2006 / 154 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

After at least ten years of starts and stops, with directors like Tim Burton, McG, and Brett Ratner all taking turns at development, Superman finally returns to the big screen. And though the results aren’t bad (I’ll get to that in a minute) I sorta wish this film would have gotten off the ground back in the late 90’s, with Tim Burton at the helm, Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel, Linda Fiorentino as Lois Lane (in my opinion, she’s the ultimate choice) and Kevin Spacey as Luthor. From what I’ve heard, the script involved a gay robot and a polar bear fight…but at least it would have been fascinating in a deranged, shitty-movie-night candidate fiasco sort of way.

After ten years of development and several complete personnel changes (except for Spacey, the best choice for Lex Luthor and the only one who weathered all the changes) the Superman we get can’t help but be rather disappointing. Then again, I’ve never been the biggest Superman fan. He’s too invincible to be really interesting. Batman has that dark revenge streak. Spider-Man has the trouble of trying to juggle a normal life AND be a superhero (with all the romantic and financial problems that lie therein). And Aquaman…well, okay, Aquaman sucks. At least Superman can do more than talk to fish. Superman can stop bullets, fly, and all that other stuff. The only thing that puts a crimp in his day is a green rock. That’s inherently cheesy, and it’s the reason Superman has never previously gelled for me.

The most pleasant surprise of this Superman film was how vulnerable Superman is. First of all, he’s in love with a woman who only wants him when he’s in a cape (and wants nothing to do with him as Clark Kent). It’s always seemed to me that Lois is kind of a superficial, career-centric bitch. Kate Bosworth really doesn’t do anything to change my opinion there. But by emphasizing this problematic love affair as well as Superman longing to know more about his roots (it’s what prompts his five year absence from Metropolis and Planet Earth) the movie gives us a more interesting Superman than we’ve seen in a lot of other movies. Though, even without this emotional baggage, Christopher Reeve did a much better job with the character. The best thing I can say about Brandon Routh’s portrayal of Superman/Clark is that he reminds me of Reeve. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do much to make the role his own. His portrayal of Superman reminds me of one of those TV shows where an actor dies or leaves and they plug another actor into the character and have him act identically to the man who left. They may do their best, but they never erase your memory of the other guy, unless they are allowed to put some unique stamp on the role. Routh doesn’t put his stamp on the role. He gives it a good shot, but he mostly makes us miss Reeve. Tom Welling, on TV’s “Smallville”, actually does a better job of owning this character. Still, the movie makes Superman a lot more vulnerable, and that gives us a little more interest in him.

The movie spends so much time making him vulnerable, unfortunately, that it forgets to make him heroic. It skimps on the exciting set pieces and dangerous situations that make us care about Superman in the first place. Moments of this film really work well. Superman’s first heroic rescue, for example, is amazing. It’s a literally crowd-pleasing moment. It’s almost as good as something from the original “Superman”. But too many of the action sequences have a “been there, done that” feel. It’s almost as if the filmmakers dusted off the original Superman script and just decided to update the effects. Big real estate scheme? Check. Entire city in jeopardy from earthquake thing? Check. The setup is great, and the first hour really gets things flowing nicely. Kevin Spacey does admirable, nuanced, creepy work as Lex Luthor but his villainous plot sucks. It’s nowhere near as good as Hackman’s ingenious scheme from the original movie. He has the best moment of the movie (it involves Superman being put in really big trouble) and Spacey gives the role a more sinister slant than Hackman. Spacey’s Luthor is a great example of a great actor taking a character and completely making it his own. Parker Posey is better than I expected as his moll, but I was annoyed that, once again, Luthor’s girlfriend brings his whole criminal empire crashing down. It’s the same thing that happened in the first film. You think the filmmakers could have done something new. If there’s a sequel to this film (and there probably will be) I hope that Luthor learns to swear off women altogether.

It was in the second half, however, that the movie started getting on my nerves. For one thing, nothing happens. The film is largely about character development, and it does well with that…to a point. But for character-driven material to work, you need to have some conflict between the characters. For example: in Superman’s absence, Lois has had a kid and is involved with her editor’s nephew Richard (James Marsden, best known as Cyclops from the X-Men films). Superman comes back, and Richard can clearly see that Lois wants him. He subtly asks her if she likes him, but that’s it. His character is too nice of a guy to get in his face about it. Gee, that’s great if he’s an actual guy. But this is a movie. Shouldn’t he confront her about that? That’s what we like to call drama. Hell, he could even confront Superman about it. That’d be cool. Superman could take a verbal bitching from Richard and not fight back because, well, Richard’s just a regular dude. Plus, he and Lois aren’t officially involved anyway. But, no, Richard just puts up with it. He should at least be pissed that he’s been seeing this woman for five years and they aren’t even talking marriage. I know that women are generally seen as the ones who want a rock on their finger, but guys occasionally want it too. And if she doesn’t, that means she really doesn’t want to be there and she wants to be with Superman. See what I’m saying here? This is real drama. The proceedings would’ve been a lot livelier.

Aside from the stagnant domestic stuff, the action stuff is rather lame. Superman doesn’t do all that much, not really. He picks up a big rock, stops a couple people from getting squashed, and stops some bullets. No big deal. We’ve seen this already. The first action sequence, where Superman saves a plane from being dragged into outer space, is a cool set piece and it’s original. It’s the best of the movie. The rest are bland rehashes of things we’ve already seen. Hell, the stakes on his other rescues aren’t even all that high. We don’t really get the sense that anyone or anything is in jeopardy. After all, if the screenwriters can’t make drama out of a relationship as soap-opera ready as the Lois/Richard/Superman love triangle (there’s even a kid whose paternity is in question!) then how are they going to make us give a shit about billions of lives hanging in the balance? Well, they could have…but they don’t. Bryan Singer’s direction is good enough that it distracts us from a lot of logistic questions for a while (one of them being: Hey, isn’t that thing made out of Kryptonite? How the hell is this happening?) but not for long enough. There’s a lot of flash and rumbling and a lot of things shaking (there are at least three sequences where things vibrate from something akin to an earthquake) but, plot-wise, virtually nothing is going on. Hell, action-wise nothing much is going on. I never got the sense that anything was really at stake here, and that essentially kills all the potential drama.

A lot of money has been spent on this movie (Ben’s big question was: “This cost 200 million?”) and it certainly looks real good but a lack of truly exciting heroics, a lame villainous plot, and some bland storytelling eventually destroy any momentum the movie manages to generate. The performances aren’t bad (Spacey is really good) and the effects are impressive (boy, that’s a huge rock Superman is lifting). But none of that matters if the filmmakers forget to make us care.

The movie did do one thing, though. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the first two Superman films. Sure, they were pretty cheesy and the effects haven’t aged well. But, damn it, they were sure exciting and fun.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.