Title: Superman Returns
Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Cast: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Frank Langella, …
Director: Bryan Singer
Release: (2006)
I’ll give Bryan Singer this: he’s persuasive. So persuasive, in fact, that it only took the wunderkind director two hours and thirty-four minutes to undo what hundreds, maybe thousands, of other artists and support staff had been doing continuously for over three-quarters of a century. I see now that for all that time I’ve been under siege by an army of Siegel and Shuster propagandists. Spin doctors, who have been working tirelessly to convince me that Superman is a good guy, a hero’s hero, that I like Superman. And in less than three hours of looking at the world through his magic lens, Singer has shown me the light: Superman is a d*ck.
But I’ll come back to that in a minute. First I should probably get some type of cursory plot outline involved here. Superman Returns delivers exactly what it advertises: a movie about the return of Superman. Relative newcomer Brandon Routh plays Christopher Reeve playing Superman (playing Clark Kent). After taking a bit of personal leave to search for remains of his home planet Krypton, Superman returns (hence the title, get it?) to find things in Metropolis much different than the way he left them. Love interest Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on from waiting for him and is now married, with a son, and is more successful than ever with a Pulitzer Prize under her belt. Old nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is out of jail and moving full steam ahead on a new, thoroughly well-conceived plan to take over the world. And the whole rest of the world is generally going coo-coo bananas. Superman must learn to rediscover his place in the lives of everyone he once knew and among the people of his adoptive planet. And it’s in this process that he begins to show his true colors.
One of the major storylines of this movie is SuperClark’s efforts to reestablish his relationship with Lois. It’s hard to describe exactly how this movie made the familiar “true love conquers all” formula so much more unappealing than any of the thousands of other movies that have tried to sell the same angle before, but let me try to put it in some perspective. Imagine yourself married to the girl of your dreams, working hard, going strong for a good two or three years, with far more ups than downs all the while. Then one day her ex- breezes back into town and wants to take her out for coffee, wants to “catch up on old times”. But this is not just any ex, and you both know it. This is her one ex that you know just enough about to know that you don’t know nearly enough about. You used to try to ask, but she never wanted to talk about him (she’d just say it’s “stupid” to talk about and the relationship was “just whatever”). You have no idea how or why it ended between them but had finally made peace with yourself to just not ask anymore. But now he’s back. In fact, not only is he back but, since he’s been gone, his band blew up and he’s a multi-millionaire rock god who’s traveled the world and wants to play your wife a song he wrote just for her (you know, just for old times’ sake). And no matter what she tries to tell you, you can see the way she still looks at him and you know you really don’t stand a chance no matter what you do. And just when he has her all worked up, just when he makes sure that every one of you knows he could still have her anytime he wants (and oh, by the way, that that’s really his kid you’re raising, sucker), he blows out of town again, leaving you to pick up the pieces of your shattered life in his wake. D*ck!
This is pretty much what Superman does in this movie. He returns to find Lois happily married, raising a boy who is about the same age as the number of years since Superman left, and the Man of Steel just cannot leave it alone. And worst of all, Lois’ husband Richard (James Marsden) is a hands-down great guy! I’m talking, so great that he sees the way they act together and just offers to let her do whatever she needs to to resolve her feelings. So great that he risks his own life and his son’s to save a wounded Superman because he sees how much it means to his wife. So great that he drives Lois to the hospital so she can visit Superman, alone, and waits in the car outside! What? I mean, isn’t the formula for these things supposed to be that the “other” guy in the love triangle kind of sucks somehow, and gets what he deserves when “true love conquers all”? This guy doesn’t beat her, he doesn’t cheat on her - he doesn’t even swear! He’s not just some slob she settled for (he, in fact, is no less than a handsome, successful, unassuming, doting international news editor/part-time pilot from an ultra-rich family), and yet we watch as Superman waltzes into their lives, woos her with moonlight flights over the city and fantastic feats of heroism, and basically all but makes out with the guy’s wife in front of him while winking at him over her shoulder.
Anyway, as you can see, the whole thing was just a little off-putting. Overall, the movie was basically just OK, which was pretty disappointing (this is all coming from a guy who’s had a Superman-style “Fortress of Solitude” doormat outside his front door for about five years now). Kevin Spacey maintains a steady keel as Luthor, a character that could have easily been played too over the top by someone else. Sam Huntington brings an uncomfortable, battling-his-in-the-closet-demons angle to Jimmy Olsen, and that guy who plays Taj from the National Lampoon movies is continually distracting in every scene he’s in, because you can’t stop thinking, “Isn’t that Taj? What is he doing? His agent must suck.”
One more thing about Bryan Singer, if you’re still not convinced that he’s more persuasive than a telemarketing crack-dealer, answer me this: who else could have convinced Richard Branson - the Virgin enterprises billionaire who is currently going all-in on an international corporate race to pioneer the private space tourism industry - to co-star in an elaborate scene about a mid-air passenger shuttle release gone horribly, terrifyingly, flame-ballingly wrong? Could there be a worse image for his business than that? Yet there he is, co-piloting the disaster right into our subconscious forever. This Bryan Singer is one scary dude.
Grading
Story: C+
Acting: C
Visuals: A-
Originality/Innovation: B (Average derived from “A” for originality in visuals, “C” for originality in story)
Enjoyability: B-
DVD Extras: None. Seriously, none. What the hell is that all about?
Overall: B
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