Movie review: Superman Returns

It seems prudent to reveal all my biases first, before I dive into the actual review of this movie. It also might be helpful to explain why it’s taken me over a year to see it, which is very much a related topic. Thanks to X-Men and X2, I am now pretty firmly committed to that particular universe as serving my comic needs. Heck, I didn’t even know I had comic needs until those two movies kicked my ass. (See more of my ramblings on this topic here.) I’m also a little too young to have been impressed by the 1978 Superman movie that jumpstarted the current culture’s interest in the dude; in fact, I’m young enough to find Superman and his world pretty painfully dorky. More on that last point later.

So that takes care of the “I’m not a fan of Superman” portion of this review. But given that Bryan Singer brought me X-Men nirvana, you’d think that would have spurred me into the theater. Aha, not quite. Recall that X3 was originally going to be under Singer’s direction; recall that Singer jumped from the project, voiding his deal with the studio, to direct SR; recall that X3 under hack director Brett Ratner was a major disappointment to me. (Did I ever give you all my lengthy rant about X3? Searching through my blog I think I haven’t. I might have to rectify that sometime.) So I was feeling pretty ill disposed to Singer’s decision, and feeling apathy to the whole Superman idea, ergo there I am not going to see the movie.

That brings us to last Saturday night, when the disc was finally shoved into the player. I was nearly a tabula rasa, although I found myself recognizing Supermanalia in the dark reaches of my memory as I watched: oh yeah, I remember Jimmy Olsen, yep, Daily Planet, right, the Fortress of Solitude. In fact, it turns out that I had a pretty good grasp on what I needed to know in order to enjoy the movie, although not quite enough, perhaps. It turns out that this is a sequel, not a reinvention, and so there is some assumption that the story line continues from the last Superman movie back in the 1980s. (Upon checking the IMDB, by the way, I find that Superman IV is the very definition of Suck, and I wonder if it would be better for humanity to pretend it never existed, rather than tack the current movie onto the end of the chain.)

Enough of this screwing around, you cry, is it a good movie?? Yes and no. Let me take care of the “no” part first. Superman himself is the largest hindrance to movie goodness, in terms of generating what I need from plot and characterization. As my pal kaskasero always says, he’s too goddamn perfect. Strong plots and characters require conflict, and the truth is that Superman doesn’t have a lot of room for it. He has only one flaw, the weakness to kryptonite, and that gets pretty tired when you have to bring it into every confrontation with the bad guys. One of the strengths of the X-Men, and Spider-Man, for that matter, is that they’re inherently flawed or vulnerable (even Xavier, who has to get knocked out of commission almost immediately in every conflict or else nothing gets going), often psychologically, which means there’s a lot you can do if you want to make things difficult—and interesting—for them. With Superman, you kind of feel sorry for Lex Luthor, because that guy is nowhere near an irresistable force trying to push on that immovable object.

This movie does some work to show us a weakened Superman and therefore an actual conflict, but the solution boils down to pulling the kryptonite thorn out of his paw and then he’s back to being, as the Tick is fond of saying, nigh invulnerable. He also doesn’t seem particularly deep psychologically, never really confronting the new developments with Lois and her tyke. Speaking of the Lois Lane family unit, by the way, I was glad to see that James Marsden got a decent amount of screentime, considering that Cyclops’ woeful underuse in X3 is one of the reasons why that movie was so frustrating.

To sum up the negatives, then, Superman is inherently a somewhat flat character that doesn’t end up very compelling, and the movie’s plot was too thin to sustain itself around him. Kevin Spacey did a great job as Luthor, but he didn’t have a lot of room to work with. He was kind of a bad dude, but as far as villains go his world domination plan was thin, and I think the Joker does a better job of projecting true sociopathic malevolence. This all dovetails with my frustration that Superman’s world is too simplistic, too unreal, as if it’s never grown up. Part of that is the annoying PG-13 rating these comic-book movies always try for, but part of it is the fault of the Superman concept.

And here’s where I should remark on the dorkiness I referred to earlier. I’m sorry, but the cartoonish red and blue tights just don’t work on the modern screen, although I recognize that the alternatives are nearly impossible to imagine. (Batman benefits immensely from the forethought of his dark outfit, doesn’t he?) And is it just me, or is it darn difficult to imagine Superman and Lois feeling actual, passionate love for each other? Even though they’re ostensibly adults, they’re still trapped in a world that’s imagined for children. The X-Men have managed to transcend their immature, adolescent beginnings and turned into adults, wrestling with moral ambiguity and imperfection just like us poor slobs in the real world. Maybe it would help if these damn movies would go for the R rating. Of all people, Wolverine deserves to say “fuck” more than a few times. On the other hand, I can almost imagine a plotline in Superman where Luthor tries in vain to force him at kryptonite point to say “fuck.” Supes would certainly find a way around it; he’s so clean he practically squeaks.

But as I said earlier, there are some positives. Even though the movie was very long and often extremely slow moving, I found myself entirely caught up in it. This is where I reaffirm my unconditional love for Bryan Singer and his team’s visual artistry. They do such an amazing job of showing the viewer everything you might want to see, with camera angles and movement that naturally draw you into scenes. This is very much unlike some directors, who cut around so fast that you can’t figure out what the hell you’re looking at, which is disorienting and alienating, and leads you to wonder whether they’re trying to hide something by being deliberately sloppy. (Here I must cast an accusatory eye at Gladiator.) And everything looks so damn good, colors and lighting are rich, and Metropolis has a Deco splendor that makes me want to move there tomorrow.

Singer probably could have done a better job in terms of economy, though; one of the strengths of his X-Men movies was that he was able to give us insight into such a large cast of characters with a minimum of lines and screen time. (Although I will comment that Cyclops got shafted, even in X-Men and X2, but what can he do when Wolverine’s the center of attention?) Here, we didn’t have that many characters, but they’re still fairly flat. Time was spent on things that probably didn’t need it, like Superman’s convalescence at the hospital, and the plot hardly had time to ramp up before it was actually over.

Anyway, I think Singer did an amazing job with a very, very small amount of actual movie. For his next trick, it looks like he’ll be trying to convince me to go see a movie with Tom Cruise in it sometime in 2008. Good luck with that, Bryan.