[Source: Entertainment Weekly]

The James Gunn era at DC Comics begins, but “Superman” is less super-powered than we’d hoped.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane…it’s a new Superman.

The latest version of the caped hero from Krypton has finally arrived, marking the start of the James Gunn era at DC Studios.

It’s got a superb bunch of actors — anchored by its exquisitely cast trio of David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult. But no amount of super-strength can lift the gifted actors from the muddled mess of Gunn’s script.

Gunn chooses to forgo another Superman origin story, which seems wise taken at face value. Instead, we’re plunged into a story where Superman (Corenswet) has just lost his first fight after three years defending Earth. Superman has fallen to a figure dubbed the Boravian Hammer, who is really more a billion-dollar LARP suit controlled by Lex Luthor (Hoult).

This Superman, out July 11, isn’t about a hero discovering who he is; it’s about a hero discovering why his humanity, the core of who he is, is his best asset. If only that narrative weren’t mired in paper-thin geopolitics, a carousel of characters whose names we barely have time to register, and an assumption that superhero shorthand will do the work of good story development.

Superman feels like the second or third entry in a franchise where new characters and increasingly wild twists are thrown at the hero for lack of inspiration. Hardly what one might expect from what’s been touted as the calling card of a new era of the DC-Warner Bros. partnership.

Superman is backed up by a cadre of other metahumans, known as the Justice Gang (*maybe) —Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), but we learn little about them beyond their powers (which include snarky one-liners).

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