We may never know Zack Snyder’s master plan for advancing the Superman saga since his Man of Steel opus (The Godfather of superhero movies) was disrupted by studio executives at Warner Bros. who insisted on a comic book series that emulated Christopher Nolan’s nihilistic but more profitable Batman franchise. They wanted darkness, not Snyder’s seriousness. But “dark” means trivial in Millennial film culture, and now, with James Gunn’s new Superman, Warner has gotten the inconsequential movie it always desired.

Snyder took up the Superman comic book myth then enhanced its meaning as American cultural heritage with classical, spiritual roots. This grand vision opposes fanboy frivolity, which is the basis of Gunn’s commercialized version. His Superman (portrayed by David Corenswet) is introduced as a humiliated, known quantity. He has already lost a battle, slammed into the pavement of Metropolis, and is bloody, wounded, and wheezing.

Gunn’s point is to replace myth and destroy all faith. This Superman movie is the most cynical imaginable. It doesn’t just go against the original Joe Shuster–Jerry Siegel comic book ubermensch that Snyder understood; it reworks a figure for the dystopian millennium and Hollywood resistance.

There’s no denying that Guardians of the Galaxy director Gunn knows the market he panders to when he emasculates Corenswet’s average all-American masculinity — the essence of the Superman concept — then extracts any romance from Superman’s relationship with reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan is grating throughout their meant-to-be-flirty spats). Lacking Snyder’s erotic pairing of Henry Cavill and Amy Adams, Gunn degrades the humanity of these characters. He victimizes Superman (horribly so in a poorly judged “Pocket Universe” prison sequence featuring nightmarish degradation) and then triggers audience revulsion through evil genius Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), whose key-punch video game tropes remotely attack a man of virtual invulnerability rather than a man of steel. Luthor combats Superman through a combination of science and technology — injecting nanobot GPS trackers into Superman’s bloodstream — using methods that recall the hideous Covid manipulation.

Gunn’s objective is to banalize the very concept that Snyder sought to elevate. He demeans Superman’s virtue, making him a figure of public distrust vilified in the press, yet gives him goofy boyishness through a mischievous terrier-schnauzer mutt named Krypto. Snyder eliminated the pet, but Gunn uses the dog for dragging Superman’s rumpled body to the icy Fortress of Solitude. The sequence lacks surprise as well as delight. Inane dialogue and jokey asides constitute Gunn’s half-Nolan and half-Marvel hackery.

The conventionality that Gunn resorts to includes a subplot with the Green Lantern League, a jokey crew of XYZ-men knock-offs. They appear briefly as comic relief until Gunn brings them back to complete a battle Superman cannot win by himself. It’s catnip for inconstant comic book consumers.

Flashback: Except for that stirring, time-reversal scene in the Superman of 1978, the Christopher Reeve films were clunky quasi-camp. Richard Lester took over the sequels, flaunting his signature light comic touch to prove his superiority to the franchise. But Snyder, being of a later generation, triumphed through expression and dedication that few filmmakers can match — and that Marvel/Nolan addicts simply don’t understand. They tolerated Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, although it felt both demoralized and uninspired. Snyder overcame all that by bringing visual richness and emotional power. Gunn, instead, infantilizes the tale. His iteration of Superman is just bad business (like Joss Whedon defacing Snyder’s Justice League), even when it veers into social commentary, fashionably evoking the war in Ukraine.

This Superman demonstrates the perversity called forth everywhere by our media. The pop-art difference between Gunn’s antipathy and Snyder’s mythology is like that between Taylor Swift’s snide “Anti-Hero” and David Bowie’s valiant “Heroes.”