Well-meaning lug: David Corenswet as Superman in James Gunn’s vivacious new film - Jessica Miglio

Forget the green crystals, mad alien generals and perpetually aggrieved hairless technology moguls. Superman’s deadliest enemy in 2025 is superhero fatigue – and this snappily vivacious reboot is Hollywood’s best hope of defeating it.

One of the highest compliments that can be paid to the latest take on the venerable Kryptonian hero is that it feels more like a Superman film than a superhero one. The distinction might sound trifling, but after the past couple of decades – exhaustingly packed with cinematic universes and multiverses – it has become vital. Crucially, this fresh reinvention of the classic DC character, written and directed by James Gunn, never feels as if it’s gearing up for a grander sales pitch.

In fact, the film arrives so geared-up on its own exuberance that the story as we know it has already reached a chapter we haven’t yet heard. Our protagonist crash-lands, fully suited, in the Antarctic during his latest battle with an armoured evildoer, and is promptly rescued by his faithful super-dog Krypto – the Snowy to his Tintin, and as intrinsic to the plot as Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane, who is already aware of her workplace beau’s otherworldly origins.

This approach allows Gunn, the director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series, to get on with the conceptually juicy stuff – which is working out how to fit his chipper mid-century protagonist into the breakneck jumble of 21st-century life. The solution, which the film pulls off with regular splashes of pop-art panache, is to identify all of the tricky spots that any contemporary Superman story would struggle to avoid – then lean into them.

Gunn’s version of the Man of Steel, embodied by David Corenswet, is not a good-hearted star child in the Christopher Reeve mould – he and Brosnahan’s Lois have a cuddly chemistry that works on its own terms while never approaching the screwball joy of Reeve and Margot Kidder in 1980’s Superman II. Nor, however, is he a Henry Cavill-esque demigod, wandering frostily among the mortals. Instead, he’s a winsome, well-meaning lug (imagine a millennial Brendan Fraser) whose determination to do the right thing is at odds with a world in which every action prompts an equal and opposite mass whingeing session on social media, and/or somehow worsens the flavour-of-the-month geopolitical crisis.

Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet in Superman - Jessica Miglio

Here, the latter takes the form of a looming overseas invasion with a vague Israel-Palestine resonance that Warner Bros will be desperate to downplay. Though naturally, it’s all being engineered behind the scenes by the dastardly Lex Luthor (a good-value Nicholas Hoult), an arms tycoon with a private militia and a steely-eyed own-the-room charisma that puts one in mind of a bald Tom Cruise.

Some well-intentioned overreach on the part of Superman leads to Luthor being granted a governmental OK to bring his old foe to heel. But his attempts to do so set in train a string of frothy escapades, each of which throws a little new light on the film’s core theme: in our morally relativist times, is the concept of doing good still a coherent one?

Paws for effect: David Corenswet as Superman with his faithful super-dog Krypto - 2025 Warner Bros

There is no lack of variety in the computer-generated spectacle: giant monster attacks give way to inter-dimensional prison breaks and unironic flying scenes shot Top Gun: Maverick-style on nose-cone-cams, all underscored with John Murphy and David Fleming’s Zimmerised reworking of the iconic John Williams theme.

But the pathos, when it lands, works rather well, too. Gunn doesn’t dwell on Clark Kent’s Smallville origins – another streamlining tactic – but a brief father-son moment between Corenswet and Pruitt Taylor Vince’s Pa Kent is the most moving of its type we’ve yet seen.

Nicholas Hoult and David Corenswet in Superman - PA

The film arguably risks overloading itself with a tier of secondary heroes who call themselves the Justice Gang, though these are wisely treated as comedic cameos rather than feature-length spin-offs in waiting, each one doing their bit before slinking back into the wings. Indeed, in a genre infamous for feints and teases, Gunn’s kitchen-sink approach feels refreshingly generous, and his excitement for the character shines through. The only omission I could think of was a phone booth costume change: ah well, you’ve got to save something for the sequel.

12A cert, 129 mins. In cinemas now

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