Superman Returns...

2 stars out of 4

I don't think you could find a person more excited to see this movie than me prior to its release. It was a tough couple of years hearing about all the rumblings going on in pre-production. Jon Peters' bizarre take on the character was well-documented; people photo-shopped Nic Cage's head over Christoper Reeve's head in an effort to work out in reality what their imagination could not--a Nic Cage Superman; Tim Burton signed on for a time, reinforcing the notion that Superman would be almost unrecognizable; production art is leaked, reflecting a darker, harder-edged sci-fi epic. A shell-shocked Kevin Smith told of the horrors of "development hell." It seemed like the odds were against a decent Superman ever seeing the light of day. A terrible abomination, certainly, but little hope for a good one. Then, Bryan Singer signed on and began to explain his approach as Superman fans across the country (and the world?) breathed a collective sigh of relief. He gets it. This is going to be okay.

And it was. Just okay. It had all the right elements and it had moments of greatness, but the movie didn't really tie together as well as I thought it should. And some of Singer's virtues, ironically, turned out to be some of the movie's weak spots. When the movie didn't deal with character and the drama of the human dynamic, there was a sense that movie could have been the greatest superhero epic. Superman's first appearance in full costume, for instance, was one of the best superhero sequences I have ever seen in terms of iconic glory and pulse-pounding excitement.

But then we get into the routine of the plot, where the tire hits the pavement, and the movie kind of falls apart. The basic premise of the movie is extremely suited to the times. Superman, played by Brandon Routh, returns to Earth after a prolonged absence and is forced to grapple with the notion that people simply adapted, accepted, and moved on without him. The central conflict is his feelings over Lois Lane, played by Kate Bosworth. She has a child now and is engaged to get married, and Superman has a hard time facing the notion that the love of his life is no longer interested in him. As almost a sidenote, Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey, is in the wings with yet another real-estate scheme, this time exploiting Krytponian technology and putting billions at risk.

This sounds like a sound starting point for a great Superman film, save for one element which I will address later. However, the movie's script is very weak. And the reasons for this are interrelated. It took too liberally from the Donner picture in the wrong way and didn't learn from the Donner picture and take from it lessons in the right way. The movie borrows liberally from the original film, like a younger brother who wants nothing more than to grow up emulating his bigger, cooler brother. He wants to steal all his cool lines, do all the great things he did before. But what the younger brother doesn't know is that in order to compete or make a name for himself he has to do something great that is unique and shows that he too has his own voice. This younger sibling, Superman Returns, is too into idol-worship. Rather than being a love letter to Superman, it is an obssessive fan letter to the Richard Donner movie specifically.

Exhibit A. Full exchanges and lines were taken from straight from the 1978 script. Superman's rescue of a plane, which included Lois Lane, ends with a public service line straight from the original, after a helicopter accident, which included Lois Lane as a passenger. Later on, Lex Luthor has the exact same exchange with his girlfriend that his predecessor, Gene Hackman, had with his girlfriend(Kevin/Gene: "What did my father always say?" 2006 girlfriend/1978 girlfriend: "Get out?"). I guess Singer and his screenwriters thought these exchanges were so witty that a copy of a copy would be sufficiently funny too.

Exhibit B. The whole plot structure is mirrored after the first film. All the memorable elements from the original were grafted onto this film. The Lois Lane interview and subsequent flight. Luthor's scene of witty plot exposition with his girlfriend. Luthor's silly and improbable real estate scheme. Luthor's confrontation with Superman and his exploitation of Kryptonite. Luthor's girlfriend gains a conscience and aids the good guys. Superman eliminates to the threat to the world that lacks a confrontation with the villain.

What does this all mean? The movie was too familiar. But the movie was conspicuous in what it was missing, like the witty dialogue and banter that really distinguished some of the Daily Planet scenes in the first movie. That sense of child-like fantasy is replaced by this sense of heavy melodrama that drowns out the inherent innocence and fun of the mythology. The humor it does have, as stated before, is incidentally transplanted from the original and not the work of the screenwriters on this picture.

The movie also lacks a credible villain. One of the weaknesses of the original movie is that Gene Hackman was so amusing that he seemed more like a jester and less like a cold-blooded villain. Except in one scene, Spacey's Luthor is very much like that. He has a hair-brained scheme that doesn't make a lot of sense and his character borders on camp, which both undermines the menace Superman's arch-enemy should have. He does have moments of potential, however.

Brandon Routh seems up to the task of being Superman if he can get away from Reeve impersonations. Kate Bosworth often seems like a sophomore in high school trying to play with the big kids. James Marsden is great at being the "other guy," just as he was in X-Men and The Notebook.

Lois Lane's kid is pretty good, but his very existence causes problems for the movie. First, the issue of whether he is Superman's kid or not is a distraction from the larger issue of Superman seeing Lois move on. The question of "Is he or isn't he?" becomes this weird tabloid sentiment that is never adequately addressed or properly fitted into the larger themes of the movie. Also, it made a Lois Lane a far interesting, less credible character. She takes her kid sneaking around Luthor's lot? She flies plane into certain death with her son aboard? Once you saddle her with a kid, you can't have her doing that stuff and have it be anything but child endangerment. It makes her look like either a bad mother or a bad reporter. So the inclusion of a kid does not serve her character. Future sequels are going to forced to explore this tedious plot development.

In future movies it would be nice to get away from the Donner love-fest and the kid and get more into the things that we would actually like to see in a Superman movie that haven't been seen yet. I, for one, would actually like to see him tackle Metallo, the Man with the Kryptonite Heart, or try to keep Brainiac from destroying the city. I mean, do we need another two and a half hours of navel-gazing?