BEN DOMENECH: Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?

This movie absolutely, totally sucks. The CGI sucks. The writing sucks. The cast, which is for the most part much higher quality than the material, sucks. There’s a blatant anti-Semitic trope figure who Hawkgirl just straight up murders without compunction. There’s a bunch of quippy Nathan Fillion dialogue which generated more murmurs than laughs. There’s a computer generated baby who becomes a pivotal plot point who creates no stakes. Lex spouts action moves like a spastic competitive gamer and his overall giant plan makes no sense. His media manipulation conspiracy is pointless. He literally employs monkeys writing tweets. People stand around looking at Kaiju and falling buildings and behaving as if they’re just NPCs in a bad video game. The main political plot point is a war that seems to take place on a battlefield the size of a minor college football stadium. The flight sequences look like crap. Alan Tudyk, having portrayed one of the most moving androids in recent memory, inspires no emotions whatsoever as a key robot here. The chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan is nonexistent — Jimmy Olsen gets a better relationship. And of course the suit just looks terrible, especially in daylight.

I’ve seen a lot of superhero movies, and this one — given the level of investment involved, the promotional push, the iconic nature of the character and the importance to the future of DC and Warner Bros. — is by far the worst. I would have left the theater if I hadn’t gone with a friend. There are minor Marvel entries with more to their credit than this. It doesn’t even manage to be fun.

Fortunately, there’s a readily-available alternative that actually is fun: Why Christopher Reeve’s Superman Still Matters.