Superman Returns

Despite the fact that I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another in the seemingly endless procession of superhero comic book movies, I had awaited Superman Returns with some anticipation. True, Superman is far and away the dullest of comic book characters. He completely lacks the darker side inherent in Batman, not to mention nearly every other Marvel Comics character, all of whom seem to reflect Marvel’s own inferiority complex over being perpetually second to DC Comics. But the fact that Bryan Singer was at the helm suggested this might be something at least a little bit new. I expected it to be either very good, or very bad. What I got was very OK — and you should get a little more than that from something with a price tag reported to be in the range of $250 million.

Unlike many of the film’s detractors, I have no real problem with newcomer Brandon Routh as Superman. I’ve greater reservations about Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor, since neither Spacey nor Singer can seem to decide if the character is campy or genuinely menacing. Routh, on the other hand, is at the very least adequate for what he’s called on to do, which is nothing more nor less than a Christopher Reeve impression. As a facsimile of Reeve, I doubt anyone could have done better.

That, however, is also my major problem with the movie — it feels less like a new movie than a facsimile of Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman, which itself is best left to roseate-tinted memory. Even though Superman Returns more or less picks up where Richard Lester’s Superman II left off (the idea is to pretend that the third and fourth installments that came out in 1983 and 1987 respectively never happened), the basic storyline involving Lex Luthor is startlingly similar to the one in the original film. In other words, once again the big threat to the world concerns Weapons of Mass Real Estate.

In 1978, Lex was all about causing “the big one” in California — an earthquake that would cause the state to fall into the ocean, thereby turning his land into valuable beachfront property. This time he’s copped some crystals from Superman’s arctic “Fortress of Solitude.” (How is it the copyright holders of the Doc Savage pulp novels never sued DC comics for borrowing both the name of Savage’s secret lair, the Fortress of Solitude, and its arctic location — a fixture of the series and in fact the title of the October 1938 installment?) These crystals when dropped in the ocean will form continent-sized land masses — barren, rocky, unlivable land masses by the looks of them. Of course, as Mr. Archimedes figured out a long time ago, that displaced water has to go somewhere, meaning it will flood a good chunk of the world in the process, thereby turning Lex’s uninviting wasteland into valuable real estate.

It remains unaddressed why it never occurs to our evil genius that the market for this land will have dwindled considerably when he drowns billions of people in the process of creating it. But then no one has ever explained exactly what kind of needle Ma Kent (Eva Marie Saint this round) used to sew together Superman’s costume of cloth that even bullets can’t penetrate, so lapses in narrative logic are to be expected.

In the midst of this, of course, there’s a great deal of time spent on the relationship — or lack thereof — between Superman and Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth, Bee Season). Since this follows the second film, we know that he and Lois spent one hot night in the Fortress of Solitude — something he then erased from her memory when he realized the impossibility of their relationship. According to Superman Returns, he then vamoosed for five years to go see if there was anything left of his home planet.

Not surprisingly, Lois is a little bitter about his desertion — and apparently the woman can hold a grudge, since she’s just won a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” She’s also given birth to a son (uh-huh) named Jason (newcomer Tristan Lake Leabu) and taken up with the nephew of Daily Planet publisher Perry White (Frank Langella), Richard White (James Marsden, X-Men III). Since he’s referred to as “a good man,” we know that Richard is duller than a sackful of Cream of Wheat.

Throw in impressive effects sequences and some Superman-as-Clark Kent, stumblebum antics — et voila, you’ve got a Superman movie. And it’s not bad on that level. For depth, there’s a somewhat peculiar strand of Christ symbolism running throughout the film, which comes down to Superman’s father, Jor-El (archive footage of Marlon Brando from the 1978 film), having sent his only begotten son to Earth to save it and help it realize its true potential. The concept is interesting, but it lacks the kind of emotional resonance Singer brought to his X-Men films.

As an homage to the Christopher Reeve films (the movie is dedicated to the memory of Reeve and his wife, Dana), it works more than it doesn’t, despite its generally excessive length and a way too extended wrap-up. Moments of terrific effects work and visual splendor notwithstanding (the image of Superman hoisting Luthor’s “continent” is like a Rene Magritte painting), as a film in its own right, there’s just not much to it. Rated PG-13 for some intense action violence.

— reviewed by Ken Hanke