Superman Reviews Reveal James Gunn’s DCU Secret to Success

The review embargo for Superman has now lifted, and critics are suggesting that James Gunn has cracked the secret to success when it comes to adapting comics.

While there’s been much talk and debate over how Superman will be received by film critics, the movie is now sitting at an 86 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time of this article’s publication. Over at Metacritic, meanwhile, the movie currently holds a 71 score.

Superman reviews show James Gunn understands the franchise’s comic history

Many critics are praising Gunn’s Superman for having a silly and light tone, which thus gives it the feeling you’d want out of a comic book movie. While there have been plenty of DCEU and MCU films that have tried to capture a similar vibe, Gunn’s movie seems to do it better than most and has even won over some critics feeling fatigued by the genre.

Alissa Wilkinson wrote for The New York Times, “By all of these measures, Gunn’s charming take on the Superman myth succeeds — it even won over a particular superhero-weary critic. It’s a sincere but also goofy movie, with a few well-timed twists on the mythology and a couple of added characters (I won’t spoil it, I promise) who keep things light at just the right moments.”

“What makes Superman work is the same thing that has made Gunn’s other adaptations so beloved: as a filmmaker, Gunn is unafraid to embrace the comic book elements at the heart of the source material,” Spencer Perry wrote for ComicBook. “No part of him is concerned with whether something will look cool or not translate to the big screen, a shadow that has lingered over countless adaptations.”

Forbes’ Scott Philips echoed, “The film feels like an old school comic book. No offense to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (the pinnacle of comic book cinema), but dark, angsty superheroes trudging through a gray landscape have worn out their welcome for now. To be honest, the real world is too bleak to spend our spare time in a dour fictional wasteland. This Superman brings back the colorful visuals, the humor, the clever quips in the midst of battle, the lightheartedness of the vintage comics.”

The DCU’s lighthearted approach might be the perfect counter to the MCU’s increasingly serious tone

While I didn’t get early access to Superman and will be seeing it this weekend with everyone else, the reviews for the movie promise a hopeful future for the DCU. Gunn seems not to be trying to mimic what previous comic book adaptations did before him — we’re not going all dark and gritty in a Zack Snyder kind of way.

That’s also a problem the MCU has begun to run into, as, with so many story threads and characters to follow, the tone has gotten more and more serious in recent years as they attempt to ramp things up and bring everyone together for Avengers: Doomsday.

With Superman, we appear to have a movie that is not afraid to be playful. There are still plenty of people praising the movie for its takes on humanity and kindness, meaning this won’t be an empty exercise; rather, Gunn is capturing a fresh, very non-Man of Steel vibe that’ll likely continue to bleed into other DCU projects.