restless reformer

Here are some scattered thoughts on my viewing Superman Returns last night.

Characters
Let’s start with our cast: Brandon Routh is an interesting mix of Tom Cruise and Christopher Reeves. At times, he was almost channeling Reeves, which I don’t think is a very good thing, since Reeves was a lousy actor. I guess it provided some continuity, though, even though Routh, like all the other characters, look quite a bit younger than the first four movies, even though the movie takes place five years later. (nice sentence, that).

Gerry Betier’s snotty racist girlfriend is not Lois Lane. Still, I have to admit, I’m more pleased with Kate Bosworth’s performance than I ever expected. I don’t agree with most of the reviews I’ve read so far - it was a fairly decent performance. She’s just not Margot Kidder, who is Lois Lane and will always be Lois Lane.

Kevin Spacey I liked, and I think my favorite part of the whole film was when Luther forced Lois into trying to say, “Superman will stop you,” and he cut her off with that loud shout. Very intense.

Plot
The plot itself…well, cheesy, but it’s a Superman plot. I can’t complain too much about Lex Luthor trying to create an entirely new continent, made partially of kryptonite, that will swallow up the US and become his own country. Really, it’s the way Superman foiled the plan that was exceedingly anti-climactic. We’d already seen him super-strength the shuttle, the plane, and the boat. Having him super-strength the new continent out into space just didn’t do it for me. And having him “die” and come to twice in about 20 minutes was overkill.

Which brings us to the “Superman’s son” thing, because obviously the second “Superman on his deathbed” scene was done to set up the revelation that the little boy was Superman’s super-seed. In short, they should have come up with another, more dramatic way of doing this, rather than to repeat the death/resurrection thing again. The last 15 minutes were flat. I like the Superman’s son idea, and a lot of ethical tension is introduced by the whole thing; it just wasn’t written well as a plot point.

Despite the dialogue being the typical poor dialogue we find in superhero movies, there were a few good lines. Superman, to Lois, high above the city, said, “You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior; but I hear them crying for one every day.”

Best line of the whole film: “Weren’t there two of those?”

All in all, fun summer flick, but you won’t be missing a ton if you decide to wait for DVD; there aren’t even any special effects that merit the price of the ticket. For me, the whole night was worth is just to see the new Spiderman trailer. In my opinion, with how well the Spiderman films have been done so far, Spidey is stealing Superman’s thunder and becoming America’s #1 hero.

Grade (0-10): 6