The leaked Superman review just blew the lid off the internet, with reactions hitting early ahead of Warner Bros.’ embargo on July 8.
Basically, members of the press who attend free screenings held by Warner Bros. are only allowed to share their reactions and reviews once Warner Bros. gives the green light.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know exactly how these press screenings or movie review embargoes work because I’ve never been offered one. Universal did just ask me to take down my first Jurassic World: Rebirth review, even though I wasn’t invited to a press screening or under embargo (for the record, I didn’t take it down; I paid to see the movie myself).
That said, I’ve agreed to plenty of embargoes for press releases over the years. The way it works is simple: if they want to send you info early, they ask you to agree to an embargo date. If you say yes, they send the info so you can prep your coverage. If you don’t reply or say no, you don’t get it. It’s likely much the same with the movie screenings.
Update: The first reactions have hit, and they’re mixed.
Update #2: The first batch of reviews has hit Rotten Tomatoes, and the score is sky high.
Superman Review Controversy Explodes Across The Daily Beast, Variety, and Bluesky
Regarding James Gunn’s Superman, what happened is that The Daily Beast posted their review early, which slammed the flick, to say the least.
Even Variety then mentioned Superman in their review for the new John Cena movie, Heads of State, which wasn’t good, but guess what? Yep, we caught them: Variety edited their article to remove mention of Superman. Too late. We have the screenshots.
Back to The Daily Beast review, following that going viral online (and believe me, it went viral along with what Variety posted), now a critic for the website Uproxx broke his embargo and posted on the woke social media site Bluesky that he couldn’t disagree more with what The Daily Beast had to say.
“I’m going to get in trouble for this. But that ‘leaked review,’ good god I couldn’t disagree more,” posted the critic.
Update: The critic added in another post and compared Gunn’s Superman to Top Gun: Maverick.
“Seems I’m already in enough trouble, ‘but whatever this mystery movie is,’ it’s the happiest I’ve walked out of a movie since Top Gun Maverick. Again, I will never reveal the movie I’m talking about,” he posted.
James Gunn’s Superman: fans will love or hate it
The Daily Beast, Variety, and Uproxx‘s reactions fit with what we first posted from that WB insider’s own review, that fans will either love or hate James Gunn’s Superman.
The insider basically said fans of the Zack Snyder DCEU will hate Gunn’s Superman movie, that comic book fans will love Gunn’s Superman movie, and that the normie audience may be completely lost as it could come across as too goofy.
I tweeted that I think Gunn is trying to recapture his MCU audience from Guardians of the Galaxy, which was goofy AF, yet a big success. However, fans and normies are already familiar with Superman, while they didn’t know jack about the Guardians. We actually got our start helping Marvel promote the Guardians of the Galaxy comics before Gunn got involved with the movies. I saw it all playing out as it is now, years ago.
Whether that is a bad or good thing isn’t up to me (I see Superman on Tuesday), it’s up to the fans who go see Gunn’s new Man of Steel. I also said Gunn’s Superman is his to lose this summer, as 28 Years Later, F1, Jurassic World: Rebirth – and there isn’t much hype for Fantastic Four – are all bombs.
Big question is: Can Gunn come through? It actually seems not only is the future of DC riding on Gunn, but quite possibly the entire superhero genre (the MCU has been in a big downfall post-Endgame, and Sony has reportedly canceled their Spider-Man spinoff universe).
Will the fans win? Or Gunn’s ego?
We’ll find out next week.
