Superduperman Returns

I laughed inside.

The second, or maybe third trailer from SUPERMAN RETURNS had hit the web, and various Internet acquaintances far more invested in this thing than I, were saying things like it made them shed tears. It’s just a freakin’ movie, I said to myself.

But by the end of my first actual screening of the movie, with dampened ocular cavities of my own, I could no longer claim the high ground of condescension. There’s a line of dialogue in there spoken by the late Marlon Brando about the son seeing the world through his father’s eyes, and the father through the son’s, and it brings to mind the gap between this and the Richard Donner film hard-wired into my consciousness at the age of four. The adult me, viewing Bryan Singer’s film, touches the child me who remembers the Donner version. If you didn’t shed a tear when Christopher Reeve died, not because we lost a talented actor but because in a very real way it felt like Superman had died, you may be too cynical for this review.

Some have compared Superman to a Christ figure, and the movie makes it blatant, with the line about Jor-El sending his only son to be the light of the world, and a scene that involves “death” and resurrection with a crucifixion pose to boot (though, to be fair, the false death, or scheintod, was a heroic literary convention long before the New Testament used it). But in a more metaphorical sense, both Superman and Jesus are like the perfect parent, always there to solve the larger problems you can’t, and endlessly patient with the fact that you’ll never measure up to the perfect standard they set. Some may complain that Brandon Routh’s performance as Superman isn’t especially layered, but it shouldn’t be — Superman is a very simple (not to be confused with simpleton) character. Make him too idiosyncratic or quirky or angst-ridden, and audiences won’t be able to project their own hopes onto him. Clark Kent gets to be quirky; Supes has to be our personal savior. Routh’s line-delivery did have a certain familiar ring to it, but only days later did I realize that his voice sounded a lot like Tom Cruise’s at certain points. It probably took me a while because Brandon isn’t insane.

The Donner film was my first exposure to Superman; only later did I start reading the comics, and then there was a period of time where I stopped for a while, and when I came back DC continuity had been utterly rebooted, which was confusing, because it got further away from the stuff I thought was canon. Singer takes Donner’s canon and nudges it more in the direction of the comics — there’s an epic science-fiction vibe that the comics have that Donner didn’t nail, and Singer gets it, with the aid of money and effects that weren’t possible before. Just to prove it, the movie opens by once again showing us the explosion of Krypton, and then our POV takes of through the universe, past ringed worlds, novas, planets cracked in half like the second death star…until finally we get to Earth. I really hope this is one of the IMAX 3-D sequences, as it seems made for that. Oh, and here’s the big kicker — the original John Williams theme and the original credits font come right out at you, literally. This is as close as it gets, on a primal moviegoing level, to the STAR WARS opening crawl. But the first SUPERMAN movie in over 20 years delivers the goods in a way the first STAR WARS movie after a similar hiatus never could. Thank the fresh blood for that — I doubt the Richard Donner of today has it in him to do anything like this.

Those who view the new movie as a direct sequel to SUPERMAN II are, I think, slightly mistaken — it’s the equivalent of saying BATMAN FOREVER is a direct sequel to BATMAN RETURNS. Yes, there are some holdovers (Marlon Brando, the Kryptonian crystals, that familiar music = Pat Hingle and Michael Gough in BATMAN FOREVER), but it’s best to see this as its own unique thing, with a backstory that probably correlates somewhat with what you know, but isn’t slavishly bound to it. This allows Singer to skip the origin story completely, and thank God for that — origin stories are boring (most egregious in this department was Ang Lee’s HULK, which took an hour to explain what we already freakin’ knew — Bruce Banner gets big and green when he’s angry). Besides, who doesn’t know Superman’s story? All we get is a text blurb which tells us that Superman has been away for five years investigating the remains of Krypton. Judging by his neon blue eyes, however, it looks like he also spent time on planet Arrakis snorting sandworm spice.

[Note to readers: No editor I have ever worked with would have let me get away with the preceding sentence]

No-one yet seems to have picked up on the fact that the new Superman actually cribs a key plot point from Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN — it’s almost THE key plot point, in fact. Hero returns to his familiar ground to discover that the woman he loves has not only found a new man, but has even had a child with him, something he was never able to do. Some will take issue with the fact that Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane looks too young to have been an ace reporter five years ago. Bosworth is 23, playing it slightly older, and yes, she does look a bit too young, but I got over that. Her performance is about as good as it possibly could be. What’s stranger is that she wears glasses sometimes. Not out of the question for her to do so, obviously…but didn’t you always kinda think that maybe no-one recognizes Clark Kent as Superman because no-one else actually wears glasses in the office?

A central problem with Superman, at least until DC rebooted him post-Crisis, is how to put him in any jeopardy when he’s indestructible? The answer is twofold: Put his loved ones in danger, and use lots and lots of Kryptonite. Singer does both.

As master criminal Lex Luthor, Kevin Spacey excellently treads a fine line that’s likely to please both fans of the comic-book millionaire tycoon Lex and the Gene Hackman goofy Lex. Thankfully, he never does the Hackman Chuckle (“HEH heh-heh”). He does have a comedic sidekick, but it makes more sense that it’s Parker Posey, as a character named Kitty Kowalski, rather than Ned Beatty (which Superman movie is it that’s supposed to be gay, again?), because hell, Parker Posey probably shows him a better time, although her principal script purpose is to make sarcastic wisecracks, like this exchange:

Lex: “What was it my father used to say?”
Kitty: “You’re bald’?
Lex: “No, before that.”
Kitty: “Get out”?

But anyway, Lex likes books and Mozart like Hackman, but he’s also a big tycoon since getting out of prison, having romanced a dying widow. He has a collection of wigs, but only uses them for disguises. One, I swear to God, makes him look like Tommy Wiseau.

The real standout in the cast, though, is Sam Huntington as Jimmy Olsen. This kid is note-perfect, and absolutely hilarious even when doing something as simple as chomping down on a burrito. I would seriously consider giving him a Best Supporting Actor nod if it were up to me. Argue all you want about Christopher Reeve versus Brandon Routh, or Kidder/Bosworth, Hackman/Spacey, whatever; good people can disagree honestly. But if you even try to say that Marc McClure was anywhere near Huntington, you are just flat out objectively wrong. As for the Marlon Brando footage — it sounds piped in from inferior speakers, but isn’t used that much. Incidentally, as a tie-in to the movie, an action figure is coming out that I believe is the first ever Marlon Brando toy. Exclusive to Target, I hear. The custom possibilities are amusing to speculate upon.

Now, as to the whole “How gay is Superman?” question. The answer is “Not.” It is absolutely spelled out for you, during the course of the movie, that both Superman and Luthor have previously had sexual relations with women (mercifully off-camera). Flying around in tights is somewhat inherently gay, but beyond that, Supes digs cooch. Jimmy may be gay for Clark, but that’s a whole different editorial for the Advocate after the movie opens.

Speaking of the tights: While the costume isn’t a problem for me as it is for some, I do miss the yellow s-shield on the cape, which is now gone. A cool new detail, though, is that his chest logo is actually made up of a whole bunch of tiny S-logos. Watch for that in IMAX.

I’m not sure why WB didn’t just get John Williams to handle the whole score — Singer regular John Ottman does the honors, but reuses a lot of Williams motifs, which are what have the real impact.

What more can I say? The movie is epic, heroic, and human. It appeals to our collective yearning for a savior to swoop in and save this world that we’ve hopelessly screwed up, especially in the last five years (Superman’s 5-year vacation is not arbitrary — he would have left Earth right before 9-11). It’s more clearly a fantasy than the Donner films, with its art-deco Metropolis and intergalactic opening, but the smaller character moments have a lot of thought put into them as well. 30 minutes of it will be in 3-D for the IMAX print, and I don’t know which scenes they are, but I can guess. I’ll definitely be checking it out again.

Over the past few years, there have been lots of superhero movies, and while I’ve enjoyed most of them, none has ever made my 10 best list at year’s end (though, in hindsight, THE INCREDIBLES should have — I only really appreciated how great it was after multiple viewings). Not Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN, not Nolan’s BATMAN, not Singer’s X-MEN, and most certainly not the Thomas Jane PUNISHER.

But this? This is in my top three right now, alongside UNITED 93 and A LION IN THE HOUSE, and is likely to stay there. I fully admit that I suspended many of my critical faculties, because this tapped directly into the “Superman” gene that had been lying dormant since the death of Mr. Reeve. It’s a primal thing — when my brother Adam was two years old and he got a Superman figure for Christmas, he immediately started trying to sing the John Williams Superman theme. It’s hard to believe Superman figures weren’t available when I was a kid (Kenner’s Super Powers line never made it to Ireland), but maybe that makes it all the more special to see the man onscreen.

Thank you, Bryan Singer. When I think of what we could have had: Nicolas Cage and Tim Burton, for one. I read Gregory Poirer’s lame script that had four villains, including Silver Banshee and Parasite. I also read Kevin Smith’s highly overrated, highly compromised piece that, in the author’s ideal world, would have seen Ben Affleck in the lead. We nearly got Wolfgang Petersen directing a Colin Farrell Batman opposite a Josh Hartnett Superman. J.J. Abrams did a script where Krypton was never destroyed, and Jor-El (then assumed to be Anthony Hopkins) actually talks his son out of being dead. Hell, Paul Walker was actually a serious candidate for the cape at one point.

I admit to some curiosity as to how Cage would have done it. But I’m also really, really glad WB waited, and let Singer practice on the X-MEN first.

This is everything it should be. And if it doesn’t work for you, I can’t imagine what would.