Set photos from writer-director James Gunn’s upcoming superhero reboot movie Superman have leaked online and are generating strong fan reactions, both good and bad, as the film continues production ahead of its July 11th 2025 release date.
David Corenswet suits up in “Superman.”
The photos in question — which I won’t post or describe in detail here, per my longstanding policy against such things — depict David Corenswet’s Superman in full costume. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the greatest Superman costume of all time, the worst Superman costume of all time, or an acceptable costume that missed an opportunity to be perfect.
So, a little of everything. But most reactions have been at the extremes, and in those environments nobody is keen on tolerating the opposition’s take — and everybody insists their own hostility is in response to their opponents’ hostility, ad nauseam.
We’ve actually already gotten a look at the costume in the first official image from the set, which you can see above. Taken “entirely in-camera” by Jess Miglio according to Gunn, that image also raised questions and sparked strong reactions, and I explained my own impression of the costume and staging in an article you can read here.
In a nutshell, I look at the costume and it’s Superman. That’s what matters — that when you see him, you think, “That’s Superman.” It doesn’t mean it’s your favorite Superman, it just means you acknowledge it has all of the attributes necessary to make you sure you’re seeing Superman in costume.
Every big-screen Hollywood Superman movie has had that quality, and Gunn’s upcoming kickoff to the DCU — under he and co-CEO Peter Safran’s leadership at DC Studios — is no different. From George Reeves to Christopher Reeve, Brandon Routh to Henry Cavill, and now with David Corenswet, the cinematic Superman costumes have always been good or great representations of the Man of Steel.
George Reeves made due with a cheap, thin outfit in 1951’s Superman and the Mole Men, but it still looked quite nice by the standards of its time. The costume itself was dependent on the form of the person wearing it; so on someone with the physique of today’s typical superhero performer, it might have looked even more convincing.
Christopher Reeve had essentially a more costly and better fitting version of the same design George Reeves wore, for 1978’s Superman: The Movie and its three sequels. This film series created the template for superhero movie storytelling, and utilized a combination of serious drama and sense of humor in a big, bright, ambitiously entertaining way that has informed Marvel Studio’s approach.
Brandon Routh got a superior and costlier version of the same design in 2006’s Superman Returns. Whatever quibbles fans have about the size of the trunks and “S,” this is a great example of how modern superhero films can use a tight fabric design in a way that still looks high-quality and believable.
It was Henry Cavill who brought the first significant rethinking of the outfit in his Superman debut Man of Steel (continuing in Batman v Superman, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and Black Adam), a more alien aesthetic for a design meant to represent not an intentional superhero costume but some sort of combination ambassador-warrior garment (presumably meant to be worn beneath outer armor, as seen on Krypton). It’s a gorgeous concept, and looked great on screen as well.
Corenswet’s outfit for 2025’s reboot Superman is back to the traditional design from the earlier films, including red trunks and overall brighter saturated colors, but without the skintight material and instead favoring the armored/uniform approach of Cavill’s era. It tweaks the traditional design by taking inspiration from specific comics and eras when it comes to certain details like the “S” emblem and the trunks design. It looks intended in-story to be a costume, a superhero suit, something Superman wears precisely to create the sensibility that leads cynics to say “that’s cheesy.”
The complaints that Corenswet’s suit is “baggy” because it has creases when he bends or leans, and the related claim that Corenswet isn’t buff enough to fill out the suit, come primarily from fans of Cavill who are upset he isn’t continuing in the role.
It’s telling that their complaints ignore the fact Cavill’s own suit also had creases and had fake muscles built into it and painted on the outside, as well as the fact Corenswet is in fact taller and heavier than Cavill — he simply appears leaner because his enormous muscles are spread out over a couple of additional inches of height.
Of course, even though Corenswet’s costume already looks great in the leaked photos, it’s also true these are illicit photos taken on set or from a distance, and so the quality of the images is poor and doesn’t at all reflect how the costumes will actually appear on film. Yet, every time a new superhero film is in production and early costume photos leak, fans engage in these same cliched histrionics about “faithfulness” and quality and design, fretting over the most pedantic of critiques.
It’s the nature of fandoms to overthink and overreact, but it’s still sad to see it happen no matter how much we know it’s probably inevitable. And it’s especially disappointing to see it driven not by serious debate or earnest complaints about something substantive, but by ulterior motives mostly driven by unhealthy obsessions in favor of one thing and against another.
This isn’t about liking or disliking a costume. This is about the inability of some fans to learn from the past, avoid cliched overreactions, and stop behaving as if only people who share their personal narrow preferences are “real fans” and that only things conforming to their preferences deserve to exist.
Making it worse is the fact these myopic and stereotypical fan reactions are expressed with tremendous vitriol and offensive lies about James Gunn personally, manifesting too often in spamming and harassing of Gunn and others.
None of this will matter come 2025, though. Mainstream audiences are the ones who will decide Superman’s fate, not fans who wage war over it.
My guess is, if DC Studios and WBD play their cards right — an oft-dubious proposition when it comes to WBD leadership, admittedly — Superman will hit the same combination of elements that made audiences embrace Marvel’s MCU films, especially those from Gunn himself.
Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequels all grossed in the roughly $800 million range, and that’s where I think DC and WBD are hoping their new Superman can soar. Gunn’s sensibilities are irreverent in all the best ways and earnest enough to win over audience hearts as well as minds, a description that describes a lot of what made the MCU as a whole popular.
Applying that approach to DC characters like Superman, in ways relevant to DC’s perspective (summed up rather perfectly in the “Gods and Monsters” naming for this chapter of the new DCU), sounds like a winning approach, especially if enough time passes for audiences to forget the DCEU. But will 2025 be long enough for that?
I’ve said before that I think it might’ve been smarter to let The Batman hold the cinematic space for DC in 2025, with perhaps a Catwoman spinoff film or series put into production for release in 2025 as well, and give Superman an extra year of breathing room from the DCEU.
While I do still believe that’s true, I also think the overall diminished footprint of superheroes in film and streaming until 2025 will benefit the genre, if the current overall “drought” leads to audiences returning eagerly for both Marvel and DC when the right films finally shows up. And so far, Superman definitely looks like one of the right ones to me.
