Superman Returns
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Parker Posey

A lot of people have been trying to get a new Superman movie off the ground for ages, but it wasn’t until Marvel began their reign at the box office with the X-Men and Spider-Man movies that all egos were put aside and focused on making it happen, no matter the cost.

There are probably a lot of reasons why a new Superman movie would be hard to assemble. He is a difficult character to write for because he is basically invincible, and times have changed since the previous Superman movies came out… Superman is a little more campy and idealistic than what most people want in a superhero nowadays. However, he is also considered the world’s first superhero, and one of the most enduring fictional characters of our time. WB’s Smallville series proved that the character still had appeal (even if it was cloaked in a teen soap opera setting) and it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances clicked for a new Superman movie to fly onto the big screen.

The key part of the puzzle was convincing Bryan Singer and his team to defect from the X-Men franchise to give the Man of Steel a shot. With a proven track record, it seemed like Singer would be an ideal candidate to give Superman the truly triumphant return that he deserved. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Despite all the money and all the hype, I have to say that Superman Returns is ultimately a misfire.

One thing I was thankful about was the fact that they didn’t reboot the franchise completely. This is a new story that picks up sometime after the events of Superman II. The first two Superman movies are true classics, and it would have been extremely challenging to retell the origin story and improve on what Richard Donner did in the original. This time around, the movie opens with Superman having left Earth to explore the remnants of his home planet Krypton, and then coming back 5 years later to find some unfortunate changes. For one, Lex Luthor is out of jail, but more importantly: Lois Lane is married! With a kid!

Right off the bat I’ll say that everything to do with Lois Lane’s kid in this movie was a bad idea if you ask me. It’s like they wanted to ensure this would be a family-friendly blockbuster, so they added a cute kid. Nothing against Tristan Lake Leabu, but he borders on being so cute he’s annoying (and his horrible dialogue sure doesn’t help). We’re talking “Jonathan Lipnicki in Jerry Maguire” manufactured cuteness all around. And the kid subplot only gets worse as the movie progresses. It just seemed so contrived, I mean, why the hell was he always running around the Daily Planet offices? Doesn’t he go to school? They gave Lois and her husband have all these family scenes at work just so Clark could observe them and be involved.

Also, the rumours about Superman being a “chick flick” (Singer’s own words, believe it or not) are pretty much dead on. This movie is almost completely driven by Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane, and for a comic book movie there is surprisingly little action. Bryan Singer has opted to make it more of an art house character study, and while on the one hand, I respect the attempt, the problem is that Superman shouldn’t be so complex and conflicted. He is the ultimate moral hero, an eternal optimist, and he always puts the well-being of others above himself. I suppose having him hung up on a lost relationship humanizes the character, but that’s just it… Superman is not human. Kate Bosworth also doesn’t seem like the Lois Lane type, and she didn’t have much chemistry with Brandon Routh. The love triangle really bogged the movie down.

To be honest, there were only a couple of scenes in this movie where I really felt my blood pumping, although thinking back, I might attribute my excitement to the use of the classic John Williams theme. (It felt like they cheated a bit by using the old music.) The climactic battle between Lex Luthor and Superman was shaping up to be something great, and it was one of the few times when I actually felt anything for Superman. Unfortunately this movie has one of the worst nosedive endings since Spielberg’s A.I. in my opinion. It drags on and gets way too melodramatic for its own good (not to mention all the Christ undertones… haven’t we had enough Christian allegories on screen lately?).

Brandon Routh does an admirable job as both Superman and Clark Kent. I think it’s a lot easier to bring in a new actor for, say, a Batman movie because he wears a mask, and you associate the character with the costume. Superman, on the other hand, doesn’t hide behind a mask, and everyone associates Christopher Reeve with the character. It’s tough to overcome that bias, but Routh makes it work. Some people have claimed that he has very little dialogue… I would say it’s more a problem of him not having any good dialogue. Where were the witty one-liners Superman usually has? Routh also plays him up to be more self-absorbed, and maybe that was appropriate given the story, but again it didn’t feel to me like the Superman I know.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with Kevin Spacey’s performance. I thought he was going to overdo Lex Luthor completely, and I was prepared to hate it, but he and Parker Posey stole the show in a lot of ways. They certainly had all the best lines in the movie.

And Superman Returns was generally pretty nice to look at. The special effects were… okay. They were able to do some things in this movie that they never could have done back in the 80’s (the plane crash scene in particular was quite impressive), but here’s the problem: they cop out and do almost everything with computer graphics. Ever since Spider-Man came out, people think it’s okay to do full action scenes with computer animation. And yeah, it gives the director a lot of freedom to make the camera swoop and rotate all over the place. But it still looks fake! Unlike Spider-man, Superman doesn’t wear a mask and he has a cape, which made it glaringly obvious when we were looking at a digital model of Brandon Routh rather than the real thing. The large scale destruction that happens as a result of Lex Luthor’s scheme (which I still don’t really understand by the way) was handled fairly well. But did we really need to see Superman in bullet time?

The bottom line here is that this movie is not nearly enough fun for a summer blockbuster. I have a hard time comprehending all the advance praise this movie received. I don’t mind character development and relationships in an action movie… in fact, I encourage it! But the pacing was off, the story did not flow nicely and in general it felt long to me (which, by the way, it is). I think Bryan Singer was so busy sitting in the middle of this beast that he couldn’t step back and see what the problems were, and where more energy or editing was needed. Superman Returns is not a complete dud, but if you’re going to compare it to the first two Superman movies, there’s really no comparison at all, and it’s a far cry from some of the better comic book movies that have been released in the past few years (Singer’s own X-Men films included). — Sean

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Recommended If You Like: Superman, Superman II, The Rocketeer, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Castaway