*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Some quick hits on the two most recent movies I’ve seen in a theater.

F1 The Movie

It’s funny to put a spoiler warning at the top, since anyone with an IQ over 90 who saw the trailer can probably provide a nearly-perfect outline of the major plot points of this one.

Nonetheless, it’s a fun watch, thanks in large part to Joseph Kosinski’s ability to provide a visceral viewing experience thanks to his devotion to mind-blowing, practical filming of large, expensive machines.

While F1 is no Top Gun: Maverick, the two movies share some of the same strengths.  Additionally, the Hans Zimmer score is perfectly suited for the action and adds to the white-knuckle moments when F1 is at its best.

Finally, two Brad Pitt-related thoughts.  He remains the ONLY person I have ever seen who can consistently get away with MULTIPLE f-bombs in a movie and keep a PG-13 rating.

Secondly, my favorite part of the whole movie—which made me laugh out loud a little too hard in the theater—comes after his first race.  To set the stage, Sonny (Pitt) has arrived on Cervantes’ (Javier Bardem) team just days earlier after Bardem recruits him out of desperation, even noting that the team is already $350 million in debt.  Sonny crashes a car within minutes of arriving.  Then, at the first race, he not only wrecks his own car, but that of his teammate as well.

One week, three wrecked cars.  For a team that’s already hundreds of millions in the hole.

Immediately after the race, Cervantes (justifiably!) confronts Sonny.  Sonny’s reaction, and I’m paraphrasing, is to say “yeah, yeah, yeah, enough shop talk.  Let’s get down to important business: that attractive technical director—is she married or what?”

Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes is about half a notch away from being Will Forte’s MacGruber, but comes across entirely differently (except to me, laughing my head off in the theater) because he’s Brad Pitt.  Wonderful.

Superman (2025)

A week-and-a-half later, I saw the new Superman movie.

I’ll say this for it—it’s definitely a James Gunn movie!

My views on Superman films seem to go against the grain sometimes, and I think I’ve figured out the key reason: I didn’t read the comic books.

I’m sure at some point I read a Superman comic when I was a kid, but I knew Superman more from the Christopher Reeve movies than being a devoted reader.  I’ve gradually deduced that this matters because people who are well-versed in the comic tend to judge the films, in part, on how comic-accurate they are.

This is one of the key reasons why I personally think the often-maligned Man of Steel is underrated.  Comic fans in particular disliked that version of Superman, especially because Henry Cavill’s version snaps Zod’s neck at the end.  But, for me, Cavill was a very good Superman.

Sidebar: the reason that Christopher Reeve is still the best, of course, is because he is both an excellent Superman and a superb Clark Kent.  Reeve plays Clark as an entirely different character—so much so that the “how do people not recognize him?” thing becomes almost believable.

That brings me back to the Gunn version, because I did appreciate that Gunn includes some dialogue about how Clark’s glasses have properties that distort his appearance in the mind of the viewer—especially important to include after an earlier scene where Lex Luthor uses facial recognition to bring up the driver’s license of a bystander in seconds.

The movie does other things well, too, and Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner is a particular highlight.  Fillion is consistently fantastic in all of his work, but Gunn shines when he’s writing for a-hole protagonists, and Fillion’s Gardner fits that bill.  I also continue to applaud Gunn’s relentless propensity for casting distractingly beautiful women in minor and supporting roles in his films.

Speaking of, Jimmy Olson being a lady’s man instead of a dorky innocent was a nice twist.  I enjoyed the Justice Gang fighting a monster outside in the night while Superman and Lois have a casual conversation.  Superman’s persistent attempts to save all lives—even squirrels and monsters—are a good character beat.  Beck Bennett is always a welcome addition to any project.

I think the biggest issue I had with the movie is that I was just kind of . . . bored.  This seems contradictory.  Like many of his other projects, Gunn tries to introduce and juggle a lot of characters, and there is certainly a lot happening—on paper.  This is a busy movie.  Probably too busy.  Social media monkeys, interdimensional imps, pocket universes with secret prisons, and more.  Yet, I found my mind wandering about halfway through, contemplating how far into the runtime we were.

Therein lies another issue.  Much has been said and written about how the audience grafts its own ideology onto this movie, and that the film serves as something of a political Rorschach test.  My issue wasn’t what I perceived to be the substance of the underlying politics, but, rather, that the political aspect creates a structural problem that detracts unnecessarily from the movie.

This could have been a pretty straightforward “Lex Luthor hates and resents Superman and wants to kill or imprison him” story.  While the movie certainly has that, it also includes detours like a shockingly protracted scene between Clark and Lois involving an interview / debate over Superman’s interventionalist actions to prevent Fictional Country “A” from invading Fictional Country “B.”  The scene goes on far too long and makes Superman come off a little dumb (or naive) and as a bit of a wuss—which is clearly the opposite of what you want in a movie introducing a new Superman.

On the political aspect, my issue isn’t what the politics are.  It’s that, even if I interpreted the movie as fully aligned with my own beliefs, that element is shoehorned into the plot in such a way as to be disruptive.  It also clashes with the otherwise fairly corny / traditional / silly comic-book tone of the movie.

Say what you will about Zack Snyder’s take—too gritty, too much pointless action—but I don’t think you could ding him for being inconsistent.

There were a few other missteps, like setting up Supergirl to be a drunken party girl.  I’m all for movies that don’t take themselves too seriously, but that might go a little too far in a direction that will undermine the basic ability of the Supergirl movie to tell a strong story.  We’ll see, though.

The Black Noir reveal—I mean the Ultraman reveal!—was obvious.  I’m also pretty sure those weren’t Kansan accents, but I’ll let that slide.

Overall, I didn’t hate the 2025 version of Superman.  I just don’t think I need to see it again or own it on disc.  It falls squarely between Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy work, which I like a lot, and Peacemaker / The Suicide Squad, which I don’t.  One lesson there might be that PG-13 constraints are actually productive guardrails that make Gunn sharper in my opinion.

One final thought that occurred to me as I was walking out of Superman: in a roundabout way . . . it made me even more excited for The Fantastic Four.