Nerd Mentality

SUPERMAN IS DEAD (to me)

Posted July 6th 2006 by J Edison Thomas.

If X3 could be described as a great movie and a bad movie tossed into a blender and mixed thoroughly, Superman Returns would be more like charging a gorilla with the task of smashing a moderately good movie with a terrible movie with such incredible force that they stick together. Loosely.

In the interest of thinking positive, I'll start with the good half. For starters, Lex Luthor finally comes up with an evil plan that is both horrifyingly evil (ok it's basically the same plan as in the first Superman flick with different means to the same end) and allows for dramatic CG shots. Spacey makes for a good Lex, and his performance was probably even better for someone who wasn't mentally occupied trying his best to not compare his performance with Hackman's. And I'm not saying Hackman was better, but a lot of Luther's screentime had me wondering if his acting was really capturing the "essence" of Lex Luther, until I realized that Lex Luther isn't an interesting character in any way and let the issue die right there.

Also, there's Cyclops, who plays Lois' almost-husband Richard (but the issue of their non-union is delicately smoothed over by Jimmy Olsen all-but-yelling "NO THEY'RE TOTALLY NOT MARRIED, THE DOOR IS STILL OPEN FOR HER TO LEAVE THIS GUY WHEN YOU FIGURE OUT THAT THIS KID IS OBVIOUSLY YOURS, SUPERMAN.") Singer had the balls to make Lois' baxter a decent guy, rather than a handsome-yet-prickish douchebag who would be in no way a moral or emotional problem to leave when the time is right. Actually, Rich is seemingly the most perfect man in the world––until Superman once again inhabits that world. Well, scratch that, because somehow Richard is better than Superman in nearly every way other than being the predictable loser in an arm-wrestling contest.

Lois' son Jason is incredibly tolerable, which is amazing considering he is a child acting in an action-adventure movie. To his credit he doesn't say "that's so wizard!" at any point in the movie and although most of his success is derived from Singer taking the easy road and keeping the kid's mouth shut for nearly the entire film, Jason reminded me of my kid, and even looked kind of like him, which is good because I like my kid. Even when mine made me get up not once but TWICE to go to the bathroom during the movie. In a way it was my fault for sharing my gigantic Cherry Coke with him, and he kind of made up for it after the movie with a pretty good soundbyte for a 5 year-old. When asked what his "favorite part" of Superman Returns was, responded, "Spider-Man": the trailer for Spider-Man 3, which actually aired just before our pre-movie bathroom stop which I assumed would assure a bathroom-trip-free viewing, especially since he'd also gone to the bathroom just before we left the house, God damn. Seriously, what the hell, kid?

I'm getting ticked enough that I'm done with saying nice things about the movie (there's not much else to say anyway; "the sets were nice"? "CG was on par for 2006/5/4/3"?). The movie fails on its most basic level, which I would assume would be "What happens when Superman leaves and then finds the world has changed when he returns?" The characters talk a fair share about this concept, but the idea never really goes anywhere. Really, the entire movie is all talk. Lex talks repeatedly about all the super-power Kryptonian technology he'll have once he makes his private continent, but all he ever has is a really big rock to stand on. Lois talks about––in plot-outline terms––the feelings that Superman's return forces her to confront, yet there's never really a resolution. Just a wishy-washiness and then OH GOD LEX IS GROWING A CONTINENT and everyone forgets what they were going through. Superman Returns and the biggest splash he makes is that Lois argues with her boss that she'd rather cover another story about a power outage. Superman's return is really more a gimmick than anything that gravely affects the plot, and the only real difference it makes is that Superman and Lois were both unaware that her son was a Superboy.

The action scenes would mostly be adequate––if still undeserving of bladder-loss––but luckily Singer included at least one inept detail in pretty much every one. For instance, take the scene where Supes stops a burning jet from a horrific crash just moments before it lands in a baseball field. This would be a great sequence if Singer hadn't forgotten what makes car crashes so deadly: moving incredibly fast and then not moving at all. By the time Routh sets his hands on the plane's ground-bound nose and stops it moments before hitting the ground (and it doesn't just crumple around him and still hit the ground like any plane made of lightweight metal would do), I was thinking, "Man, Superman wasted all that time! Turns out these passengers were made of rubber and feel no ill effects from being thrown around in a rag-doll of a plane cabin for a 40,000 ft. drop at terminal velocity!" This same principle would come to effect later when Lois and Richard take a magical ride on half a broken yacht that falls 500-1000 feet before crashing into the ocean and leaving them both with mild bruises (maybe).

In terms of pure non-sensical bullshit, both are beat out by the epic finalé, which somehow didn't involve Lex getting his head punched off: Superman lifts, like, a fucking mountain range worth of rock (an already monumental task for a post-Crisis Kryptonian) and then flings it into space. Did I mention this billion-ton rock was MADE OF FUCKING KRYPTONITE, and even burns into his flesh as he heaves it into space? And that moments earlier he was rasping for breath and sapped of strength just due to being near the same mini-continent? Yeah, apparently all this time Superman only had to, I don't know, try harder and kryptonite can't effect him until his task is complete and it's once again convenient for it to effect him. After this deus ex machina pulled out of Kal-El's colon, our hero suddenly remembers that Superman + kryptonite = X_X and falls back to Earth, but not without subtly throwing his arms out at perfect right angles while keeping his legs tight together so everyone can tell he's a Christ figure.

ATTENTION: BRYAN SINGER. SUPERMAN IS IN HIMSELF A SYMBOLIC CHARACTER, YOU DO NOT NEED TO COMPARE HIM TO JESUS. IT IS REDUNDANT AND UNINSPIRED, AND A MORE THAN LITTLE BIT PATHETIC.

Now, if Lex, Richard, and Jason were all characters that worked for the movie, Lois and Superman themselves did an incredible job of counteracting said trio. God, I don't know where to start with those two. I guess casting. Is it enough to say that it's a bad idea to make a movie about Lois and Superman where they both look at least ten years younger than when we left off "five years ago"? If not, then there's always the acting. While Bosworth certainly didn't hack Lois Lane's character on any Lucasian level, she still completely misses the mark. Unlike Lex Luther, Lois Lane is a very interesting character, and yet Singer's portrayal makes her impossible to pick out in a lineup with any other hero love interest in any other movie ever made. She's just a pretty face with almost enough emotional baggage to make a plot coalesce between moments where I was wondering what the hell was going on.

Superman Returns was to me not as much a comic-action flick as a baffling mystery: why wasn't Marsden cast as the Man of Steel instead of this Brandon Routh schlub? Marsden could act, he looked human, he already has superhero cred, and he had natural blue eyes that would have neatly avoided using near-glowing contact lenses from out of a gay fantasy. What did Routh bring to the cape at all? Being 6'4"? Was his Ken-doll face so alien and incapable of expressing emotion that he reeked of "stranger from a distant world"?

Beyond the simple aesthetic aversion to a Superman that was mildly reminiscient of Master Shake's plastic surgery gone wrong (I would bet money that Routh was born with a modest non-cleft chin that actually fit his face) there's the wrench it throws into the drama in that as a movie-goer I really couldn't see what Lois would see in this guy. While Reeve pulled off the half-boyish heroic charm that makes it completely understandable that a capable woman like Lois Lane would go mad for his superdong, Routh is difficult to sympathize with or admire, and nearly impossible to see as a magnetizing force to Lois. But then, since there's really nothing special about Lois in this movie either, it's yet another mutually-forced Skywalker-style romance wherein the director's vocabulary does not include the word "chemistry". It's all topped off nicely during the scene where a reluctant Lois takes yet another midnight flight with Superman and actually says––these words actually leave her mouth and are caught by the sound team and were assumedly actually written into the script––"I forgot how warm you are." The fuck? How warm is this son of a bitch? And why would you say it anyway? Oh right, because believably portraying the surrender of pride and scorn to desire might have been hard and required talent.

Now, normally I wouldn't bring up the "little things" that piss me off to no end because it's too nerd-blog and I like to pretend this isn't a blog, but for some reason Superman Returns was so chock-full of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder that it made me wonder if Bryan Singer hates Warner Bros. Or Superman. Or being sober. At one point, mere days before accepting a Pulitzer Prize, Lois Lane asks her editor how many "F"s are in "catastrophic". P-U-L-I-T-Z-E-R: traditionally given to journalists who are the best in their field at writing and reporting. And writing (words). There's the little issue of Clark, who shares all of Superman's features including his one-in-a-billion gem-blue eyes, returning to Metropolis on the same day as Superman, an issue apparently Singer couldn't be bothered to actually explain away. He doesn't even give a believable cover story for Clark. He just left to travel around the world and then shows back up with barely a mention or query about what the fuck he's been doing during the exact span of time that Superman left Earth. Not even Jimmy, who adores both Superman and Clark seemingly equally, never indirectly challenges Clark with a comparison.

And just to drive the nail directly into my skull, in another scene Lois explains a few things about Superman to Richard––his height, weight, powers––and immediately Richard comes to the conclusion that Clark Kent also fits that description and suggests (the impossible!) that Clark could be Superman, before laughing it off because laughing it off is the only way that this scene doesn't destroy 70 years of Superman lore.

I'm not going to go into a Kevin Smith rant about how Lois could never have Superman's alien baby, because he very clearly banged her in Superman 2 and ejaculated into her human loins while human himself, but how did she think that Richard was the kid's father? Sure, she forgot all about her trist with Clark when he used his "magic kiss of forgetfullness", but she couldn't have had unprotected sex with Cyclops until at least after the events of Superman IV, assuming she jumped in the sack with him the minute Superman left Earth, and assuming that his departure was itself right after Superman IV. And the kid is very obviously like 7 years-old anyway, and not the 4 year-old maximum that continuity would require, so no matter how you add it up there's no way the kid could be as old as he is without Lois thinking she was the next Virgin Mary.

But major props to Singer for his killer diversion of the kid being very incredibly obviously Superman's kid: ahoy! he is sickly, and got a "D" in gym class! See? Not a Superboy! Exactly what sadist is giving this kid shitty grades in gym class just for being a weakling? In kindergarten? God, even through high school the grades are almost entirely based on participation. Fuck it. It's this kind of lazy, "paint-by-numbers without even thinking about what the characters are actually saying" writing that makes me wonder why I go to the movies with the slightest bit of optimism.

Just to end on a happy note, the movie is very funny for a comic-action flick. Both intentionally and unintentionally, sure, but it's still worth going to. Pick the earliest matinee possible so that the theater's all but empty and have fun screaming at or otherwise mocking the characters onscreen. Just don't head into this thing expecting some great action adventure along the lines of Batman Begins or X2. Heh, X2; only at this very moment did I realize that Bryan Singer somehow managed to singlehandedly ruin both of 2006' blockbuster superhero flicks. Congrats.

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