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Jun
28
2006

CANFIELD REVIEWS SUPERMAN RETURNS

Posted by Canfield at 11:02am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Drama, Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, USA & Canada.

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Is the dust of X3 outta yer nostrils yet? It was a fun film but one that wasted the opportunity of cinamtic glory. Those who are invested in how Hollywood adapts comic icons will forever be haunted by what director Singer would have done if he had gotten to continue that franchise. The real question now is was his move to Superman a move in the right direction for fans who’ve been waiting for Superman to Return?

Well does he or doesn’t he is more the question of this film NOT is he or isn’t he no matter what the rest of my fellows in the press would have you believe. And the answer? I don’t know. Is it my job to tell you whether you will enjoy this movie? Maybe. But I can’t help telling you that as good a film as I think Singer has made I still heavily prefer the Donner version. This mature relationship based look at Superman offers less a man of steel or more of, a man among men and that isn’t why I go to Superman movies.

I’ve never read the comics. I watched the George Reeves TV show when I was a kid (in reruns people- I ain’t that old!) but my connection to the character is much more nebulous. A comic here, an episode there, the old Superfriends cartoons. As cool as the idea of Superman seemed to me I just always liked Batman and Spiderman and The Hulk better in almost every medium I encountered them.

But the one thing that did connect me to old blue was the savior metaphor. I’m one of those pitiful fools that really believes he needs one. And not just in some religious soul sense but in the sense of the physical world as well. The phrase “Look, up in the sky! It’s a Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s Superman!” means that everything is going to be okay. That bus won’t run over the cliff. That train won’t derail, crimes will be justly dealt with by someone honest, someone worth believing in. Superman is a shadow of a larger truth. I am safe in this world because goodness does really exist in some pure personal form. Hope suddenly seems less abstract in a world where buses do run off cliffs, planes crash and I might get cancer. Superman saves me from, among other things, being a cynic.

This movie just didn’t do that for me. for a big summer tentpole movie there are surprisingly few big special effects sequences involving Superman’s powers. If you’ve seen the trailers then the only thing you’ve missed is seeing the plane sequence (which is breathtaking) in its entirety. The Donner movie promised, “You will believe a man can fly.” And delivered. The Singer movie promises a solid bigger budget episode of Smallville set in the big city and delivers as well but that’s all it delivers- a television drama dressed up to look like a big movie. Kevin Spacey is very good but drastically underused as Lex Luthor but the movie is missing its big showdown between him and Supes. Where are the monsters, the robots, something that might conceivably beat Superman, something that resonates with the fears we all have right now about the instability of the world?

The odd thing is there’s a lot fo savior talk in the film. An old paperback in my office is titled The Gospel According to Superman and it’s almost as if Singer used cliff’s notes from it in shaping his take on the character. But this Supes seems more like a.. well…like a guy in a pair of tights than God in human form. Now Nacho Libre (another guy in tights) there is a god (small g) in human form!

The movie has Supes returning after a mysterious disappearance of a five years to reveal that he was searching out the remains of his long destroyed home planet Krypton. Since then the world has learned to get along without him, Lex Luthor has hatched yet another plan for world domination involving Supes abandoned Fortress of Solitude, and Lois Lane has become an engaged single mom who’s more 5than just a little unhappy that Supes took off without a goodbye. Can Supes find a place in the world once again?

Singer makes a classic mistake banking the emotional resonance of personal revelations that come too soon in the film. By the end there are no real surprises. I never really took flight with the Lois Lane Superman midnight flight in the Donner movie and it doesn’t work that much better here. Although the relationship is given plenty of room to breathe there’s a lack of urgency to it. It lacks the epic scale that made Superman turn back the course of time at the end of the Donner version.

The problem isn’t the cast. Brandon Routh is a fine, even complex Superman but he’s in a pastel pastiche of a film that just doesn’t understand what makes Superman different than say, Abraham Lincoln. In Young Mr. Lincoln director John Ford latched onto and augmented a cherished American myth. In Superman Returns director Brian Singer fails to get a grip on what makes Superman mythic. So does he or doesn’t he. Oh yeah, Supes returns after discovering that his home planet of Krypton really is just space dust. But when he gets back it’s only so the rest of us can realize- you can’t go home again.

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Reader Comments

  1. El Duderino 06/28/2006 @ 12:25pm

    Nice review.

  2. Swarez 06/28/2006 @ 2:43pm

    Yeah. I too regret that there are no Supervillains in a Superman movie. Lex is after all just a guy with a bald head and an over abundant ego. Superman 2 had supervillains (lame as they were IMO) but at least he got punched through a wall or two.


    Sounds like Singer made the same “mistake” as Ang Lee by making the film too much of a drama rather than a summer blockbuster which gives the people a bang for their buck.


    We’ve all seen him before, know his story and seen him fly so why not try some new fantastical things?

  3. Marten 06/28/2006 @ 2:54pm

    Good movie….but not great by any means. I enjoyed X-Men 2 & Spiderman 2 far more than this. And that’s coming from somebody who grew up reading Superman comics. It was a bit too…schmaltzy.

  4. hernan 06/28/2006 @ 5:49pm

    superman is far too dull a superhero in this post modern era, and Lex Luthor is the dullest villian ever, might as well be fighting Donald Trump…

  5. Dan Taylor 06/28/2006 @ 8:13pm

    Pretty much agree with your review. The film seemed overlong and anti-climactic, though that shuttle sequence is definitely breathtaking. My biggest problem with the film, and the Superman franchise in general, is this over reliance on Luthor as a villain. And they don’t even make him menacing or complex like they do on SMALLVILLE. Oh well, at least the SPIDEY 3 trailer rocks hard.

  6. zanti 06/28/2006 @ 8:25pm

    My main problem wasn’t that they didnt acknowledge the mythology, but that they didnt play with it. Althought there’s mention of a world getting by without Superman, I find they played that down. In that case, why have Superman even take a leave of absense at all. A world that doesnt need Superman is an interesting rout to take, but it wasnt taken any further than a few newspaper clipping on Lois’ desk.

    That being seaid, i still enjoyed it.

  7. Nartou 06/28/2006 @ 10:19pm

    I’m just glad i it was better than X3.

  8. Dylan 06/28/2006 @ 11:05pm

    I liked the film enough i suppose, there is one thing that nags at my uber-geekness though…the kid. i know that most of you guys, perhaps all of you will make references to “Mallrats” at the mention of this, but i really dont believe it is possible for Lois and Supes to do the deed. All i have to say on the matter is this; go read Larry Niven’s article called Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and you will either laugh a me or call me horrible names. there is the possibility of you even being swayed about why a mini superman is impossible. Frankly, i think the guys reasoning is sound.

    So yeah thats about it…OH! No wait, there was one other thing, but its minor…when supes is being shot up with the minigun, and the cool eye thing happens, his suit stays intact… High velocity bullets do nothing to his suit, but when Lex does the thing with the shard of kryptonite, the suit tears… minor gripe, but honestly…

    all in all, i can walk away from superman returns knowing a few things. Superman is a home wrecker, Lex Luthor surrounds himself with complete buffons (I mean KUMAR for gods sake), and somehow he managed to walk all over an ISLAND MADE OF KRYPTONITE…call me bitter, but superman isnt stupid by any means.

    oh, and on another note…i loved X3. the only beef i had with it is that juggernaut was a mutant.

  9. Dylan 06/28/2006 @ 11:07pm

    oops, forgot the link to the article….

    http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html

  10. Teo 06/29/2006 @ 6:26am

    It was a chick flick that everyone in general could watch. And I completely disagree with Superman being the dullest hero in this post modern era; Superman Returns is largely about dealing that matter alone.

    Now everybody wants a flawed Superhero, the darkness of a superhero, with the need to identify than idolize. That’s exactly what I don’t care for; relating. I think that the concept of a superhero, swinging about all over the city and catching bad guys and then changing back into civilian clothes, goes to a corner of 45th Street and waits for his crush to step out of the diner work place. F*CK that shit!

    If I wanted to relate to someone, I might as well talk to my mother.

  11. DarkmanPoe 06/29/2006 @ 7:16am

    Also agree with your review. The best part about this film, sadly, was the usage of the John Williams “Superman” Theme (and, perhaps, the dedication to Reeve and his wife). The rest was dreafully slow-paced and, simply, no fun at all. And Superman Jr.?! Please…didn’t they remember that Supes was HUMAN when he and Lois did the nasty?

  12. Ariel 06/29/2006 @ 8:10am

    the film was pretty cool, but thats all that it was. it didn’t deliver the neccessary punch that everyone was hoping for. it felt very slow and the story just wasn’t put together very well. it was like watching a sretched out season premier of smallville and the ending was just like, “okay movie’s finished, you can get up and go home now, but be sure to tune in next week”. with the cgi tech we have in this day one would think singer would use that to make a movie that keeps you saying “WOW look at that”, instead everyone walks out the theater saying “yeah the plane scene was cool” and thats all we have, 2 1/2 hours just for one great scene. i wanted to see superman get chanllenged on his level not watch him get humbled down to ours. and the plot with him trying to bang lois again was whack, she was cute but had no ass i mean come on.

  13. Bean Spanker 06/29/2006 @ 9:06am

    Brandon Routh = has no persona, not very charismatic as a super hero. Kate Bosworth = way too young for the role for his girlfriend, let alone a mother. The Little Kid = super annoying, it brought down the whole movie to a disney level type film. Brian Singer = shouldn’t be allowed to touch anymore superhero movie.

  14. Jay 06/30/2006 @ 4:34am

    Dylan,


    I super-sense a little bit of asian-bashing in one of your comments. You specifically mention the guy Kumar (the asian guy) who has a tiny tiny tiny part in Superman Returns, who gets told what to do by the director, and that’s it!

    You couldn’t be any more subtle though, I might add.

  15. Joel 06/30/2006 @ 1:19pm

    I was a firm supporter of Kevin Smith’s screenplay involving the death of superman with doomsday as the instrument of his destruction. Don’t get me wrong…I love sup…but the legacy is at an end not a beginning. I firmly believe that for it to have been successful in quenching my thirst for super hero special effects greatness it needed an arch villain that could truly be his Moriarty. But alas…to once again begin the saga they needed someone we all know so they could focus solely on sup’s return. I liked it because I like superman…I looked at my watch twice.   

    Attn. Jay…


    Harold was the Asian guy…not Kumar…

  16. Tuan Jim 06/30/2006 @ 10:30pm

    I would say that Lex could be used as a supervillain (haven’t seen the movie yet)—the Justice League series on CN does a pretty good job with that (brains and money). Whether or not anyone else does it is another story.

  17. amy 07/07/2006 @ 7:33pm

    anything that has underwear on the outside turn me down…period.

  18. SuperWHAT? 07/10/2006 @ 7:29am

    Are you guys kidding me? I thought the movie was the perfect way to reintroduce this legendary character to the modern masses. Seems as if all of you, like myself, have superman integrated into your childhood etc. and were looking for something new and different and exciting. Singers task was to bring him back, reintroduce him to a new generation of children, teens and yes many adults who either thought the first movies were lame and outdated, or never saw them at all. What he did was perfect and almost a sneaky remake of the original superman. Alot of the same themes and plotlines (especially Luthor’s real estate scandal)  It gave perfect homage to the old while moving the series forward a bit. And give me a break if you need more action! This was a true superman fans wet dream, just seeing superman zipping around to save people was plenty for me, but the EFX were so well done. I would say that it has at least as much action as the X-men films, where Singer was praised for adding a humanizing storyline, but taking shots for it here. In any case now that the man of steel has been reintroduced to us you can bet the next film will be awe inspiring…think Spiderman 1 to 2, but with 1 and 2 being much better. I loved it and this is coming from one of the most skeptical superman fans out there. Not only did they not screw it up they brought back that old childhood feeling that made me want to throw on a cape and jump on the bed (I didn’t do that of course…or did I??)

  19. elizhaldi 10/25/2006 @ 7:25pm

    superman means a lot to me ev erytime i watch it!!!!!!!!
    ——-

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