Maybe you can’t go home again, but you can certainly buy your parents’ old place and renovate it.

 

Cast:  Brendan Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Parker Posey, Frank Langella, James Marsden, Sam Huntington, Eva Marie Saint, Marlon Brando, (archival,) Kal Penn.

Writers: Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris

Director: Bryan Singer

Running Time: 154 min.

2006

 

Version 2

 

The amount of bias that precedes me as I enter the theater to see Superman Returns is somewhat ridiculous.  Hence the “version 2,” the first version screamed of the conflict between fan and critic within me.  I’ll just get it off my chest:  Bryan Singer is one of my favorite directors; I love comics, (obviously,) and I will go see basically any comic book movie there is.  Sometimes I can’t tell if I like the movies or not, because part of me is too elated to see things happening with my favorite characters on the big-screen.  Both Superman Returns and X3 required two viewings for me to cleanse my palate enough to experience them objectively.  Truthfully, I have mixed feelings about both films.  (For X3, please see accompanying review.)

 

On many levels the film works.  There is a solid heart to it…something’s there.  I think perhaps what works and what doesn’t are so closely intertwined, unavoidably, that they obscure each other.

 

What works is that all the right pieces are in place.  I think Singer made excellent choices with the casting, especially with Brandon Routh, (yep.)  Kevin Spacey was a great idea too.  Bosworth as Lois looks great for sure, and Frank Langella feels like the real ink-for-blood newsman that Perry White is meant to be.  Sam Huntington is the best Jimmy Olson ever, of all incarnations, (yep, said that too.)  And, most importantly, Superman is not a pussy!  (Those of you familiar with the Adventures of Superman animated series will know exactly what I mean.)

 

To explain what doesn’t work, I will break down the previous statement:  ‘Spacey was a great idea…’ I say, “was,” because Spacey doesn’t work for me as Lex Luthor.  [I would rather have Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville.  (I might get railed for saying that later…)]  It’s not that Spacey is bad, I just feel like they trotted him in to pull off some “Hackman hijinks;” to bring in some “serious acting cred.”  In a way, it works.  The jokes work.  He has henchmen.  He has a relatively hot hench-lady, played by Parker Posey, (whose character is equally disposable.)  There’s kryptonite and he uses it, (perhaps questionably.)  From his mind springs many a maniacal plot, which he then enacts.  It works…but it doesn’t.  The jokes are funny, but the tone is annoyingly zany in too many places. Posey and Spacey are unfortunately more than a little forgettable in this film because they don’t really get all that much to do.  What they do is carry on the types of activities that the generic Luthor might pursue, like killing Superman, robbing old ladies, killing “billions” of people or more, but why, (because Gene Hackman had the motivation to do so over a quarter-century ago?)  Because Superman put him in prison before, now he’s mad?  Of course he’s mad.  The general, megalomaniacal motivation might be there, but what of something fresh, something we can grab onto?  Instead of rooting against Luthor as though he was Snidely Whiplash, I would like to be compelled to know how far his tortured soul will take him, where he will go to satiate his greed, (and I don’t mean practically repeating Hackman’s atomic real estate swindle from the first film,) why is he so greedy?  I am not sure that last question has ever been answered about Luthor, (with the exception of his constant chess-like maneuvering against his dad on Smallville, which may not count, being a highly manipulated version of the universe.)  Damn Spacey for being so likeably charismatic and so easy to watch, because it makes him a bit of a conundrum here.  I might want him to come back as Luthor, but only if he has a lot more weight, (which is most likely a writer’s note.)  You can’t masquerade one actor for another.  Kevin Spacey will never be the same Luthor that Gene Hackman was.  No disrespect to Spacey at all, but if they want him to work as Lex, they must write to his strengths.  They must write a new Lex Luthor, one whom Spacey can inhabit.  Hackman would never be asked to play Spacey, so the opposite must not be asked.

 

I say only ‘Lois looks great,’ (she does,) somewhat for the same reason I have issues with Spacey: she’s just typical Lois, doing the same ol’ Lois Lane shit.  I don’t know why, but it feels like a single episode of Lois & Clark, (admittedly, Teri Hatcher’s shoes are mighty tough to fill in my eyes,) has more development of Lois’ character, than this entire movie, aside from one thing, her love for the man.  Despite the fact I basically don’t buy Kate Bosworth as a veteran reporter, (she just seems too young,) I do feel a strong connection between her and Routh.  Maybe that’s why she got cast.  If they gave her the job because she had chemistry with Routh, then they obviously made the right choice, because clearly she will get older.  It’s not to say Bosworth is not talented, I always consider it a blessing when an actor can string together long sentences and actually sound like they are talking, not reciting broken lines from a fourth grade play.  Bosworth speaks with a nice confidence, she acts very strongly with her eyes, which will make for great performances in the future no doubt, and certainly contributed to the good performances she gave in the past, in films like Rules of Attraction, (great film by the way, written/directed by Roger Avary.)  She can definitely act, and this is the second time she’s worked with Spacey, (Beyond the Sea,) which can only help her.  Ultimately, she has a good look for Lois, very similar to the animated version from the forties, actually, but she does seem five years too young.  Just like Spacey as Luthor, if she’s coming back, she needs to be written as more than a nicely printed cardboard cutout.

 

These are the major detracting elements of the film, (despite a few plot points that it took my vast comics knowledge and resources to explain away,) so I guess it could be worse.  Upon a second viewing, my feeling was unfortunately cemented, that Lois, Luthor, James Marsden, (as Lois’ baby-daddy,) and the whole Daily Planet crew were just thrown in to pad things out until the next time Superman flies by.  Honestly, all the background to “big-blue” is structured so much on what happened in two films over twenty years ago, that it appears thin under the strain of that age.  I am not referring to the use of the original John Williams theme, or to a title sequence very reminiscent of the original series.  I am referring strictly to the fact that Singer went through the trouble of casting all these great actors, and, (yes, I know it’s two and a half hours already, but,) they just don’t get anything but the same old shit to do.  That makes it feel like a sequel, in a way a sequel never should, the dry, yawning kind of way.

 

I hinted before about my feelings toward Routh as our hero, but specifically, he’s perfect as Clark, and perfect as Superman.  He may not yet have the chops the that Reeve had, (Reeve was Juliard trained,) but Singer has helped him craft a sensitive, powerful performance, one which I would gladly buy for a dollar or any other price.  The reasons for his casting are obvious, and eerie.  Brandon Routh, especially when he dawns Clark’s glasses, looks frighteningly like Christopher Reeve, from certain angles.  In addition, his voice sounds nearly identical to Reeve’s.  Weird.  I can’t wait to see more.  When he dawns the costume every time, it is ridiculously cool.  I have only seen such cool Superman action in the comics and in my head.  Finally there is filmed action of Superman on par with Spiderman 2’s awesome train fight, even if I was left a bit wanting on quantity.  (Singer’s first X-men is much like this, in which everything is cool, there was just not quite enough of it.  He paid that debt back tenfold with X2’s opening alone, not to mention the brawl between Wolvie and Deathstrike.)  The action in this film, though, was more than the fanboy in me could ever have asked for in quality, and it is powerful enough to impress even the most seasoned viewer of action fare.

 

The juxtaposition of the previous praise to this, the succeeding mention of the director, is no accident.  I waited to get my complaints off my shoulders beforehand because I actually don’t have much criticism toward Singer himself.  This was not an easy project to undertake and he busted is out pretty fast, producing a very polished, if not perfectly scripted, strong film.  This film would not have been remotely as good had someone else directed it using the same script.  I look forward to his sequel, then, instead looking at this film as a decent reset.  The troublesome past of this, the fifth Superman film, is something of modern Hollywood Legend, and could not have been easy for Singer to walk into.  For over fifteen years Warner Bros. worked to get this film made.  The creative list included directors like Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Wolfgang Petersen, and McG.  For a long timed, Nic Cage was attached to star.  A thought that immediately induces my vomit reflex to this day.  Fifteen years is a long time in Hollywood.  I think I even heard Bret Ratner’s name attached to direct at one point, ironic he would take over the director’s chair on X-men once Singer moved over to Warner’s to direct this instead of X3.  Once Bryan Singer was signed on and sincerely committed, an actor was found to fill the tights, more quickly than I expected, and the production race was on.  It’s a pity Singer couldn’t have helmed both X-3 and this, but seeing as how they came out a month apart, it would have been a little tight.

 

If you are going to see this film as a direct sequel to Superman 2*, it will not make total sense.  You will be able to see, if you’re familiar with 2, where they stuck to the story and where they disavowed certain occurrences.  Do not then, judge too harshly in that light.

Superman Returns is a comic book film most definitely of the same caliber as the best of them, but it shares flaws with some of the worst.  Like Batman Begins, the Spiderman films, X1 & 2, and Sin City, it is a beautiful film to look at, but unlike those films, it doesn’t totally gel.  It is, however, a worthy 2 1/2 hours of entertainment, it is worth your ten bucks, and it will make part of you happy if you grew up with the now classic series.

 

Three stars, count ‘em, ***.

 

K

 

*There is a cut of Superman 2 out there different from the one we know.  Originally, Richard Donner, who outdid himself on 1, directed the second film in tandem with the first.  After a plgued and overbudget production, the production team decided to complete only the first film, leaving the second only seventy percent complete, Donner's relationship with Producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind suffered miserably. Even after the box-office success of the first film, their differences were irreconcilable.   Richard Lester, who directed two "Musketeer" films for the Salkinds, was called in to shoot around the usable material, and the near piece of crap we know and love today came to be.  Recently, like a dumbshit, I passed up the opportunity to buy the Donnner cut at the Wondercon in SF.  I will do my best to get my hands on it in order to see if there is any closer relation to this film.

Kronicle Kraig