Holding Out For A Hero
Written: Aug 18 '06 (Updated Aug 21 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some excellent action and effects, Parker Posey, Routh, the nostalgia factor, that music.
Cons: Offensively long, Bosworth totally mis-cast.
The Bottom Line: A decent enough summer movie, but with skewed and confusing internal logic, dodgy casting, and never quite feels like its own film.
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| nsign's Full Review: Superman Returns |
“Whatever happened to the heroes?” sang the Stranglers. Well actually, ever since Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve brought us the original (and still the best) superhero movie in 1978, they’ve been raking in vast amounts of cash courtesy of the paying public, whose appetite for flying saviours, angst-ridden vigilantes and mutated monsters remains as strong as ever, ensuring they’re kept in spandex and continued employment. It would now be a strange summer indeed without at least one big-budget comic book extravaganza, a genre that has, for the last 5 years or so, been the bedrock of Hollywood’s summer schedules, propping up the otherwise declining profits of the multiplexes.
You’ve got to get this kind of thing right, though. If there’s one group of fans who’ll burn you to the ground for ruining their favourite characters, it’s the comic book crowd. Think of Batman & Robin being skinned alive by critics and audiences back in 1997, or the distinctly lukewarm reception given to the Fantastic 4, or the commercial failure of Hulk. Still hasn’t kept any of them down though. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale simply wiped the slate clean with Batman Begins, with stunningly effective results. Sequels will join both Hulk and Fantastic 4 in the next couple of years. Spider-Man will be on his third instalment next summer, to be joined by Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman, followed by Nolan’s Batman follow-up The Dark Knight in 2008, and a rumoured take on Captain America. Busy people, your superheroes of today. And few would argue that if it hadn’t been for the fondly remembered, superbly constructed and beautifully handled Superman, none of these movies would have come to pass.
Richard Donner’s achievement in 1978 was to take a character which, even then, would have been easy to parody, and create a lovingly rendered popcorn spectacle which remains probably the best film of its kind (and Superman II isn’t far behind). Thanks in no small part to the late Christopher Reeve’s wonderfully warm portrayal of Clark Kent and the Man of Steel, Donner crafted such a brilliantly definitive and downright perfect origin story that almost 30 years later, Bryan Singer has seen no need to hit the reset button. Approaching Superman Returns as a loose sequel set in the “Donnerverse”, he has instead created an almost slavishly beholden tribute film, which admirably aims for so many right buttons but ultimately fails to hit them all.
Singer assumes, as many probably wish to, that Superman III and IV simply never happened (Or so we have to assume – Such vague and left-unsaid continuity is a big part of this movie’s problem). Some introductory text informs us that Superman (Brandon Routh), “earth’s greatest hero”, has disappeared for five years. We then see the spectacular explosion of Krypton’s sun, and immediately have our nostalgia glands tickled by those familiar zooming opening credits and the most rousingly heroic theme music of them all, the appropriation of which may be the single best reason to see Superman Returns (and for which, it must be said, John Williams is given a disgracefully brief blink-and-you’ll-miss-it credit, while John Ottman makes a good job of other composing duties).
After astronomers discover what they surmise is a chunk of Superman’s home planet, the man of steel buggers off at a moments’ notice to have a poke around his cosmic birthplace (despite telling the president at the end of Superman II he wouldn’t abandon them again after General Zod forced everyone to kneel). He comes crashing back to the Kent farm five years later to the shock of his adoptive mother (Eve-Marie Saint), and heads back to Metropolis to regain his reporting job at the Daily Planet. To his horror, not only has his
coot-like nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) been released from prison and conned an old woman out of a vast fortune and a flash yacht, but Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is in line for a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial piece explaining why, in Superman's absence, the world is better off without him. Miaow. To cap it all, she has a new man in her life and a young son, and seems less than pleased to see him again, even when taken on another free flight through the night sky.
Luthor, hell-bent on revenge and still with ambitions of becoming a real-estate overlord, visits Supeman’s fortress of solitude in Antarctica to watch a hologram of Jor-El (Marlon Brando, proving death is truly no object in Hollywood) and pilfers several crystals, with which he intends to grow a colossal landmass in the ocean and flood a huge portion of America. Arming himself with generous quantities of Kryptonite and some awful outfits, the scene is set for another Superman/Luthor rematch, while the man of steel must also attempt to win the hearts of the woman he lost and the world he left.
The movie therefore spends much of its painfully padded-out running time dwelling on Superman’s emotional meltdown at the discovery of Lois’s new family and antipathy towards her former idol. On paper, the idea of a superhero returning to a changed world, unsure of his place and in spite of all his superpowers still as fallible and vulnerable as any human when it comes to emotions and relationships, is an interesting one, and the film does throw up one genuinely daring revelation. Unfortunately, in this instance, Singer lacks Donner’s ability to balance humour with human drama, and the end result is a rather leaden and sombre movie, which Superman spends mostly in a state of mild depression. Hmm.
While Brandon Routh produces an excellent performance in the face of the intimidating shadow of Christopher Reeve, Kate Bosworth is a fatal mistake. She lacks Margot Kidder’s playful edge (or even Teri Hatcher’s glam sassiness), and is for the most part rather hard-faced and even bitter. The casting of the 23 year old Bosworth as a supposedly older and emotionally wiser Lois Lane is inexplicable. To be fair, she doesn’t look 23. She looks 16. Which unfortunately means that incredulous audience eyebrows are raised whenever she reminisces on the past and says something like, “That was a long time ago.” Bosworth simply doesn’t look old enough to have any kind of past, never mind a 5 year old son and a successful career behind her.
Quite why Singer never noticed this, or thought the audience wouldn’t notice, only he can answer. Routh himself is also too young for the part, considering he is meant to have been away for five years, but gets away with it because of his effortless confidence in the role and, it must be said, his spooky resemblance to Reeve (particularly as Clark Kent). Kevin Spacey gives us a satisfyingly nasty Lex Luthor, and special mention has to go Parker Posey for her terrific turn as his sidekick, Kitty.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is its bizarre cherry-picking of the Donner mythos. It is a tad confusing that this is a movie so deeply in hock to the Reeve era that it uses cut Brando dialogue from the first film, and then picks and chooses which elements it is going to keep, and which are simply ignored, to say nothing of the glaringly obvious problem of these characters apparently now being ten years younger than they used to be. Coming out of the theatre, I overheard many comments such as, “I don’t understand it, if he’s been away for 5 years why is it suddenly 2006?” and “How come they’re both so young?”
None of which would really matter – If Singer hadn’t gone to such lengths to connect his film to the originals. He could have done one of two things: Either make it a direct sequel, set in the correct time period with appropriately aged actors, or break completely with the Reeve movies and do entirely his own take on it. As it is, Singer has made something hazily in-between that ends up being frustratingly vague, and hasn't quite pulled it off in that respect.
None of which is to suggest that Superman Returns isn’t good. It is. In fact, it’s often excellent, particularly when Singer cranks up the gears and give us some action sequences, such as a thrilling space-plane rescue which ends in a heart-stopping touchdown in a crowded baseball stadium. The moment when the crowd rise to their feet to wildly cheer Superman’s triumphant return almost brings a lump to the throat and captures perfectly the spirit of the John Byrne comics, and the final third of the film delivers spectacle in spades.
But with a two and a half hour running time resulting in numbed arses the film veers precipitously close to becoming an endurance test. With Singer padding things out to such an unnecessary length, we are left fidgeting, bored and restless during what are presumably intended to be the quiet and ‘emotional’ closing scenes – I distinctly heard several yawns and sighs amongst the audience I was with (And while we’re on the subject, what is it about the current fashion for making popcorn films last longer than an average season? In the last 12 months I’ve clocked up almost 11 hours on 4 films alone: Superman Returns, Pirates 2, the last Harry Potter and King Kong, all of which would be improved no end by having at least 40 minutes shaved off. I think some heads should roll, frankly).
Still, it’s good to have him back, and if Singer has made a flawed movie, his intentions in adding emotional heft to the story of a man in tights have been admirable ones. Given the tortuous journey it has taken over the last ten years or so to get this film made, we should be thankful Superman is at last back on the big screen where he belongs. The next one should be worth waiting for.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Duration
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Epinions.com ID:
nsign
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Member: Steve
Location: England
Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 35 members
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