Superman Returns

Directed by Bryan Singer

Leaping into theatres everywhere beginning 6/28/2006

Surely the most anticipated of the summer event movies, it is with sadness that I report that Superman Returns provides less than awe-inspiring result for such expectations. Unlike last summer’s release of Batman Begins, the return of the Man of Steel is neither a great film on its own nor a snappy reigniting of a dormant film series. Too derivative and too safe by half, even longtime DC Comics fans will find the whole experience more of a yawn with the movie’s small advantages stemming more from anticipation than from anything seen on screen.

A clunky title card presentation tells us that Superman has been away for five years exploring astronomers’ discovery of his home world. Bad start this as what could have been intriguing opening sequence is tossed away. Considering the flick’s languid two and one-half hours running time, director Bryan Singer could have spared shots of Superman cruising the rubble strewn sector of his long-dead home world. Despite this leaden start, the story leads into the reappearance in which Superman rescues a space plane (both the movie’s best sequence as well as harkening back to one of his first comic book stories).

Unfortunately, with this out of the way, the movie becomes little more than a derivative rehashing of the 1978 feature complete with a new Clark Kent/Superman (newcomer Brandon Routh) whose sole attribute appears to be that he looks like Christopher Reeve. Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey, brilliant as always, but underused) is making another land grab (even to the point of repeating Gene Hackman’s lecture on the value of real estate from the earlier version) though this time using some of the Kryptonian crystals from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to make an off-shore land mass which will eventually engulf North America.

One of the reason’s for the anticipation here was not just the big screen (and a very big screen in some markets where the movie will be making its appearance in IMAX) of one of pop culture’s greatest heroes, but also because the attached director was Bryan Singer who had so successfully delivered the X-Men franchise to the movies. But a certain timidity seems to have hit Metropolis and what we get here is something that never seems to deviate far from what was accomplished 28 years before (including reprising Marlon Brando’s sonorous narration). There is no specific problem with any of the cast. Though one wishes for more of Spacey, Kate Bosworth is a perfectly adequate Lois Lane (though a somewhat odd choice in that blonde vacuity rather than brunette vivacity has been the hallmark of her career). The plot twist of having Lois saddled with a five-year-old child of unstated parentage (think The Dead Zone TV series) provides for one good moment, but also leads to some scenes where our hero veers towards becoming a somewhat creepy super stalker. The subplot of Lois moving on in Superman’s absence also seems to have written Singer, et.al. into a corner regarding any potential future Lois/Clark pairings.

The rest of the flick seems satisfied to mix Superman ’78 with bits from the more recent comic books (including “The Death of Superman” and Lex Luthor’s Y2K recreation of Metropolis using Kryptonian technology), but nothing seems to be handled with much enthusiasm. After many belabored attempts to bring back Superman (reportedly 11 years and many false starts of writers and directors which reportedly caused the budget to burst the $300 million barrier), one cannot help, but think they could have come up with more. As an additional note, some rather overwrought Christic symbolism (presumably to give this some emotional heft) is as borderline offensive as it is obvious and heavy-handed.

In the movie Lois has won the Pulitzer Prize for an editorial, “The World Doesn’t Need Superman.” Moviegoers do need Superman; they just need him to be better than Superman Returns. Does Bryan Singer just need to get this out of his system (a la Star Trek the Emotionless Picture) so he can make a really great Superman movie? That may be the only hope that longtime friends of the Man of Steel can hold onto.

 

–Bill Henry

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