The trailer for Superman 2025 dropped todayand it's a perfect holiday gift. Not only does it build even more anticipation for the already hotly anticipated film by showcasing Kal-El's adventures in a way that feels both nostalgic and unique, it's also one of the best-edited trailers of all time. year. One of the trailer's most surprising choices is to leave the film's title card at the end, a decision that acknowledges Superman's power in pop culture as well as building more hype for the film.

However, that doesn't mean the trailer doesn't end with some form of title card. Just before a card announcing that the film is "Shooted for IMAX" and will be released next July, the trailer ends with the DC Studios logo, a reminder that Superman is Warner Bros.' theatrical debut. DC Comics' new joint venture into the cinematic universe (the animated series "Creature Commandos" marks the beginning of the television universe). The placement of the logo card seems to serve a dual purpose, however - by delaying it from the beginning (where logo cards usually appear) and placing it at the end, where the title card is usually found in a trailer, it feels like this Superman teaser it also doubles as an announcement trailer for the actual DC Studios universe. It's another bold choice by writer/director James Gunn, who oversees DCSU (maybe that acronym will stick?) with Peter Safran, and it presents Superman as a new make-or-break moment for DC Comics characters on screen.

To be fair, there's a bit of a "putting the cart before the horse" feel to the trailer, if you take the late DC Studios card drop as an indication of the clip as a DCSU announcement. Of course, WB and DC have been here before, as the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), which ran from 2013-2023, struggled to reach the heights (shared universe and otherwise) that Marvel Studios' Cinematic Universe has. As anyone from geek pundit to professional critic will tell you, one of the DCEU's biggest problems was trying to do too much too soon, making a big team-up movie with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before Gal. Gadot's Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck's Batman were fully established on screen. The film, and many of those that followed in the DCEU, had their own issues aside from building a cinematic universe, but it didn't help that the studio seemed a little too eager to have its cake before it was fully baked.

That goes double for Universal's proposed Dark Universe, which, unlike the DCEU, was completed after the release of one film, 2017's The Mummy. While the film itself doesn't contain too many teases of future films (only the introduction of Russell Crowe's Dr. Henry Jekyll in response to Nick Fury's Dark Universe), there was an infamous photo shoot with the proposed stars of future Dark Universe films that are the only other media from shared universe, as no other films were ever made. Even more than Batman v Superman, the proposed and abandoned Dark Universe plans exist as Hollywood's biggest cautionary tale when it comes to starting a shared universe.

However, "Superman" and its status as a starting point for DC Studios seems to avoid this problem in a fairly simple way: while other projects in the shared universe have been discussed publicly, Gunn and Safran are not announcing a massive multi-year release. a plan for future movies a la Marvel or DCEU. In this way, Superman could be a bit of the best of both worlds, promising future characters to come without insisting on any set plans.

Unlike the literal non-starter that was the Dark Universe, the DCEU has been moving for a decade, with the help of several films that act as bright spots in his film universe. Despite these ups and downs, the DCEU never really came together in an MCU-like way, and that's partly because WB and the people behind the DCEU never really seemed to have a clear vision of where the DCEU should be going. Retroactively starting with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel immediately put the universe on uneven ground, as Snyder's 2013 film was intended as a deconstructionist look at Superman, similar to Christopher Nolan's out-of-continuity Dark Knight trilogy. So Batman v Superman and Justice League , the immediate sequels to Man of Steel , found themselves trying to honor that tough guy, warts and all, while trying to establish a more traditional foundation for DC. heroes moving forward. It made for an awkward mix and left many of the other spin-off films feeling either too similar to these "main" films or awkwardly separate from them.

Things only got worse as the DCEU tried to follow the MCU into the "multiverse" era. Zack Snyder's Justice League, while born out of fan demand and behind-the-scenes issues surrounding the theatrical version of Justice League, only further muddled proceedings when it came to continuity, seemingly splitting the DCEU into two canon branches who may have tried to coexist. Last year's The Flash tried to tie everything together in a neat arc similar to Crisis or The Flash, so Barry Allen broke into the multiverse. However, again the film seemed too desperate to get to the cameo and cheer moments instead of letting things unfold naturally. It's probably because of all this confusion over tone, direction and continuity that Gunn and Safran are eager to hit the reset button with Superman, and hopefully the film is the fresh start that the trailer seems to promise.

Of course, it is not possible to tell what the overall effect of the film will be from the teaser trailer alone. Still, Gunn says an awful lot of good things about his film, as well as its ethos when it comes to DC Studios, and this combined with the trailer makes it feel like his comments are well-founded. At the Superman trailer launch event I attended on Monday, Gunn was asked about the DC Studios logo drop at the end of the trailer, and admitted that it was as much an instinctive decision as a calculated one:

“But you also have to go with your gut and what feels right for you. And I had some people around me, including Peter Safran, who I could trust, and mine, who seems to be the most drained of courage, which means I'm the one who likes things the least when they come together, so all it seems it worked."

Even more encouraging is Gunn's take on further DCSU Superman films past. During a visit to the set of Superman, Gizmodo's Germaine Lussier asked Gunn about plans beyond this first film, and the director was refreshingly candid:

"A lot (ride on 'Superman'). I mean, we're not just going to keep making movies."

Already this first teaser trailer promises a more compartmentalized approach to the shared universe than "BvS" did, with characters like Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and Mr. , Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, and not a bunch of other heroes vying for the spotlight early on. Hopefully the final film will prove this to be true. One thing's for sure: For the film itself as well as for DC Studios, the Superman trailer gives us a ton of hope.