Flying Superman Close-up

About

Flying Superman Close-up refers to a series of memes based on a three-second clip of the DC Comics superhero character Superman (portrayed by American actor David Corenswet) flying in the teaser for the 2025 film of the same name. As many users deemed the appearance of the character in the shot to be uncanny, the clip sparked a viral debate in late January 2025 and was compared to scenes of characters flying that became memes in past years, such as Flying Adam Warlock and Flying Black Adam.

Origin

On January 26th, 2025, the YouTube^[1] channel DC uploaded a TV spot for the upcoming 2025 superhero film Superman, with several new shots appearing in the teaser. The teaser (shown below) ended with a shot of Superman (David Corenswet) flying through a snowy landscape, doing a barrel roll mid-flight as he dodges an obstacle and looking directly ahead. The teaser garnered over 588,000 views on YouTube in one day.

Later on January 26th, multiple film news accounts on X / Twitter shared the clip and the still image of Superman flying. On that day, the X^[2] account @HollywoodHandle posted the clip, with the post (shown below) gaining over 2.5 million views, 2,000 reposts and 15,000 likes in one day.

Spread

On January 26th, 2025, multiple users then compared the shot to close-ups of other flying fictional characters, including Flying Black Adam and Flying Adam Warlock, both of which became memes in prior years. For example, that same day, X^[3] user @WongUpdates made a post that received over 5,000 reposts and 94,000 likes in one day (shown below).

Multiple users also argued that Superman looked somewhat uncanny in the scene, with multiple posts highlighting that the character looked as if he had a lazy eye. For example, on January 26th, X^[4] user @Uber_Kryptonian posted a caption meme about the teaser that received over 420 reposts and 4,900 likes in one day (shown below).

Other users defended the shot, arguing that there was nothing wrong with it. For example, also on January 26th, 2025, X^[5] user @ReevesBatverse posted a Literal Coolest Thing Ever meme that received over 190 reposts and 3,400 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References