The first moment that we see David Corenswet’s Man of Steel in James Gunn’s highly anticipated Superman, he isn’t looking very super. The iconic DC superhero plummets from the skies and crashes down onto the snowy tundra, seemingly near his Fortress of Solitude. Superman has been beaten and battered. He’s coughing up blood, injuries sustained in a fight we didn’t get to see. Speaking of not seeing things, the very next beat of the first Superman trailer features something we have never seen in a live-action Superman movie.
Krypto the dog, who zooms to Superman’s rescue.
James Gunn’s DC universe officially is underway with this exciting, action-packed and triumphant trailer, which you can watch at the top of this story.
You can tell that James Gunn assembled this trailer with his team knowing that every frame was going to be scrutinized by a ravenous fan base. DC crowds have not had a proper, standalone Superman movie since Zack Snyder delivered his unique origin story Man of Steel back in 2013. That film led into a Batman versus Superman team up movie that eventually killed off the Blue Boy Scout, and fans have been waiting for some form of a return for years.
During an event in Los Angeles to celebrate the launch of the first Superman trailer, writer and director James Gunn told journalists:
I was incredibly rigorous with the trailer. And it went through a lot of iterations until I was happy with it. And there was only one thing that was on the forefront of my mind, was that the trailer has to be an authentic representation of what the film is. It doesn't have to have every single element that’s in the film, obviously. But it has to show what is the basic essence of the movie, and the story we're telling. And I think that it does that, but it took a lot of work to get there.
So what do we see? As one might expect from a Superman movie, we see the dichotomy of the all-powerful Superman in action, and the bumbling physicality that is Clark Kent (also Corenswet) at The Daily Planet, or in conference with his paternal figure, Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince). We get glimpses of the staple characters in the universe, from intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) to the sinister Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), holding a gun that I have to assume is loaded to Kryptonite bullets?
But the unique aspect of James Gunn’s Superman is that the hero will be inserted into a universe that – from a narrative standpoint – already is up and running. So when the action kicks in, we see Superman (Corenswet) battling creatures alongside Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), a member of the Green Lantern Corp. We catch a shot of Superman mourning what looks like the robots that protect his Fortress of Solitude, and fighting a being who is rumored to be Ultraman. There’s a lot happening here for DC fans to process.
Luckily, we have several months to work it all out. Superman is due in theaters on July 11, 2025, and will continue the expansion of this new DC universe under James Gunn and Peter Safran. What was your favorite part of this new look at the impending blockbuster?
