Overall Rating
  Awesome: 32.97%
Worth A Look: 17.03%
Just Average: 14.86%
Pretty Crappy: 18.84%
Sucks: 16.3%
13 reviews, 198 user ratings
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| Superman Returns |
by Peter Sobczynski
"Hey, At Least There Isn't A Giant Spider In the Third Act!"
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When the first big-budget “Superman” film was being put together in 1978, it faced an avalanche of pre-release controversy concerning virtually every aspect of its production from its extravagant budget to the risky move of casting a virtual unknown in the title role to the weirdness of Marlon Brandon lending his dulcet tones to the role of Superman’s father in a brief cameo. The biggest question mark, however, was the one surrounding whether or not the character was still relevant at all to a contemporary audience. Sure, they knew who he was–since his debut in the comics in 1938, he has remained one of the most well-known fictional characters in the world–but how would they respond to him at a time when the very things that he has always stood for–truth, justice and what was once called “the American Way”–seem weirdly out of step in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate world gone increasingly wrong? As we all know, they responded enthusiastically to Richard Donner’s savvy blend of sly humor and eye-popping special effects (as the ads proclaimed, you really did believe that a man could fly) but more importantly, they sparked to the utter sincerity with which the film treated its main character. Sure, Superman has always been a little on the square side but instead of mocking him for the sake of some cheap laughs, the film embraced his sincerity and decency in such a way that even the most cynical of viewers found themselves falling for it all over again just as intensely as they did when they first encountered the character as children. The result was a film that is still regarded as the gold standard by which all other superhero movies are measured to this day.Intriguingly, “Superman Returns,” the long-awaited attempt to restart the film franchise after a pair of miserable sequels and nearly two decades of development hell, seems to be following the same rocky path to the silver screen. Like Donner’s film, the project has been dogged with controversy surrounding its astronomical budget (rumored at $280 million-plus, though about $65 million was racked up in development costs for the various false starts over the years), the casting of unknown Brandon Routh in the title role and even the weirdness of the late Marlon Brando making a virtual cameo through old footage shot three decades earlier. And yes, it even comes at a time when the things the character stands for once again seem out of step and overly simplistic in a post-9/11 world. This time around, however, the results are kind of a mixed bag. Unlike the virtually flawless first film, this attempt has some wonderful things going for it along with other things that simply don’t work and the result is a solidly entertaining film that is a little frustrating in the way that it never quite manages to achieve the pop-art heights that it is clearly straining for throughout.
Unlike last year’s amazing “Batman Begins,” in which Christopher Nolan powerfully revived another moribund superhero franchise by essentially relaunching the entire saga from square one, Bryan Singer (who launched the X-Men into theaters with “X-Men” and “X2") has chosen to pretend that “Superman III” and “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace” never existed (an excellent idea under the circumstances) and has designed “Superman Returns” as a more-or-less direct follow-up to Donner’s film as well as Richard Lester’s well-regarded sequel “Superman II”–although updated, everything that we see and hear, from the production design to John Ottoman’s score (which includes a reprise of John Williams’s still-stirring original theme), can be traced back to those original films. More importantly, it retains the straight-faced approach that Donner used in his film (one that Lester began to drop once he took over the reins)–Superman still stands for truth, justice and the American Way (even though the latter isn’t actually spoken aloud) and while I am sure that there was the temptation to make him a little more ambiguous along the lines of such warts-and-all superheroes as Batman and Spider-Man, I am glad that Singer and screenwriters Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris resisted those urges and treated the character and his square sincerity with straightforward respect.
All of this is done so well that it probably won’t dawn on many viewers at first that the actual story of the film takes forever to get going and turns out to be disappointing familiar once it does. Although Superman promised that he would never leave us again after the events of “Superman II” (in which, you will recall, he rejected his powers to live as a mortal with Lois Lane at just the moment when the fearsome General Zod and his minions arrived to wreak havoc), we learn in an opening title crawl that he wound up doing just that by going on a secret journey to find the rumored remains of his home planet of Krypton. This mission fails and when he returns to Earth–managing to once again crash-land on the planet of the now-widowed Martha Kent (Eva Marie Saint)–he discovers that five years have passed and that most of the world has gone on without him, especially one-time love Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth). When Superman returns to Metropolis and his job at the Daily Planet in the guise of mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, he discovers that Lois has a five-year-old son (with an unknown father–hmmmmm), a fiancee in Richard White (James Marsden), nephew of Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella) and a Pulitzer Prize for penning an article explaining in detail why the world no longer needs Superman. Of course, her thesis proves faulty and Superman and Lois Lane have a reunion when he saves the airplane she is flying on from first shooting up into outer space (thanks to a faulty space shuttle detachment system) and then plummeting to the Earth. Even after that, however, she still seems a little miffed at his abrupt departure and not even another moonlight flight through the skies can completely put her anger aside.
Even less thrilled with the return of Superman is long-time foe Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey). Having been released from prison after Superman failed to make a court date during his disappearance (if trying to blow up California and collaborating with General Zod isn’t enough to keep someone behind bars, there may be something to the complaints about the rampage of overly lenient judges after all) and having successfully swindled a dying billionairess (a fanboy cameo by Noel Neill–onetime Jimmy Olsen Jack Larson also pops up as a bartender) out of her money, Luthor, along with henchwoman Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey) and assorted other thugs, has hatched yet another diabolical plan–without going into too much detail, it involves the magical crystals sent with baby Kal-El on his trip to Earth that formed the basis of his Fortress of Solitude, yet another chunk of kryptonite and yet another real-estate scheme that will simultaneously kill millions and earn him billions. The result is a number of expensively-filmed sequences in which Superman defeats this dastardly scheme while repeatedly saving the day in the nick of time, although this time around, Lois and Richard are both required at certain parts of the story to return the favor.
If you are feeling a little underwhelmed after hearing that particular plot description, you aren’t alone. One of the central flaws of the entire Superman mythos is that by making him invulnerable to everything but kryptonite, it means that most of his adventures wind up with a slightly depressing familiarity–a bad guy gets a hold of some kryptonite (and not to be a nag, but how much of that stuff made it to Earth in the first place?) and Superman is nearly destroyed, only to somehow pull himself together and save the day. In “Superman II” and “Superman III,” the filmmakers managed to put a spin on this particular narrative dead end so that the story wasn’t just another rehash (and I still persist that the conceit of “Superman III”–that a faulty chunk of faux-kryptonite inspired a psychic split between the two halves of Superman’s personality–could have made for a brilliant film if it hadn’t been ignored for the woeful capering of a never-less-funny Richard Pryor) and you would have thought that in the two decades since the last Superman film that someone could have come up with an idea that didn’t involve this especially tired premise. Although it is lavishly staged and executed, the simple fact of the matter is that the basic premise is just a little too close to the first two films for comfort without ever managing to find its own voice.
Another major flaw in the film is an example of miscasting so flagrant that you can’t believe that no one involved with the production noticed just how awful it was. This would be the casting of Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, a role that she is thoroughly unsuited for. For starters, there is no way of buying Bosworth, who is 23 and looks about 6 years younger, as a tough and savvy reporter with a five-year-old child and a Pultizer Prize–I understand that the producers wanted to cast young in order for the characters to age gracefully into the sequels but the result is a situation where the theoretically adult characters here look years younger than their counterparts on the pre-Metropolis “Smallville.” More importantly, she lacks the fire and humor and spunk that have always been the hallmarks of Lois Lane–a woman who could easily go toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel has been reduced to someone who would be regarded as the one with less personality if she were paired up with Aquaman. What is especially infuriating is that an actress that would have made the perfect Lois Lane, Parker Posey, is actually in the film but is wasted in a supporting role that gives her relatively little to do (although she gets one throwaway line that turns out to be the funniest thing in the film). You might argue that Parker Posey is not a name that would lure people into a blockbuster of this size but Kate Bosworth is hardly the kind of actress to put butts in seats, as anyone who invested money into “Win a Date With Tad Hamilton” will certainly tell you.
Aside from her, though, the rest of the casting on display here is pretty good. Although Spacey doesn’t really bring anything new to the character of Lex Luthor–he seems to be giving an extended reprise of his joke appearance as Dr. Evil from “Goldmember”–he does bring a zip to some of his more over-the-top line readings that is highly amusing. Although he isn’t in it nearly enough, Frank Langella gets some big laughs as Perry White while still making him seem like a reasonably believable newspaper editor who wants the big story. And while their brief scenes don’t really amount to much in the long run, the mere presence of a virtual Marlon Brando and a flesh-and-blood Eva Marie Saint bring a gravity to their appearances that resonates as strongly as the most spectacular effects sequences. In the central role of Superman/Clark Kent, Brandon Routh has the thankless task of standing around in goofy tights and uttering dialogue that sounds as if it came from the Boy Scout handbook and, like Christopher Reeve did before him, he manages to pull it off by playing the characters as simply and directly as possible–even his obvious youth sort of fits in with the performance in the way that it subliminally suggests Superman’s essential innocence.In the grand scheme of superhero epics, “Superman Returns” lacks the sheer majesty of the original “Superman,” the thrilling invention of “Batman Begins” or even the screwy strangeness of Ang Lee’s deeply misunderstood “Hulk.” However, as a jump-start for a franchise that many had simply written off as a relic, this is a film that has enough spectacle (the airplane rescue sequence is as dazzling as anything to come along in a while), humor and sincerity to please both longtime fans of the character as well as those who have never seen him flying across the big screen. With the success of this film all but assured, it stands to reason that a sequel will be coming along in a couple of years. Hopefully, the filmmakers will have enough confidence in the material and its inherent popularity to take the time to come up with a continuation that jettisons the weaker elements and comes up with a storyline that is genuinely super.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=14733&reviewer=389
originally posted: 06/28/06 01:00:44
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USA
28-Jun-2006 (PG-13)
DVD: 28-Nov-2006
UK
14-Jul-2006
Australia
29-Jun-2006
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