‘Superman’ Review: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Reboot!

In one sense I can’t really spoil “Superman.” Even comic book agnostics already know the basic idea: A Kryptonian baby with incredible powers, sent to Earth by his parents ahead of his planet’s destruction, is raised by a pair of American farmers. By day, he’s the bespectacled journalist Clark Kent; by night, he’s — well, you know. That’s been the story since Action Comics No. 1 was published in 1938.

On the other hand, the ubiquity of those bare facts makes it extra easy to spoil this newest movie, a hard reboot for the character and his universe, because you’re probably going to the movies to see what they’ve done to the guy now, and the discovery is the fun part. “Superman” is the first film for DC Studios, of which Peter Safran and James Gunn are the chief executives. Elaborate histories of the byzantine path that got us here are available to you, should you be interested, but if you’re just a normie like me, the most important thing to recall is this: Gunn is probably best known for directing the three “Guardians of the Galaxy” films for Marvel and the 2021 DC film “The Suicide Squad” (not to be confused with the 2016 movie “Suicide Squad” — you see what I mean about byzantine).

Gunn tends to nail the right tone with superhero material: He mixes big-hearted themes with a dash of real-world allusions and a good-natured understanding that all of this should be treated as if it’s a bit silly because, let’s face it, it is. Guys in capes zooming around, humans with magical powers that let them make big punching fists out of matter and energy, tech billionaires consumed by envy who hang out in shadowy lairs trying to control the universe, I mean, come on.

Well, OK, maybe that last bit. And maybe a little more. Let’s not forget that Superman was created by two Jewish men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who were keenly aware of rising antisemitism and Nazi oppression, as well as the despair of a people saddled with economic depression, looking for someone to save them. Superman took on corrupt politicians, unscrupulous businessmen and substandard housing conditions. And he was staunchly antifascist: In a noncanonical 1940 story titled “How Superman Would End the War,” Superman brought Hitler himself to justice.

So while staying true to Superman requires trotting out certain familiar plot elements — his birth parents, his adoptive parents, his susceptibility to Kryptonite, his big old crush on the scrappy lady reporter Lois Lane — it also means tapping into those ideological roots. He’s a metahuman, but he’s also a man who’s almost guilelessly attached to truth, justice and something called “the American way”: protecting the little guy, pummeling the baddies. Set that guy down in the 21st century, and things get complicated.