Movie Review: Superman Returns

I had low expectations for Superman Returns and they should have been lower. I blame the script and the pacing. This is a long film, 2.5 hours long, and there's no reason for that. Much of this film is homage to Richard Donner's first two Superman films. Those films ushered in the modern superhero movie but they weren't that good. Bryan Singer seems to have copied the length but didn't bring enough of the intelligence he brought to the first two X-Men films.

It takes place after Superman II and Superman has been gone 5 years visiting the remains of Krypton. He found nothing and is back now, but the world has moved on. Including Lois Lane who now has a fiance and a young son. Lex Luther is back too, with another insane real estate plan. He got out of jail because Superman didn't show at his trial to testify, which is cute. Lex funds his plan by swindling a fortune from Noel Neill who played Lois Lane in the 50s TV show. Jimmy from that series has a cameo as a bartender.

Supes' first act is to save a falling plane. You'd think by now he'd know you grab a plane by the fuselage not the wing. Still it's a good sequence and I liked the ending of it. The one complaint I had, Perry White mentions a couple of minutes later, so I was happy. Well there were other problems with the scene but I was willing to suspend disbelief.

In other cases things are just dumb. You'd think a newspaper editor, or anyone over 12, could recognize latitude and longitude coordinates. A bank robber, instead of escaping, sets up an enormous machine gun on a roof and does his best impersonation of Arnold from T2 shooting the cops below. It's all just to give one cool shot of bullets bouncing off Superman, who cares if it makes sense? I realized towards the end of the film, that nothing in this movie that takes off, without first falling. That includes Superman, planes, helecopters and space shuttles. The pacing of every action scene was the same, first dangerous bad stuff, then climaxing in certain doom, which goes on for twice as long as it should, followed by unexplained recovery. In a 2.5 hour film the same thing repeated gets old.

The script touches on a lot of good ideas but then doesn't develop any of them. How does Superman deal with Lois when he returns from a 5 year absense and she's moved on? Turns out he doesn't really have a conversation, he just flies her around. Lex accomplishes the first part of his plan and then his henchmen sit around playing cards while Lex, well...just sits around. Why does the world need a Superman? That page is literally left blank and all we get is "I'll always be around". Sure there's more than enough Christ metaphors in the film but that didn't help me either.

I thought the actors were fine, they just weren't given enough to say. For all the length of the film, there isn't that much dialog. This particularly hurts in the scenes between Lois and Superman. There's a scene where Superman spies on Lois and her fiance which is kinda creepy. She say she doesn't love Superman and she's obviously lying to her fiance and herself, but somehow Superman is dumb enough to believe it. In fact, Superman is all brawn and no brain. I also wanted much more of Kevin Spacey as Luther, he's gotta a lot scenes but only a couple of speeches.

I found the pacing slow and with a few exceptions I was pretty bored at times. Batman Begins is still the standard for comic book movies. If you're going to go see it, don't read the following until after you do.

*Spoilers*

Ok, I needed to say this but it is a big spoiler. This is your last warning.

There's a reason Lois is so upset that Superman left. It's not just that she loved him and he didn't say goodbye. It turns out Superman is a deadbeat dad! Apparently during that scene in Superman II she got pregnant and while Superman was gone had a son. Since Superman erased her memory at the end of Superman II, maybe she was surprised she was pregnant. We see little Jason throw a piano across the room so he's got superpowers. Lois didn't seem surprised by this so maybe he's demonstrated his powers before? Raising superbaby must have been difficult. So when Superman returns does Lois tell him he has a son? Nope. When he finds out he's a father does he do anything other than whisper to the kid while he's asleep? Nope. Jor-El had an excuse for being a crappy father, he was dead! In 70 years of the character this is a genuine new development, but they do anything with it.

So why didn't Jason try to open the locked door in the ship? And I was sure he'd be solution to the new continent. It would have made much more sense for the kryptonite-proof kid to help rather than have Superman lift a continent of Kryptonite while still having a good sized piece inside of him. I guess it really doesn't affect him much. It's stuff like this that really bothered me about the film. Do dumb things until disaster happens, then resolve it with no explanation. Add slow pacing and lots of character non-interaction and it doesn't add up to much.