Warner Bros. dropped a new sneak-peek teaser for James Gunn’s Superman on Thursday out of CinemaCon, and it’s mostly just the same trailer we saw back in December, with the same quick-cut looks at Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Guy “worst haircut in the ’verse” Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), a giant kaiju that might be Jimmy Olsen, and more. The difference is, there’s an extra two minutes of footage that might just be the full theatrical cut of the sequence that follows after Superman crashlands in the snow near the Fortress of Solitude — and it’s a long, agonizing two minutes.
Worse, half of it is a grim comedy sequence where Krypto is torturing Superman and doesn’t realize it. He’s just a good boy who wants to play — by jumping all over the shattered, writhing body of his best friend. Superman’s Fortress of Solitude robots also show up, and also kinda torture Superman, though much like Krypto, they’re just trying to help, even if that help leaves him screaming in pain.
This is pretty classic James Gunn humor, seen throughout The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies — dark, weird, boundary-pushing (most of us aren’t used to seeing Superman physically shattered, helpless, and spitting blood), and enough of a blend of tones that you’re meant to struggle a bit with the response. David Corenswet’s performance as Superman in this scene is certainly designed to provoke sympathetic flinches.
But after the internet’s ecstatic embrace of tail-wagging, cheerfully bouncing Krypto on screen, this scene is more than a little squirmy. Sure, Lex Luthor and other foes have beaten and broken Superman before, physically or emotionally. But watching him being hurt by a happy dog who loves him is an extra-cruel moment, and Gunn feeling that this was the scene to really sell people on the movie makes me wonder what else he has in store for the Big Blue Guy.
Superman will hit theaters on July 11, 2025.
