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Writer/Director James Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham powerfully diverts from the grim, grounded, and gritty aesthetic of recent DC Comics superhero film gives the audience in Superman a colorful and gloriously goofy rendition of the iconic ‘Man of Steel.’ A trailer featuring the super canine ‘Krypto’ coming to a battered and beaten Superman sets the tone audiences should expect with this movie.

Eschewing re-harvesting the overly tilled fields of the character’s origin story or Marvel Studios’ course of building a cinematic universe element by element introduced in features focused on individual character Gunn drops the audience into a comic inspired universe already in progress and populated by ‘metahumans.’

DC Studios

What writers refer to as ‘the inciting incident’, Superman’s (David Corenswet) intercession into a war and losing in a battle against a new supervillain, happens before the film even starts the character crashing into the frame beaten and defeated. Gunn skips many of the familiar beats found in stories of these characters, hurling the audience into a film where Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is already aware of his dual identity, allowing the story to focus on their relationship instead of secret identity shenanigans.

This new DC Cinematic Universe is one where the heroes of the ‘Silver Age’ are already present and active. Gunn, rightly, in my opinion, understands that the audience, after 17 years of the MCU, is ready to accept a world of comic book characters without the need to establish and detail each and every origin. As such the Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) simply fly into their scenes without the scrip stopping to explain them.

Quickly the plot develops as manipulated public opinion turns against Superman and the hero finds himself questioning his purpose on Earth and the challenges doing the right thing in a complex morally grey world. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) fueled by a fiery envy and hatred to destroy Superman is here presented in a composite of attributes that the character has exhibited in various media, he is scientifically and technologically brilliant, a billionaire businessman, politically influential, as well as having a predilection for land and its ownership.

There are a number of nods and references to 1978’s Superman The Movie, most notably even in the trailer is that the score by John Murphy and David Fleming is inspired and around the well-known theme written by the legendary John Williams. There are more subtle callbacks, in the background of one scene Perry White (Wendell Pierce) can be heard shouting ‘Don’t call me Chief!’ This Lex Luthor has a large number of people assisting his villainous plot including one referred named Otis a nice Easter egg but one that is expanded in the credits where his surname is revealed to be ‘Berg.’

There is a major change in the canon of the character, one on which a great deal of the plot revolves about that is sure to upset some fans. To avoid spoilers, I cannot reveal it here but when it unfolds people familiar with the history and lore of Superman will see it. Personally, I was fine with it, but others may not be.

James Gunn’s Superman is about as far as one can get in tone and style from Nolan’s Batman Begins, but both are crafted by talented director/writers who knew exactly the kind of film that they wanted to see on the screen. It was a fun frolic but one with heart and soul and a powerful theme that we are not tools of our parents designs but of our own.

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WB Studios

I was 17 years old and in my senior year of high school when Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie hit the screens in the United States. Despite never being a deep fan of the comic books and possessing only a surface knowledge of the character, this was still a movie that I rode my bicycle a couple of miles to the local twin cinema to see. I can recall quite vividly pumping the pedals quite hard and fast with John Williams’ icon score replaying in my head as I went home from that screening. While not as campy as the Batman television series of 1966 and a far cry from the grounded, gritty DC superhero movies of the ‘Snyderverse’ to come in the next century, Superman: The Movie set a high bar for superhero films in general, and Christopher Reeve’s excellent portrayal as Clark Kent/Superman remains in the minds of many unmatched.

What is surprising is that after 47 years, the number of people who do not quite grasp that the plot of the film and its resolution rotates around the fumbling failure of one henchman.

Otis (Ned Beatty), while a seductively costumed and faux-injured Ms. Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) distracts the Army’s security detail escorting a nuclear-armed ICBM, alters the missile’s targeting at the behest of his supervillain boss, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman.) Later, Lex learns that Otis bungled his assignment inputting only three updated coordinates instead of the required four. When it comes to the second missile, this time being transported and guarded by the US Navy, it is Ms. Teschmacher whom Lex sends to corrupt the missile’s targeting, ensuring it hits his intended target: the San Andreas Fault line to create ‘New West Coast’ that he will own and control.

Lex Luthor’s plan is when both missiles are launched Superman, due the missiles divergent courses, will be able to intercept only one. But to ensure even that outcome does not come to pass, he chains lethal kryptonite to Superman and drops him in a pool to drown.

When Ms. Teschmacher learns that the other missile will detonate its nuclear warhead over her mother’s town of Hackensack, New Jersey, she betrays Lex Luthor and rescues Superman but only after he promises to save her mother first.

It seems an idiotic mistake for Lex Luthor to send his expendable nuclear warhead to the hometown of his expendable girlfriend but of course that was never Lex’s plan. That missile is the one whose targeting was charged by the bumbling Otis, who failed to input the coordinates correctly. Because it was not the warhead that would create the ‘New West Coast’ Lex never bothered to correct that mistake leading to the targeting of Hackensack and Ms. Teschmacher’s betrayal.

Without Otis’ ineptitude, Superman would have perished, and Lex Luthor’s plan would have succeeded. Otis is the accidental hero of Superman: The Movie.