The second that received the one greatest response on the packed screening of Superman that I attended was when Superman saves a squirrel. It takes place throughout the kaiju battle, it’s over in seconds, and it’s composed of two photographs. Within the first, we see a wall of particles roaring towards the harmless creature, and a streak of blue and pink whisking it away. Within the second shot, Superman (David Corenswet) flies into the body in a peaceable spot away from the battle, gently units the squirrel down, then returns to the fray.
It’s performed for laughs, and it received an enormous one at my screening. It’s a superbly executed visible gag. The timing is immaculate. The distinction with the dimensions of the monster catastrophe engulfing Metropolis is absurd. It’s a joke at this Superman’s expense, in step with the film’s portrayal of his niceness and wholesomeness as cute and type of dorky, nearly to the purpose of being naïve and short-sighted. This can be a Superman who likes tacky pop-punk, lets a canine bully him, and might’t inform when an interview — or a chat together with his girlfriend, or each on the similar time — goes badly. He has godlike powers, however he’s additionally type of ridiculous.
Because of the allure of Corenswet’s efficiency and the nice and cozy tone writer-director James Gunn brings to the film, although, the viewers’s laughter at him isn’t mocking or mean-spirited. It’s affectionate and delighted. Such scrupulous goodness is absurd, however it’s nonetheless good, and in a world of many different metahumans, it’s what makes him particular.
There’s a meta layer to the joke, too. It’s certainly one of a number of barbs Gunn directs on the earlier cinematic incarnation of the character, as portrayed by Henry Cavill and conceived by Zack Snyder in 2013’s Man of Metal. In that movie, Superman permits his rageful private battle with Zod to trash Metropolis on the presumed price of many human lives. On this animal-loving film, Superman gained’t permit an existential battle with an enormous monster to assert the soul of a single rodent. It’s the stake within the coronary heart of the Snyderverse.
Alternatively, you may learn it as a tribute to a extra harmless period in superhero cinema. The 1966 Batman film has a beautiful comedian sequence during which Batman runs round attempting to eliminate a bomb, however all over the place he turns there’s a marching band, or some nuns, or a stack of butane canisters, or a household of geese. 2025’s Superman can relate: Some days you simply can’t do away with a large kaiju.
However there’s additionally a degree on which the squirrel second isn’t a joke in any respect, and that Gunn’s intent with it’s lethal critical. I feel it’s attainable to argue that this seeming throwaway two-shot sequence resonates so strongly within the theater as a result of it locates the film’s emotional and philosophical core, and the core of Gunn’s conception of the character.
Repeatedly, Gunn reveals Superman utilizing his powers to save lots of particular person individuals (and animals) from hazard, and these moments carry as a lot weight within the storytelling as his fights. The squirrel gag happens inside the context of a bigger set piece during which Superman is usually attempting to include the injury completed because the Justice Gang battle the kaiju, together with pleading with them to not kill the rampaging beast. The climax of the battle shouldn’t be the Gang’s gross execution of the monster; it’s Superman utilizing his may to softly decrease its physique to the bottom in a park, leaving the neighboring buildings and not using a scratch.
That second is echoed later within the film in a spectacular scene during which Superman stops a toppling constructing from collapsing right into a bridge and wiping out the residents of Metropolis who’re fleeing throughout it. The tiny determine holding up the mass of falling masonry all by himself is pure old-school Superman iconography. However once more, Gunn’s focus is telling. He doesn’t search to maximalize Superman’s heroism by depicting an enormous crowd of individuals beneath, gesturing on the hundreds of lives the hero is saving. As a substitute, he makes the second private, displaying us a single, determined mom on the bridge whose automobile has stalled, and who manages to flee due to Superman’s well timed intervention.
One of the best shot within the movie’s unique trailer — and the primary inkling I had that Gunn had completely understood the task — reveals Superman, in gradual movement, whooshing in to defend a little bit lady from an explosion of particles, once more throughout the kaiju battle. It’s a really shut mirror of the squirrel second, solely with staging that’s dramatic and funky reasonably than comedian and goofy.
For Gunn’s Superman, each life is sacred, and each second of heroism is intimate and one-to-one. When he lastly confronts Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) face-to-face, he speaks to him angrily however with compassion, as a result of in his eyes, Lex additionally must be saved. It’s not simply that this Superman is right here to save lots of the world; he’s right here to save lots of you. Even in the event you’re a villain — or a squirrel.
