When Superman gets drawn into conflicts at home and abroad, his actions are questioned, giving tech billionaire Lex Luthor the opportunity to get the Man of Steel out of the way for good. Will intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Superman’s four-legged companion, Krypto, be able to help him before it’s too late?
Release date: July 10, 2025 (Australia)
Starring: David Corenswet; Rachel Brosnahan; Nicholas Hoult; Edi Gathegi; Anthony Carrigan; Nathan Fillion; Isabela Merced
Box office: $616.7 million
Running time: 2h 9m
Distributed by: Warner Bros.
After metahumans first emerged on Earth three centuries ago, Kryptonians Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van evacuated their son, Kal-El, to Earth from the dying planet Krypton three decades ago. Adopted by human farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent, he was raised as “Clark Kent.” In 2025, three years into his career as Superman, Kal-El crashes into Antarctica after suffering his first defeat three minutes prior. Summoning Krypto the Superdog with a sharp whistle, he is taken into the Fortress of Solitude, where Superman Robots heal him using Earth’s yellow sun. While recovering, he hears a message left by his biological parents, translated by Robot Four. It explains that he was sent to Earth because they believed it was where he could do the most good, though the rest of the message becomes garbled.
Telling Krypto to stay behind, Superman leaves to face the Hammer of Boravia in Metropolis, Delaware, the Fortress sinking into the ice before Angela Spica, codenamed the Engineer, could investigate. To settle the fight derived from his interference with the U.S.-backed Boravian-Jarhanpurian War, Superman clashes with the Hammer of Boravia once more, his foe puppeteered by billionaire arch-nemesis Lex Luthor and his team at LuthorCorp Tower. Slammed into the pavement, Superman is helped up by food vendor Malik Ali. Ultraman removes his Hammer of Boravia armor after entering the tower’s control room through a portal device at Fort Kramer and joins the celebration of Superman’s defeat as the Engineer returns.
Reporter Clark Kent arrives to work at the Daily Planet the next morning, congratuled by his family for his front page “interview” with Superman. Lois Lane, Clark’s girlfriend, and Jimmy Olsen, his best friend, discuss the article and Superman’s volatile actions in Jarhanpur. Meanwhile, Luthor holds a meeting in the Pentagon in which he pitches his PlanetWatch team, consisting of Ultraman, the Engineer, and Luthor’s airborne Raptor army, to the United States Department of Defense. The council, including Generals Stephen Mori and Rick Flag, Sr., turns him down, despite Luthor insisting that Superman is a growing threat.
Lane returns home that evening to find someone already there and, brandishing a baseball bat, is relieved to find that it is only Kent making breakfast for dinner to celebrate their three months together. Sharing a kiss, Lane tells Kent that, if he is the only one getting interviews from Superman, people will eventually connect the dots. Kent then agrees to allow Lane to interview him as Superman, but as Lane begins to question his actions — such as pushing Boravian dictatorial president Vasil Ghurkos against a cactus to halt his advances on Jarhanpur — Kent defends his actions as life-saving. He cuts the interview short, and as Lane laments that their relationship was doomed, Kent walks out.
Luthor, Ultraman, the Engineer, and his constantly-selfie-taking girlfriend Eve Teschmacher infiltrate the Fortress, destroying the Superman Robots and incapacitating Krypto. The Engineer accesses the missing segment of Kal-El’s birth message. Meanwhile, LuthorCorp scientists Sydney Happersen and Otis Berg release a miniature Kaiju, which grows to monstrous proportions and attacks Metropolis the next day. Superman’s efforts at apprehending it are recklessly aided by the LordTech-funded “Justice Gang,” consisting of Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific, and Guy Gardner of the Green Lantern Corps. While Superman rescues citizens and animals on the ground, Gardner and Hawkgirl attempt to blind it as Mister Terrific kills the Kaiju by sending explosive T-Spheres down its throat, much to Superman’s consternation.
The heroes’ praises are cut short when Luthor broadcasts on the The Sphere News the translated Kryptonian message in full, which reveals that they intended Superman to rule, not protect, humanity. Superman hides from public backlash and is followed by the Justice Gang, to whom he denies any knowledge about the message’s second half. He realizes that the Fortress must have been breached and he immediately takes off. While the U.S. government decides to act upon Superman and Ghurkos condemns the superhero, later meeting with Luthor, Superman finds the Fortress’ Robots destroyed and Krypto missing. Four delivers a final message before shutting down. A furious Superman later confronts Luthor in his office about the missing dog, only for video of the confrontation recorded by Teschmacher to end up as the scandalous subject of the day on The Sphere.
Lane comforts a disheartened Superman at his apartment while the Justice Gang attend to a threat outside. The pair makes amends, and Superman tells Lois that he intends to turn himself in to the government. Before he leaves, Superman tells Lois that he loves her. Turning himself in the following day, Superman is handed over to the PlanetWatch under Flag, Sr.’s orders. Taken to the camp, he enters a “Pocket Universe” Luthor created to hold metahumans, political dissidents, and his ex-girlfriends. This facility also houses Krypto as well as an army of monkeys cybernetically enhanced to stir up anti-Superman sentiment on social media. Superman is imprisoned alongside Rex Mason, a metahuman known as Metamorpho who can transform his body into any elemental substance. Luthor, threatening to harm Rex’s infant son Joey, coerces him into forming Kryptonite to weaken Superman.
At the Daily Planet, Lane discovers Luthor has been arming Boravia for almost nothing. Olsen learns of Superman’s location through a contact named “Mutant Toes,” prompting Lane enlist the Justice Gang’s help. Olsen meets up with Mutant Toes, who turns out to be Teschmacher. Teschmacher has strong feelings for Olsen, which he pretends to reciprocate, achieving her aid in taking Luthor down. In the Pocket Universe, an incapacitated Superman watches as Luthor and Ghurkos bring in a bound Malik Ali, demanding Superman explain his origins and his true motivations. In a game of Russian roulette, Luthor kills Ali, threatening to repeat it with more loved ones.
At the Hall of Justice, the Justice Gang denying to help Lane, Mister Terrific steps forward, having planted nanobot trackers in Superman’s bloodstream and aiming to irk Gardner. He locates Superman’s last known whereabouts, but the trail disappears in the portal tent. Using the T-Craft to travel to the camp, Mister Terrific engages in a brief skirmish with the Raptors before finding the portal. Mister Terrific hacks into the device, cautioning Lane that it is a very dangerous machine that could open a black hole at the slightest miscalculation. As they enter the portal, Mister Terrific notes a river of anti-protons beneath them, which prohibits them from going any further. Instead, he sends out T-Spheres to scout for Superman.
Weakened by Kryptonite, Superman persuades Metamorpho to help. Metamorpho creates a mini yellow sun, empowering Superman. Together, they free Joey and Krypto, triggering an escape attempt. After a skirmish with Raptors, Superman and Joey are taken by the anti-proton river, streaming towards a black hole. Superman manages to fend off the Raptors while protecting the baby with Krypto’s help. The entire party combine their strengths to propel them away from the black hole. T-Spheres guide them back to the portal, which has begun to collapse due to its prolonged opening. Lane takes Superman to the Kent Farm in Smallville, Kansas to recover.
A raging Luthor harms Teschmacher in his anger toward Superman’s escape. She sends the evidence of Luthor’s misdeeds in the form of saved selfies to Olsen from inside a closet before she is dragged out of the closet and thrown into the Pocket Universe herself. After arriving at the Kent Farm, Lane receives a call from Olsen, who sends her Teschmacher’s photos. Lane finds a map in the background of one of Teschmacher’s selfies that shows Jarhanpur’s territory split in two, with one half labeled “New Boravia” and the other named “Luthoria.” Luthor has Ghurkos station his troops at the Jarhanpurian border and prepare their invasion, while simultaneously ordering a dimensional rift to open at the site of the collapsed portal, so that Superman will be unable to handle both emergencies.
The following morning, Clark and Jonathan discuss the message from his birth parents. Jonathan insists that what Clark wanted the missing part of the message to be says a lot more about Clark as a person than what the actual message did. He clarifies that his actions and his choices define him. Martha switches on the TV — Jarhanpurian citizens wave flags bearing the Superman emblem as a distress call. From high above Metropolis, Mister Terrific monitors the dimensional rift. After failing to hack the code to closing the rift, he calls for Superman’s help. As Metropolis evacuates from the oncoming rift, the Daily Planet crew goes over all of the evidence that was found in the backgrounds of Eve’s photos. From various documents, they piece together that Luthor was selling Ghurkos weapons cheaply in exchange for half of Jarhanpur’s territory, where he could crown himself king. They then pile into the T-Craft where they can safely view the developing story from above as Olsen transcribes Lane’s reporting.
While the Justice Gang allies with Metamorpho in their mission to help Jarhanpur against Boravia’s invasion, Superman returns to Metropolis and takes on Ultraman and the Engineer. At the Metropolis Meteors’ home baseball stadium, the Engineer begins to fill Superman’s eyes, throat, and lungs with nanites in order to suffocate him. But before he does, Superman rockets himself into the sky and plummets back towards Earth as his enemies cling onto the nanites covering his body, crashing into the Metropolis underground. Stunning the Engineer, Superman climbs out of a hole and extracts the nanites from his insides. Luthor sends down cameras to monitor the event, and Ultraman soon emerges, his mask torn. When he removes it, Superman is astounded upon seeing his own face staring back at him. Luthor divulges that Ultraman is the imperfect result of a cloning process, that took him three years of battle site scouring to initiate, conceived with a piece of hair.
At the Boravian border, Guy Gardner and Metamorpho repel the military’s tanks and soldiers, while Hawkgirl assassinates Ghurkos. Meanwhile, Superman and Ultraman continue their fight as the dimensional rift begins to form a black hole below Metropolis. As Ultraman pins Superman down, the latter whistles for Krypto, who destroys all of Luthor’s surveillance. Superman bests Ultraman and manages to overpower a fleet of Raptors with Krypto’s aid before he finally defeats Ultraman by launching him into the black hole with the strike of an entire subway train.
Superman and Mister Terrific subsequently confront Luthor aboard his now airborne control room before his nemesis could make his escape. As Mister Terrific works at sealing the rift, Luthor, injured upon Superman’s entrance, berates his alien heritage. Superman tells him that he is no less human than him or anybody, and that his humanity serves as his greatest strength, not a weakness as Luthor sees it. An irritated Krypto slams Luthor around the room and heavily injures him, terrifying Luthor’s employees before Superman tells him to quit. The Daily Planet team and various news outlets expose Luthor for his crimes while Mori and Flag, Sr. watch as Justice Gang successful overthrowing of Boravia’s forces is televised. In the aftermath, while Luthor and his team are sent to the Belle Reve Correctional Center, Superman and Lane share a kiss in mid-air inside the Lacey’s Arcade, where Lane finally confesses her love for him.
In the Fortress of Solitude, a rebuilt Four warns Superman that his cousin has returned for her dog. An inebriated Kara Zor-El stumbles into the Fortress and retrieves her pet, much to Krypto’s excitement. As she leaves, Superman climbs onto his healing machine, where he is soothed by a new video consisting of home movies from his childhood with his adoptive parents.
In a mid-credits scene, Superman and Krypto watch the Earth from the Moon. In a post-credits scene, Superman and Mister Terrific survey the damage done to Metropolis after the rift. When Superman makes the comment that the two halves of one particular building didn’t line up properly, Mister Terrific storms off angrily.
