James Gunn's Superman updates the legend without destroying it

Has James Gunn saved the DC comics universe with his new Superman film?

Maybe. I do know that I liked it a lot more than I had feared (I feared I'd hate it, and I didn't).

Good Superman movies are hard to find. It can be argued, I suppose, that some of the Supes that have come along since 1978's exquisite Richard Donner version were okay, but every one of them have left me cold. I had practically given up on seeing a good Superfilm again.

Until this one. Oh, it isn't as good as the Donner/Christopher Reeve/Gene Hackman version, but it doesn't suck. And it also uses that old film as its launching point, kind of, and is chock full of nice homages, from the design of the Fortress of Solitude, the title credits, many music snippets, and even some character names (for example, Eve Teschmacher and Otis Berg were Luthor's sidekicks in the 1978 version, though the new actors can't hold a candle to them – and to be fair their roles are comparatively insignificant to the 1978 version).