00:00Warning, the following video discusses the latest Superman film and we'll get into spoilers about the film.
00:05When the video veers into spoiler discussion, there will be a warning about it that you can skip over.
00:10But still, viewer discretion is advised.
00:13So James Gunn's Superman is good.
00:15The guy who did three of the best MCU films, surprisingly knows how to make a great superhero film
00:19that has a lot of weird, offbeat and obscure elements and makes them work when added to a Superman film.
00:24A film series that often has had trouble trying to leave the shadow of the 1978 film and make it
00:29seem new.
00:29It has elements like Krypto or his robot assistants, or additional DC characters like Guy Gardner,
00:34Hawkgirl, Metamorpho or Mr Terrific.
00:36We haven't seen goofy stuff like that in a superhero film, especially in a DC film,
00:40and it sets itself apart from other films.
00:43But I also like how it adds elements from two other older films,
00:46and you'll be surprised which ones came to my mind when watching it.
00:50Yeah, as I mentioned before, the 1978 Superman film has a large cultural footprint.
00:54Elements like the design of the Fortress of Solitude, going from an arctic cave to a crystal fortress,
00:59and the S symbol, being the symbol of the House of Elk, has been adapted into comics and other adaptations
01:03before,
01:04and characters like Lex Luthor's assistant, Miss Tessmarker, and owners have been used in other adaptations,
01:08like the CW series, or have been added to the comics.
01:11And the death of Jonathan Kent from a heart attack has been a major attack of the characters' mythos.
01:15But James Gunn's Superman film has a, surprisingly enough for me,
01:18more connective tissue with Superman 4, The Crest of Peace, and, you know, the last Superman reboot, Man of Steel.
01:25Crest of Peace is often considered one of the bad ones out of Christopher Reeves' run of films,
01:29with bad effects, low budget hampering everything, and Milton Keynes is now New York City.
01:34Oh, Metropolis.
01:35But one element of the film is that it involves Superman dealing with geopolitical topics.
01:40In Superman 4, it has Superman walk into the UN and tell them that he's going to disarm all these
01:43countries' nuclear arsenals,
01:45and they all go along with it without any prior discussion about it.
01:48Gunn's film also deals with geopolitics, namely Superman and civil union conflicts between two countries,
01:52but unlike Crest of Peace, it deals with the consequences of that.
01:55That film also has Lex Luthor involved, and, like that film, has him trying to benefit from the geopolitical conflict
02:00in Crest of Peace.
02:01He's making a play at Arm's Dealing.
02:02And in Gunn's film, he's also doing that, but trying to get land.
02:05I know he's also doing that just to show he's better than Superman,
02:08but I felt it was very similar to Hatton's version of the character, so I thought I'd bring it up
02:11here.
02:12Warning! This part gets into the spoilers about the film.
02:15Best skip this section if you haven't seen the film. You have been warned!
02:18Also, Ultraman, who turns out to be a clone of Superman in the end.
02:21While this does bring to mind Bizarro, and especially with him being sent into the pocket dimension,
02:25which seems like a likely setup for Bizarro world.
02:27But also in Superman 4, the Crest of Peace, that has Lex Luthor created his own Superman, the Nuclear Man.
02:32In a bit of dialogue in the Gunn film, Lex mentions that he could have cried from the scrap of
02:36Superman's hair.
02:37Yeah, Gunn, a man who put how the duck in the MCU is not afraid to reference prior 80s combat
02:42adaptations.
02:42Now get Heather Locke here in this universe, and he gets a trifecta.
02:46Spoiler time is over for now! You can now continue to watch the video!
02:49Now there has been lots of comparisons made between this film and the last Superman reboot, 2013's Man of Steel.
02:55Which I think is fair, as Man of Steel tried to go in a different direction from the previous Superman
02:58movie, Superman Returns,
03:00but the end result is a little bit divisive, to say the least, and you can see Gunn build upon
03:03the themes and ideas that previous Superman film director Zack Snyder had touched upon in his films.
03:08Spoilers again! Please skip if you do not want the movie to get spoiled!
03:11For instance, Harry Handel's Krypton.
03:13While it isn't that much of a focus on his film, but Gunn does make a big change in their
03:17depiction,
03:18of what is usually shown as a more utopian, but for civilisation as a more colonial one.
03:22Man of Steel did touch upon this as well, but with Krypton being more explorers than militaristic.
03:26Along with Zordon's plot in that film was to make Earth Krypton with the dubstep machine.
03:31But this isn't new. My adventures of Superman depicted Krypton in a more militaristic fashion as well,
03:36and during the New 52 era, Lara was made part of Krypton's military, but it's noticeable when pairing it to
03:41the film.
03:42Spoiler talk over! Yes, this is a bit indulgent, but it adds to the runtime and, you know, how you
03:47gotta catch that algorithm.
03:48Also, Gunn's depiction of Lex Luthor feels like a refined version of what Snyder was doing with the character in
03:53Baton v Superman.
03:53In the DCEU, Lex Luthor was being imagined as a tech billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg,
03:58because that was the easy screenwriting shorthand for evil industrial villain at the time.
04:02They even got Jesse Eisenberg to play an updated version of the post-Crisis Lex Luthor,
04:06but he also had elements of the mad scientist characterisation from the pre-Crisis continuity.
04:11PBS's Luthor feels a bit derivative of other tech industry characters that were showing up in films and TV at
04:16the time,
04:16with Jesse Eisenberg's performance feeling a bit too manic.
04:19Compare that to Gunn and Nicholas Holt's version of Luthor, and you can see he's a bit more defined and
04:24a bit more darker.
04:25Gunn, as a writer, knows how to write villains and makes them utterly reprehensible.
04:29Him and Holt's version of Luthor is manic, but he has a man that makes pretty light film dark,
04:33while Eisenberg's Luthor was manic, but not that threatening and a bit silly in a film that was trying to
04:37be serious.
04:38So those were only strange observations about a great movie I watched recently.
04:41Do you have any observations you made about this film?
04:44Say them in the comments, and don't forget to share this video, like it, and also subscribe to my channel.
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05:19I'll see you next time.
05:19Bye.
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