Superman Returns: Powet Final Word

The crack editorial team here assembled in the Powet Watchtower this week to dish out the Final Word on Superman Returns.
After the jump, you can read four reviews, and four differing views on the same movie.

TheOrange:

Superman Returns is a quasi-remake/sequel of the first two Superman films. I love those movies, and think there’s a lot of power and magic to them. They helped redefine a character for a generation to come — specifically mine — and laid the groundwork for this movie.

Lots of people who have reviewed the movie were disappointed that we didn’t get another origin story a la Batman Begins. Truth be told, it might have made some things easier. Bryan Singer didn’t want to do that story, mostly because of how much he personally loved those Richard Donner films. That is precisely why — after over a decade of Warner Bros. getting nowhere with origin scripts, and after a fateful conversation with Lauren Schuler Donner (producer of the X-Men films) and her husband Richard — Singer got the job.

Given his self-imposed limitations, I think Singer nailed it. This is the best Superman III ever; what it lacks in Richard Pryor, it makes up for in awesome. The action scenes, especially the plane scene, is simply breathtaking and visually flawless — and I don’t just mean that as a pun for the sub-orbital setting. I swear Brandon Routh was channeling Christopher Reeve at some moments. Kate Bosworth’s Lois is quite different from Margot Kidder’s, but I still like her. New character Richard White is, in some ways, the true hero of the film. A mere mortal shouldn’t have a chance against the Man of Steel, and yet he’s the perfect romantic foil for Superman; he gets to be for Lois what Clark wishes he could be if he didn’t have to use his mild mannered persona as the greatest misdirection of all time.

Because it’s so firmly couched in the previous iterations, Superman Returns is more like a bookend that rounds off a trilogy than it is a stand-alone film, and I think that’s its biggest potential weakness. I understand that at one time they considered retelling key moments from the first two movies in a comic book format that would run under the credits (pictures leaked), but this was apparently scrapped. It’s too bad, because it might have helped explain some things to the audience, like the full extent of the relationship between Lois and Superman. Such things are left to innuendo in the final version, which has an equal chance of stirring up curiosity in the older films as it does to simply confuse the audience.

Regardless, this movie sets up the groundwork for a most excellent sequel that will steer the Superman mythos into uncharted waters. As much as I loved Kevin Spacey in this film, Superman has a bevy of other villains to fight. While some might seem hokey, if Spider-man can pull it off, I think Superman can too.

For me, the best critics of this movie were the audience members themselves. I managed to catch the film on a second viewing with many people I believe hadn’t seen the movie before. Just as the first time I saw it, they would laugh and gasp and chuckle at all the same moments. And when it was over? They applauded.

aDam:

I came into this movie with mixed feelings. I loved Brian Singer (but not in the way Singer feels about other men) and I thought Spacey’s Luthor looked amazing. I just couldn’t get behind that Brandon Routh guy. As pictures trickled in I was quoted to say “I wanna cut his face with a bottle” more than a few times.

Well being the non judgemental open minded humanitarian that I am I didn’t let this get in my way of the enjoyment of the movie.

As it would turn out Routh did a great job as did the rest of the cast. I found his Clark Kent especially reminiscent of Christopher Reeve’s rendition. As Superman he filled the suit well. I don’t mean that in the way that Brian Singer likes guys but in a way that it’s extremely difficult to have someone not look completely ridiculous in tights. This is partly due to hima nd partly due to a good design of the costume. Spacey as Luthor was spot on. Just crazy and fun in a horrible kind of way. Kate Bosworth did a great Lois. She captured the essence of the character real well.

I surprisingly liked James Marsden in the role of Richard. He seems doomed to play the guy who doesn’t get the girl that we more often that not cna’t help but hate. In somewhat of a success and somewhat of a failing of the movie I sympathised more with him than with Superman for a change. He’s a well intended guy that truly loved Lois and she just couldn’t return the favour.

Thought the movie as a whole was great. The style was all throwbackish. The story was solid. We all saw the kid thing coming but that didn’t make it any less effective. So his hair’s long because there isn’t a pair of scissors in the world that can cut it, right?

My major gripe with the movie was the blatent Superman = Jesus references hammered into my head. Somewhere between him getting stabed in the side and one of his half dozen cross poses I ran out of patience. I actually think it was handled less subtlely than in the Matrix where it was just way too much.

Good movie. Good fun. Go watch!

Phil Bond:

To those who’ve never bothered to try, it’s difficult to explain why they should care about Superman. So he’s a big boy scout, right? He’s got more power than anyone in the world, and does his best not to piss off elected officials while he uses it? That’s pretty vanilla, it must be conceded. The character is made appealing through subtle exploitation of his problem: namely, being an exceptionally lonely guy who can’t make a meaningful love connection. Easy opportunities for gratification are present, but he knows they bring no fulfillment.

I’m impressed with the balance struck between faithfulness to the original films and consciouness of a modern sensibility. The way Batman’s rogues gallery was hurriedly trotted out over the last decade, I’m hoping future Superman movies might tap into his more interesting (less hokey) opponents. I want Doomsday. I know it’s difficult to write him into a movie, but several times during Superman Returns, I was thinking “This style could work. I could see Doomsday in this world.” Drawn right, he’s as iconic as Superman, and given the chance to run around menacingly for a while and not go out like a bitch, I think he’d become a very popular halloween costume.

I know that’s a tangent, but that last paragraph illustrates the effect that movies this imaginative have on me: I want to wallow in their reality.

Zac Shipley:

Theres a very good chance I am in love with the idea of a Superman movie more than I actually like any of them. The Reeve films were fantastic for their time, but dated and hokey, especially considered against the recent rash of very seriously done comic movies like Bryan Singer’s X-Men.

Which is why its so maddening that Singer lost all his creative juice and vision when taking up the cape. He treats the 30 years that have passed as if it were nothing more than a leap in special effects and a need to cast new actors. Returns is a pound for pound stylistic retread of Donner’s original.

I’m not totally down on it, when the movie breaks free of those constraints, it soars. Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor is an excellent case of an appropriate update and made more in line with the way the character is known today. He’s vicious and angry and has a grudge and is no longer hiding behind the ascot. But when his ultimate plan is revealed, they might as well have left a sign advertising “Otisburg” on it. The realistic flair added didn’t pull Superman into a real world so much as it pulled him into a daytime talk show. It alternates between goofy and heartbreaking, exciting and embarrassing.

It is in fact, the best Superman movie yet. That much is not in question. But after David Goyer and Christopher Nolan knocked Batman Begins out of the park, Sam Raimi turned Spider-Man into a cultural icon, and Bryan Singer himself turned the brightly colored weirdos with histories too convoluted for their own good into the movie X-Men… well you can forgive me if I had some higher expectations.