[Animals] A real wag: Superman gets the bleak realities of dog ownership spot on

[ThunderStorm.]

 

Superhero movie that is plainly about the invasion of Gaza, is all over the shop. Too many characters contribute too little to the plot. There are moments when it feels like it was written specifically to provide work for the silly-glasses and ironic-haircut industries.

But that said, one thing is demonstrably true: the dog is cool. As shown in the trailer, Krypto the superdog is Superman’s secret weapon. A mile away from his last screen outing, where he was muscular and proud and voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Superman’s Krypto is scrappy and wild. He doesn’t obey commands. He destroys whatever equipment is put in front of him. Whenever he may or may not save the day, it seems like he does it out of accident rather than design.

And now everybody wants one. Research by the dog training app Woofz has shown that Google searches for “adopt a dog near me” jumped 513% during Superman’s opening weekend. What’s more, searches for “rescue dog adoption near me” rose by 163%, while “adopt a puppy” rose by 31%. And these searches are specific, too. Krypto is apparently a schnauzer-terrier mix, and “adopt a schnauzer” searches have risen by almost 300% since Superman’s release.

There are many potential reasons for this. Perhaps viewers who found themselves confused by Superman’s swampy storytelling latched on to Krypto as a guidepoint. Perhaps they have short attention spans and fail to think things through, as with the boom of dalmatian sales (and subsequent boom in dalmatian abandonments) after 101 Dalmatians was released in 1996. Or perhaps it’s because Superman is one of the rare films to get dog ownership exactly right.

dogs and never knew human beings, was problematic to say the least. He immediately came in and destroyed our home, our shoes, our furniture – he even ate my laptop. It took a long time before he would even let us touch him. I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, how difficult would life be if Ozu had superpowers?’ – and thus Krypto came into the script.”

And maybe that’s the key here. There were no misty-eyed Marley and Me-style reminiscences about Ozu. Gunn was living through the incredibly annoying part of dog ownership where neither party fully trusts the other, and just lifted it wholesale into the script. And this realistic depiction has apparently translated to the hearts of Superman’s audience, as we will soon see when thousands of schnauzers are definitely not abandoned at shelters four months from now.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/17/tiresome-useless-superman-may-be-sci-fi-but-it-dog-ownership-right