By now we’ve all had time to digest the teaser trailer for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman reboot. That includes the teaser’s cameos – it’s many, many cameos.
In under two-and-a-half minutes, the Superman teaser gives us brief glimpses at several superheroes other than the Man of Steel himself. Mister Terrific, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho, and the Guy Gardner incarnation of Green Lantern all make their cinematic DC Universe debut. Predictably, this has reignited the ongoing debate about whether Gunn has crammed too many side characters into his Superman do-over. While most fans remain optimistic, a vocal contingent is worried that David Corenswet’s Last Son of Krypton risks being crowded out of his own movie.
They make a fair point. Typically, you don’t relaunch a superhero franchise – not to mention a wider shared universe – with a quasi-team-up flick (except in the case of something like Marvel’s X-Men). Yet the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Gunn’s cameo-heavy approach to Superman makes sense in a post-Marvel Cinematic Universe world.
The MCU Walked So That the DCU Could Run
When I say, “a post-Marvel Cinematic Universe world,” what I mean is a movie landscape where audiences are used to seeing multiple fantastical characters sharing the screen. Before the MCU, this simply wasn’t something that happened, unless said characters all effectively shared the same origin story (again, see: X-Men). The Christopher Reeve Superman quartet and its Supergirl spinoff, the Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney Batman flicks – all these (and more besides) were built on a universal truth: that audiences needed to get used to one superhero before you could throw any more their way. What’s more, any additional costumed crime fighters introduced further down the line required a fully fleshed-out origin story. Otherwise, moviegoers wouldn’t follow along.
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Heck, even the MCU initially followed this roadmap; 2008’s Iron Man only featured Tony Stark’s titular alter-ego (Nick Fury’s post-credits stinger notwithstanding). True, Marvel Studios rapidly ramped up the number of origin-lite superhero cameos in subsequent MCU outings. However, even then, the MCU Phase One put a strict cap on these guest appearances. For example, Hawkeye briefly shows up in 2011’s Thor, but that’s it; no other hitherto unseen heroes appear. It wasn’t until after 2012’s The Avengers – a box office smash that proved MCU sub-franchises could share the same movie – that Marvel became more ambitious with its cameos and crossovers, and rightly so. Once you’ve conditioned casual viewers (not just comics readers) to accept a world where multiple superheroes are the norm, the old approach seems antiquated, if not outright redundant.
The Post-MCU Approach to Cameos Has Its Drawbacks
Of course, there are downsides to the more cameo-heavy superhero movie formula popularized by the MCU. For starters, rolling out a bunch of new characters can leave audiences feeling disoriented. We may no longer demand to know every last detail about a spandex-clad do-gooder’s history and powers when we first meet them, however, there’s a limit to how many new faces we can encounter before things get overwhelming. This is a common complaint leveled at the MCU’s more recent phases: unless you’re a die-hard MCU devotee, it’s become increasingly hard to keep up with (much less care about) the shared universe’s sheer volume of background characters and storylines.
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The other unintended side-effect of the MCU-style multiple cameo approach is that it can make the world-building come off as rushed. The legacy DCU, the DC Extended Universe, arguably ran afoul of this post-Man of Steel. Zack Snyder’s follow-up to that film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, tried laying a decent chunk of the groundwork for Justice League via a handful of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos. Presumably, this was partly driven by Warner Bros. Pictures’ eagerness for an MCU of its own. Either way, it didn’t work as intended. After all, the DCEU’s uneven critical and commercial performance in the wake of Dawn of Justice is why Gunn and fellow DC Studios boss Peter Safran are hitting the reset button with Superman.
Superman Can Make the MCU Cameo Formula Work
But none of the above guarantees that all future, cameo-stacked DC tentpole blockbusters are automatically doomed to fail. As is so often the case, balance is key. There’s nothing wrong with Gunn setting his Superman reboot in a world where other superheroes already exist; thanks to the MCU, that’s a given for most cape-and-tights films these days. And the ratings success of Creature Commandos (technically the DCU Chapter One’s “official” jumping on point) proves that fans aren’t that phased by how things fit together, so long as the story at hand delivers the goods.
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However, where things could go wrong is if Gunn puts too much or too little focus on these auxiliary adventurers. Feature them too much and they’ll bog down the narrative and steal our attention away from Superman. Feature them too little and they’ll be an annoying distraction that doesn’t flesh out the new DCU as planned. As such, it’s a good thing that Gunn’s at the helm. The filmmaker-turned-studio mogul has a proven record of managing big ensemble superhero-led casts, for both DC and Marvel. If anyone can pepper Superman with guest appearances effectively, it’s him. And certainly, Gunn’s chosen the right time to do so. In a post-MCU world, superhero cameos aren’t the big deal they used to be – even in film with the fate of the nu-DCU resting on its shoulders.
James Gunn’s Superman reboot soars into cinemas on July 11, 2025.
Published: Jan 11, 2025 09:00 am