Superman 2025: A Trailer Drops

I think this Krypto movie will have Superman in it

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Firstly, I meant to spend any Super-writing time this week on discussing Elizabeth Tulloch as our Lois Lane on the recently completed TV series Superman and Lois.  But I guess I'm punting on that 'til we're done talking the trailer for Superman.  Suffice to say, my discussion of Tulloch will be a deeply positive one, so just... insert that in your brain for now.

As is evidenced by now, WB, DC and the popular movie community has lost its collective mind over the Superman trailer, happily following the marketing breadcrumbs along the way.  This isn't a criticism.  Movies stopped advertising during the covid-era, and I have no @#$%ing idea why they did that.  You need to advertise to get people excited.  Wicked advertised and is doing swell.

We knew Gunn had been working on a trailer and it would come out this winter.  I thought it would come out for The Big Game, but... I think they wanted it out there for NCAA football game commercial breaks as we head into Conference Championships (SEC is this Saturday), and then bowl games.  

The timeline, as near as I can tell, is that around end of October or early November, actor Frank Grillo said he'd seen the trailer for Superman 2025 and loved it.  

Rumors abounded we'd see a trailer in December, but the internet is full of all kinds of non-facts, and so I was in a wait and see mode.  Then - I saw that they were holding a showing of the trailer on the WB studio theater on Monday, and said "oh, I guess... maybe?  For Christmas?"  

What I didn't anticipate was that WB re-awakened their mostly dormant hype-machine and went into full-court-press.  It seems obvious now.

The DCSU as I'm coining it (DC Studios U) is meant to be a cohesive thing, unlike DC's various efforts over the years.  We're now about three weeks into the first offering from Gunn in the new DCSU as  Creature Commandos is out there on MAX.  It is very James Gunn, animated and, frankly, really good.  But Rated-R.  Which is a weird start to what I expect is intended to be a bunch of media to sell toys.

On Monday the 16th, we got a "motion poster", which showed Superman in-flight against an abstract back-ground.  The image is paired with a music track that includes a vocal emulating part of the John Williams score.  

I mean, if you're pushing the idea of fun and action and nostalgia, too... this isn't half-bad.  

Also, we're told the tag line is "Look Up", which may say a lot about what James Gunn is going to convey with the movie, about having heroes that are worth looking up to, and what those heroes have to do in trying times.

On Wednesday, Gunn released a trailer *for* the trailer.  (which I can't find anymore?  But when I do, I'll add to the post)

Which... I get it.  Get people sitting in front of their computers.   Create awareness.  Give a sniff of the appetizer that's coming with the trailer coming on Thursday.

But, friends, I am old.  This is my third Superman reveal in my adult life.  I was already 31 when Superman Returns came out and 38 when Man of Steel landed.  So, the suspense is real, but, also...   I don't really care about or trust trailers a ton.  Multiply that by "a trailer for the trailer".  

So, nice marketing on the trailer-for-a-trailer.  I salute it..

However, the trailer did drop on Thursday at 8:00 AM Central on Thursday, December 19.

Well.

That is certainly the Williams score, isn't it?  There will likely be much to say about Superman now having a theme so iconic, almost 50 years later we're back using it.  When a leitmotif works, it works.  And if a whole theme works for a character?  I guess we use it.  I mean, Lone Ranger fully stole William Tell's overture without blinking.  At least Superman's theme is wholly Superman's.

And that font floating in space sure reminds of something.... what could it be?

For folks who don't know DC Comics, this has to be interesting.  Who is that dog?  Who are these other super-people?  Is that Lex Luthor?  What is that glowing thing?

I want to pause and say:  this is a teaser trailer.  There's no obvious plot here, just vibes.  Super-nerds such as myself can maybe squint and figure a few things out, but I won't spend my time here analyzing it just to get things wrong in July.  If you ask me "which story is this?" I am going to gesture at the 20 long boxes of Superman comics in my closet and shrug.

After the trailer dropped, I posted the trailer to my personal facebook page with a jokey "I'll be here to answer your questions".  And I got a few.  

It's easy to forget that Superman's vast history means that (a) people assume they know all about Superman because of cultural osmosis and seeing a movie a decade ago - but what most people know is tip of the iceberg, at best.  Even veteran comics fans.  And (b) my assumptions about what's obvious to non-Superman-nerds when looking at a Superman movie teaser trailer are not at all obvious, it seems.  

Intellectually, I know that people have a rough idea of Superman, but don't dig deeper.  And I know it's hard to fight how rock solid those notions are, often based on something someone was told in high school or college while forming opinions on the way the world works.  We all heard about Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and why, in a post Dark Knight Returns world, we were supposed to think Superman sucked and was not a good character.  It made us feel savvy and wise as we shed the silliness of childish things.  So, we found out Superman is invulnerable, and therefore boring.  He can do anything, so he's boring.  

But they haven't been making new Superman material weekly for 90 years about a boring idea or character.  Not across TV, movies, comics, video games, peanut butter canisters...  Still, we sure bought that idea.

Or, we saw Superman II on HBO in 1982, and Man of Steel once, and we think "oh, that is Superman".  And that was quite literally my biggest complaint about Snyder's Superman - it was going to take a massive effort to tell multiple generations of people that Snyder's version is *a* take on Superman, it is not *the* take on Superman.  And as Daniel Craig is James Bond, so, too, is Roger Moore in his middle-aged years gadding about in questionable fashion.

Interesting stuff, to me at least.  

There's almost 90 years of comics now, so it's hard to say what the influences are on this film.  I am sure they are many.  If you're looking for material that may be useful as he head towards the movie, you can see Superman's start in Superman For All Seasons.   I'd also guess Geoff Johns' run on Superman had an impact, so maybe Superman: Secret Origin and Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright.  And I am sure there will be some influence from a sort of "what if?" book about a mature and experienced Kal-El called All Star Superman.  

We do know that Gunn was planning on launching the DCSU as a living, breathing thing, and not worrying about well-worn origins.  This is a world with metahumans, aliens and other things living in society.  And! characters with established relationships.  We are robbed of a meet-cute with Lois and Clark, I guess, but I assume skipping that will be all right.

We got confirmation of Guy Gardner played by Nathan Fillion.  Hawkgirl swinging a mace!  We saw Mister Terrific being super-sciency.  We saw Krypto the Superdog in motion.  We saw Lois looking like Lois, and the notion of the love story happening there. We see Pa Kent (as if to say "we're not killing him off this time").  

There's one or two things we didn't know coming into the movie.  But Gunn has been clear - this is a Superman versus Lex movie, and that is Nicolas Hoult as Lex.  He looks weirdly perfect, like a Superman: Birthright Lex.  Expect much in the way of folks deciding if they're into Hot Superman or Sexy Lexy.

It's also abundantly clear, this is the first Superman movie made by a comics reader who gets how the pieces fit.  The baseball stadium we see is that of the Metropolis Meteors.  That's comics accurate!  That's almost a coded message to fans that someone is paying attention. 

Superman Returns was a follow along to Superman: The Movie and Superman II.  It was a film fan's version of Superman, and as a fan of those movies, that was a good starting point, but a limited one.  Man of Steel was like Otto from Fish Called Wanda got to make a Superman movie, and Wanda had to tell him "apes do read philosophy, they just don't understand it".  It was lovely to see the visuals sometimes, but on the whole, it was the suit wearing Cavill, not Cavill wearing the suit.

I think oddest to me is that, visually, the trailer looks a spot like both Superman Returns and portions of Man of Steel.  Were going for lighting as practically a character.  The Daily Planet looks like the 2006 version (which was perfect, so I'm not mad).  

Circling back to those pre-conceived notions, the trailer opens on Superman broken and injured - something I take for granted as I've seen all of my superheroes beat to a pulp.  But I can already report that I've been asked "how is this possible that someone beat Superman?".  That belief that Superman is invulnerable, casually carried around by many, many people, is being shown to be untrue in their first look at this new Superman.  And that's... weird!  It's like starting on a bankrupt Scrooge McDuck.  But smart of Gunn, as it asks so many questions!  It's like an old comic cover showing Superman in peril, and you better hand over 75 cents to find out what happened and how he'll escape.

I love the look of Corenswet as Clark in Metropolis.  He's clearly tall, but a non-presence (which reminded me of Gary Frank's Secret Origins take, or Frank Quitely's in All Star).  That he's almost unrecognizable as Superman and as Clark in Smallville, where he's maybe most himself.

But it also shows Krypto coming to the rescue, and this made my heart grow three sizes that day.  Throw in seeing Guy Gardner and Mister Terrific, Hawkgirl in full-swing (Kendra, I assume), along with a Lois who looks the part, and I'm a happy kid.

You can go online and see image by image analysis of the trailer.  And... go nuts doing that.  I'm going off the vibes, and what I see is what Gunn promised - that this is a movie about Superman.  And his Superman is a good person who happens to have powers and tries to do well by others in a complicated world, and he sometimes pays for trying to do the right thing.  Not everyone (cough... Lex... cough) wants Superman to succeed or even exist, sometimes for very legitimate reasons.  

Maybe we're finally ready for a superhero other than Steve Rogers who feels like he's just doing the right thing to do the right thing in a world that doesn't love that idea (which was the fantasy of Superman all along, from the first pages of Action Comics #1).  After decades of watching WB trip over itself thinking everyone needs to be Dirty Harry, we maybe have a straight-forward Superman.

But the bit that got me, after Krypto, was the kid with the flag, pleading for Superman to come.  And Superman protecting the child from the flying debris.  If kids can't believe in Superman, we have a problem.

This will be far from my last word on all this, but it's great to have a teaser trailer, and to get the rough feel for what this movie may be.  Up, up and away!