It’s hard to be Superman. The newest (and first full-length) trailer for writer/director/DCU-über-helmer James Gunn’s reboot of the Man of Steel kicks off with the titular hero (David Corenswet) sitting down with Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) for an interview. It’s a fitting framing device, and it harkens back to some of the best moments from the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder Superman films—at least until the trailer moves into significantly darker territory.
After some playful banter, including a Walter Cronkite reference likely to soar up, up and away over the heads of moviegoers under 40, Lois gets to the hard questions, grilling Superman about the whys and wherefores of his involvement in global affairs. How does he decide when to intervene in a war? Should he have the right to do so? As Corenswet’s Superman struggles to answer these probing questions, the trailer shifts gears. The villainous Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) argues that Superman isn’t even a man, but rather “an it,” in a nod to his status as an alien on this planet. As forces aligned with Lex, including The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria) and the previously-unseen new iron-suit-guy character the Hammer of Boravia, step up to challenge Superman along with other heroes like Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), it looks like he’ll more than have his hands full.
Questioning skeptics, not unlike Lois, were wondering what the Gunn Superman experience may look like. While this comic-book-color-graded trailer doesn’t give us all the answers, it does provide our best look yet into Gunn’s interpretation of the character. It turns out that he’s interested in how a symbol of hope—a person devoted to doing the right thing above all—can exist in a complicated modern world where there are so many other factors and challenges facing even the most altruistic do-gooder. What’s the cost of doing the right thing when so many others are hoping you’ll fail or self-destruct? That’s the internal question that has long made the character endlessly compelling. The foregrounding of that question—along with a savvy costuming choice, and the prominence of Krypto the Superdog in this film’s marketing—is yet another sign that Gunn intends to take Superman back to his roots and away from the grimacing nihilism of the Zack Snyder era.
Also on display are Gunn’s trademark humor (note the girl taking a selfie in the midst of a monster attack), inherent weirdness (a giant kaiju), and kinetic movement (the camera being slow to follow Superman after he takes off is a great gag). While we still have until July 11 to wait, this trailer is a confident sign that this iteration of Superman is poised to reach new heights.