For all the airborne spectacle and unfathomable feats of strength featured in Superman, the film’s most amazing attribute is its sense of timing. Arriving at your local multiplex after years of delays and scratched plans, Warner Brothers’ latest attempt to turn their DC Comics IP into a proper Marvel competitor couldn’t have asked for a better release date given its subject matter. Our favorite cornfed Kryptonian may embody a backwards-looking rallying cry for decency and decorum, but writer/director James Gunn’s plea for civility isn’t here to just play nice. He’s got some scores to settle, both interpersonal and geopolitical, and for as often as right-wing media outlets blow Hollywood’s leftist ideologies out of proportion, the chum in the water is real this time. That the clogged studio pipeline could produce something so of-the-moment probably says more about the rigid nature of our international struggles than it does anything regarding creative foresight, but now is not the time for mitigation. Clark Kent is here to punch his way through your news feed, and he doesn’t know the first thing about choosing his battles.

With all these contemporary skirmishes to attend to, it’s no wonder that Gunn and company couldn’t find time for a backstory. Opening in media res has become an agreeable workaround for comic book flicks looking to keep things fresh, but Superman does them one better by operating like a sequel from the get-go, bypassing the meet-and-greet portion of the proceedings altogether. Joining us three years after the public unveiling of his god-like alter ego, Clark (David Corenswet) is already seeing Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) on the downlow, and has fully drawn the envious ire of villainous tech billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). Proudly wearing its episodic ambitions on its sleeve, Superman operates like an aspirant serialized drama, wherein the plot at hand is less important than its own continuation, giving Gunn free rein to choose his subject matter. Turns out he has a lot of interests.

The first, unsurprisingly, is himself, or rather his treatment by the online bad actors who nearly derailed his career just a few short years ago. Given Luthor’s relative lack of physical strength, it makes sense that the character would wage war against the extra terrestrial in the court of public opinion, but the contextual veneer is awfully thin. Clearly still licking his wounds from the resurfaced tweets that temporarily saw him ousted as the helmer of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, Gunn positions Luthor as a social media-wielding scoundrel with a facility pot stirring, though the revenge tour doesn’t stop there. Casting Michael Ian Black as an in-universe Tucker Carlson smacks of hurt feelings, as does the brief glimpse of enslaved monkeys tweeting ravenously at Superman’s expense. Like the empowered Iowan himself, Gunn’s lofty industry standing doesn’t make him immune to the slings and arrows of popular discourse.

Using untold millions to take aim at your detractors may be petty, or even immature, but it gives the movie an edge that’s missing from its action sequences. Leaning into the regrettable CGI playbook of the last fifteen years, the melees at the center of Superman feel weightless and tired, if mercifully condensed until the exhausting climactic throwdown. It all feels like autopilot at this point, as does the integration of peripheral players as a means of soft launching other upcoming DC attractions. You hate to complain about the presence of Nathan Fillion, especially in an atrocious wig, but the incorporation of Green Lantern mythos feels more like a threat than an enticement, gesturing toward years of interconnected wheel-spinning just as we’re getting our sea legs. Apparently the Marvel way is still the only way, though it’s unlikely that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers will be weighing in on the conflict in Gaza anytime soon.

Despite Gunn’s claims to the contrary, there’s no mistaking the fictitious countries of Boravia and Jarhanpur as anything other than stand-ins for Israel and Palestine, respectively. The former, whose military is subsidized by both Lex and the American government, is looking to annex the lands of the latter through brute strength, a fate that Jarhanpur would be hard-pressed to avoid without the aid of the titular do-gooder. Their third-world equipment and infrastructure make them an underdog worth championing, but the arm-twisting morality here comes with a side of patronization. Using a dusty soundstage to stand in for an entire nation will do that, especially when paired with the unideal optics of a slew of anonymous non-white extras pleading helplessly for their melanin-depleated savior. Even the motivations here are a bit dubious, transparently more interested in being on the right side of history than adding anything to the conversation. It’s a briar patch of ethical depiction, but our lead performers are graceful enough to not get caught in the thickets.

Picking up where Jesse Eisenberg’s Luthor youth movement left off in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Hoult plays Lex as yet another Elon Musk avatar, though the caricature is kept to a minimum. Exuding an inferiority complex from head to toe, his smooth intonation and percolating disdain feel ripped right from the wunderkind headlines, the perfect opposite of Brosnahan’s galvanizing self-possession. Whether verbally sparring with Clark or piloting a futuristic aircraft, the Emmy winner is ready for her big screen close up, even if Gunn’s screenplay occasionally forgets that she exists. The chemistry between her and Superman is real, though that’s largely true of anyone who passes Corenswet’s path. Striking a perfect balance between puppy-eyed, aw-shucks charisma and leading man fortitude, the largely unknown thespian was simply built for the part, which makes it all the more impactful when our beloved illegal alien is thrown into a darkened cage.

Gunn’s recent touting of Superman as an immigrant story only reads as liberal glad-handing until you see the final product, which subjects the metahuman to all kinds of outsider castigation. It starts as dangerous worry-mongering perpetrated by the insulated upper class, but ends up, as these things do, with Kent being disappeared into an unmarked pocket dimension. The ICE raid imagery is enough to send shivers down your spine, but weaponizing real-world trauma to cinch the point of your lavishly-funded popcorn entertainment should be treated with at least a hair of skepticism. Gunn makes political arguments like an overzealous high schooler, so convinced of his correctness that fervor gets the best of nuance, or even practicality. Unwilling to remove himself from the Superhero Industrial Complex, the splash page auteur is determined to bring authentic tragedy into a candy-colored world that knows just how to fix it, subtlety be damned.     

Most blockbusters that become political footballs do so unwittingly, but Superman was designed for the back-and-forth. Its eagerness to join the discursive frey is likely to ruffle feathers on both sides, either for hewing too closely to woke sensibilities, or for flooding the chat with half-baked opinions, but the sloppiness doesn’t make it any less bracing. Features of this size and scale rarely stick their neck out to this degree, and Gunn and crew should be commended for their willingness to court scorn and misinterpretation. Like Superman flying half way across the world to save the day, the movie navigated an awfully long runway to arrive just on time. Eloquence might not be its strong suit, but punctuality sure is.