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Superman Returns July 2, 2006 |
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I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be Superman. On the one hand, a natural human urge to be a superhero, what with the saving babies and the inevitable prevention of world destruction thing, is as strong in me as it is in anybody, but on the other hand, it’s hard work, I mean, come on, the name alone bears a tremendous burden to be an all giving, all sacrificing, being of pure selflessness and perfection, and for that I just couldn’t prescribe. Superman is indeed a beast of the world’s burdens, cursed (or blessed, depending on your outlook) with a body of indestructibility, the ability to fly, supersensitive hearing, x-ray vision, and a skin tight blue body suit and red cape, he’s jetting around the globe fighting crime while the rest of us are sleeping in our cozy beds, knowing not, and caring little, about how easily we wake up in the morning safe because of the heroic deeds of one God of good. So if you ask me if I want to take on the responsibilities of Superman when he’s ready to retire, I’d say thanks for the thought, but I’ll keep my Sunday’s free and my crippling fear of heights in tact for now, but that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t need somebody else to do the job, or for that matter, the world of cinematic make believe, which of course is where I’m coming from anyway, doesn’t need just one more box office comic book behemoth to do us all good in a lackluster summer, and the Superman of “Superman Returns”, a kind of variation on Christopher Reeve’s ‘70’s stud and Christian Bale’s modern Batman, will do just fine. He’s noble, he’s heroic, he’s handsome, he’s complicated, he’s funny, he has perfect hair, and in Bryan Singer he has a visual master controlling his every move, so yeah, the movie world needs this Superman and his talented director just as much as the fictional world of Metropolis needs the Godlike alter ego of newspaperman Clark Kent, because without them, both worlds are that much more, for lack of better vocabulary, less super. “Superman Returns” picks up five years after the Man of Steel vacated Earth for his home planet of Krypton at the end of 1980’s “Superman II”. Having spent enough time on his decaying planet, he blasts off in a meteor-shaped space ship during the film’s opening credits to return to an Earth that has all but forgotten him, thanks in part to Superman’s former squeeze Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), who has written a Pulitzer Prize winning piece suggesting, out of anger of his abandonment, that the world really doesn’t need such a mythic figure saving it from destruction on a nightly basis. But if that were true than there would be no reason to bring him back to the movies for the first time in 19 years, so to debunk the article, and to put to rest years and years of failed projects and whispers that the character wasn’t relevant anymore, we get a long set piece where Superman rescues a crashing plane (with Lois on board) in spectacular fashion, setting it down, to ravishing applause, in the middle of a baseball stadium. Not a bad way to come out of a five-year retirement; not only does he get to reintroduce himself to the world with a stunning piece of heroism – and conversely open the movie with a brilliantly exciting extravaganza – but he gets the added bonus of saving the woman that he still loves in the process. Plus he gets to crack a joke, in that charming, cheesy Superman manner that Christopher Reeve utilized so well: “I hope this experience hasn’t put you off flying”, he says to the stunned passengers of the plane, “statistically it’s still the safest way to travel.” As the plot develops, Metropolis once again catches Superman fever, thanks to the Daily Planet’s front-page coverage of his sudden emergence, but the hero has a problem, as Clark Kent, his human alter ego (who, in the long running comic’s most obvious flaw, looks exactly like Superman, much to the befuddlement of nobody), he’s hopelessly in love with Lois Lane, but she’s engaged to a nice assistant editor, and has a five year old son, forming a love triangle that, unfortunately, we already saw in “Spider-Man 2”, where it was more effective. If half of the two and a half hour running time is spent reacquainting Lois with her festering feelings for Superman, the other half is spent dealing with the recently released Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), who hatches a confusing scheme with his cronies to harvest a crystal from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude that, somehow, will shift the globe’s glacial plates, causing mass destruction, and making him some kind of post devastation land developer war lord, at the cost of about a billion lives. “I don’t want to be a God,” he says citing Prometheus, “I just want to bring fire to the people, and I want my cut.” If you know anything about the Superman franchise, you know that the man in blue won’t allow that, but a choice piece of kryptonite, and Luthor’s seemingly insane devotion to rule the world, may say otherwise. What you get with Superman is usually the same stuff; lots of cool flying, a few amazing set pieces, Lex Luthor in bad wigs, Clark Kent bumbling one minute and flying out of an elevator shaft the next, goo-goo eyes between Superman and Lois, and a climax where the hero eventually saves the day, and that’s all here, so you can’t say “Superman Returns” is the most original film of the year, but you can say that it’s one of the best looking, and most interesting franchise films of the year. Bryan Singer creates a stunning visual world for Superman to fly around in, less gloomy than Batman’s Gotham, and more modern and inviting than Lang’s futuristic original Metropolis (it’s basically New York filmed with an edgy romantic sensibility), while the script allows for much iconic imagery of hero as God, or Jesus, or Atlas, or Icarus, or whatever mythic figure that fits the bill, and there are a lot of them if you look close enough. He is larger than life, and Singer never forgets it, painting the lovesick hero as somebody who has to sacrifice his own personal pleasures and wants to use his unusual gift to save others. “You say that the world doesn’t need a savior,” he says to Lois in one of the film’s typically sympathetic dialogue scenes, “but every day I hear the world crying out for one.” Singer gets good performances out of his principal secondary cast, especially Spacey as the high strung Luthor and Parker Posey as his flapperesque girlfriend, but credit is due to first time star Brandon Routh who fills the cape of the late Christopher Reeve with charm (though at times unsure and stiff) and believability, making it plausible for us to once again root, and care for, this being of pure bodily perfection, idealism, and humanly goodness. The world of popcorn adventure films with unusually strong God complexes will have to wait until next summer for the terrific Spider-Man series to return, but in the meantime, the return of Action Comic’s most famous creation to the silver screen is a pleasantly entertaining layover. “Superman Returns” is playing at the Movie-Plex 59 by Adam Suraf
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