James Gunn's Superman Trailer Has Everyone Saying The Same Thing

After weeks of online discourse concerning the color grading of "Wicked," which director Jon M. Chu has defended as an attempt to portray a more realistic Oz, social media has moved onto a new bugbear — the colors in the "Superman" trailer. Following the dark and drab color palette in Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel," people now apparently have a problem with James Gunn's "Superman" being too brightly contrasted. You can't please everyone, especially when it comes to Superman.

On X (formerly Twitter), @LuckyDyse criticized the aesthetic: "['Superman'] looks like a fancy TV show. The bright colors are matched with bad contrast, the limited character interaction looks shallow and David Corenswet shows 0% Superman aura." These types of posts first materialized after Wednesday's initial teaser, showing off just a little bit of footage, including a shot of The Daily Planet reporters looking a bit drab to some. However, they kicked into another gear when the actual trailer dropped, ensuring many more long-winded debates about Superman in the weeks and months to come. 

User @theeSNYDERVERSE posted, "This [color grade] is actually horrendous and is washing out the whole cast, going from ['Man of Steel'] to this." Perhaps that comment should be taken in consideration with the username. Anyone who liked the more muted colors of Snyder's films may be taken aback by greater colors here. There's no right or wrong answer, and the final product may justify such a palette. We'll only know when "Superman" finally comes out on July 11, 2025. 

The overly saturated colors have a lot of X users making one comment specifically. Just take this post from @WhiteQueenNV: "'Superman' looks very odd visually. Almost reminds me of one of those CW shows." To be clear, this seems to be meant as a bad thing, as CW shows are often criticized for their special effects. There's also usually a tendency to ensure every shot looks overly polished, like it's meant to be a TV show rather than something that could feasibly be real. 

These CW similarities not only applied to the visuals, but also to the overall vibe. User @_PowerHouseG wrote, "Looks [cheesy] like a CW show plus a dog with a cape saves Superman [Face palm emoji]." Look — talking about color grading is one thing, but Krypto is the goodest boy around. Let's not bring Krypto into this. 

It's worth noting that The CW actually had a Superman show the past few years with "Superman & Lois," which ended on December 2, and actually managed to do something new with the character. Not only that, "Superman & Lois" had pretty good visuals considering its budget and network, so perhaps CW shows deserve a little more respect from those criticizing it online.

As with anything that happens on the internet, there's bound to be backlash to the backlash. As soon as people came in posting about the "Superman" trailer's color grading, others entered the chat to insist the shots looked fine. X user @guiltchip offered this perspective: "I like the colors in that Superman trailer. Even if it looks kind of goofy, it's a nice contrast from everything being so grim and gritty."

To be honest, a brighter color palette really shouldn't be surprising to anyone considering James Gunn's previous superhero efforts. His Guardians of the Galaxy movies are far more colorful than a lot of other films in the genre, and if there's any character who deserves to have bright colors pop on the big screen, it's the Man of Steel. 

As for anyone still dismayed at this color grading, @jlikescomics offers these words of comfort: "They are still in post-production meaning, they are still editing and polishing the movie including all the visuals, sound mixing, etc." While the film probably won't look drastically different, some scenes can certainly be touched up to look a little better over the next seven months. That's plenty of time to debate every aspect of James Gunn's "Superman" before it's even out, including a theory as to whether "Superman" will borrow a plot point from "The Boys."