Forget The Dumb 'Superman' Controversy — This Movie Is A Truly Great Superhero Film

It’s not James Gunn’s fault that the real world suddenly resembles a Saturday morning supervillain’s fever dream.

The word “Marvel” wasn’t always followed by “Cinematic Universe.” Once upon a time, Marvel was a comic book company on the verge of bankruptcy. Then came “Iron Man” and a last-ditch effort to transform its remaining intellectual property into a profitable business. We all know what happened next — the Avengers, a Disney buyout, massive profits, superhero fatigue — but even in that very first movie, the seeds of a sprawling, 36-film saga were already being planted.

“Superman” needs to accomplish something similar. The first movie in director James Gunn’s new DC Universe (a sparkling clean slate to replace the dour DC Extended Universe helmed by Zack Snyder) has to bring us into a new superhero world, establish a tone that’s different from both Marvel’s quippy franchise and Snyder’s grimdark films, and set up the next few years of box office profits for Warner Bros. Discovery.

In other words, there’s a locomotive’s worth of pressure riding on “Superman.” A concocted anti-woke political controversy isn’t helping, either.

So it’s nothing short of a miracle that Gunn’s take on the Man of Steel feels more like a self-contained movie — and a good one, at that — than the first step toward building a new cinematic universe.

To be clear, the building blocks for a fresh franchise are evident in almost every frame. A new world full of metahumans (the movie’s term for superheroes), winking cameos from recognizable actors in iconic roles and a recurring gag about the inevitable formation of the Justice League are all littered throughout “Superman.” But what carries this film is undeniably a focus on developing its main characters and telling their story right now, rather than the promise of what’s coming next.