The marketing campaign for Superman has kicked into full gear in the past week or two, as the DCU movie finally releases in theaters next month.
I’m excited. You’re excited. All of us superhero and comic book fans who aren’t annoyingly determined to turn the film into some kind of weird James Gunn vs. Zack Snyder culture war are excited. With all the trailers and promotions we’ve seen for the movie, however, we’ve now reached the point where we have to ask ourselves: Are there still any surprises left in store to be excited about?
Now, I haven’t seen Superman yet, and there could easily be many more surprises left in store for us when it opens in theaters on July 11. I’m hopeful there will be. Maybe Batman makes a cameo and I’ll be eating my words, here! I don’t know!
I’ll also point out that I understand the position Warner Bros. is in, as they really, really need Superman to be a hit; Creature Commandos was more or less a soft launch for the DCU, while this film will really kick the doors open to this new shared universe. They’re banking a lot on this franchise. In order for it to continue, people need to show up for this one.
The risks of revealing the Superman movie plot
Let’s turn our eyes to Marvel, for just a second. Recently, Captain America: Brave New World director Julius Onah said he believes the Red Hulk reveal needed to be spoiled in the trailers for the movie. On some level, I understand his point. He says it would have leaked anyway, which is probably true. Secrets like that in big-budget movies are hard to hide in 2025.
On the other hand, the movie treats Harrison Ford’s transformation like a big third-act twist that then becomes pretty underwhelming (especially since the whole sequence only lasts for, like, ten minutes tops) since we all knew that it was coming. Can you imagine the buzz that Captain America: Brave New World would have had if they hadn’t shown it in the trailers? Some Red Hulk toys still might have been revealed early beforehand, sure, but the average movie-goer who isn’t searching the internet for MCU news wouldn’t have known about that. The word-of-mouth alone surrounding Harrison Ford’s transformation, I think, would have led to a big increase in box office dollars.
What if Superman had done that? What if they managed to hide the fact that there was a Green Lantern in the movie from the larger public? Could that have paid off for them?
Maybe. Maybe not. But the buck doesn’t stop there, does it? Because the trailers, alone, have already told us that Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific, Metamorpho, Rick Flag Sr., The Engineer, and Ultraman are in there, too. And there’s way, way more information about the movie and its plot out there beyond that if you do start looking into the toy reveals and whatnot.
To be clear, I’m not walking into the theater to see Superman next month because I’m hoping for Easter eggs or set-up for future DCU spin-offs; I’m going because I want to see a good Superman movie, and I have faith that Gunn can deliver that. But they’re setting fans up to expect a lot of the aforementioned DC characters in the movie, given how much they’ve been featured in the marketing campaign. If they’re only in the movie for ten minutes or so, like Red Hulk was in Captain America 4 (another example, go look at how much Sony spoiled about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 before that came out), are people going to be disappointed?
It’s all relatively hypothetical until we see the movie, but come a little bit further on this journey with me. Imagine if the Superman trailers only focused on the Man of Steel and characters like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, etc. To bring it full circle back to Snyder, that worked for Man of Steel, didn’t it? No Wonder Woman or Batman cameos in there, but people still went to see it. We’d all be losing our minds if we went into Gunn’s movie with those expectations and then found out there were a bunch of other fan-favorite DC heroes in there, too!
But now we know Green Lantern is in there, we’re expecting Green Lantern, and Warner Bros. could be setting themselves up for audience disappointment, which will then likely translate into less box office money, if they don’t deliver on what people are hoping for now. And with other big blockbusters like Jurassic World: Rebirth and The Fantastic Four: First Steps also coming out the same month, word-of-mouth is going to be everything.
