Superman Returns

The last few weeks have been a long wait for those of us in Europe as we’ve had to wait for the World Cup to finish before Warner Brothers’ would release Superman Returns. I hope the lag doesn’t dent Supes too badly, but was a fantastic sunny weekend and the cinema was fairly quiet when I saw it. Marvel’s top writer seems to be doing his bit to promote the film. I enjoyed Mark Millar’s piece in the Scotland Sunday Herald and if you want to see a very uneasy fellow check out the Richard and Judy threads at Millarworld. Beyond Mark’s self confessed love for Superman, there is a quiet logic to a Marvel guy supporting a DC film — if any of the superhero films tank then it could well sink the entire genre for a movie generation.

Spoilers follow…

The film itself opens with a restaging of the destruction of Krypton. As a professional astronomer it was a delight to watch the detail given to Krypton’s collapsing sun and the supernova that scours the planet of all life. I was fairly calm during the start — too many commercials — but the moment THAT music started I was gone, my attention was super-humanly fixed and didn’t falter until the end. I was too young to see the original films in the cinema so hearing the theme in its native environment for the first time was a real experience for me.

Superman Returns does not seek to escape from the imposing shadow of the original two Superman films. Indeed it embraces those films with a reverence that almost stifles its own creativity and identity. However, it still manages to bring new elements in from the comics. The first big set piece is the returning Superman saving Lois Lane during the launch of a next-generation space shuttle. This parallels their first meeting in the modern comics from Man of Steel #1 when Superman saves the space plane Constitution. Lois and Clark used another variant of the space plane/shuttle rescue for their pilot episode. The link back to the first helicopter save from Superman the Movie is also made with Superman’s speech about the safety of flying. I’ve always liked this slightly playful characterisation of the movie Superman.

Brandon Routh does a very good Reeve, an amazingly good Reeve at times, but there are differences. Routh’s Superman doesn’t quite have the same adolescent quality that Reeve’s had. Its here that I take contention with the idea that Superman Returns is somehow more emotionally complex that Richard Donner’s original. The original’s core was an adolescent Superman, a good kid wanting to do more and struggling to deal with responsibilities of maturity. However, this film comes dangerously close to using the sledgehammer of angst – Lois’s angst at Superman returns, Richard’s angst at possibly loosing Lois, Clark’s angst at Lois’s rejection – but Singer manages to rein it in and keep the intruding emotions to knowning glances and short character moments.

The real focus of the film is Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane and if there is a week element to this film then I’m afraid it’s her. Routh does a very good Reeve, an amazingly good Reeve at times, but Bosworth’s Lane is very different from Margo Kidder’s Lane. I think she’s far close to the softer edged Terry Hatcher Lois and you genuinely have problems believing that Bosworth’s Lois would smoke. That’s not to say she doesn’t suffer for her relationship with Superman. Bosworth spends most of the action sequences in typical damsel mode being thrown around, knocked out, nearly drowned, and generally battered by any object not nailed down.

I found myself liking James Marsden as Richard White. His role could so easily have been the good guy who turns out to be a cad and is easily dumped, but he comes across as a genuinely likeable and upstanding character – a hero in his own right who really makes the Lois/Superman dilemma work. However, I fear that they’ve painted themselves into a corner for the sequels. The only thing that can happen to Richard is either to become seduced by a badguy and turn against Superman or for him to meet a heroic end and so open up the way for a full resumption of the Superman/Lois romance. I’d hate for the former to occur and I’m not entirely sure I want to see the latter happen either. The quartet of Clark/Superman/Lois/Richard is relatively interesting and I’d like to see it continue in the films as a status quo.

Spacey’s Lex Luthor is far closer to Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor and is arguable the closest match to the original casting. He is definitely the more bombastic and melodramatic Luthor of the first film and not the darker Lex from the comics or from Smallville. One fun fact pointed out on IMDB was that Christopher Reeve’s last line to Hackman in Superman IV was “See you in twenty”, now twenty years later a difference Superman and Luthor are reunited. Personally I’d liked to have seen a really stripped down Lex Luthor shorn of the light relief and the need to carry 1/3 of the screen time. I’d also of liked to have seen a totally coldly serious Earth-One style Luthor. The little clever nods to the first film are most noticeable with Lex and the first sequence on the boat is almost a direct lift. Even his scheme, an overblown property scam, is lifted from the first film.

I’d heard about the little kid before I saw the film. It was almost impossible not to hear about him and remain connected to the Internet. That was the one thing that gave me a tinge of dread before I saw the film, but to my relief it wasn’t overstated. I’m not saying I agree with Singer’s decision to introduce him, but within the film they handle it with care and with a certain internal logic.

In my previous reviews I noted how I thought Batman was a better film than Batman Begins because it represented a paradigm shift, a change in the way superhero films are made. That can also be said of Superman the Movie and Superman Returns. Superman The Movie and Batman represent two revolutions in the presentation of superhero films, Batman Begins didn’t make that leap and neither does Superman Returns. It’s already been made for this generation of films by the first crop of Marvel movies. We’re living in the post-Spiderman paradigm and Superman Returns squarely belongs to it.

For all it’s hype and for all our admittedly over blown expectations Superman Returns is a relatively simple film with a relatively simple mission. Like the first X-Men film it’s about re/establishing the status quo and re/introducing the main players. There is a framing sequence, a threat, a mission, but it isn’t really important. What is important is that it allows us to see the heroes at work, to see their strengths, their weaknesses, their friends and foes. And it succeeds fantastically well at that. This isn’t the alternate Superman 3, this is the alternate Superman 2.5.

In summary: Brandon Routh is Superman (for me he nails it so well that it that isn’t even worth debating), Kate Bosworth isn’t Kidder, but she’s closer to Hatcher or even Kristin Kreuk’s Lana Lang, whilst Spacey hams it up as well as Hackman, but doesn’t really add anything new to the role. The plot is as thin as the first X-Men film, but serves the same purpose. The set pieces are stunning and the kid isn’t as bad as I thought he would be.