Superman Returns review!!!

I’ll admit that Superman is not my absolute favorite superhero; that would be Batman. He’s not even my second favorite, since Spider-Man holds that honor, but I would have to say that he is probably the first superhero I was aware of. Much of this is no doubt thanks to the classic movie which was released the year before I was born. Richard Donner’s Superman proved that superhero movies could be made and could be played seriously. Sure, there were scenes of comedy relief and the tone throughout was light and fun, but it wasn’t camp and it wasn’t a parody. It was Superman, plain and simple.

Last night, I went to see the pseudo-midnight showing¹ of Superman Returns, Warner Brothers’ and DC’s newest attempt to restart the franchise. What did I think? The quick version is that it’s not by any means a perfect movie, but there’s a whole hell of a lot to love. Throughout much of its running time, I found myself grinning from ear to ear and chuckling over just how cool the things I was seeing were.

Now I’ll get into some SPOILERS!!!! INVISO-TEXT ON!!! (Highlight text to read.)

I was surprised that I wasn’t resistant to the story concept when I first heard about it. The idea of Superman leaving for five years and coming back to find out how much things have changed sounds like one of those things that would make fanboys like myself bristle. After all, we don’t want to see things change in a comic book series that runs for decade after decade, let alone in a movie series that runs for less than a day if you combined the running times of each film. (I hope this reasoning makes sense to readers, since I can’t think of a better way to phrase it.) Maybe it was because I knew that the makers of X2² were the ones who would be responsible that I just thought, “Hey, that sounds interesting. Let’s see what they do with it.”

What they do with it is give us the most melancholy Superman we’ve ever seen. He’s always felt like an outsider on Earth, and now he’s just confirmed for himself that there is no one else like him in the universe, since he’s visited the remains of Krypton. Now that he’s back, he discovers that Lois has moved on, gaining a son and a fiancé during his five-year absence. (She’s even won a Pulitzer for her bitterness-fueled article “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.”) Now the poor guy is even further alienated from his adopted planet, but that doesn’t stop him from doing what he feels is right.

The scene where he makes his return to the public eye is one of the most thrilling sequences I’ve seen in a movie all year. Superman rescues an airplane that has experienced engine failure, imperiling the lives of all its crew and passengers, Lois being one of them. The fact that Superman has to really work for it makes the sequence all the more thrilling. Obviously, he’s going to save everyone, but it isn’t made easy for him. (For example, in trying to straighten out the plane, he rips the wing off, making it even more difficult.)

After safely landing the plane, he goes aboard to make sure everyone is alright, and his words cemented something that I had already noticed, Brandon Routh sounds exactly like Christopher Reeve. He may not look much like him—some of his facial expressions are reminiscent of Reeve’s, but he just looks different—but his voice is dead on. More or less, it just made me think right away, “This guy is Superman!”

I know that there was some controversy amongst fans about the differences in the costume design. I know that they were a small minority, but since one of them is a good friend of mine, I just thought I’d take this opportunity to address it. The costume looks great. The muted colors serve the tone and color palette of the movie very well. I really couldn’t possibly give a rat’s ass if the neckline is higher, or if the chest shield is smaller, or if the cape doesn’t have a yellow shield on the back. Those, to me, are trivial details. After all, it’s not like they put nipples on the damn thing. Besides, Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace both got the costume “right,” and that sure didn’t keep them from sucking unholy amounts of ass. In fact, if minor changes in the costume keep someone from enjoying the movie, that person should be forced to watch nothing but the abovementioned sequels for the rest of his/her life.

Anyway, the acting is all uniformly great, even Kate Bosworth. I was worried I’d feel similarly about her as I did Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, but she really won me over. I still think she looks too young, but she manages to pull off a maturity of character I didn’t think possible in someone her age. (Plus, let’s not forget that she is actually quite beautiful.) I was glad that they gave her more to do than just be a damsel in distress. At two points in the movie, she actually gets to save Superman for a change, a very bold move on the part of the filmmakers and a very empowering one on the part of the character.

James Marsden’s role could have been quite thankless, but his character actually comes out quite well. We certainly don’t root against him as Superman’s roadblock to Lois’s heart because he’s just a darned decent guy. He’s a good romantic partner to Lois, a good father to Jason, and he’s probably good to his underlings at the Daily Planet, despite being the boss’s nephew. He also gets to play Superman at one point, flying out (in a plane) to rescue his fiancée and their son.

Speaking of Jason, his was a role was one about which I was most worried. It seems extremely difficult to pull off kid roles in movies these days—hell, Spielberg can’t even seem to do it anymore ³—but Tristan Lake Leabu is actually very endearing from the first time we meet him. It helps that he doesn’t have a great deal of dialogue, and the dialogue he does have isn’t of that overly precocious smartass variety we’re so used to seeing these days. At no point does he say anything to Lex Luthor like, “My dad’s going to kick your ass!”

Oh, yeah, so Jason, it turns out, is the son of Kal-El. Since Superman Returns is kind of a sequel to Superman II, that means that, during the time he’d given up his powers to be with Lois, she got all knocked up and stuff. I have to admit, though, that as much as I saw it coming, the scene where it is revealed that he has his father’s super strength—but, we find out, apparently not his weakness—is still a very effective scene. Also, we luckily don’t get to see him do anything super throughout the rest of the movie. I imagine it just might have looked ridiculous.

Now for the negatives:

First and foremost is the fact that many of the Lex Luthor elements are so similar to the 1978 film. His diabolical plan is once again a real estate scheme, only this time it’s much, much bigger. It also makes much, much less sense if you think about it critically. Aside from that, Parker Posey’s character just feels a bit too much like Miss Tecshmacher, right down to her betrayal due to her disgust with Luthor’s disregard for human life. I think the story would have been much stronger if the makers had made Luthor more like the comic book version, the evil billionaire industrialist.⁴ After all, it’s always frightening to think about the fact that those who wield large amounts of power and influence don’t have the welfare of the people in mind.

I also felt that the climax and resolution of the movie dragged a bit too much. I understand that Singer and crew were really going for something epic, but the action sequences toward the end were a tad bit tiresome after a point. Also, the late subplot about his life hanging in the balance didn’t really have a great emotional effect because we all knew he’d live. It’s the first entry of what Warner Brothers hopes is a long-running franchise; there’s no way they’d kill him off. I think it could have been trimmed a bit and then the extra running time could have been devoted to some more character development at earlier points of the film.

To make a long story short, though, if you want to go see a good Superman movie, you’re in luck. Not only does it feature several scenes of Superman being Superman—the foiling of the bank robbery is great, especially the part where the bullet crumples and ricochets off his eye—but it also contains some good, heartfelt emotion. This is a movie made with absolute love for the character, and I can’t wait for the sequel, Superman’s Still Here or Superman Hasn’t Gone Away This Time or whatever they end up calling it. (Superman Forever, maybe?)

There’s a whole lot more I could write about, but this thing is pretty damn long. To anyone who’s read it all the way through, congratulations. You get a No Prize.

Oh, wait, wrong company…

1. The showing was at 10:00 PM, but it was more or less like a midnight screening. It was certainly still playing at midnight. Back

2. For those of you who aren’t aware, I consider X2 the be-all-end-all of superhero movies. Oh, how I wish 20th Century Fox hadn’t decided to continue the series without Singer & Co. X-Men: The Last Stand may not have been a terrible movie, but the fact that it was just okay, that it actually contained some decent elements but not enough to put it in the same league as the first two, makes it even a little more frustrating. Back

3. Watch E.T. to see how well he used to be able to handle child actors/characters and then check out War of the Worlds. I hated the teenage son in the latter. Back

4. They could always just explain that, after his release from prison, he claimed that he’d been reformed, and he put his brilliant mind to good use by inventing something beneficial to mankind that made him impossibly rich and powerful. Back