Nineteen full years after the disastrous Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Warner Brothers pictures attempts to make the Man of Steel fly again. The question inevitably arises: does he?
Before I start this review I'd like to get something out of the way, a little thematic aspect of the movie that doesn't really have anything to do with its overall craftsmanship but which proves bothersome just the same. I hate the Jesus Christ take on Superman. I despise it, for reasons I don't think I have to explain. Well, there's one thing John Byrne and I have in common.
That aside, the movie is not the magnum opus I had hoped it would be.
It is by no means a bad movie, and is in fact head-and-shoulders better than X-Men 3, the movie that director Bryan Singer abandoned to do this. But there was so much that Singer set out to do that the movie pretty much gets out of hand midway through.
The plot is pretty much familiar to anyone who surfs the internet or even just browses the entertainment pages of any daily newspaper: after a trip to space to find his lost homeworld Krypton, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns home to Earth to find out that five years have passed, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has given birth to a son (some shaggy-haired kid who looks like yet another Culkin clone) and moved in with Perry White's nephew (James Marsden), and that the world apparently doesn't need him anymore.
This is the first Superman movie that's been released in nearly two decades. It's the first Superman movie to be released in the post Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and even Spider-Man CGI era. There is so much that can be done that wasn't possible in the 70s or the 80s. This movie purports to be a sequel to Superman 2, thereby (wisely) abandoning the last two movies of the franchise, the last of which killed it. And yet, for a sequel, it has surprisingly little to say that's new.
The movie's single biggest stumbling block is the clumsy execution of the Lois-Superman love story. So much of the movie's marketing revolved around it, to the extent that one of the earliest production stills released was the close up of the two of them just before they fly off the Daily Planet and all around Metropolis. Bryan Singer even declared "this is the first chick flick I've ever made." The thing is, it all feels like a marketing stunt, because it just doesn't work.
Superman and Lois Lane have a very rich history together, in both the films and the comics. We're not talking about boy-meets-girl, young love here. It's a long time sort of thing, that is not at all reflected in the actor's performances. There is no regret, no sense of longing, no...forgive me for using the word...angst over love lost. There is no chemistry between them whatsoever. We're told that they should be in love, but we aren't given any convincing reason to believe it.
If Singer had wanted to establish a dynamic of people with such a storied romance, he shouldn't have gone for such young stars. Kate Beckinsale, for one, would have made a great Lois because apart from being gorgeous, she brings a certain maturity to the table, due in no small part to the fact that she already has a kid in real life. While there has been much hullaballoo about the casting of Brandon Routh, who admittedly bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Reeve, Singer should have gone for an actor who could convincingly play romance. Routh simply can't sell us on the idea that he's in love with Lois Lane. Well, apparently we now know why Bryan Singer didn't bother to write any real love stories into his X-Men movies: he can't do romance to save his life.
The second biggest problem is the way the hero-villain dynamic is played out. Yet again, Lex Luthor (given the hambone treatment by Oscar winning Spacey) has a diabolical scheme that involves him becoming rich and powerful at the expense of billions of lives. As in the earlier films, he has included the use of kryptonite in his plans to protect himself against Superman. And again, Superman walks right into Luthor's kryptonite-laced lair.
I seem to remember a vivid image of Christopher Reeve chained to a huge hunk of kryptonite in the first Superman movie. This movie supposedly only takes place five or six years after that, so I wonder why on earth it doesn't even occur to Superman that Luthor would use kryptonite against him again?
See, the trouble with making a hero so powerful that he only has one known weakness is that the only way for an infinitely weaker opponent to take advantage of that weakness more than once is for the hero to be a complete and utter moron, which in this case, Superman apparently is. Kudos actually goes to Luthor for outsmarting Superman yet again.
See, if this were told as a remake, these concerns would be non-issues. Lois and Superman, having only just met, could be as awkward and devoid of history as they wanted to be, and Luthor could zap Superman with as much kryptonite as could fit the screen, and it wouldn't matter, because it would all be shiny and new.
As parts of a sequel, however, these little details simply don't add up.
The good news, however, is that as an action director, Bryan Singer is in absolute top form. He is every inch the auteur who had Nightcrawler kick the ass of the American President's entire entourage, who had Wolverine gut the U.S. military blackops agents invading the Xavier mansion, and who had Storm take out U.S. fighter jets with tornadoes. Singer's sense of scope is very much intact and it was this that X-men 3 was sorely lacking, all things considered.
The space shuttle piggyback sequence was perfectly conceived and executed, and it was a properly auspicious way for Superman to make his grand return. The homages to both the Action Comics artwork and the Reeve flying sequences were also well done, although in the case of the latter it once again reinforces my opinion that this should have been presented as a remake instead of a sequel.
Guy Hendrix Dyas' reimagining of the fortress of solitude is absolutely awe-inspiring, and I'm only sorry there weren't more sequences involving it. His vision of Luthor's rock palace towards the end is obviously derived from the fortress and is therefore not quite as spectacular being cast in black and grey hues, but it's still imposing to behold. When I saw the ice cathedral that was the fortress, I had a good idea where a healthy portion of this movie's $200 million plus budget went. It was, in this instance, money well spent.
Sony Pictures Imageworks justifies the fact that they were chosen over other visual effects outfits by showing that the effects of this movie could not possibly have been done any better. Like many people, I'm sure, I am a huge, huge fan of that bullet-bouncing-off-Superman's-eye sequence. Incredible stuff.
The visuals I expected of Singer were all there, but storywise, this is still nowhere near what he threw together in X2.
I don't know if there will be a sequel anytime soon, given that this mammoth-budgeted movie's box-office returns aren't quite as robust as people have predicted, but I hope that next time around Singer brings a solid, FRESH, take on the Man of Steel to go with his stunning visuals.
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