Saw my first summer blockbuster of the season last night, as I am wont to do in summer blockbuster season (X-Men 3 doesn’t count, as it wasn’t summer yet, and it wasn’t a blockbuster….though it was fine.)
So, Superman Returns. I’m going to tell you all about it, so if you don’t want to know what happens, just scroll up to the top of the page, the right hand corner, and click “next blog”.
Still here? Okay, then – Superman Returns apparently constitutes a bit of revisionist history, a world in which Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace never happened. Which is fine by me, and I would imagine fine by anyone who saw Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. The events follow Superman II…rather, I should say, they pick up five years after Superman II, as the opening credits inform us that Superman has been in outer space for the past five years, looking for his home planet of Krypton (yes, we all remember that Krypton exploded, as does Superman himself…why exactly he went to look for it is never quite explained).
Superman II, you’ll recall, involved Superman giving up his powers and sleeping with Lois Lane. This becomes an important plot point later, so don’t forget it.
True Superphiles will also instantly realize that the five-year gap conveniently allows for the events of the film classic, Supergirl, which I saw in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day almost 22 years ago with JubJub, who will be visiting this weekend with her new boyfriend Babaloo.
But I digress.
After the five-years-later explanation, and a dizzying ride through space while the credits roll, we pick up at the Kent farmstead in…well, I don’t know where it is. Kansas? Indiana? Someplace flat and expansive. Mother Kent (Eva-Marie Saint) is puttering around her kitchen, which apparently hasn’t been updated since about 1927, judging by the antique ice box with a Marconi wireless perched precariously on top. Her scrubbing of the laundry on a washboard is interrupted by a fiery meteor which lands in the back forty, so she hops into her Model T pickup and heads out to find:
1) a giant smoldering crystalline something-or-other, and
2) her adopted son Superman (Brandon Routh), naked and stumbling around the field
She takes him home and spruces him up, whereupon he plays a mean trick on the family dog, has a flashback to his childhood, watches the news, offers no explanation about where he’s been, mumbles something, and leaves.
We then head to Metropolis, where Supes has re-donned his Clark Kent disguise and assumed his old duties as a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper (I won’t bore you here with my treatise on how, psychologically, I believe that Clark is the authentic person and Superman the disguise, which puts me in opposition to pretty much everyone else in the world). Clark’s hopes for picking up his life exactly where it left off are dashed when he discovers that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), his former paramour, is living with the boss’s nephew (James Marsden), has an asthmatic out-of-wedlock child (Tristan Lake Leabu), and is about to accept a Pulitzer for her opinion piece “Why The World Doesn’t Need Superman”. Whoops.
Before he has time to brood about it, however, he’s called upon to save a crashing plane-connected-to-a-space-shuttle (don’t ask) which just happens to include passenger Lois Lane. He saves the plane in a spectacular display of special effects wizardry, sets it down on the pitcher’s mound of Yankees Stadium, and if you don’t get a lump in your throat as the crowd erupts in cheers then, my friend, you have no soul.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), his gun moll Kitty (Parker Posey) and three (maybe four, I had trouble telling them apart, except that one had a video camera) generic stoolies are planning their revenge against the newly-returned Superman. Revenge includes picking up on Lex’s obsession with beachfront property from the 1978 film. Only this time, Lex has stolen power crystals from Superman’s long-abandoned Fortress of Solitude, which he is going to use to create a new continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, flooding all of North America and leaving a huge, craggy, crystalline continent that no one would want to live on in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
After much hand-wringing and soul-searching on the parts of Lois, Superman, and Lois’ live-in boyfriend - interspersed with gee-whizzical scenes of Superman saving people and stuff – Lois ends up trapped on Lex Luthor’s yacht with her asthmatic out-of-wedlock child, headed out to sea with Lex to create his new continent. Which, incidentally, will be laced full of Kryptonite so that Superman can’t stop him. They are rescued by Lois’ live-in boyfriend, but not before one of the generic stoolies has a piano thrown at him by the asthmatic out-of-wedlock child, pretty much confirming everyone’s assumption that Superman is Lois’ baby daddy. Superman then arrives to save all of them, then gets weakened by Kryptonite, then gets shivved by Lex Luthor, then gets rescued by the people HE had just rescued. Then he flies up into the sky to soak up some sunlight and flies back down to Earth to beat Lex and – wait for it – lift the entire new continent up into space and fling it toward the sun.
Then he plummets to Earth, powerless, and dies. Or not. It’s a tense few minutes.
Lois manages to get into the hospital with her no-longer-asthmatic out-of-wedlock child, where she kisses Superman on the lips, reveals that he’s her baby daddy, and then goes on about her business. Either the kiss or the revelation of parentage does the trick, because next thing you know the big blue is up and around, creeping into the kid’s bedroom while he’s asleep to whisper some mumbo-jumbo about the father becoming the son, and other useless drivel you’ll recall being uttered by Dead Marlon Brando earlier in the film.
So, there we have it. The movie ends with Superman flying off to stop some more deli robberies, leaving Lois living with her child and her boyfriend who is not the father of her child, but still thinks he is. It’s a pretty big genie they’ve let out of the bottle, it will be interesting to see how they follow up.
Performances: I was awfully worried when Brandon Routh first appeared on the screen. He mumbled and appeared to have little idea that he was in a movie, or even awake. But he grew on me. His instructions were apparently to “channel Christopher Reeve”, a challenge he accepted with gusto. His speech patterns and mannerisms might as well be Reeve himself. And actually, I like his Clark Kent better than Reeve. More natural, less of an obvious put-on.
Kate Bosworth. Sigh. She gives it her best shot, but she’s far too young to be playing Lois Lane, especially a Lois Lane that has a five year old child and a Pulitzer. She’s far from the worst Lois Lane (hello, Teri Hatcher) but I fear it won’t be a high point of her career, nor a character-defining performance like Margot Kidder’s.
Kevin Spacey. Parker Posey. I want to like them both, especially Posey, but…well….they just…they both seem to play the same character, no matter what movie they’re in. Spacey the smarmy ham, Posey the crazy chick. There is nothing remarkable about either performance, certainly nothing unique that they bring to their characters. Lex Luthor should be terrifying in his evil, and he’s not. And, I certainly never thought I’d pine for Valerie Perrine’s Miss Tessmacher, but there you have it. I do.
James Marsden has his role as a pretty face down pat. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, unencumbered by his X-Men Cyclops shades, he can turn in a moving and subtle performance. He might have actually been a good Superman, if not for the fact that he appears to be about five-foot two. And as I mentioned above, he’s awfully pretty.
Dead Marlon Brando appears, to what purpose I still don't know. Honestly, his face is obscured by so much digitized vaseline-lens effect, it could have been anyone spewing metaphysical drivel with marbles in their mouth.
There is one perfect match of character and actor, Sam Huntington’s Jimmy Olsen. Perfect. He needs more to do in the sequel.
There are nice cameos by Noel Neill and Jack Larson, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen from the 1950’s television show. Larson, as you’ll recall, is now an acclaimed playwright, and was the longtime partner of James Bridges, director of The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome, and Urban Cowboy. But you knew that.
Gripes: The costume. He looks like a Nicaraguan hooker. And Routh has this weird sort of love-handley thing that doesn't lend itself to wearing bikini trunks.
The hair. Director Bryan Singer is gay, so one would think he could employ a decent hairdresser. Kate Bosworth looks like she combed hers with an egg-beater. And Routh's...well....look, I KNOW Superman's hair in the comics is black with navy-blue highlights. That's because it's a comic book. That does NOT mean you have to dye his hair with jet-black shoe polish, and give him a wig like a 70's porn star. The movie-going public WILL accept a Superman with a weight line and a haircolor that occurs in nature.
The child. Are there no longer child actors that look and act like children, instead of like Damien?
The Christ symbology. Okay, I get it. You don't have to freaking pound me over the head with it.
So…not the best movie I’ve ever seen, certainly far from the worst. I give it a B+. Review over!
Now – get over to Monk-E-Mail and amuse yourself the rest of the day.
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