretty big pile depending on why those two nations were at war. Superman might not have killed anyone here and we don’t know further specifics of the incident but he can’t stop war from happening. At best he probably delayed the inevitable.

Credit to Lois for asking the hard questions but Clark doesn’t get to look good in how he defended himself. He was acting less like Superman being interviewed and more like Clark defending his actions. He’s kind of whiny here to be honest. He knows Lois is going to ask the hard questions but he can trust her to be objective and let him plead his case. He’s just doing a lousy job of pleading his case. It sounds more like he just wants to be told he was right. If the point was to get his side of the story out he should just accept the questions given and give a straight and honest answer, let the people listening to the interview decide. He’s talking like a person during an intervention totally convinced he’s right, not conducting an interview. He comes off weaker for it.

When did Mercy Graves get a suit that spawns razor blades that can smack Krypto away? Eh, that might work in the story. Of course, have to take the swipe at the dog, even when the dog was based on Gunn’s dog and not the actual Krypto. Not Graves smacking him aside. She’s evil and maybe it works in the scene. I mean Lois’s comment “you have a dog?”. She didn’t know that? Also makes me think of this:

It’s the monkey I don’t get.

Superman’s had a dog for as long as I can remember, minus the early post-crisis years when they booted all the other Kryptonians out of continuity until fan demand brought them back. (Remember when they actually listened to fans instead of attacked them?) How are we still surprised Superman has a dog? They brought Krypto back for a reason: people knew about him and wanted DC’s ultimate good boy back (sorry, Ace, but it’s true).

The effects look good enough, the action looks okay of what we can see from the trailer, and I have no complaints about the acting. Corenswet might be able to keep “Clark” and “Superman” different enough that the guise is believable (the “Clark Kent Factor”), and Hoult is a better Luthor than the one Snyder forced Eisenberg to play. Brosnahan did an okay Lois, but I can’t tell about anyone else and the full movie may or may not disappoint. There’s only so much you can tell from a trailer, but nothing was egregiously bad or over the top with the performances we say.

Otherwise…it hasn’t changed my opinion. I’m still on the low end of neutral thanks to the plot leaks and obsession with this being James Gunn’s Superman by James Gunn. I’m not on the “I hate it” side but I’m not excited for this. I have not seen proof that this breaks current history with the treatment of superheroes in general and Superman specifically. I’m not convinced it’s going to be garbage but I’m not convinced it’s going to be good. I just can’t bring myself to care outside of this starring my favorite superhero (allegedly, with all the cameos). The movie is coming out two days before my birthday, though with my current finances I probably won’t be able to see it in theaters, and they have a long way to go to convince me it would be worth going.