 To say that I disliked the movie would be an understatement. To say that I wanted to eat my own eyeballs for letting this into my brain is a slightly better statement.
Astute readers will catch that this my opening and I am going to present a review of Superman Returns , and I am sure some are hoping that it will be spoiler-free.
Don't count on that.
Seriously. I'm going to give away the movie. Jump ahead to the last paragraph, or stop reading right now. I've warned you…
The hard bit is, I don't know where to start with this piece of shit movie; by that, I'm not sure if I should review it as a “Summer Blockbuster” movie, or as the latest in the Superman mythos. It tries to be both, and fails like a two-legged puppy in a pissing contest. The pacing is too slow for a blockbuster and the script is too poor to be a “good” Superman movie.
This isn't a retelling or remaking of the Superman franchise; they are merely retconning and ignoring everything after Superman II.
The movie opens with Superman returning from a five year exodus to find Krypton, since scientists have discovered the location of the planet. (By the way, the movie credits open with what looks like the planet reforming and doing something sinister – don't expect to see any reference to that again.) Supes crashes his ship on Ma Kent 's farm, reminisces and decides to return to Metropolis as Clark Kent . He returns to find Jimmy Olsen damn near professing his gay-love for Clark . Lois Lane , having won a Pulitzer Prize for why the world doesn't need Superman, is now an unwed mother and engaged to Perry White's nephew, Richard. (Wouldn't the nepotism-like aspects of getting married to your boss's nephew cause friction in the workplace? Maybe that's just me…)
Cue dramatic music and there is a plane strapped to an out-of-control space shuttle that just happens to have Lois on board and Superman is called into duty again to save the day. He even uses the same quote from the first Superman movie regarding the safety of air travel and she faints again. Déjà vu.
Speaking of déjà vu (read as: “Let's rip off the first movie some more!”) Lex Luthor is up to his old tricks. Old Lexy goes all Anna Nicole and marries an old rich woman (who happened to be Lois Lane from the old TV series) and coldly inherits her wealth to fund his big plan. You see, Lex remembers that he has been to the Fortress of Solitude (in Superman 2), so he decides to bring his ragtag band of criminals and crash there for a few weeks and drink Superman's beer. Well, that last bit wasn't exactly true, but would have been a better plan than what he came up with. Lex finds the magic crystals and talks to Jor-El. After a big speech on technological superiority and now having access to all Kryptonian knowledge, he decides to, wait for it, build Kryptonian land masses over the Earth, with buildings that construct themselves, forcing world leaders (the ones that survive) to pay him and…stuff. I know the guy is fascinated by real estate, but this “plan” was just too much and makes no sense; I'll come back to this.
Clark meets Lois's son, who is so addicted to huffing that he carries an inhaler with him at all times, even though he'll grow up big and strong, just like his dad. At the movie theatre I was at, there were two-foot-tall 3-D subtitles that jumped out and said, “Hey! Did you get that? This boy, who looks to be about five years old, is going to grow up strong like his daddy! We are so clever!” I don't think Jeremy saw this, but he got the point nonetheless.
Anyway, whenever Lex uses these crystals to create landmass, it causes an EMP that kills all electronics. Pilots aren't fond of this, so Superman becomes really busy. (Lex also take a moment or two to steal some kryptonite, probably the only reasonable part of his plan.)
You know, I'm done with this; I cannot continue recounting the movie like this as it is starting to physically hurt me. Let me sum up the next 60 to 90 minutes very quickly. Lois and her kid, Jason, get caught and Jason murders a bad guy by throwing a piano at him. Richard White goes to save them and Superman fights Lex, who has discovered that by using the crystal with the kryptonite, the landmass will be filled with deadly mineral. A weakened Superman gets his ass kicked until Lex stabs him in the side with a kryptonite shiv. (Hey, don't feel bad if you missed this biblical reference; the movie is full of “Superman as Christ” analogies. For the record, Kingdom Come did it far better.) Superman, wounded, gets found by Lois, Richard and Jason (only Jason can see him in the water – super vision, I guess) and when Lois pulls most of the shiv out, Superman flies the landmass into space, but he is so wounded, he falls all the way to the ground and nearly dies. As he is in the hospital, Lois takes Jason to see him, where she whispers something in his ear and Jason kisses him on the forehead. Like a “kiss of spinach” for Popeye, Superman soon leaves the hospital and is okay again, so he drops by and visits a sleeping Jason and recounts the things Jor-El told him. After one last visit with Lois, he promises to stick around takes to the air, thankfully, ending the movie.
Well, that's the gist of it, I skipped a few things here and there because that is two and a half hours of my life that I will never have back and I really do not want to probe the depths of my memory recalling it. Allow me to address why I hated it so much.
I didn't go into this movie expecting much (Hollywood has let me down too many times to expect anything ever), but I figured it was in good hands with Bryan Singer at the helm and having been ten years in the making. I saw that they made Supes's costume darker, so a part of me wondered if Superman was going to return from space with a chip on his shoulder. No, instead, Superman was just “I'm back, enjoy me saving your life.”
But Superman wasn't quite himself, either. While I thought Brandon Routh did a good Clark Kent , he just never seemed right as Superman. The worst part, though, was watching “Mr. Life, Liberty and the American Way ” hovering outside Lois and Richard's house, using his x-ray vision like a floating Peeping Tom. He was so upset about losing Lois, that he should have told her why he was leaving, instead of him and Lois dancing around the idea that it is hard to say “goodbye.” (Plus, as Clark , he could have asked anyone at the Daily Planet about Lois if he wanted info. Hell, Jimmy Olsen would have gladly volunteered any info had Clark pressed and would have offered a hand job afterward!) And besides being a peeper, Superman is now also a dead-beat dad! Great fucking idea, Hollywood ! For someone who is about being all things good and doing the right thing, I'm so glad he didn't marry Lois on the spot at the end, or at least take responsibility for being a father – that would have been the right thing to do. (Seriously, do not get me going on the whole “Superman's a daddy and let's not tell anyone.” It was a DUMB fucking idea that should never have made in into the script; good job for ruining the next movie in the franchise you're trying to recreate guys!)
Kevin Spacey, Kevin Spacey. This is my short open letter to you: “What the fuck happened, man?” I like Spacey a lot, and while he is no Gene Hackman, I figured he could do a good Luthor. He said in interviews he was going to be a darker Luthor; I think he meant an apathetic Luthor. Spacey looked so bored throughout the movie that it's easy to forget he was the main villain. He didn't have to be over-the-top like Hackman, but the only decent Luthor scene is the first one where he manipulated the old biddy out of her fortune.
In Spacey's defense, he didn't have much to work with - the story and script were that bad. You're telling me that with all that Kryptonian tech, the best Luthor could come up with was raising Krypton on Earth? No rayguns, power armor or even teleporting bombs? I know he has a real estate fetish, but come on! Here is my impression of Luthor's thought process: “Hmmm…what weapons do we have here? Wait! Crystals that grow land and buildings! Great! This is JUST like Superman 1, because that worked so well for me! This time, I'll hit the East Coast – that'll be really different! I'm brilliant!” Nevermind that the crystals are in the Fortress in the Antartica, surrounded by snow, which is still water, the last time I checked.
The dialog was so poor that even the lines that were supposed to be funny gathered NO laughs in the theatre I was at. In fact, let's take a look at this paraphrased exchange between Richard, who doesn't know Clark or Superman, and Lois, as Clark listens in with his super-hearing:
Richard: How tall is Superman?
Lois: About 6' 4”.
Richard: How much does he weigh?
Lois: About 220, 225.
Richard (Looking over at Clark ): …And how tall is Clark ?
Lois: About 6'3”, 6'4” and 220.
Thankfully, Clark then stumbles, causing them to laugh at themselves for even thinking such a thing. What should have come next would be:
Richard: Hey - isn't it strange that they were both gone five years and came back at the same time? We're all journalists and we didn't notice this?
At this point, Clark could hold up a pack of Mentos and smile as Richard and Lois laugh at themselves again. And then he'd melt them with his heat vision as the credits rolled. That would have been a far better twist than the unknown son.
Yes - Jason, the son of the Last Son of Krypton. Why was he created? His presence does not add to Superman's character, it detracts from it. Supes got jiggy with Lois and then took off for space. In fact, I think that whole “found Krypton” thing was a ruse. Supes porked and panicked, so he went to a bunch of astronomers and said, “Listen guys, I've saved the planet, what, 12, 13 times now? Could you all be buds and do me a favor for once? Nothing big, I just gotta get the hell out of here because I…um…forgot to pay taxes. Could you just, you know, maybe say you found Krypton so I can go check it out. You don't even have to say for sure that it is, just, you know, allude to it. Thanks a lot guys!” But then he forgot how boring space is, so he came home. And he didn't even own up to his kid, other than a repeat of the pep talk Jor-El gave him. (Oh yeah, nice way to forget about Pa Kent, you know, the guy that actually raised you like his son and died in the first movie? It's good that you quoted Jor-El, since he wasn't around for you, either. Nice little cycle you got going there…)
One last thing: did Superman get stronger? In Superman I, when he has a kryptonite necklace, he falls down and nearly dies. In this movie, he gets the stuff stabbed INTO his body AND carries a continent that has a fine green layer. Perhaps he has built up a tolerance…?
This movie needed a major rewrite, or at least a re-edit, because the timing is very off and drags at some points. (Everything after the fall to Earth should have been trimmed or excluded, because they only ended up wasting time, getting us to think something more would come.) I saw the movie for free, and still feel ripped off. This was easily one of the worst movies I have seen recently, and I cannot say “don't see it” enough. Wait for it to come around on DVD and get it from NetFlix if you need to see it. I wouldn't even call myself a hard-core Superman fan – I like the character and the first two movies. Trust me, Superman 3 is better than this one. The best part of the movie is the Spider-Man 3 trailer, which is available on web and isn't followed by 2.5 hours of garbage, only midget porn, if you so choose.
Your friend,
Tanz |
