Superman shows we were wrong about blockbusters

James Gunn's new version has defied expectations to become one of the biggest hits of the year. There are reasons to be cheerful about mainstream moviemaking

- Louis Chilton

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a hackneyed opening line? No - it's Superman (2025), James Gunn's new blockbuster, which flew dashingly into cinemas last Friday.

The film comes at a precarious time for blockbusters, arriving in a forbidding post-pandemic landscape where superhero movies, still ubiquitous, are no longer the bankable certainties they were a decade ago. If “superhero fatigue” is the phrase du jour when it comes to recent audience attitudes, then Gunn clearly didn’t get the memo.

Superman is as unapologetically comic bookish as any film in recent memory, and promises much more to come. It heralds a complete overhaul of the DC Comics movie universe, following more than a decade of critically panned, commercially wavering releases, from Man of Steel (2013) through to The Flash (2023).

Gunn, best known for directing Marvel’s much-loved Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, took over as co-chair of DC Studios in 2022, and is overseeing the new creative direction of the franchise himself.

On paper,