'Superman' Teaser Trailer Released By DC Studios
On July 11, you’ll believe the time could fly. And what a good boy it’ll bring
Well folks, it’s finally here. Nearly 2 years after being announced, and a year and a half of casting news and set photos, the teaser trailer for DC Studios’s Superman, directed by James Gunn and starring David Corenswet and kicking off the new DC Universe, was finally released Thursday morning.
The trailer starts with the Man of Steel himself bloodied in an arctic fight, laying there still as he thinks of all the people in his life. He stumbles to work, tactically avoids Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) to her intrigue. He thinks of a chat with Pa (Pruitt Taylor Vince). And he summons Krypto for the rescue to take him home. Cut to saving a civilian, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) watches in anger from Luthorcorp. Elsewhere he loads a gun. A child prays for Superman as he escapes being bombed. The Man of Steel gets pelted by his loudest detractors as he enters…Stagg Industries? Right on cue we get our first glimpses of Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced). Biggest of all we see how much of a not-origin story this film sets out to be because Clark and Lois are actually in deeeeep love already. That first official photo of Corenswet suited up? Lois is right there with him as whatever catastrophe is happening unfolds. The trailer’s end shot has them holding hands and her hugging him panicked. And they can make out. Soar doing it. The trailer continues as the big blue Boy Scout tends to robotic life, Fortress formation, a first look at Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho (where the Stagg Industries of it all will probably factor most), falling landmarks, more angry Lex and big battles covered by the news, even some of Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific. There are also glimpses of Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen, who was with the rest of the Daily Planet team in a “Trailer Tomorrow” teaser with the likes of Lois, Beck Bennett’s Steve Lombard, and Mikaela Hoover’s Cat Grant.
Variety believes that the fallen robot is Kelex, a servant droid from Krypton who later becomes a caretaker at the Fortress of Solitude. As much as Clark might have Krypto to remind him of home, having multiple connections is never a bad thing, but losing any certainly is. Gunn explained in a Q&A following the press preview on the Warner Bros. lot that the teaser is meant to demonstrate that this Superman “lives in a world with superheroes.” Elaborating, Gunn said, “Superhero movies have taken these characters and said, ‘Okay, it’s Batman [or] it’s Superman, but it’s not any of the other stuff,’” We’re embracing all of the Superman mythology. He has friends who are other superheroes. He has people he doesn’t get along as well with who are other superheroes. He has a lot of the things that we love from the Superman comics that we haven’t been able to see as much of in filmed media, and definitely haven’t been able to see in a grounded way, which is what I hope we’ve created.” He wants it to feel like “a fully lived-in world” that just happens to include fantastical elements. “This is an alternative history world where superheroes exist but it’s also incredibly grounded. It’s about real people having real lives, there just happens to be metahumans there. Superman has friends who are other superheroes.”
The trailer and the film’s use of John Williams’s theme from the 1978 movie, one of Gunn’s favorite soundtracks of all time was wrestled with but ultimately necessary. He enlisted his recently reliable John Murphy, who composed the scores for both The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at the very start of the process, a rare entry point. “I said, ‘I want to use a version of the Williams theme, but I want to do our own version of it,’” Gunn said. “That leads into a lot of other pieces, some of which harken back to the Williams theme, but some of which are purely John Murphy.” Murphy was sent preliminary drafts of the screenplay nearly two years ago. Gunn then played some of Murphy’s initial passes at a score on the set while they were shooting the film. “It’s finding that balance between the novel and the traditional.”
At the same press event, Gunn described one of the themes of the movie embodied by the hero “We do have a battered Superman at the beginning, and I think that is our country,” it’s “a movie about kindness. It was a movie about being good. I believe in the goodness of human beings, and I believe that most people in this country despite their ideological beliefs or politics are doing their best to get by and are trying to be good people despite what it might seem like to the other side or what that other side might be, and I think this movie is about that.”
Superman is set to be released in theaters on July 11, 2025, and will also feature Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Christopher MacDonald as Ron Troupe, Neva Howell as Ma Martha Kent, María Gabriela De Faría as Angela Spica, The Engineer, Terence Rosemore as Otis, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, and Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr.
