I Watch Films: Superman Returns
Superman Returns
Superman’s been missing for five years, returns to Earth. (As Martha Kent is alive when Superman (Brandon Routh, doing an intermittently good Christopher Reeve impression) returns, the events of Superman III and IV are being ignored in this film). Astronomers had discovered the location of the remnants of Krypton, his home world, and he went to look for survivors, found none. He returns to his life as Clark Kent to discover that Lois Lane is engaged to Richard White, the nephew of editor Perry White, who is omni-competent, including being a pilot. A good match for the omni-competent Lois who has a five year old child, Jason. Lois has won a Pulitzer Prize for her article “Why The World Doesn’t Need Superman”.
Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has got out of jail – without Superman’s testimony he was found not guilty on appeal – and he has got himself made heir to an old woman’s fortune. When she dies he uses her money to mount an expedition to Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude, stealing crystals. Experimenting with them he causes a power outage across the East Coast – including a 747 carrying a new Space Shuttle, and also members of the world’s press (Lois Lane, asking awkward questions). Superman makes his reappearance saving the plane and also mitigating other disasters from the power outage.
Lois is assigned the Superman story; she wants to follow the power outage. Finding the source at the mansion, she sneaks aboard Luthor’s yacht and she and Jason are captured. Luthor explains his plan; using Kryptonian crystals to make a new landmass, beachfront property. By raising a new landmass from the water it will flood other lands, only those who serve him will move to the new land. For a moment Jason seems effected by Kryptonite and Luther asks the question the film has been leading up to; who is Jason’s father?
He's distracted, launches the crystal seed, it grows a weird crystalline island and Metropolis floods. Lois is menaced by a henchman, who is crushed by a piano, which is implied was pushed by Jason using super-strength. Superman has to save people from the flood, so it’s down to Richard to grab the Daily Planet’s seaplane (?) when Lois radios in.
It’s good that people other than Superman have things to do in the film. And it’s good to have Superman with a bit of vulnerability. But here we have the creeping problem that all later Superman films (and TV shows) have; Clark Kent is a bit cool*. He also vanishes from the film. And we’re left with the question, if this is a sequel to Superman II and Lois’s memory was wiped, what’s Superman’s responsibility here? A very interesting question this film never answers, and the sequel was cancelled so is never addressed.
Does it recapture the magic of the earlier Supermans? Not quite, and that’s because it isn’t quite trying to do that. It’s bringing it forward into the 21st Century, what turns out to be an awkward bridging moment in Superhero films. Superman went on to be darker and grittier with mixed success in The Man Of Steel. Meanwhile Marvel Studios created a film franchise juggernaut with their own ideas of how superhero films should go, drawing more from the X-Men films (2 of which were directed by Bryan Singer, the director of this film, an early example of the “is there really only one guy to go to” question that has plagued superhero franchises and, thanks to sexual harassment allegations, exposed a terrible weakness of it).
Watch This: Superman film that manages to keep much of the
spirit and adventure while bringing it forward
Don’t Watch This: Indicated possible ways forward for
Superman that never happened so are annoyingly left dangling
* When he’s having a conversation with Jimmy Olson (also a bit cool) about how Lex Luthor got out of prison, Jimmy asks him how much that pisses off Superman. And Clark doesn’t stumble over his words, embarrassed by the use of the word piss, saying that Superman wouldn’t put it that way, but I’m sure he’s peeved by it, he says “a lot”. He is a man of his time, and not full of old-fashioned courtesy and good-manners.
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