This article contains spoilers!
A bird! No, a plane! No… a dog? As the DC Universe (DCU) makes its grand debut with James Gunn’s Superman (2025), it also debuts Krypto the Superdog in his first live action film. But what does this canine’s clumsy entrance onto the silver screen mean for movies? It signals the existence of a new, much sillier era of film and television.
Firstly, let us look back at the past era of comic book films. Starting with the massive success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, a more gritty take on Batman movies compared to the past, the stage was set for more grounded and spunky takes on our favorite stories. While comic books themselves have always told a wide array of stories, what they are best known for is how strange and nonsensical they can be. However, after the grim Dark Knight, studios and creatives wanted to trim that strangeness away. For example, in Sony’s The Amazing Spiderman 2, instead of an Electro with a frilled bright green and yellow costume with yellow lightning, the film gave us a bald, pure blue lightning Electro.
The greatest example of this phenomenon was the Snyderverse, a string of three DC movies directed by Zach Snyder. To combat the successful (Marvel Cinematic Universe) MCU, DC scrambled to make their own connected universe. Helmed by Snyder, the franchise boasted its superheroes as gods in an epic. Their greatest example was how they used Superman as a biblical figure. Instead of the cheery and hopeful man of tomorrow, in Man of Steel (2013) he was portrayed as a distant and somber god who turned wholly evil the second Lois Lane dies—Superman’s one true love. Due to this premise, most of the fantastical elements of the comics were subdued. Aquaman was made a bro sailor, and Lex Luthor, a Mark Zuckerberg ripoff.
However, in recent years, comic book movies have been taking a turn into fuller adaptations of the source material—wackiness and all. This trend started in the early 2020s with the MCU’s phase four. Although massively unpopular, the phase jumped to adapt more fringe sections of the Marvel story, such as She-Hulk’s life as a fourth-wall breaking lawyer superhero, or a Moon Knight, split between personalities by Konshu the moon god. This trend is of course exemplified in DC’s new Superman with Krypto’s inclusion.
In the cold open of the film, Superman is at his lowest point. He loses in a battle for the first time ever, is now in a fetal position, wounded and alone in the Arctic. The frenzied, hyperactive superdog that is sorely lacking in discipline is what saves him. He tugs Superman around, bashes him against the ground several times, and overall makes the poor man suffer for a while before dragging him to the Fortress of Solitude. This behavior continues as he plays flying fetch with Mr. Terrific’s T-Spheres, chases the cattle at the Kent Farm, and thrashes Lex as soon as he sees him.
If this film came out any earlier, Krypto would have either been a throwaway joke, a brief cameo, or just a regular dog. But the fact that Krypto gets to partake in all the insanity throughout the film shows that the studios and creatives are finally comfortable with including sillier characters than they have before. The complex and sometimes dark side of the DCU is shown in Superman and Lois Lane’s dynamic relationship, as well as the wacky addition of Krypto in this debut film.
