SUPERMAN RETURNS

“You wrote that the world doesn't need a saviour, but every day I hear people crying for one.”

When one looks at the work, frustration, manpower, and most importantly money involved in the making of Superman Returns, it is really an eye-opener. Whether they like it or not, Warner Bros. spent more than $300 million bringing the greatest superhero to the big screen, with the project starting in the early nineties. Nic Cage was slated to play the man in the tights. Tim Burton would direct. There was even a time period in which a script penned by Kevin Smith was green-lit for the project, but that idea crashed as well. At the end of the day Bryan Singer, the architect behind the first two X-Men movies, ended up in the director’s chair. He knew he had his work cut out for him, and it is fair to say that he chose to leave a ‘safe project’ in the final X-Men installment for the movie he has always wanted to make. Nearly everyone in the world knows about the film, and many know how much money and how many careers are at stake due to this project.

These are stupendous, collosal odds. Bryan Singer has stared them down and given us the greatest superhero movie of the comic book era. He nailed it.

Superman Returns takes place five years after the events occuring in Richard Donner’s Superman II. Superman has been absent in this time, looking for his home planet Krypton after scientists discovered remnants of the planet in space. He calls what he found in space a “graveyard”. What he finds returning to Earth can’t be considered much better to him. The world he returns to is now a post-9/11 mess, in which one can surf the channels on TV and find bombings, hurricanes, murders, and nightmare scenarios and shrug them off, as they are everyday occurences now. Since he has left the world has forsaken him. The lowest blow comes when he sees that Lois Lane is now engaged, has a son (who may or may not be Superman’s), and won a Pulitzer Prize for her article titled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman”.

Brandon Routh is following in Christopher Reeve’s footsteps, playing the Man of Steel with a very limited-known filmography before. He plays Superman as well as Clark Kent better than anyone is giving him credit for, to my delight. As Clark Kent he bumbles around, stutters, stumbles, and is gawky, but loveable. We all know though that Clark Kent is simply an act, an act used to fool people that he is not a charasmatic superhero who can fly faster than a speeding bullet. AS Superman Routh excels as well. Many people have knocked his performance, saying that it is too much like Christopher Reeve’s iconic take from the 1970s. It is, but for a reason. Routh nails every facial expression, hair wave, flexed muscle, every single motion that Reeve made in his films because Superman Returns is a continuation of the series. This should not be an original performance.

Stepping into Gene Hackman’s boots as Lex Luthor is Kevin Spacey, who you may remember has had previous success with Bryan Singer (winning an Academy Award in The Usual Suspects). Spacey is an intelligent actor, and understands the character well. He realizes that Lex knows he plays second fiddle to Superman, and hates it. He is selfish and will capitalize on any oppurtunity to advance himself, as seen in the opening scene. An old woman lies on her death bed, and thanks a man for ‘giving her the greatest pleasure of her life’. We realize the man is Lex, who promply removes his wedding ring, tosses it into a glass, and leaves the mansion (which he has now inherited) with his minions. This moment defines Lex: he is smart, capable, and gets what he wants (most of the time).

Lex’s master plan is to steal crystals from Superman’s Fort of Solitude and build a new continent with them. This is where Superman and Lexs’ paths cross (sadly they only share one scene). Superman is as surprised as anyone to find this out, for when he left Earth five years ago Lex was to be sent to prison. It’s funny how the justice system works, even against mad scientists/bad guys.

While the main story for Superman Returns is an oppurtunity for impressive special effects (and they are very impressive), and they are used, it is not an action movie. This is a great drama. At its core the movie is about the necessity for good in the world. After Superman left, the Lois Lane and the rest of the world thought they could manage on their own without the Man of Steel. But alas, Superman is disheartened to return to a post-9/11 Earth dominated by fear, doubt, anger, and paranoia. It is a great social commentary, as well as a great story abut Superman.

As Lois Lane Kate Bosworth takes an oppurtunity for stardom and originality and relishes in it. Her performance as Lane will not win her many awards, but it is a breath of fresh air. The character is spunky, independent, and wants Superman to know it. Or is she? Is she just trying to deny her feelings, as well as the possibility that he is the father of her son? She is engaged to a good man, but refuses to set a date for the wedding.

Clark Kent is as tortured as Lois, if not more. He has nearly unstoppable powers, and saves the world routinely, but can not confide in anyone. His birthparents are dead, as well as everyone else from his home planet. He has two personalities, one who loves Lois, while Lois loves the other. At its heart this film is about Superman’s emotional dilemma, about a man who saves a world that doesn’t want to be saved, and loves a woman who he can have but at the same time can not.

This is Bryan Singer’s crowning opus of superheros. If the X-Men films were the warm-up runs, Superman Returns is the marathon. It is an epic, lush, gorgeous romance that blew me away in every frame.

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