Breaking down the Superman trailer, from heroes to villains

James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) is in charge of DC’s film/TV universe now, and his direction is immediately clear: earnest, colorful, and super comic book-y. The trailer for the studio’s first major release, 2025’s Superman, dropped on Thursday to set the tone. There’s a lot to unpack in the two-minute spot — so let’s unpack it. Here’s a breakdown of everything teased ahead of the July 2025 release, to make sure you didn’t mistake any birds or planes for Superman.

The trailer opens boldly for a superhero movie: Its lead apparently just had his butt kicked. Is this an All-Star Superman thing where he’s becoming more vulnerable? Or has he gone up against a truly gnarly foe? We know Gunn loves All-Star Superman (and is right to do so).

Fortunately, Superman’s best friend is around to lend a paw. Krypto the Superdog has been a recurring addition to Superman continuity ever since writer Otto Binder and artist Curt Swan introduced him in 1955’s Adventure Comics #210. He’s a dog from the planet Krypton, who, like all Kryptonians, gains awesome powers — like flight and super strength — when exposed to the light of a yellow star.

How did an animal exactly like Earth dogs evolve on Krypton? How did Krypto survive the destruction of Superman’s home planet? Comics creators have come up with various and sundry explanations for this over Krypto’s 70 years of editorial existence, so let this comics expert sum it up for you: Don’t worry about it.

Superman has a dog with laser vision. It’s fun.

While Lex Luthor’s conglomerate (I’d say “evil conglomerate,” but that’d be redundant) is classically known as Lexcorp, it has occasionally gone by other names, like LexCo, Lex-Corp, L-Corp, and even Supercorp (because Lex likes doing things just because it’ll piss Superman off).

For his Superman, James Gunn appears to have gone with the dark-horse choice of “Luthorcorp,” most prominently used in the Smallville TV series.

When there’s a bald guy in a suit in a Superman comic, there’s only one guy he could be. Here’s Nicholas Hoult (Nosferatu) as Lex Luthor as Agent 47 from Hitman.

There are a lot of ethically compromised billionaires running technology companies in the DC Universe — ha ha, so superhero-y, so far-fetched, ha ha — and here’s our indication that at least one of them exists in the new DC Films universe.

Stagg Industries is the company of the unscrupulous CEO Simon Stagg. Stagg may not show up in Superman — he’s not on the film’s officially announced cast list. But he is the nemesis (and prospective father-in-law; it’s complicated) of the superhero Metamorpho (more on him later). With Metamorpho appearing in Superman, it makes sense that Stagg Industries would be present in the setting, regardless of whether the company plays a significant role.

That bowl cut is how you know a Green Lantern lives without fear

Also rounding out the supporting superheroic cast is Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl. There are a lot of different versions of Hawkgirl and Hawkwoman in DC Comics history, but let’s see if this comics expert can narrow it down: She’s either a perpetually reincarnating warrior who retains the memories of all her past lives, or she’s a cop from a planet of bird people. We’ll find out!

A rampaging giant monster seems bad for Metropolis, but great for moviegoers. And an eagle-eyed Polygon writer raised a good question: Could this be Jimmy Olsen?

We’ve seen this ball of energy before, hovering in the background of the first photo Gunn revealed of David Corenswet’s Superman costume. There’s no telling what it is, what it’s doing, or who created it, but purple and green are classic Lex Luthor colors, just saying…

Often, as a comics fan, you have the slightly out-of-body experience of seeing a thing that makes total sense to you, and knowing that it looks bananas from the outside. “Superman cradling a robot with no legs while deep in grief” is one of those things.

Judging by the bright crystal environment here, we’re in his Fortress of Solitude, and judging by Superman’s apparent deep distress over whatever has befallen this robot, it’s probably Kelex. Created by John Byrne for 1986’s Man of Steel #1, Kelex is a robot that used to belong to Superman’s Kryptonian family, and often serves as a caretaker of the Fortress.

This rocky-exterior man is Rex Mason, the shape-shifting superhero known as Metamorpho, played by Anthony Carrigan (Barry). Due to some shenanigans on the part of Simon Stagg (see Stagg Industries, above), Rex Mason has the power to turn himself — or even just parts of himself — into any element or chemical compound, stretching, bouncing, dissipating into gas, or making his mass dense enough to survive and dish out mighty blows. The catch is that he simply does not look like a human being anymore.

Not much to say here, except to acknowledge that Boravia is one of an innumerable number of made-up European countries that have graced the pages of DC Comics over the setting’s nearly nine decades of history, and in Superman, things there are getting tense.

The trailer sneaks in a couple of shots of Superman’s mystery villain, seen here battling it out in the empty baseball stadium of the Metropolis Meteors. The identity of this character has been all but totally spoiled by paparazzi snapping set photos, so Google carefully! (If you really want to know who this seems to be, click here.)

Here, we get our first look at Michael Holt, the adventuring supergenius known as Mister Terrific, and his characteristic T-spheres, projecting that nifty shield. For more on him, we have a whole article — Gunn has repeatedly said that Terrific, played by Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind), has a “big part” in his Superman.

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

The trailer rounds itself out with some classically framed shots of the real beating heart of Superman stories — Superman and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). The greatest superhero tales rest on a combination of monsters, superheroes, and romance, but we’ll have to wait until July to find out how Gunn is mixing those themes together for Superman.