[Patreon Preview] Superman (2025) Review

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Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone reboot an 85-year-old property at one of Hollywood's most troubled studios.

As always, I am Chris Winnerbauer joined by Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Chris.

And I, you know, I like that we're...

we're getting our butts in movie theater seats a little more often thanks to these uh reviews that we're doing.

Speaking of which, normally in our show, if you all are regular listeners, you know that generally we don't share or we don't consider ourselves to be giving reviews of movies.

We certainly discuss what we think about them, but that's not the focus of the show.

So what we've decided to do is when there is a new movie coming out that is of interest to us or maybe connects to a movie that we have talked about, we are going to give you a little taste of our opinions.

All right, well, we'll get into it.

We're discussing James Gunn's Superman.

And just so you guys know, this is a Patreon bonus episode.

The first, let's say, 10 to 15 minutes are both going to be free on our main feed and spoiler-free.

So if you haven't seen the movie, you can totally listen to the portion that's on our main feed.

Don't worry, we will not spoil anything.

If you'd like to continue listening and you have seen the film or you'd like to get spoiled, you can head to our Patreon, www.patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast.

And if you join at the $5 tier, you will get access to this episode, an ad-free RSS feed, and more bonus content.

But without further ado, Lizzie, you saw Superman last night.

I did.

Give the folks your spoiler-free thoughts.

No spoilies.

No spoilies.

All right.

First thought.

Man, have they found their Superman?

I thought David Kornsweat was fantastic.

He's so funny.

He really, out of all of the super, the Super Mensch that we have seen over the last, what is it at this point?

Almost 50, 47 years.

Almost 50 years of films.

Of films.

There was television before.

He is the closest that we have come, I think, back to the Christopher Reeve era of Superman.

I think he managed to both pull off sort of Superman's cheese.

Like he's, he's a cheesy Superman in this, but there's enough edge to David Cornsweat that he was fun to watch.

And I believed him every second of the way.

And not all of the lines were amazing.

And that's okay.

And he still delivered them all with a plum.

So I thought he was really wonderful.

He's very funny.

I just thought fantastic cast all around.

Everybody's really fun to watch.

Some are given more to do than others, which I'm sure we will get into.

Listen, I thought for the most part, this was a success.

It's very colorful.

It is a nice return to, you know, I mean, he's, he is dressed like the sort of 1930s circus strongman strongman that the original Superman comics looked like.

And yes, that looks like Granny Panties.

It's fine.

There's a lot about this to like.

Chris, what did you think?

I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I thought it was very fun.

I agree with everything you said.

Fantastic casting.

David Cornsweat, you are my Himbo Superman.

You're great.

That's great.

And

really,

I

felt vibes of Brennan Fraser in George of the Jungle.

I don't know why, but I just...

Honestly, also in The Mummy.

Yeah, sure.

Very fun.

I thought Rachel Brosnihan was my favorite Lois Lane that I've seen in a while.

I also think they gave her a little bit more dynamism than the.

I re-watched Man of Steel.

I re-watched Superman Returns.

I think she's given the most to do since Margot Kidder, at least comedically.

Until a point, yes, I think that's true.

Sure.

A lot of my thoughts, I realized, are going to be spoily.

So why don't we jump into some details here for the fine folks on the main feed, and then we'll get to some spoily thoughts but guys overall i this movie is a lot of fun it's very buoyant it's very light it's just an entertaining popcorn movie and i think it's a really fun different approach to superman after a couple of you know really interesting but dour

incarnations.

I have one more thing to say about the casting.

And, you know, since we're going to pay well, the spoilery part of the conversation, I will shout this out at the top.

One frustrating part of this for me, honestly, was Nicholas Holt because he's, I really love him as an actor.

And, you know, we talked about him in Mad Max Fury Road.

That's one of my favorite performances of his.

And it feels like this was teetering on the edge of really letting him go to that point where he's just like full-on berserker mode, but it doesn't really go there.

And also, I thought out of all the writing in this movie, his was hands down the worst, which just felt like such a waste because he's so good.

Like, this is not a spoiler, but he spends

so much of the movie.

It is, it's like an Austin Powers joke.

He is just explaining what he's going to do, or, you know, some character on a computer next to him will be like, wow, it's almost like he knows Superman's next move.

And he'll be like, it's because I do.

And then he explains how.

There's a little Basil exposition.

He's 99% Basil exposition, 1% Mad Max Fury Road.

All right, well, let's get into a couple of details here.

So, if you guys are unfamiliar, somehow, Superman is an American superhero film.

It is based on the DC character of the same name created by, as we discussed in our episode on Richard Donner's 1978 Superman, Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel.

This incarnation of the Man of Steel was written and directed, as you mentioned, Lizzie, by James Gunn.

The movie is a reboot of the Superman film franchise.

It is the second hard reboot of this franchise since it started, following Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.

It stars, as you mentioned, David Cornsweat as Clark slash Collell slash Superman.

Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor, Skylar Gizondo as Jimmy Olson, Eddie Gethegi as Mr.

Terrific, Nathan Fillion.

I would say the entire Justice Gang

in this movie.

Nathan Fillion is wonderful as Guy Gardner, the Green Lantern, and Isabella Merced is rescued from Madame Webb and has a really fun turn as hot girl in this movie.

Yes.

And many more.

It's a really fun cast all around.

There's an interesting cameo that we'll get to that is a spoiler.

It actually comes very early in the movie.

Oh, yeah.

It is.

produced by James Gunn and Peter Safran, the new co-CEOs of DC Studios, which is rebranding and relaunching a new DC universe after the Snyder-verse has been put to rest.

Superman was released on July 11th, and And as of the time of this recording, it is expected to bring in about $130 million domestically its opening weekend, which exceeded the studio's, I think, somewhat conservative $100 million goal for the opening weekend, which is definitely better than Superman Returns.

It is lower than Man of Steel, I believe, but it is very much a success.

And I believe it's only the third movie this year that it has broken the $100 million mark in its opening weekend.

We are talking a post-COVID world here, guys.

So when people on Reddit are saying, oh, it's stinking compared to Man of Steel.

Man of Steel was

in 2013.

Is that right?

Released in 2013.

That's right.

It started production in 2011.

I have a question for you, Chris.

Does it count as vertical integration if James Gunn is both the head of the studio, the director, and the writer?

Sure.

Yeah.

A man of many hats.

I would love to see what his paychecks say.

Yeah.

We'll get into kind of how this all came to be because I have some fun, some fun details on this roadmap.

So there's been a lot of hand-wringing over this iteration.

As you guys know, Warner Brothers is and has been a studio very much in distress.

David Zasloff, whether you agree with his methods or not, has been struggling to wrestle down a toxic amount of debt at this company.

Zack Snyder's fanbase, or at least a very vocal segment of it, has been pretty fairly prone to toxic behavior.

And they do not seem excited, or some of them maybe, about this new iteration.

And of course, James Gunn himself has courted a lot of controversy, including, if you remember, Lizzie, a brush with a brief online cancellation and termination from Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 a few years ago.

I had forgotten about that.

What was the context of

it?

It's that little, the meme of the increasing size dominoes.

The first domino is James Gunn making rape and pedophile jokes in 2008.

That's right.

And

that's what led to this version of Superman.

So quick recap on how we got here.

This is all information.

We want to make sure everybody has all the information.

So mid-1970s, Lizzie, Ilya, and Alexander Salkine licensed the film rights to Superman for 25 years at a price of $3 million.

We discussed this in our episode, Superman the Movie.

They make Superman, Superman 2, Superman 3, they do a spin-off, Super Girl.

But after Superman 3 and Super Girl failed to provide the returns that they want, especially Super Girl, $14 million against a $35 million budget, they sell the rights to Superman to the Canon Group for $5 million.

Now, the Canon Group is a very

financially insolvent company by this point.

It's basically revealed to be a house of cards by the end of the 1980s, but they're banking on Superman 4, The Quest for Peace.

They apparently paid Christopher Reeves $6 million to return for this fourth film.

Again, critical flop, commercial disappointment.

Cannon Group goes into financial insolvency.

So the rights actually revert to the Salkins.

So they get them back.

But the world didn't need Superman, it seems, until Lizzie, the early 90s.

And we've talked about this, comic books are experiencing this renaissance boom.

Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man then spawned.

Jim Lee's X-Men relaunched.

They've got the Fox X-Men animated series that we liked as kids.

And then in 92, DC does something unthinkable.

They kill Superman.

And so the death of Superman was an idea germinated by editor Mike Carlin, writers Dan Juergens, Roger Stern, Louis Simonson, Jerry Ordway, and Carl Kessel.

Excuse me if I mispronounced your last name.

And it was this crossover story event between the four major Superman publications, and then also Justice League America and Green Lantern.

And the storyline, which was originally pitched as a joke, is Superman is killed by Doomsday, a villain who would show up in Zack Snyder's Batman vs.

Superman later.

He's replaced by imposters, and then finally he's resurrected.

And so the idea was like stun the fans and show them that Superman could die, this event of killing, you know, one of the longest-tenured characters in superhero history.

And it's a huge hit.

So, Superman 75, that's the one that featured his death, was the highest-selling comic book of 1992.

So, Warner Brothers says, we need those film rights back right now from the Salkines.

So, they buy the option back.

And

there's no official figure, Lizzie, but the Salkines may have sold it back for the $3 million that they bought it for.

So, it's possible that the Salkins made $5 million on, like, basically, they were $5 million profitable on just the film rights alone of Superman,

which is crazy.

And Lizzie, you actually have worked with one of the gentlemen who was tied up in the attempt to bring Superman to life in the 90s, Kevin Smith.

Yes, that's right.

And they could never get it off the ground.

So there are all of these aborted versions that we'll go into later, guys.

There was an early draft where

it's a riff on the death of Superman.

Kalel dies.

His life force impregnates Lois Lane.

She then has a virgin birth.

Superman grows up in three weeks into an adult.

Yeah, Lizzie's face is why they did not attach a director to this movie, which is horror and disgust.

So then Superman lives.

This is the one, Lizzie, that Kevin Smith took a crack at the script.

Dan Gilroy also, and then Tim Burton and Nicholas Cage.

That's the combination

that almost comes to fruition.

They spend millions of dollars.

They're a screen test, they're a costume test, pre-production, but the budget spirals out of control, well over $100 million.

Mars attacks flops, and the studio pulls the plug.

Then Michael Bay is maybe an idea.

Martin Campbell, we discussed on GoldenEye, is an idea.

And early 2000s, you've got X-Men and Spider-Man, hyper-successful launches of these properties and live actions.

So a version of Batman versus Superman is proposed.

Story by Andrew Kevin Walker, who'd written Seven.

And then Akiva Goldsman wrote the script, who had just done Batman and Robin.

And apparently it was so dark, just like the darkest movie that you could imagine.

Well, you hired the man that wrote seven.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it ends with Lois Lane's head in a box.

Colin Farrell was apparently cast as Batman, and Jude Law was going to be Superman, and Wolfgang Peterson was going to direct.

Excuse me, you can't have a British Superman.

Come on now.

I know he's an alien, but he's an American alien.

Well, that is an important point.

That version never goes.

There's a movie called Superman Flyby.

J.J.

Abrams is writing the script.

McG is going to direct it.

Big Kryptonian Civil War.

You can see some of Zack Snyder's, you know what I mean, eventual storylines here.

McG quits right before the green light.

Brett Ratner joins to direct.

He quits.

McG comes back.

And something important happens here, Lizzie.

Henry Cavill screen tests for Superman.

in this iteration.

You can see that online.

Is this the one that would end up being Brandon Routh?

No.

So $50 million has been spent in development costs I read up until this point.

And that's when Brian Singer, who's hot off of X-Men and X2, X-Men United, comes in and pitches Superman Returns.

Not a full reboot, but a soft reboot.

So if you guys haven't seen Superman Returns, it's pitched as kind of a sequel to Superman 2.

Basically, Superman leaves Earth and now he's returned five years later.

And this is the one with Brandon Rouse.

And I got to say, I re-watched it, Lizzie.

This movie made no impression upon me in the theater.

I really liked it when I was in the middle of the day.

I remember really liking it.

I thought he was good.

I thought he's good.

Yeah, he's good.

I know.

I see, I think he's the closest to Christopher Reeve.

I actually think he's kind of doing a Christopher Reeve.

Well, he looks like him.

He does look like him.

And he's funny.

He's charming.

And I got to say.

Kevin Spacey as Lexie Luther.

He's so good as Lex Luther.

I mean, he turned out to be a real life Lex Luthor, but he is so good as Lex Luther.

And Parker Posey

as the Eve Tessmacher character is amazing.

She's so funny.

I know, I enjoyed it.

I remember liking that.

I saw it in theaters, and I never understood why that just didn't go anywhere because I thought it was really pretty good.

Well,

let me tell you.

So it did receive generally positive reviews and it made almost $400 million, but the budget was...

It's estimated to be $200 million.

So the break-even point was at least $500 million.

Now, I'm sure it did that, you know, eventually with DVD sales, but the studio deemed it unsuccessful.

And they said specifically they needed more action because this movie was not action-heavy, especially not compared to the Snyder versions that would be.

I like, I don't need it to be as packed with, I mean, that's one of the things I didn't enjoy about this one, to be honest, is it was just back-to-back-to-back action sequences.

You get a lot of rock'em-sock'em robots.

That's literally all it is.

Yeah.

So a couple of other things, though.

It wasn't just that that it flopped.

I think you had Brian Singer was committed to shooting Valkyrie and then you had the 2007-2008 writer's strike.

And then Dark Knight comes out in 2008 and is such a success that I really think the goal, the goalposts change at DC at that point.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that that just completely shifted what anyone thought you could possibly do with a comic book movie.

I mean, and to be honest, Batman begins like it starts to tip that scale.

We will cover that at some point because I think that's really where the tides begin to change.

But yeah, Dark Knight is just, it's still, it's unreal.

And that same year, Lizzie, is Iron Man.

And so Iron Man kickstarts the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's now time for a DC cinematic universe.

David S.

Goyer pitches an idea to Christopher Nolan during Dark Knight Rises.

Nolan takes that to the studio.

Zack Snyder comes on to direct.

He'd obviously adapted 300, which was extremely successful.

I love 300.

And Watchmen, which I really enjoy, it was not financially successful, but it proved that he could do something in the world of Christopher Nolan, I think, very effectively.

So Nolan's producing, Snyder's directing, We Get Man of Steel.

Also, important to note, a lawsuit from 2009, Schuster and Siegel's Estates, I believe, had sued, again, DC for more back-end participation.

Basically, put in a use it or lose it clause.

And these are the clauses that basically say, if you do not produce a movie based on this option, the rights will revert.

And that's why you get a new Spider-Man every few years.

And so they needed to go into production by 2011.

So Man of Steel is fast-tracked.

We get Henry Cavill.

And again, having re- I re-watched all these Supermen for this episode

and I loved certain elements of all of them.

And my favorite part of Man of Steel, Russell Crowe as Joro is so, so good.

That's great.

He's just got this quiet dignity.

I really liked the new imagining of Krypton.

I thought it was fun.

So let's jump forward.

And guys, it's here that we're going to start to tip into some spoilers because I want to kind of talk about Zack Snyder's Snyder-verse in context with James Gunn's Superman 2025.

So if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,

please head over to our Patreon, www.patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast.

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