Superman Returns

One of the trailers before tonight's screening of Superman Returns advertised an upcoming release called A Nativity Story. On the heels of Mel Gibson's smash hit The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre The Last Cross on the Left Death Blow The Passion of the Christ, I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of a certain Messiah in theaters for the next few years. Call this first entry Jesus Begins.

And yes, Bryan Singer's new Superman film makes the obvious Jesus comparisons, particularly in one over-the-top shot towards the end that quite frankly oversells the connection. He was sent by his learned father down to Earth to teach all us mortal some valuable life lessons. He's forthright and honest and kind and unselfish. Not to mention all that suffering in order to save human lives. We get it even without him Assuming the Crucified Position, thanks all the same, Bri-Bri.

That word, "suffering," pretty much sums up the experience of Singer's movie. Perhaps understanding that a nearly invincible alien doesn't neccessarily win over an audience right off the bat, he goes to great lengths to make the sometime Mr. Kent relatable. He can't be harmed by bullets, of course, but he does get sad and lonely and jealous, just like everyone else. In Superman Returns, an angry spat cuts our hero far deeper than any number of natural disasters, runaway airplanes or blazing infernos.

Unfortunately, Supes isn't the only one to suffer in this 2 and a half hour archetype marathon. The overly-referential, plodding script by Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris, lean on big set pieces and heavy on repetition, pretty much guaranteed a dull finished product right from the outset. And Singer's seriousness of mission and near-desperate desire to tie his new film in with the Donner/Lester classics prevents him from putting any kind of unique stamp on the proceedings.


Little more than a jazzed-up combination of Superman I and Superman II, Singer's new film teases the viewer with what could have been while serving up heavy doses of familiarity, nostalgia, camp and schmaltz.



I found the film more disappointing than most because these glimpses of greatness are there. As pure spectacle, Superman Returns has a few sequences that will easily rank among the year's most impressive. In particular, the plane crash/shuttle launch set piece (shown in 3D at some IMAX theaters, but not where I saw it) stuns with its scale and level of detail. Having said that, it doesn't make a lot of practical sense. Why would you possibly want to strap a rocket on to the back of an occupied 747? Isn't this just asking for trouble? You should probably put in a call in to Superman before even going ahead with a stupid concept like that, just to make sure he's free for the next hour or so.

Singer's the kind of director who pays attention not just to these kind of major centerpiece moments but smaller visual details throughout the film, all of which helps to sell an audience on this kind of far-out fantasy universe. When Superman lands on a rocky surface, he leaves a small impact crater under his feet. When Superman fights his nemesis Lex Luthor on an island made of kryptonite, crystals continue to branch out and grow at the edges of the frame.

Also to his credit, Singer has found an almost ideal Superman in Brandon Routh. The guy's no Christopher Reeve. In particular, he lacks Reeve's gangly, awkward effectiveness as Clark Kent. Reeve played Kent not as a clumsy man but as a graceful man who pretended to be clumsy. Rewatch Superman II some time. He'll walk into rooms with ease only to remember he's supposed to be a klutz just in time to knock his elbow into the filing cabinet. Routh just flashes a toothy grin and pushes his glasses further up his nose, but he looks the part and remains effective throughout.

So you have a solidly cast new Superman and an ace effects team ready to put a massive budget to use in creating an awe-inspiring new Superman movie for a new generation. Why go backwards? Why rehash most of the plot points from the first two films in the series, the ones from the 70's, instead of designing something new?

Singer includes a lot of post 9/11 ideas and references in the script, which obsessively contrasts Superman's godlike powers with human frailty. Humans are brittle and occupy a hazardous world liable to collapse upon them at any time. A late seqeuence features oddly familiar images of Metropolis skyscrapers and buildings being violently shaken by shock waves.

Superman can thus relate to humans emotionally, he feels pain when rejected or ignored, but he can never truly be one of them because of his preternatural ability to survive. (Towards the end of the film, he will develop a strong emotional connection to another character specifically because they share this ability.)

It's an interesting perspective to take towards the material, and could definitely have worked as a reintroduction to this venerable franchise. Singer, for whatever reason, uses it as an excuse to reminisce about great Superman moments of the past. The film opens with the Man of Steel crash-landing on the Kent's Midwestern farm. He has been traveling the universe for five years searching for remnants of his home world of Krypton. Finding none, he has returned to Earth so that he might resume his previous life as Clark Kent/Superman.

So we get a return to Metropolis, with Clark showing up at the bustling Daily Planet office seeking work. We see him reunited with his old flame Lois Lane (deadeyed Kate Bosworth), who's now a mommy and engaged to fellow reporter Richard White (Cyclops James Marsden). They become embroiled in the same kind of Dreary Love Triangle that occupied Singer's valuable time in the first two X-Men movies. He just keeps returning to this well and it never pays off for him. Remember the painful, uninteresting and ultimately pointless showdown between Cyclops and Wolverine for Jean Grey's affection? It's repeated here, this time with Cyclops playing the guy who comes between the established couple, with equally pointless results.

Much of the blame falls on Bosworth, who just couldn't be less interesting or vital as Lois Lane. Gone is the rapid-fire, syncopated dialogue. Gone is the pluck and good humor. She's still an ambitious reporter, but even this trait - clearly her single most definitive - is blunted by the inclusion of the "single mother" sub-plot. If people didn't keep calling her Lois, you'd think she was just some attractive girl reporter with a nice family. She and Routh have very little chemistry, but then that's okay because they share very little screen time. Believe it or not, Lois spends much of the film's second act locked in a pantry.

It's interesting to me how veteran character actors, like Frank Langella, can step comfortably right into this sort of a world while other, less talented performers like Bosworth immediately seem out of place. As Daily Planet editor Perry White, Langella's not given a lot of great lines, or even much to do, yet he still manages to blend in seamlessly with the reality of the story. He feels at home in Metropolis while Bosworth seems like she'd be more comfortable stripping down to a bikini and heading over to the beach from Blue Crush.

While we focus mainly on the Romantic, Supes' old enemy Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has been paroled, in part because Superman was not present to testify at his trial, and is right back up to his old tricks. And I mean that literally. Luthor's evil plot borrows heavily from his schemes in Superman II (in which he first discovered the Fortress of Solitude to which he returns here) and Superman I (his first attempt to artificially create Beach front property, which he will revisit). In place of Otis and Mrs. Teschmacher, he's now accompanied by the silent Stanford (my old college RA Kal Penn) and Kitty Kowalski (a horrible, screechy Parker Posey).



As much as I disliked Bosworth as Lois, Spacey gives by far the film's most humiliating performance. Opting to impersonate Gene Hackman's portrayal of Luthor rather than create his own, Spacey's such a preening, hammy and cornball presence that he threatens to totally derail the movie every time he's on screen. I always thought Gene Hackman was too broad in the role initially, but his take on the material is like Olivier's Henry V in comparison to Spacey's. Will he ever do anything worthwhile again? The guy hasn't been good in a movie since the 90's. Again, Singer chooses to reference the old movies rather than give us something, anything, different. So disappointing.

I mean, it's not like there aren't any more Superman stories to tell aside from the old Lex Luthor gets Kryptonite rigamaroll. The comic's been around for, what, 70 years? I don't ever want to see the rows of corn at the Kent homestead lighting on fire as a rocket from the stars smashes down to Earth again. Ever. I've seen that. Ditto Luthor holding a crystal up to the light and explaining to someone its deep significance. Old news. Show me Brainiac or Darkseid or what's inside the Phantom Zone or something.