Well, it looks like James Gunn decided to give us nerds and geeks an early Christmas present! A few days ago, the teaser trailer for the upcoming Superman movie was released to the general public. As someone who really didn’t like the previous DC Extended Universe films, I am glad James Gunn is helming the new DC Superhero movies. He’s proven to be a true blue comic book fan so I had a lot of faith he can do justice to them. Of course, the proof is in the pudding and my fears can only be alleviated once I do see the final product. But, after seeing the teaser trailer, it does look like my faith wasn’t misplaced. In other words, the trailer for the upcoming Superman movie does look good.

There’s a lot to like with the trailer as, for one thing, the movie looks bright! None of that “grimdark” nonsense Man of Steel had! No, Superman has to be a beacon of hope for humankind and the trailer does make you feel he is. That quick scene of him shielding a little girl from an explosion and Superman ignoring the idiot who chucked what I think is a can of peaches at his head does exemplify this feeling. I also didn’t think Nicolas Hoult as Lex Luthor would look good on screen but I am so glad I was wrong!

However, for a lot of comic book nerds, the biggest surprise would be the abundance of superhero cameos we got to see in this two minute teaser trailer. In that short span of time, we got our first looks at Krypto, Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific and Metamorpho! And that’s just may only be the tip of the iceberg as, if you check out the cast list in IMDB, there are still a few more DC comic book characters who are slated to be in the movie but weren’t in the teaser!

However, this also might be one big problem with the new Superman movie. While comic book geeks will swoon at how many DC characters James Gunn in cramming in here, I’m not so sure if that love will transfer over to those unfamiliar with the grander DC comics mythos.

Of course, there are going to be characters who non-comic book lovers will recognize. Despite never being seen in the movies, I’m pretty sure they’ll recognize Krypto the Superdog. At least most of them will anyway. I can even imagine them knowing who Hawkgirl is in one way or another. After all, the character was one of the founding members of the Justice League in Bruce Timm‘s Justice League animated series. Heck, maybe they even saw one of the many live-action iterations of the character in Smallville, Legends of Tomorrow or Stargirl! You might be able to say the same thing for Mister Terrific as a live-action version of the character did pop up in Arrow and Stargirl!

But then you get to characters like Metamorpho and Guy Gardner. These characters can be pretty niche as they haven’t really been featured outside of the comics. Metamorpho showed up in the aforementioned Justice League cartoon, Batman: Brave and the Bold, the 2004 version of The Batman and even Young Justice. Guy Gardner did show up in Young Justice and Batman: Brave and the Bold as well. He also was part of the lesser known Green Lantern cartoon. Still, these were mostly one off appearances and probably didn’t make a huge impression as they weren’t the main characters anyway.

But why would this be a problem for non-comic book fans? Well, James Gunn may have the right intentions of showing off these lesser know DC superheroes but this just might be information overload to them. Imagine being familiar with the “correct” version of Green Lantern, namely Hal Jordan. They see Guy Gardner strut around and then shoot a green beam out of his ring. They’ll be all confused because Guy Gardner doesn’t look at all like Hal Jordan! Then you have someone like Mister Terrific show up with his T-Spheres, blocking all sorts of gunfire. They just might wonder who he is and why isn’t someone like Batman doing whatever Mister Terrific is doing.

Now, imagine being introduced to all of the characters I’ve mentioned in around an hour. I mean, you can’t trickle in these characters throughout the entire movie because it would be ludicrous to have a totally new character show up during the final minutes of the movie, right? No, James Gunn has to give the audience time to grow to like these new and unfamiliar heroes and villains. So, he would have to cram them all in during around the first half of whatever Superman’s runtime will be.

Do you think they can handle all of that and remember what superhero and supervillain does what? Us comic book fans wouldn’t have that problem but that’s only because we got acquainted with each of them through years and years of comic book reading! These non-comic book fans will have just an hour to get to know them! This isn’t like in Deadpool and Wolverine film where Deadpool goes multiverse hopping to find another Wolverine and he meets all the variants from the comics. No, that scene works because it’s not integral to know what those variants are referencing. But in the upcoming Superman movie, I would think knowing who’s who in this new DC movie universe would be important info!

Now, obviously I’m the last one to suggest James Gunn is making a huge mistake with cramming all of these DC characters into the very first movie that’s supposed to launch a new and successful cinematic universe. He knows much better than me as he has done a good job doing just that with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies as well as The Suicide Squad. However, it feels a bit risky to do this as, like I said, this is the first movie of your new proposed grand cinematic universe. While I’m very sure comic book nerds will love them, the “regular” movie goers who don’t know these heroes might not really care for them.

What do you think of James Gunn adding all of these superheroes to the upcoming Superman movie? Let me know in the comments section below!