I loved it. After all the boring Marvel stuff I thought I was totally done with superhero movies. The way it began was so odd it grabbed my interest straight away and Superman had more personality than in all the movies he’d ever done while still being a goodie-two-shoes nerd.
I liked it, and it had personality, but the one thing I didn’t like was that there was not enough Superman and too much everyone else. For me the ‘78 Superman is the gold standard that every other version should aspire to, and there was only one super hero in it - Superman. There’s too much copying of the Marvel universe, where every movie has to involve a team.
That said (and I guess to contradict my own self), it was cool seeing the live action Hall of Justice from the ‘70s cartoon! And Krypto stole the movie! He elevated it from being just good to great.
Gunn and Safran are putting the DC universe on film the right way for the first time. Those characters all live in that world and it would be weird for the film to pretend they don’t. We’ve done so many movies with a single hero as the center of the universe, it’s time to do comic movies right.
I feel like the current iteration solves an interesting dilemma in writing for Superman, how do you deal with him being so overpowered over humans?
In this case, there are existing power structures in place that can fight Superman. Hell, there are existing power structures that can replicate what Superman does and these power structures are threatened by Superman.
I think the population, as a whole, can get dropped into a super hero saga in media res. You don’t need an origin story for the universe any more.