The 2025 Superman film is a strange movie

When the new 2025 movie Superman was announced and teased, I was mildly curious (even though, honestly speaking, it's by this point quite tiresome how many times they have rebooted the franchise.) When it appeared on Netflix recently, I watched it.

I was left quite perplexed.

This is not the noble, stoic, highly moral, "boy scout" True American Hero that Superman has been traditionally depicted is.

This is also not the grittier, brooding, anguishing, struggling-with-moral-and-personal-dilemmas Superman of the previous reboot movie series by Zack Snyder.

This is a quite strange alternate-universe Superman that's a bit different from that. And not only Superman himself, but the other characters and the world around him too.

As far as I know, this is not officially some kind of "alternate universe", in other words, something like "the Superman of Earth-751" or something like that, but it certainly does feel like it. In other words, this isn't the normal regular "Earth-One" Superman that we all know and love.

There are some significant difference in this Superman compared to his normal characterization, but before going into that, let me describe the overall tone of the movie itself, which left me a bit perplexed.

At points the movie almost felt like a parody of Superman movies (and superhero movies in general). However, I did not really get the feeling of the movie not taking itself too seriously, but more like it's not taking the source material seriously enough.

The movie has significantly more humor in it (and in my opinion not even very clever humor), in a way that's uncharacteristic of more recent Superman movies (and superhero movies in general). It's very reminiscent of the classic Richard Donner movies, especially the ones after the first, which often had silly humor that didn't really fit the mood all that well (nor the entire concept of a superhero movie based on the DC universe.)

In fact, the movie is very clearly a homage to the Donner movies, even using in its score a repeating leitmotif that closely resembles the famous Superman theme by John Williams. (It's very clearly not some kind of remake of them, or some kind of continuation or prequel to them, but there are very clear references to them.)

The movie also leans more towards the wackiness and silliness of the Golden Age and the silliest Silver Age of DC comics. Perhaps in this particular aspect the movie does indeed not take itself too seriously, like the Zack Snyder movies do, and is pretty much the opposite of "gritty" (that was the defining characteristic of the Snyder movies).

However, where it stopped being less of a "the movie doesn't take itself too seriously" and veered significantly more towards "the movie doesn't take the source material seriously" is in the characterization of Superman himself, which for some reason deviates significantly both from the Donner movies and the Gold/Silver Ears of the comic books. I didn't really like much the wackiness and "Golden Age" antics of the movie, but the characterization of Superman himself, which deviates from everything before, is the thing I liked the least.

Physically, this Superman can be injured, to the point of almost death. He bleeds, his body can be damaged, and ostensibly he could probably even die if damaged enough. (This is not just speculation, as the very first minutes of the movie very clearly establish this.) He can heal super-quickly with a hefty dose of yellow sunlight, but he seems to be extraordinarily and unusually weak in this respect. He also actually needs to breathe air and can asphyxiate (which is a deviation of the comics canon.)

But fine. I can attribute that to this happening in some "Earth-751" or something, not the primary "Earth-One" canon. Not really that huge of a problem.

What I did like much less was his characterization. (Yes, there exist even worse characterizations than this in the DC multiverse, but this movie is not actually clearly established as happening on an alternate Earth, and officially this is supposed to be "the" Superman. An official reboot of the franchise.)

The normal canonical traditional "Earth-One" superman is a gentleman, always polite, always with high ideals, the epitome of "lawful good", a "boy scout" and American hero, someone to look up to.

This Superman, however, can be a bit petty and argumentative, and in fact gets into bickering arguments with Lois Lane. Nothing really bad, mind you, but it just feels so uncharacteristic of Superman.

And one of the most shocking differences with the original comics (and previous movies) canon is his backstory. Yes, he is still from Krypton, which was destroyed, he was still sent to Earth by his parents (still without explanation to why only him and not everybody), and the parents still sent a message alongside his ship telling him how much they love and how they sent him to Earth to do good and to help people.

Except... as is revealed later in the movie (spoiler alert), part of the message had been corrupted and wasn't playable, but it's later restored and turns out that he was actually sent by his parents there to rule the Earth as its supreme leader under his iron fist, and to gather himself a harem of countless wives in order to repopulate Krypton.

Yes, I'm not making that up. And yes, the movie very clearly establishes that as the actual genuine message by Superman's parents (ie. it's quite clearly established that it's not eg. a fake message fabricated by Lex Luthor, but that it's the actual original genuine message.)

While Superman himself is very shocked, upset and depressed by this reveal, and the lesson is (delivered by his adoptive father) that "you choose your own destiny, don't let others dictate what you have to do", that's still an astonishing deviation from the original canon. Turns out that Superman's biological parents were actually quite douchebags. And nothing in the movie contradicts this, and on the contrary seems to reaffirm it. This is astonishingly disrespectful to the source material.