Sorry for my VERY late review - Movie was released here last week, plus had cash problems, long story, don´t ask...
Superman Returns is just the kind thing that sometimes makes me feel like na alien in the fanboy world. Never, in my five years at SHH boards, I have seen a superhero movie that I felt was so unfairly criticized and nitpicked, and I followed the “organics sucks” thing in the Spider-Man board… I read so much about this that I didn´t feel at all when I saw the movie, sometimes I wondered if we all saw the same thing. Maybe it´s my perspective. I thought a restart a la Batman Begins was a terrible idea, I was more than pleased with Donner´s telling of it and the last thing I wanted to see was the kagillionth retelling of the origin. I don´t think a good Superman story has to be a direct version of any particular comics storyline, just a good Superman story, even though tributes and recognizable ideas are nice. I actually put together some of the comments I been reading over a month that made me go “what the hell are they talking about”.
“It´s a remake of the Donner movie” – Very rarely, if ever, this movie felt to me like a mere imitation of Donner´s Superman. Despite the many common plot and visual elements, it´s a new story with its own twists and turns. And it gets a lot of the things that were great about his take, like the epic imagery and romanticism. And it takes from other sources too, the Fleischer cartoons – the many low angles, nice use of shadows, etc., the George Reeves show – Supes walking firmly but calmly towards the thug with the machine gun, even the Animated Series – the plane rescue and Superman taking more hits, suffering more.
“It´s boring and lacks action” – If by action you mean merely fights, yeah, it lacks in that department, but if the idea is that it lacks excitement, I totally disagree. I´d say the pace is actually faster than that of Batman Begins, and it has plenty of humor, a visually beautiful romance moment – that evokes the Supes flying with Lois moment from STM, I know, but it adds to it visually with their “dance in the sky” – and after Luthor´s plan sets in motion, the movie gains a lot in energy and barely stops till it´s over. Oh, for those who said “all he does is lift stuff”, hardly, we see Supes´s vulnerability in ways we haven´t before – the bullet to the eye shot is priceless and got a great reaction from audience -, he uses his super breath to stop fires, his heat vision to destroy pieces of glass falling on people, his super vision in ways we didn´t see before – checking Lois´ organs to see if she´s all right. My audience rarely seemed bored with the movie.
“This has nothing to do with the comics” – This is a perfectly recognizable, archetypical Superman. He´s the last survivor of Krypton, he was raised by the Kents, he has all his classic powers and vulnerability, he´s the mild-mannered, bumbling Clark at the Planet, Lois is the noisy and feisty reporter, there´s Perry, there´s Jimmy, all the essential lore is there. The suit is recognizable as well and it fits well with the cinematography of the movie, I don´t remember anybody at the theater saying “that doesn´t look like Superman”, and it was a very vocal audience, in a couple cases annoyingly so – your typical bratty kids who laugh and make fun of everything and think they´re really cool without realizing they´re annoying the hell out of the other people, but even those got quiet and followed the movie after a while...
Now let´s really get our hands dirty – the “Superman leaves Earth/has a son out of wedlock” thing… The story reflects on the whole notion that Superman doesn´t fit our times anymore. As the Lois article points out, the question is “does the world still need Superman?” Does his connection with his planet makes him more of an alien than a human? What we learn is deep down, Superman´s fragility, moreso than kryptonite, is his incomplete humanity, the “loneliness at the top”. He looked for the answer at the wrong place, cuz it was here all the time. His humanity is now complete as he bred life in this world instead of worrying about a dead one, and in his love for Lois and his son and for the world, it has become his greatest strength, the one that impulses him to win over kryptonite and lift a wasteland made of his dead home planet out to space. The final scene between him and his son was beautiful, a wrap-up of his own connection with Jor-El, passing the legacy, keeping the example for the future generation. If this is not the stuff of a great Superman story, I´ll throw away or forget everything I owe or know of the character. And no, I didn´t feel like he was more worried about getting Lois back than saving the world, there was a nice balance, IMO, between the drama and romance and his traditional heroic acts. The FX and visuals were incredible, this movie constantly feels huge in its scope, as it should be.
I´ll concede, however, to some of the criticisms I read. At times, yes, it´s somewhat gloomier than a Superman movie should be, but Supes didn´t come up as a mopey whiner to me. It´s just that the story lands itself that way, but at the end of the day, it´s a hopeful one. In Lex´s case, I thought it went a little too much for the Donner approach. This Lex was scarier and more menacing, yeah, but sometimes he still came off a bit campy for my tastes, yet I think in the darker scenes Spacey did a great job. And I´d have preferred a more physical threat than yet another frikking land takeover scheme. But don´t tell me it´s more absurd than the villainous plans of Magneto, Doc Ock, Ra´s, etc. I´m kinda tired to see girly girls play roles of mature professional women – coughJessica Albacough… Kate is 23 and she looks 18… if I have to guess the idea is to appeal to the teenage audience, why come up with a story where she´s a mom and Supes is an old boyfriend? Doesn´t sound like The OC to me…I´ll also agree that Supes is a bit too quiet, even though I love his “everyday I hear people crying for one” line and his final Jor-El speech to Jason.
As for Routh, I think he lacked a bit of Reeve´s screen presence, but overall I thought he worked well, especially as Clark, in a less bumbling version. Sam Huntington was very funny as Jimmy.
But maybe the scene I felt the most was the one where Richard, Lois and Jason were drowning and they´re saved… I think that moment defines Superman in so many ways… The hope of a miracle, of being rescued from an impossible danger, hope springing when it seems completely lost. To me it made more of a mark than the plane rescue or even the lift of the island…
I may not be able to put SR up there with my beloved Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins – it´s my fanboy bias, I´m too much of a Spidey/Bats fan. But SR to me is a crafty, entertaining, and heartfelt superhero movie. I can accept many criticisms to it, except that Singer didn´t put genuine love and dedication to making the best Superman movie he could. Whatever bias or take you have against SR, this a Superman fan´s movie. I believe it as I believe a man can fly.
.
