Overall Rating
  Awesome: 33.7%
Worth A Look: 17.04%
Average: 14.81%
Pretty Bad: 18.89%
Total Crap: 15.56%
13 reviews, 192 user ratings
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| Superman Returns |
by Erik Childress
"This Screenplay Could Have Used A Savior"
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Never did I believe that after seeing the long-gestating revamped Superman I’d be wondering what it would have been like if McG had actually stuck with it. It may have had a horrible script, suffered through some obvious Christian imagery and maybe even a giant spider, but at least it wouldn’t have been so lifelessly boring and that’s just scratching the surface. Bryan Singer’s take on the American-as-apple-pie Man of Steel tries to be both homage and continuation and winds up failing on such a colossal level that the dispensing of parts three and four takes on an ignorance that rivals the reign of the Salkinds.Announcing itself in no certain terms as the real Superman III, an opening title card provides a brief reminder of who the son of Jor-El is and how he’s disappeared since astronomers found evidence of his home planet of Krypton. A fascinating journey to be sure, although it’s never expanded upon nor explained past another throwaway line by Kal-El himself. Superman (Brandon Routh) does indeed return though in a scene that may have most wondering at first if we are actually witnessing a flashback or the present when another giant Christmas ornament crash lands on the Kent farm.
Returning also to his alter ego of Clark Kent, he discovers that his long-time love Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on to marriage and child with the nephew (James Marsden) of Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella). That tends to happen when you go a multi-year sabbatical. Just ask Tom Hanks’ Chuck Noland (Cast Away) and Brad Pitt’s Tristan (Legends of the Fall). (Lois will prove through the course of the film to be an unfit mother, putting her kid in peril more often than Britney Spears.) After actually going to the bottle with the underage(?) Jimmy Olsen (a nicely cast Sam Huntington), Superman gets the chance to leap back into action when a space shuttle launch goes the way of modern-day NASA, giving him the opportunity to make his way back into the good graces of the American public just as arch-enemy Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is planning another elaborate real estate grab at the expense of “billions” of lives.
Earthquakes…floods…sounds a lot like Luthor’s plan from the first movie, doesn’t it? Only this time he’s also returned to Superman’s fortress of solitude, stolen all the memory crystals and plans to build Krypton right here on Earth where North America currently stands. The subtext of using “advanced alien technology” to build a new world is a fascinating one, but its just one of the many intricacies that screenwriters Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris avoid on the path to creating a two-and-a-half hour passion play where the participants know the words but not the music.
Oh, did I just callously invoke Catholic theology to describe a simple comic book film? I’m not the only one. In fact, the filmmakers would be ignorant to just sidestep the obvious Son-of-Man allusions to the story of a savior sent to Earth from a heavenly presence. But its also one that deserves a more subtle treatment than a powerless Superman taking a beating in the dirt, a Christ-like fall back into the atmosphere and not one, but TWO resurrection scenes including one rise to the sky to restore himself to his former glory. Instead of a 40-day trek into the desert to gather his faith on being the savior, it's FIVE YEARS despite announcing at the end of Superman II that he "would never leave us again." As for the rest, it’s a crotch hammer approach bulked together in the final act when we’ve already lost all faith in Singer and Co. to thrill us or stir our appreciation for a hero.
If its action you’re looking for, remember that there is no villain of comparable strength so there are no fist fights or Matrix-esque theatrics of sky-punching. Luthor’s only hope is the old standby of Kryptonite, the radioactive remains of Superman’s launching pad which renders him mortal and all of Luthor’s twit galpals sympathetic to the hunky guy in blue tights. But back to the action – if I can find it. Other than the obligatory good-deeds-montage, Superman saves the plummeting plane we’ve all seen in the trailers, another plane sinking into water and keeps certain Metropolis landmarks from crushing people. Instead of the do-gooder boy scout with the strength of a hundred Atlases, Superman has been reduced to a third-rate disaster film deterrent with a martyr complex. (Can we possibly begin more action by slowly shaking everything on set?) As thrilling as that first plane incident could have been, audiences are likely to wonder (as they will throughout the film) how the hell twig-like Lois Lane is able to survive. Her body gets banged around so much it’s amazing she walks away at all, let alone without more concussions than Steve Young and Troy Aikman combined.
Brandon Routh has the thankless task of stepping into the costume which made Christopher Reeve synonymous with the role and the only thing he can do is to mimic his speech patterns, which he has down about right. But where Reeve created two distinct characterizations in the feeble and shy Clark Kent and the confidently heroic Superman, Routh has trouble maintaining just one and neither is better than the other. Say what you will about glasses not being much of a disguise, but if you go back and watch the Reeve films he sold it to the point where we were focusing on the mannerisms and not the look. A blind bat could call out Routh’s disguise.
Bosworth fares no better as the completely miscast Lois Lane. Both are already far younger than the five-year timespan between Part Two and this suggest, but Bosworth’s Lane is written as no more intelligent than Parker Posey’s mole and by giving her little more than one extended dialogue scene with Superman, it’s impossible to fully appreciate the loss and heartbreak that has extended since he went off to find his roots. It’s a lame plot device to explain his absence when the complications of their romance from the end of the second chapter would have been enough to send him running away like Forrest Gump. With the chemistry between Routh and Bosworth lower than Reeve and the cameoing Margot Kidder (so she can drink some more) from Richard Pryor’s Superman III, the heart of Returns skips its beats altogether and lies there flatlining the movie with every slow step towards its multiple anti-climaxes.Bryan Singer did a fine job with the first X-Men film, clocking in at a mere 90 minutes where neither the action nor its thematic weight wore out its welcome. Another half-hour of X2 dwindled his storytelling and with yet another drummed onto Superman Returns, its becoming clear that while Singer may have good intentions by focusing on characters over action, he doesn’t have the skill nor sensibility to pull it off. Even Superman’s reappearance into the national conscience at a baseball stadium, which should have been hit out of the park, is curiously muted and unappreciated. Without John Williams’ masterful original score accentuating the proceedings at every thankful turn, Superman Returns would have no memory whatsoever of what makes the character worth cheering for in the first place. True he’s not as dark as Batman or as exciting as Spider-Man, but its for what Superman represents as a figure of hope, justice and overall goodness that gives him his strength, particularly in a post-9/11 world. Of course the last thing I want to see (even after the powerful United 93) is more 9/11 imagery or simplistic posturing to exploit the world of terror we’ve come to accept in the last five years. But it IS that world – and if you’re going to bother inserting plummeting planes towards national landmarks and a shot of people jumping out of buildings – then you might as well use Superman’s symbol as a commentary for peace just as he tried to do for nuclear weapons back in 1987. Don't ask if the world needs Superman as the subject of a Pulitizer-Prize winning editorial and then leave us asking the same question. Either do an homage or do a sequel expanding each of the storylines and metaphors. Don’t remind us of the original films with some of the exact same dialogue and then pretend like you never saw them by not referencing any of the situations. And, for the love of Superman, don’t destroy his reputation with such an elongated, yet half-assed production that has us doubting what we were asked to believe in 1978.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14733&reviewer=198
originally posted: 06/27/06 23:09:07
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USA
28-Jun-2006 (PG-13)
DVD: 28-Nov-2006
UK
14-Jul-2006
Australia
29-Jun-2006
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