“You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one.”
After a tepid reception to the low budget snooze fest that was Superman IV, Warner Bros. shelved the Man of Steel for nearly two decades before feeling the time was ripe for a new silver screen adaptation. Of course, he was never entirely out of the spotlight. Several live action television shows (Lois & Clark, Smallville) and Superman: The Animated Series ensured that the studio could keep tabs on the public’s interest in the iconic character. It’s hard to believe that there was a time when interest in Superman waned, but in the early 2000s a big budget movie was not a no-brainer like it is today. But as the new millennium began, several fresh takes on the superhero genre quickly turned comic book movies into something with real potential for mass appeal. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men both took bold steps toward bringing comic book heroes (if not the comics themselves) to the mainstream. The director of the latter was tapped to helm Superman Returns, a soft reboot of the franchise that straddles the divide between old and new, both paying tribute to the campy Reeve films and trying to tell a mature story. The result is a mixed bag, and while I think it is a decent popcorn flick, it doesn’t stack up against its contemporaries—which, at the time of release, now included Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Superman Returns has neither the grit of Nolan’s film nor the splash and pizzazz of Raimi’s. Instead it’s more character-focused, differentiated from those films by its subdued pace and its focus on relationships. Returns dutifully provides action by way of CGI plane crashes and slow motion bullets, but those lackluster action moments are not what it was made for. The film begins with Superman (Brandon Routh) returning to earth after a five year absence, during which he journeyed to an obliterated Krypton. He crash lands on the Kent’s farm where Ma Kent (Eva Marie Saint) still resides. (Perhaps wisely, the inclusion of Martha Kent retcons Superman III and IV, since she was dead in those films.) Clark Kent immediately returns to his job as a reporter at the Daily Planet, and that very same day he must save Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) from dying in a plane crash. He saves other people too, of course, but we don’t really care about them, do we?
Even after five years, Clark is still fixated on Lois. She has understandably moved on, and has a child with a newspaper editor named Richard (James Marsden, who had portrayed Cyclops in Singer’s X-Men and its sequel, X2). Lois is set to receive the Pulitzer Prize—an ambition that had driven Margot Kidder’s Lois to take many irrational risks—for her article titled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman”. The complex emotions are handled well by both Bosworth and Routh, encapsulated by a romantic late night flight during which Lois transforms from a spiteful martyr into a confused girl whose dream mate has just flown back into her life. “Richard is a good man,” she says, restraining herself from grabbing some lip action with Supes. “And you’ve been gone a long time.”
The dramatic arcs are generally very good. For instance, several hints are dropped throughout that Lois’s son Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) may in fact be Kal-El’s offspring. It isn’t until his mother is facing a life or death situation that the young boy finds the strength to hurl a grand piano on top of a bad guy. But only Lois witnesses this. Towards the end of the film, as Superman lies comatose on a hospital bed, Lois whispers in his ear; we don’t hear what she says, but we can assume. A few moments later, Superman sits on the sleeping boy’s bed, repeating the lines that Jor-El had spoken thousands of years ago before he sent his son into space prior to the destruction of Krypton.1 Whether or not the quote makes sense is besides the point; it seems to be profound and mystical, so it works within the context.
You will be different, sometimes you’ll feel like an outcast, but you’ll never be alone. You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father and the father becomes the son.
Though the film received its fair amount of criticism for its distinct lack of aggression (I don’t recall Superman throwing a single punch), I think it portrays Superman as a true hero; a character whose spirit drives him to help even those who don’t deserve it; who can’t will himself to be selfish, who does things because they are “right.” At times, it veers dangerously close to substituting Superman for Jesus,2 but even if it does, it’s pinpointing a real issue in our culture that a fictional hero cannot address.
While there are moments of well-crafted dialogue, there are also plenty of bland lines as well. Particularly between Routh and Bosworth, who seem to lack the level of chemistry that Reeve and Kidder could employ on a whim—though I think the script hems them in too much in that regard. Their conversations are littered with embarrassing small talk, which can work in doses, but at some point you need to let the characters we are supposed to view as a potential lovebirds have a genuine conversation. I think they refrained from the flirty banter that gave the Reeve films a “low brow” feel at times. In that regard, it does match the subdued tone, I suppose. But it’s not very fun, or memorable… or good.
Kevin Spacey portrays Lex Luthor, who was let out of prison when Superman didn’t show up as a witness at his hearing. He launches a very unbelievable plot to utilize Kyrptonian crystals to grow a new continent off the east coast of the United States. Spacey’s performance is much more menacing than Gene Hackman’s, playing the ruthless character with a nice hint of charisma. He is both funny and mean, and often both at the same time.
Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don’t share their power with mankind. No, I don’t want to be a god. I just want to bring fire to the people. And… I want my cut.
One-upping the bimbos and nincompoops that have served as Lex Luthor sidekicks in past films is Parker Posey, who plays Kitty, a high-class ball of sass who isn’t afraid to call Lex out or disregard his instructions. She is also fond of tossing out crude and/or witty remarks whenever they pop into her head. It’s a bit of an odd role; the film never quite makes up its mind if it wants her to be smart but playing dumb, actually dumb with occassional flashes of biting insight, completely guided by her fluctuating emotions, or some combination. It makes for a pleasantly high number of funny scenes, but it kind of leaves me scratching my head when I think about the character’s composition.
Where I think the film finds itself on shaky footing is in conjuring up a viable threat for its hero. This is a Superman film. I’m not expecting to be able to connect all the dots. I’m not surprised that there is no explanation for much of what Lex Luthor does. But I do feel let down by the wangled set of circumstances that lead to Superman’s predicament at the end of the film. It works, kind of, on a mathematical level. It doesn’t really pass the sniff test, though. The threat feels too contrived and hollow to match up against the iconic hero and too frequently “the unknown” is used to drive the plot. Like, am I really supposed to believe that the craggy rock structure jutting out of the Atlantic will be considered prime real estate? And everybody in the world knows, thanks to Lois’s coverage, that the only thing that can harm Superman is Kryptonite. So why does he take so little precaution when confronting Luthor? Clearly, Luthor would not try to pull something off if he didn’t have the stuff. But he doesn’t even have to trick Superman, Superman just comes on his own—just walks right into getting literally stabbed in the back with a shard of Kryptonite.
I also feel that the film suffers from characters that fit the plot, rather than characters that experience the plot. Outside of what we see on screen, the characters don’t have lives. Everything they do or say is either completely trivial and generic or very relevant to the plot. For instance, Lois picking up her smoking habit again would have been a nice way to flesh out her character; but it’s included so that she will go up on the roof for a visit with Superman. Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) and Perry White (Frank Langella), such standout characters in the earlier films, have been respectively stripped of their daring and curmudgeonliness, becoming efficient office drones instead, because those characteristics aren’t needed for the plot. A positive example of the kind of thing I’m talking about is when Kitty adopts the cannibalistic pomeranian that’s left to fend for itself when Lex inherits the old lady’s mansion at the beginning of the film. Jason’s need to eat pea protein and use an inhaler are others (though I think those things were probably included to throw the audience off from guessing he was Supey Junior). I wish they’d have more inconsequential details like that; even when they’re silly they give the characters a sense of reality that is too often lacking. I’m not belaboring this to nitpick, but to illustrate one reason why superhero films so often feel bland when considered as works of cinema.
It’s still a decent film, though, and one that would probably be “the best Superman film” if Superman didn’t exist and have such a nostalgic glow to it (but then, this film would have been completely different since it’s technically somehow a continuation of that series). I like Routh as both Clark Kent and Superman. Like Reeve, he does a good job of differentiating the two characters and he carries himself well, perhaps aided a bit by modern CGI effects. Bosworth’s take on Lois is fine for the film but isn’t really that memorable. She was certainly constrained by the script which doesn’t leave much room for the light-hearted battle of wits that made Kidder and Reeve’s interactions so much fun.
It’s a shame that Singer, Routh and company didn’t get to make a sequel, as they seem to have understood the spirit and mythos of the character in a way that Zack Snyder simply doesn’t. But when Marvel successfully began moving in the direction of a connected universe, it became clear that DC and Warner Bros. would follow the money.
After a 20 year hiatus, the Man of Steel’s return to the big screen was most welcome. Superman Returns is a solid superhero film that was made by competent and passionate people. It has its flaws—the layer of CGI polish erases the rough-hewn charm that characterized the Reeve films and the script doesn’t quite execute on its balancing act between homage and serious drama, among other things—but it does a lot of things well, and at the very least, it seems that the creators captured the essence of the character. I’m glad that the series was resurrected, if only briefly, warts and all.
1. One neat element of Superman Returns is that they were able to resurrect Brando’s performance, discovering archival footage that allowed for at least a minor continuity with the older films.
2. “The son becomes the father and the father becomes the son” seems a bit too deliberate in echoing John 14, and doesn’t really make sense. Kal-El learns all of his father’s knowledge, but Jor-El never knows Kal-El. But depth isn’t really something they were striving for, methinks; just the appearance of profundity.