Superman 2025: Sneak Peek Released

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

Well.  Heck.

Say what you will, but this movie is Warner Bros. finally getting someone on board who knows and cares about the comics.  And when it comes to Superman, it's sometimes unusual for the writers themselves to know more about Superman than the readers.  I'm not sure there's exactly misinformation out there, but there is a dearth of Super-info regarding the Amazing World of Superman.

What I think you can expect is that people will say "that is crazy" or "that is kind of silly".  Super dogs?  Super robots?  Yes.  Absolutely.  And it's long been my stance that if you're going to do Superman, you should lean into the Superman-ness of it all.  Despite the fact this has been Superman since Eisenhower was in office, and we've had multiple Superman shows and movies over the years, people really have never seen giant chunks of what Superman is.    

Superman fell into a weird spot where the was cost prohibitive to show a lot of what's in the comics on the big screen in the 40's and 50's when serials were coming out.  In the 1970's and 80's, just seeing a guy fly and do heat-vision was enough. When it became possible via CGI to show robots, dogs, etc.., it was believed at Warner Bros. that Superman needed to be something not in line with the comics.  Some of the joyless take appeared in Superman Returns, which tried to straddle the earnestness of the Reeves movies with the edginess that was coming - and fell into the crevasse in-between.  But most of it came from Zack Snyder's Ayn Randian Ubermench who wasn't sure he wanted to help people if it was going to be a whole thing.  Kelex was turned into a robot that tries to murder Lois Lane on sight.

But real ones know:

from Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman

Yeah, the robots look like robots and wear capes.

Now, I think it's fine for Superman to have all kinds of super robots.  After all, in the comics of the Silver-Age, Superman made robots in his own image so he could keep up his Clark Kent ruse, and generally gaslight Lois Lane.

In the 1990's when I was picking up Superman the first time, the robots looked more like:

The main robot, often the Alfred to Superman's Batman, was Kelex.  Have I named various devices Kelex?  Yes, I have.

In general, I am delighted with the movie's version of the robots and vocal performances.

Also, burying the Fortress of Solitude and have it blossom from the snow is a cool idea. I am sure we'll see more of that going forward.  Some will mourn the lack of a giant key to open the door, which is a delightful bit of nonsense making entering Superman's home a super-feat.

or, a more modern take

But it also is often narratively inconvenient to require others to be able to lift the key to get in and out of the Fortress.  So, if they ditched the key altogether, I'm okay.  The Super-door was plenty good.

I did see some folks online complaining that they got it wrong, Superman can't be hurt.  That opening is bunk!  But, no.  

Firstly, Superman is whatever you need him to be.  He is fictional.  Second, he absolutely can be hurt.  Magic.  Red Sun light.  A good beat down from Mongul or Darkseid.  

I mean, this didn't come from nowhere:

So, yeah, Superman does get beat up, and he does wind up going to lick his wounds at the Fortress under the care of some robot butlers.  The take and look here is special in the Sneak Peek, but it's more of a variation on a theme than anything else.

Not every Superman story includes Krypto, even Superman Family stories.  This is a mistake, but no one puts me in charge of these decisions.

We got our first full look at Krypto here, and it's funny.  In just 20 seconds or so, we got more personality out of Krypto than 90% of super-writers have been able to think of since Alan Moore in the 1980's.  And Krypto *used* to be a dog with a lot of personality back in the Silver Age.  

We already wrote about Krypto, so I shall have you reference that post.  But I will say, I've had six dogs in my life, and I miss all of them for various reasons.  But you have a special relationship with the difficult child, and that one for me was Lucy (aka: Little Lu), a small Black Lab we had from 2005 til 2018.  

I get what James Gunn has meant by the bad good dog.  That Superman will also have a bad good dog fills me with delight.

Anyway, we're about 100 days out from the release of Superman (2025). The Sneak Peek trailer looks great. I remain enthused.

Here's to what will, no doubt, be a big weekend at our house when the movie is released.