MOVIE REVIEW: Superman Returns

After twenty years Superman has finally made his way back to the big screen, and I was very impressed with the flying effects and the overall look of the film. Now mind you, I only saw it on DTS not on IMAX, I'm hopefully going to be seeing it in 3D this Sunday, so we will hold out for another article on the effectiveness of the CGI. I have to say watching the opening credits with the original John Williams score did give me goose bumps, I mean the last time I saw Superman on the big screen I was nine, so I think I'm entitled. On top of that the last time I saw Supes he was being chased around by a nuclear guy with a spray on tan, girly fingernails and bad hair. This was a shitty movie and although it wasn't Batman and Robin shitty it did leave me with a terrible impression of old blue boy. Now for the last fifteen years or so Superman has been pawned off on one director/actor team after another, until finally settling in the hands of Bryan Singer.

Overall I enjoyed the film, but I didn't love it. As I write this I am trying to figure out why this film, for all of its potential, cannot touch the original Superman film in its greatness. I mean Superman uses a couple of lines from the first movie, which I guess is supposed to invoke some continuity, but while he made coy little references to the first two films he never really addresses them, so it's a little strange. I know that Singer loves the first two movies, especially Richard Donner's, but this movie feels like it is too much in the shadow of the Superman of the past, not the Superman of Tomorrow. I always believe that a good Superman story is very difficult to write because of many things but mostly because he's so damn invulnerable that you can go in only two directions; you tell a story that attacks his emotional state of mind or you create some alien badass with the same power of Superman to duke it out to the end. For instance one of the things I liked most about the first Superman is the warning that his father, Jor-El, gives him at the very beginning of the film. He says that he is forbidden to change the course of Human History; ergo he is not to use his powers to time travel in order to change an event. When Superman's earth father dies of a heart attack he wonders why, with all of his powers, was he unable to do anything to stop it. Fast forward to the end of the movie when Lex Luthor uses rockets to blow up the San Andreas Fault causing a massive earthquake in California. Supes saves the day but is too late to save his true love Lois Lane; she dies in a rock slide. So by the time Superman gets there she is already dead, Blue Boy goes into a rage, and breaks his father's ultimate rule. In one of the cooler scenes in cinema, Superman alters the rotation of the earth, causing it to rewind, thus saving Lois. This was a great plot point it challenges Superman to do bad things with his powers even if it's for a good cause. It shows while he is an alien he can also be selfish. In the new film Superman is poised with an interesting dilemma he has returned from a five year hiatus to find the love of his life Lois Lane with child and engaged to be married. This proves unsettling to the caped wonder, but unfortunately Bryan Singer does not dig into this point as much as he should have. You also have a great mystery about the whereabouts of Superman for the last five years, and then they don't really explore it, that really pissed me off. The only thing they say about it is that Astronomers thought they found Krypton so Superman left to go and check it out, apparently he found nothing and it took him five years to do it. I thought this explanation was a little lame. I mean, he knows and we know that the planet exploded, so what is he really looking for? Also, if you are going to present this as a possibility wouldn't you want him to find something of interest that could link him to his past? This was a totally wasted opportunity.

Anyway I thought that Brandon Routh as Superman was pretty good, he did have a lot of similarities to Christopher Reeve. The use of Marlon Brando's Jor-El from the first film was awesome and added a nice dramatic lift to the film. I thought that Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane was a bit of a miscast but she did ok overall. Sam Huntington was annoying as Jimmy Olsen. Some people think Jimmy is supposed to be this dork in a bowtie. Maybe in the fifties that worked, but even the Lois and Clark TV show got rid of the stupid bowtie and gave him a little more development. Frank Langella as Perry White was fine, but I guess his character made me also realize why Superman can be, well...boring--Everyone loves the big guy including the newspapers. I guess that's why I like Spider-Man more; it's tougher to be a hero when even the people you try to save hate you. James Marsden is the other man and I think he does an admirable job as Richard White, nephew to Perry. There isn't enough tension between Supes and Richard but I think that it was nice that he was not the clichéd dickhead boyfriend that obviously is not going to compete with Superman; he is actually a good guy. Of course Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor was fun, he was evil as always, he kept a sense of humor and he gets to stab Supes with some Kryptonite. Parker Posey as Kitty, Lex's girlfriend, was funny at times but she felt like a tired Ms. Teschmacher from the original film.

So don't take what I said too much to heart. I did enjoy this film overall and I think most viewers will too. Superman is an iconic character that represents the birth of comics as an art form, while telling the story of a powerful immigrant who came from the stars to take on the traits of his adopted home: truth, justice, and the American way. Superman is America, and what better way to celebrate the birth of a nation by watching its greatest champion.
Grade: 3 Buckets