Is the dust of X3 outta yer nostrils yet? It was a fun film but one that wasted the opportunity of cinamtic glory. Those who are invested in how Hollywood adapts comic icons will forever be haunted by what director Singer would have done if he had gotten to continue that franchise. The real question now is was his move to Superman a move in the right direction for fans who've been waiting for Superman to Return?
Well does he or doesn't he is more the question of this film NOT is he or isn't he no matter what the rest of my fellows in the press would have you believe. And the answer? I don't know. Is it my job to tell you whether you will enjoy this movie? Maybe. But I can't help telling you that as good a film as I think Singer has made I still heavily prefer the Donner version. This mature relationship based look at Superman offers less a man of steel or more of, a man among men and that isn't why I go to Superman movies.
I've never read the comics. I watched the George Reeves TV show when I was a kid (in reruns people- I ain't that old!) but my connection to the character is much more nebulous. A comic here, an episode there, the old Superfriends cartoons. As cool as the idea of Superman seemed to me I just always liked Batman and Spiderman and The Hulk better in almost every medium I encountered them.
But the one thing that did connect me to old blue was the savior metaphor. I'm one of those pitiful fools that really believes he needs one. And not just in some religious soul sense but in the sense of the physical world as well. The phrase "Look, up in the sky! It's a Bird! It's A Plane! It's Superman!" means that everything is going to be okay. That bus won't run over the cliff. That train won't derail, crimes will be justly dealt with by someone honest, someone worth believing in. Superman is a shadow of a larger truth. I am safe in this world because goodness does really exist in some pure personal form. Hope suddenly seems less abstract in a world where buses do run off cliffs, planes crash and I might get cancer. Superman saves me from, among other things, being a cynic.
This movie just didn't do that for me. for a big summer tentpole movie there are surprisingly few big special effects sequences involving Superman's powers. If you've seen the trailers then the only thing you've missed is seeing the plane sequence (which is breathtaking) in its entirety. The Donner movie promised, "You will believe a man can fly." And delivered. The Singer movie promises a solid bigger budget episode of Smallville set in the big city and delivers as well but that's all it delivers- a television drama dressed up to look like a big movie. Kevin Spacey is very good but drastically underused as Lex Luthor but the movie is missing its big showdown between him and Supes. Where are the monsters, the robots, something that might conceivably beat Superman, something that resonates with the fears we all have right now about the instability of the world?
The odd thing is there's a lot fo savior talk in the film. An old paperback in my office is titled The Gospel According to Superman and it's almost as if Singer used cliff's notes from it in shaping his take on the character. But this Supes seems more like a.. well...like a guy in a pair of tights than God in human form. Now Nacho Libre (another guy in tights) there is a god (small g) in human form!
The movie has Supes returning after a mysterious disappearance of a five years to reveal that he was searching out the remains of his long destroyed home planet Krypton. Since then the world has learned to get along without him, Lex Luthor has hatched yet another plan for world domination involving Supes abandoned Fortress of Solitude, and Lois Lane has become an engaged single mom who's more 5than just a little unhappy that Supes took off without a goodbye. Can Supes find a place in the world once again?
Singer makes a classic mistake banking the emotional resonance of personal revelations that come too soon in the film. By the end there are no real surprises. I never really took flight with the Lois Lane Superman midnight flight in the Donner movie and it doesn't work that much better here. Although the relationship is given plenty of room to breathe there's a lack of urgency to it. It lacks the epic scale that made Superman turn back the course of time at the end of the Donner version.
The problem isn't the cast. Brandon Routh is a fine, even complex Superman but he's in a pastel pastiche of a film that just doesn't understand what makes Superman different than say, Abraham Lincoln. In Young Mr. Lincoln director John Ford latched onto and augmented a cherished American myth. In Superman Returns director Brian Singer fails to get a grip on what makes Superman mythic. So does he or doesn't he. Oh yeah, Supes returns after discovering that his home planet of Krypton really is just space dust. But when he gets back it's only so the rest of us can realize- you can't go home again.