The Five Spot: Look At Superman's Dog

ALSO: Parkour Santa and a developing Polish butter situation

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The whole thing is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a super dog

Here is the first look at James Gunn’a big new Superman movie, which stars David Corenswet as Superman and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. There’s not too, too much happening here beyond your usual teasery business — character intros, a sense of the style and tone, a little touch of story — but I will say that it looks kind of cool. That’s not nothing. Superman movies haven’t really had the success of your Batmen or Spider-men or even your Guardians of the Galaxy, which is, I suppose, why you go and bring in a James Gunn to overhaul things. There’s a whole process here and I thHOLD ON WE GOT A DOG

DOG IN THE TRAILER

HE HAS A CAPE

HE’S A SUPER DOG

SOMEONE PUT A CAPE ON A DOG WITH SUPERPOWERS

HELLO

LOOK AT THIS GUY

This, as you can imagine, derailed most of an afternoon for me this week. I never knew there was a dog in the Superman universe. Some of this is on me, I guess, but mostly it’s on everyone else who knew about it and never told me. I have been alive for decades. I have been subjected to superhero movies for most of those decades. And yet, still, I had to find out about Superman’s dog like this, from a trailer for a movie that comes out next summer. Goddammit but also Merry Christmas to me.

Here is what I have learned about Superman’s dog: His name is Krypto and I love him very much

From Krypto’s Wikipedia page:

On Krypton, parallel evolution leads to the emergence of analogous species to Earth birds, dogs, cats, and simians. They are domestic companion animals as they are on Earth. As explained in his first appearance, Krypto is originally the dog of toddler Kal-El while they are on Krypton. Jor-El, testing prototypes for the rocket that eventually sends Kal-El to Earth, decides to use Krypto as a test subject. However, Krypto's rocket is knocked off-course and drifts through space for years until it eventually lands on Earth, where Krypto is reunited with the now-teenaged superhero, Superboy. Due to the environment (Earth's yellow sun and lower gravity), Krypto possesses the same powers and abilities as his master, although his physical abilities are proportionate to his smaller size and species. Certain sensory abilities of Krypto's (senses of smell and hearing) are more acute than those of Superman, just as an ordinary dog's senses are more acute than those of an ordinary human. Krypto also has human-level intelligence, with his thoughts being represented via speech balloons.

The facts here are simple:

• I am immediately more interested in Krypto than any other human superhero

• We need a full-on spinoff prequel about this guy, if only because there are not nearly enough movies about dogs getting on rockets and floating aimlessly through the cosmos

• If anything happens to him I will find and strangle Lex Luthor myself

I hope he gets to surf and his little cape blows in the breeze.

FOUR: Finally, at long last, there is a movie where Santa does parkour