Superman Returns and Sucks a Lot
Living in Los Angeles, you complain about movies at your own risk. There's a technique to learn--if you see something you really didn't like, when the lights come up, you wait until you have some relative privacy and then quietly say what you have to say. Trash a movie in public, and someone who worked on it (or a friend of someone who worked on it) could be there.
There's another important reason not to be seen in Los Angeles bitching about bad films. LA is full of people who want to make movies--to write them, direct them, produce them. Everyone thinks they should be up there. If you're caught giving a two-and-a-half hour crapfest what it deserves, you ineveitably get the reply:
"Well, what have YOU done?"
The implication from the questioner is that this is what he/she DOES, pal. Or wants to do. Unless you're WAY higher on the Hollywood food chain, you have no credit to draw from in this discussion. It's a way of putting you down quickly, dismissing your opinion before you even make an argument.
Well, I'm nothing to nobody in Los Angeles. I know no one important and have no pull anywhere. I am the lowest form of human life, a freelance reality television stooge.
I have got to tell you, "Superman Returns" is a lousy movie.
Now, there are going to be plot points discussed here that, if you haven't seen the movie, will be unfamiliar to you. Don't worry, though. These spoilers will not ruin the movie for you. What WILL ruin the movie for you are the actors and the script.
First, the actors. There is not a single casting choice that was made that seems better than those in the 1979 movie. Every character seemed better defined and better acted in that version.
The guy playing Superman is doing a dead-ringer Christopher Reeve impression. If this were a radio show and not a movie, you'd swear at times that Reeve was playing the part. This is not in and of itself a bad thing, and he's actually pretty natural. You get the sense that if he were in, you know, a Superman movie...he'd be a good choice.
Superman's always kind of been a blank slate. Even his villains point this out--he's such a boy scout, there's not much to do with him. The great part about Superman is his supporting cast, and here they fail miserably.
Kevin Spacey has made an outstanding living playing incredibly dark characters with amazing comic timing (See: Seven, American Beauty, The Usual Suspects). Lex Luthor should be the role he was born to play. Instead, he seems to think he's in a mid-70s Bond flick. Gene Hackman was evil, arrogant, and hilarious. This guy's an angry bore.
Frank Langella sleepwalks as Perry White--I swear to God, he gives his performance with his eyes half shut. He's slurring his words. It's the Chief on percoset.
I liked Eva Marie Saint as Mrs. Kent. She was terrific with both her lines. But, when you compare her to Glenn Ford as Pa Kent in 1979, she still comes out behind.
The worst of it, though, comes from Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. Her problem is simple--she's not Lois Lane. In this movie, Lois Lane is shown solely as a weepy mess. That just shows a total disregard for every single portrayal of the character since the 1950s. There's not a single reason for Superman to give a shit about this woman except that her name happens to be Lois Lane.
These bad performances, though, cannot be blamed only on the actors. They were probably told that they'd be in a Superman movie. They were misinformed.
Of the TWO AND A HALF HOUR running time, less than an hour is devoted to Lex Luthor's scheme and Superman stopping him. The action. You know, the stuff you'd want to see. Instead, we all get a chick-lit novel starring Lois Lane.
The entire focus of the movie is Lois Lane and her reaction to Superman Returning from wherever he was for five years. And now she's with someone else, someone who is Not Superman. And she has a kid. Who's five years old. Well, she's in agony and she wants to believe that she doesn't need Superman so she's writing articles saying NOBODY needs him and she doesn't want anything more to do with Superman because she's NOT in love with him, damn it, she's NOT. (Anyone else bored to shit with this? It goes on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS.)
This is not Lois Lane. Not the character we know from the last 50+ years. Lois Lane wouldn't act like this. However, it seems minor compared to how badly they've fucked her up with the Mommy act.
Giving her a kid (Surprise! It's Superman's!) is a mistake that cannot be underestimated. Put simply, Superman can't have a kid. There is literally not a single thing about the Superman story or his relationship with Lois that is improved by giving them a child. In fact, it makes everything a lot less interesting.
Plus, it makes Superman an asshole--and I'm not even going into how the new love-'em-and-leave-'em Supes factors into this. No, toss them a kid and there are two options. I'll give them to you along with ACTUAL STORY POINTS:
1) Superman doesn't know he has a kid with Lois Lane. When he returns and discovers her living with a guy and with a child who assumes the guy is his Dad, Superman seduces Lois on the roof of the Daily Planet--essentially saying, "This guy can't compare to me. I'm Superman." He's just reminding her of his superiority, knowing she'll leave the father of her child. In this option, Superman is an asshole.
or
2) Superman realizes the kid is his. Still, Lois is living with this guy and a child who has grown up thinking of the guy as Dad. But he's a Super-kid. So Superman decides instead to "check up on the kid," and flirt with Lois, knowing that she's going to leave the guy eventually--breaking up the family and separating father and son. In this option, Superman is an asshole.
Giving Lois a kid also performs the counter-productive function of making her boring. It takes away all her edge. Now she's not fearless, brassy reporter Lois. She's crying-Mom-worrying-about-her-son Lois.
And here's the worst part of the whole kid thing: we're stuck with him. He can't go anywhere. For a generation, whenever there's a Superman movie, there's going to have to be this kid. It took 15+ years to reboot the franchise last time. That means because three guys (Bryan Singer and two credited screenwriters) were arrogant enough to believe they could improve on Superman's basic ingredients, you will never have the chance to see a good Superman movie until at least 2030.
A few other thoughts:
--The movie appears to have been made for women. It's basically the quasi-Lois's story and any story element that might make it interesting to guys is always subjugated to hers. If you're a guy, you just want to scream at the screen, "For Christ's sake, HIT SOMEBODY!!" Like I said, chick lit.
--Speaking of Christ, I get that Superman has always had Messianic elements in his story, but Jesus... Enough was enough.
--If you had told me that they were going to make a new Superman movie that would be a direct homage to the Donner film, ripping off the production design, the music, the titles, and bringing Marlon Brando back from the dead--plus having 200 million bucks worth of effects--I'd have thought it was going to be the best thing out this year. So, so disappointing...
--If you are going to make a 200 million dollar Superman movie, you should make damned sure that the best thing in it isn't a recycled piece of 25 year old music.
Contrary to how it must sound after the last few hundred words, I'm not one of those comic purists who think any deviation from some 4-color gospel is an unforgiveable sin. However, Superman is something that--even if you're only familiar with the Richard Donner movie--we can agree has definite boundaries. There are things it needs and things it can't have.
This movie fails on every non-visual level. It looks great, but it's totally empty. I'm sorry I rewarded the people who made it by going to see it. Don't you make the same mistake I did.
(Oh, and a final reason to hate it: It's a Superman movie made almost entirely in Australia--a wonderful place, but one which is taking jobs away from people I know. But I guess that solves one problem--you can tell everyone in LA how much you hate it and not worry about accidentally slagging it to a crew member. They're all in Sydney.)
There's another important reason not to be seen in Los Angeles bitching about bad films. LA is full of people who want to make movies--to write them, direct them, produce them. Everyone thinks they should be up there. If you're caught giving a two-and-a-half hour crapfest what it deserves, you ineveitably get the reply:
"Well, what have YOU done?"
The implication from the questioner is that this is what he/she DOES, pal. Or wants to do. Unless you're WAY higher on the Hollywood food chain, you have no credit to draw from in this discussion. It's a way of putting you down quickly, dismissing your opinion before you even make an argument.
Well, I'm nothing to nobody in Los Angeles. I know no one important and have no pull anywhere. I am the lowest form of human life, a freelance reality television stooge.
I have got to tell you, "Superman Returns" is a lousy movie.
Now, there are going to be plot points discussed here that, if you haven't seen the movie, will be unfamiliar to you. Don't worry, though. These spoilers will not ruin the movie for you. What WILL ruin the movie for you are the actors and the script.
First, the actors. There is not a single casting choice that was made that seems better than those in the 1979 movie. Every character seemed better defined and better acted in that version.
The guy playing Superman is doing a dead-ringer Christopher Reeve impression. If this were a radio show and not a movie, you'd swear at times that Reeve was playing the part. This is not in and of itself a bad thing, and he's actually pretty natural. You get the sense that if he were in, you know, a Superman movie...he'd be a good choice.
Superman's always kind of been a blank slate. Even his villains point this out--he's such a boy scout, there's not much to do with him. The great part about Superman is his supporting cast, and here they fail miserably.
Kevin Spacey has made an outstanding living playing incredibly dark characters with amazing comic timing (See: Seven, American Beauty, The Usual Suspects). Lex Luthor should be the role he was born to play. Instead, he seems to think he's in a mid-70s Bond flick. Gene Hackman was evil, arrogant, and hilarious. This guy's an angry bore.
Frank Langella sleepwalks as Perry White--I swear to God, he gives his performance with his eyes half shut. He's slurring his words. It's the Chief on percoset.
I liked Eva Marie Saint as Mrs. Kent. She was terrific with both her lines. But, when you compare her to Glenn Ford as Pa Kent in 1979, she still comes out behind.
The worst of it, though, comes from Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. Her problem is simple--she's not Lois Lane. In this movie, Lois Lane is shown solely as a weepy mess. That just shows a total disregard for every single portrayal of the character since the 1950s. There's not a single reason for Superman to give a shit about this woman except that her name happens to be Lois Lane.
These bad performances, though, cannot be blamed only on the actors. They were probably told that they'd be in a Superman movie. They were misinformed.
Of the TWO AND A HALF HOUR running time, less than an hour is devoted to Lex Luthor's scheme and Superman stopping him. The action. You know, the stuff you'd want to see. Instead, we all get a chick-lit novel starring Lois Lane.
The entire focus of the movie is Lois Lane and her reaction to Superman Returning from wherever he was for five years. And now she's with someone else, someone who is Not Superman. And she has a kid. Who's five years old. Well, she's in agony and she wants to believe that she doesn't need Superman so she's writing articles saying NOBODY needs him and she doesn't want anything more to do with Superman because she's NOT in love with him, damn it, she's NOT. (Anyone else bored to shit with this? It goes on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS.)
This is not Lois Lane. Not the character we know from the last 50+ years. Lois Lane wouldn't act like this. However, it seems minor compared to how badly they've fucked her up with the Mommy act.
Giving her a kid (Surprise! It's Superman's!) is a mistake that cannot be underestimated. Put simply, Superman can't have a kid. There is literally not a single thing about the Superman story or his relationship with Lois that is improved by giving them a child. In fact, it makes everything a lot less interesting.
Plus, it makes Superman an asshole--and I'm not even going into how the new love-'em-and-leave-'em Supes factors into this. No, toss them a kid and there are two options. I'll give them to you along with ACTUAL STORY POINTS:
1) Superman doesn't know he has a kid with Lois Lane. When he returns and discovers her living with a guy and with a child who assumes the guy is his Dad, Superman seduces Lois on the roof of the Daily Planet--essentially saying, "This guy can't compare to me. I'm Superman." He's just reminding her of his superiority, knowing she'll leave the father of her child. In this option, Superman is an asshole.
or
2) Superman realizes the kid is his. Still, Lois is living with this guy and a child who has grown up thinking of the guy as Dad. But he's a Super-kid. So Superman decides instead to "check up on the kid," and flirt with Lois, knowing that she's going to leave the guy eventually--breaking up the family and separating father and son. In this option, Superman is an asshole.
Giving Lois a kid also performs the counter-productive function of making her boring. It takes away all her edge. Now she's not fearless, brassy reporter Lois. She's crying-Mom-worrying-about-her-son Lois.
And here's the worst part of the whole kid thing: we're stuck with him. He can't go anywhere. For a generation, whenever there's a Superman movie, there's going to have to be this kid. It took 15+ years to reboot the franchise last time. That means because three guys (Bryan Singer and two credited screenwriters) were arrogant enough to believe they could improve on Superman's basic ingredients, you will never have the chance to see a good Superman movie until at least 2030.
A few other thoughts:
--The movie appears to have been made for women. It's basically the quasi-Lois's story and any story element that might make it interesting to guys is always subjugated to hers. If you're a guy, you just want to scream at the screen, "For Christ's sake, HIT SOMEBODY!!" Like I said, chick lit.
--Speaking of Christ, I get that Superman has always had Messianic elements in his story, but Jesus... Enough was enough.
--If you had told me that they were going to make a new Superman movie that would be a direct homage to the Donner film, ripping off the production design, the music, the titles, and bringing Marlon Brando back from the dead--plus having 200 million bucks worth of effects--I'd have thought it was going to be the best thing out this year. So, so disappointing...
--If you are going to make a 200 million dollar Superman movie, you should make damned sure that the best thing in it isn't a recycled piece of 25 year old music.
Contrary to how it must sound after the last few hundred words, I'm not one of those comic purists who think any deviation from some 4-color gospel is an unforgiveable sin. However, Superman is something that--even if you're only familiar with the Richard Donner movie--we can agree has definite boundaries. There are things it needs and things it can't have.
This movie fails on every non-visual level. It looks great, but it's totally empty. I'm sorry I rewarded the people who made it by going to see it. Don't you make the same mistake I did.
(Oh, and a final reason to hate it: It's a Superman movie made almost entirely in Australia--a wonderful place, but one which is taking jobs away from people I know. But I guess that solves one problem--you can tell everyone in LA how much you hate it and not worry about accidentally slagging it to a crew member. They're all in Sydney.)
posted by Matthew at 10:17 PM
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