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With the birth of James Gunn’s new DCU resting on its shoulders, 2025’s live-action “Superman” has a lot to prove — and early reviews suggest that it’s managed to deliver in a huge way. Aside from a couple of less-than-stellar reviews (including one that managed to break embargo), critics, film journalists, and influencers are uniformly lavishing the film with praise. They’re calling it the superhero film fans have been waiting on for the past few years, while performances, costumes, special effects and the movie’s script have all received raves.
This film’s plot sees an already-established Clark Kent (David Corenswet) try to balance his life on Earth — including his adoptive human family and workaday job as a journalist at the Daily Planet — with his fantastic heritage as a Kryptonian who fights crime and a variety of villains under the name Superman. This story takes some inspiration from the “All-Star Superman” series of DC Comics, as well as the character’s vast previous history. What are the critics saying? Here’s a roundup of the best raves — and a couple of negative reviews.
Most critics are raving about Superman
In general, critics are in love with Kal-El’s latest incarnation, with the film earning an 86% score on Rotten Tomatoes at press time. Screen International’s Tim Grierson called the movie “an ambitious, occasionally stirring film that is weirder, nervier and more thoughtful than most blockbusters,” while The Mary Sue’s Rachel Leishman remarked on her X (formerly Twitter) account, “[‘Superman’] reminds us that Clark Kent has always been a beacon of hope and the goodness that can exist in this world.”
The Wrap’s William Bibbiani noted that while the film occasionally falls short of its ambitions, it nevertheless “shoves everything super about Superman into a single motion picture, and it’s bursting at the seams with strange, wonderful, intricate ideas.” Variety’s Courtney Howard, meanwhile, had special praise for each actor involved in the piece. “Corenswet has that heroic shimmer. [Nicholas] Hoult is delightfully diabolical. [Rachel] Brosnahan brims w/ vim [and] vigor,” she said on X.
Multiple reporters and bloggers noted that James Gunn has managed to capture what makes Superman so special in this movie. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney summed general critical sentiments up perfectly by calling the film “very much a comic-book action-adventure but one with a warm human heart.” But not every early reaction has been positive.
A handful of negative reviews are dragging the movie
While most of the early reactions had a lot of praise for James Gunn’s work, a couple of reviews have drubbed “Superman.” The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager, in a critique that briefly went live before the review embargo broke, provided the first major anti-Supes salvo. He flat-out branded the film as “terrible,” saying it “gets tangled up in fanciful nonsense that soon renders the entire affair superficial and silly.”
Other negative reviews have emerged from The Toronto Star, The Times (U.K.), and the San Francisco Chronicle, the latter of which declared that “Superman” is “a mess, but it’s a colorful one. It’s either a terrible superhero movie or an OK parody, take your pick.”
The negative reviews are clearly the outliers so far, but it remains to be seen if more emerge and — even more importantly — what the audience response is like as public screenings begin. For now, however, “Superman,” James Gunn, and the film’s stars are getting the response they no doubt hoped for — and possibly giving DC Studios and the superhero genre a much-needed shot in the arm.