Day 43: I'm Always Around

SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Frank Langella, Eva Marie Saint

After an unexplained five year absence, Clark Kent (Routh) comes back to Metropolis.  And Perry White (Langella) is nice enough to give him back his old job at the Daily Planet.  While catching up with his Best Pal Jimmy Olsen, he finds out that his old flame Lois Lane (Bosworth) is engaged to be married and has a son.  However, also coming back to town is Lex Luthor (Spacey), and he’s cooking up yet another crazy world-domination scheme.  But of course as we all know, with the return of Clark Kent comes the return of Superman, who also mysteriously reappears.  He also finds out that Lois has moved on when he discovers she wrote the Pulitzer-winning editorial “Why We Don’t Need Superman.” 

I heard a lot of negative press about this film, but I have to say, I can’t really see why.  It’s got everything a Superman movie should have; Lex Luthor trying to take over/destroy the world, Superman saving the day in his charming Boy Scout manner, a rekindled romance between Superman and Lois Lane and the prospect of sequel, which I won’t ruin for you if you haven’t seen it.  So why all the hate?  I honestly can’t say.

Director Bryan Singer is no stranger to super-hero movies, having helmed the first two X-Men films, and he handles the Man of Steel with a great amount of respect.  The temptation is always to use Superman’s goody-goody persona as an excuse to make things a bit campy.  There is very little in the way of camp here (aside from a few inside jokes for fans), and the film supposedly takes place in the same continuity as the first two Superman films directed by Richard Donner (and Richard Lester, if you must mention that).  Great attention is paid to every detail.  He wanted to get everything right, and that’s exactly what he did.

One of his best decisions was to cast Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor.  Really, can you think of another actor who is better suited for that role?  There are some who would say Gene Hackman should have reprised the part, but I was never a fan of Hackman as Luthor.  He just didn’t seem diabolical enough.  Spacey, on the other hand, has that maniacal edge that makes Luthor a menace rather than a clown.  Sure, he occasionally plays for laughs here too, but that’s not his main focus.  He’s a super-villain who enjoys his work a bit too much, which is always a bit scary, no matter how charming he may be on the outside. 

As far as the rest of the cast goes, everyone does a fine job.  Brandon Routh is good as Superman/Clark, but I can’t help feeling he was chosen for the role only because he bears a more than passing resemblance to the late Christopher Reeve.  The good thing about him is that he doesn’t try to imitate Reeve.  He stands on his own, as it should be.  Bosworth isn’t bad as Lois, but then I’ve never seen a great on-screen Lois Lane.  Even Margot Kidder got on my nerves a bit.  Bosworth works because her attitude best matches Lane’s as a woman succeeding in a man’s world.  Hers is one of the better interpretations of what is, essentially, a pretty one-dimensional character.

I do, however, have two problems with the film.  First of all, the main cast are all a bit too young.  Five years are supposed to have passed between Superman II and this film, and yet everyone looks younger.  Second, even though we know Superman is impervious to bullets and can lift a trillion tons and all that, he always does so as if he’s lifting no more than a medicine ball.  I think back to The Incredibles and what Brad Bird had to say about super-strength: even if the world’s strongest man is about to stop a runaway train, he still winces just before impact, as if to say, “This isn’t going to kill me, but it’s gonna hurt.”  Just one shot like that in this movie would have done a better job of selling it.  Even Superman must get a bruise now and then.

I found this to be a really good interpretation of the Superman mythos, and I still don’t understand all the bad press this movie got.  Perhaps people thought it didn’t really add anything new, but that’s not a bad thing.  Especially if you’re doing a reboot of a classic series.  The last thing I want to see is Superman getting all dark and gloomy.  This world is dark and gloomy enough already.  Our heroes should rise above all that, and no one ever did it better than Superman.

And all this was written by a die-hard Batman fan.  But that’s another story.