Superman Returns

It’s rare when I don’t have anything to complain about after watching a movie. As some of my friends will tell you, I like to complain about movies. If you read my Brokeback Mountain review, you already know this, too. Superman Returns is one of those rare movies that did everything well enough that I can’t say anything bad about it.

Unlike Batman Begins, which retold the genesis of Batman, Superman Returns does everything it can to maintain continuity with old Christopher Reeve movies. Director Bryan Singer—a comic book geek—went so far as to use archive footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, Superman’s father, from the first movie.

Singer put a lot of effort into maintaining the idea that it’s the same Superman from the four Christopher Reeve movies. Not only does Brandon Routh look vaguely similar to Christopher Reeve, he also channels Reeve’s Superman voice startlingly well at times.

Even the opening title sequence pays homage to the original movie series. The names fly towards the audience the same way they did in the original movies, and composer John Ottman—a longtime collaborator with Singer—used John Williams’ original Superman theme before segueing into the wonderful original score for the movie.

At the beginning of the movie, we learn that Superman has been missing from Metropolis for five years. He didn’t say anything when he left and the world is just learning to live without him. Lois Lane just won the Pulitzer prize for her article “Why the world doesn’t need Superman.” She’s engaged to Perry White’s nephew, with whom she has a small boy.

Then Superman crashes to Earth in a crystalline spaceship at the Kents’ farm in Smallville. He went to Krypton—his home planet—to see if there were any remnants of his race left, but Krypton was destroyed when its star went nova. So Superman, as Clark Kent, returns to Metropolis and to his job at the Daily Planet. He wants to leave Superman behind and live out the rest of his life as the boring, normal Clark Kent. That is until Lois’ life is in danger. He rushes into action without skipping a beat and saves the day in a very public way.

After that, Superman is back and with gusto, saving people around the world. From that point on, the movie focuses on the ramifications of Superman’s return. Specifically, it revolves around Lois and her lingering feelings for Superman. To make matters worse for Lois, who honestly tries to separate herself from Superman, she’s constantly being pushed towards him by her role as a reporter. Superman is also doing everything he can to be close to Lois, going so far at one point as to become Creepy Stalker Superman—he follows Lois home and peers into her house with his X-ray vision and uses his super-hearing to listen in to her conversation with her fiancé about Superman.

And this is one part of the movie I loved. Instead of the characters being carbon copies of their comic book personas or even the characters from the previous movies, these characters have changed. These major character shifts for Superman and Lois are not paradoxical to the continuity of the previous movies. They are the same people but their experiences have changed them over the last five years.

Lois, once the single-minded ace reporter, now has a fiancé and a child to worry about. She’s settled down—somewhat. Superman, on the other hand, has learned that he’s alone in the universe so he’s desparate for companionship, despite the reassurances from Martha Kent and Jor-El that he’s not alone amongst the humans. Even knowing that Lois has a family, he still pursues her romantically. Instead of Superman’s usual black-and-white sense of morality, he’s putting himself in a morally questionable situation with Lois.

Lex Luthor, now played masterfully by Kevin Spacey kept most of his original traits. He’s smart, devious, and pure evil. Unlike with the other movies, however, Luthor’s evil is palpable at times. He nearly kills Superman with his own hands. He’s no longer a cartoonish villain. He’s a real bastard.

Although I’ve never been much of a fan of Parker Posey before, I loved her in the role as Kitty Kowalski, Lex Luthor’s female companion. She’s got some great one-liners and she plays off of Kevin Spacey like a pro. Her character also shows some emotional depth and moral conflict around the climax of the movie, which was pleasantly surprising to see.

Lex Luthor’s plan to create a new continent out of Kryptonian crystal and Kryptonite (killing billions in the process) is just contrived enough to be an authentic comic book supervillain plot but not too ridiculous as to detract from the story. It makes for some spectacular visuals as well—the crystals grow to form the land mass, and any time someone (whether Superman, Lex Luthor in his helicopter, or Lois and family in a seaplane) flies near the crystals, you can see them still growing. It’s a subtle effect but it assures us that the director didn’t forget any details just because the plot was moving along.

Combine all of the aspects of this movie and they make for a teriffic movie and one of the best superhero movies ever made—which is actually quite an accomplishment now that we have Batman Begins, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and X-Men and X2 to compare against.