Macclesfield film critic James Burgess shares his review of James Gunn's Superman, which is being shown at Cinemac now.

In 1978, its classic poster excitedly declared 'You'll believe a man can fly' and Christopher Reeve took off those black-rimmed spectacles to don the famous red cape in Richard Donner's perennial original; very significant - as it was the first time a comic-book superhero was brought to life in a live-action mainstream Hollywood studio picture, spawning an entire genre of blockbusting superheroes, then a rarity; now dominating multiplexes the world nearly half a century later.

This latest, much-hyped iteration, marks director James Gunn's first entry as head of a revamped shake-up of DC's slate, after working for its arch-rival (and commercial and critical frontrunner), Marvel, on the fast-talking, pop-culture cynicism of the Guardians Of The Galaxy franchise. The 2014 first of that trilogy remains one of the very best of the MCU – a personal favourite of mine, so my expectations were as sky-high as the Man Of Steel himself...

What a shame, that Gunn's treatment of one of its most beloved protagonists, repeatedly makes a catalogue of misjudged errors, resulting in an over-complicated, befuddling, wholly unoriginal mess, that is never given any opportunity in its screenwriting to ever find its rhythm; be that tonally, visually or comedically – and ends up being as far away from the traditional, clear, pure charm of the Reeve era quadrology as you could possibly imagine.

This is obviously intentional, as Gunn has jettisoned the origin story of a baby flying from his home planet to earth (there is still a strange parental cameo), instead opting to hit the ground crashing, back to a snow-encapsulated Krypton. He and his alter-ego's relationship with journalist Lois Lane, is also seen as an indeterminate on/off romance that's already spanned sometime - (when we meet her, she already has prior knowledge that Clark and Superman are the same person). This is refreshing and their push-pull dynamic is one occasional plus point (despite assertive Rachel Bresnahan uncannily channelling a young Courtney Cox's Gale Weathers a lot of the time). It's a promisingly strong, if underdeveloped reintroduction of the two of them, which the film could've done more with – there's no central, romantic flying sequence, accompanied by John Williams's beautifully lulling: 'Can You Read My Mind?' string-lead love theme – they missed a trick there.

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Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet star as Lois Lane and Superman (Credit: Warner Bros/IMDB)

David Corenswet – so brilliant in his breakthrough role as Jack Castello in Netflix's Hollywood, is the film's biggest asset; well cast and very good as both a more charismatic Superman and endearing Clark. He's not as woodenly vanilla and dour as Henry Cavill was, as strait-laced as 2006's vastly underrated Brandon Routh, or as comic-book waxy as Reeve. Superman's always felt nobly separate from other superheroes. He doesn't have the tragic, traumatised backstory of Batman, he's not a clumsy teenage novice like Spiderman. His simpler personification of hopeful aspiration, means that an idealistic straight arrow is often difficult to play, or make interesting. Because his portrayal is freer, cutting far looser and more naturally than previously, I'd go as far as to say, Corenswet is my favourite Superman actor to date.

Sadly, the film and its writing around him, doesn't serve either actor or character anywhere near well enough. From the start, the emphasis is bafflingly on how contemporary this instalment is. This is Superman for the social media age (a boring choice – we're already consumed by our phones before we get to the cinema, the last thing I  want is to see it so perpetually when I get there). It's way overplayed, as is the shameless political punditry. TV screens forever showing us approximations of rolling right-wing news, appear again and again. This is political filmmaking at its least impartial. Unbelievably on-the-nose parallels between the ongoing conflicts of both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine – but why? For no discernible reason. Where's the optimistic escapism? 'I wasn't representing anything, except for me' Clark insists. Really? Not help, truth, love or hope? What happened to his good old traditional corn-fed values? They're still present, but there's never enough set at Metropolis's glossy, warm, inter-city street-level, where's he's simply flying around saving people.

Instead, it's far too often preoccupied, as the genre is now, with portals and multi-dimensionality. Again? It should work really well for such a cosmologically-centric figure as Kal-El, but we've been to the multiverse so many times before – and its worked far better – in Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange sequel for example. Here, the CGI effects aren't particularly sharp. This can't decide whether to be grungingly serious with a dark subplot about capturing the population in glass cases – again, so blatantly a half-baked commentary on our current sticking-point of immigration, painted so broadly – (Wicked did the same with its box-ticking) or so monumentally silly that it jarringly juxtaposes this directly afterwards, with genetically modified monkeys 'trashing' Superman, sitting at keyboards trolling him online! Who thought that was a good idea?!

Nicholas Hoult is 'woefully miscast' as Lex Luthor (Credit: Warner Bros/IMDB)

Nicholas Hoult is woefully miscast as Lex Luthor. Again, they've lent into present-day parallels: this Luthor had to be an Elon Musk figure stuck behind a desk, with no clear motivation as to why he hates Superman so much. Any number of great actors would've been brilliant: Vince Vaughn, Kevin Kline or Pierce Brosnan. There's also a dreadful story out of nowhere with Lex's useless arm-candy influencer, infatuated with Jimmy Olsen – a profoundly strange strand of comedy that's so weak, and falls completely flat.

The unoriginality doesn't stop there. There's also an entire gaggle of new, completely non-descript superheroes, looking like they couldn't be less interested, calling themselves the Justice 'Gang' – a shameless rip-off of the Justice League. No wonder it all looks like a bad spoof of Marvel's Avengers half the time, with odd, needle-dropped song choices overlaying the action.

It continually ties itself in topically political knots that strain so effortfully for on-the-button relevance, that it forgets to have what was intact originally: heart and fun. I didn't even like the distraction of Krypto the dog!

Rating: * *

Cinemac is screening Superman until at least July 31 (Credit: Warner Bros/IMDB)

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Macclesfield resident James Burgess is an actor and film critic with a master's degree in Film Studies.

Follow him on X - @Jamesfilmcritic

Tickets for Superman at Cinemac are available from www.cinemac.org.uk.