Hello and welcome to In Defense Of (working title), a subsection of my blog where I talk about movies that many people do not enjoy for reasons but still have people who like it for reasons. And to start it off, I am going to talk about the 2006 film Superman Returns. While it had gotten some solid reviews from critics during the time of release, having Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings in the 70s (76% and 72/100, respectively) audiences have been sort of torn on it, either liking it or hating it. While the criticism has been into more of the favorable aspect of it, there are still some detractors of the movie, usually taking their hate onto the length of it and lack of action. It could be easier to say that, "Hey, at least it was better than the previous sequels" and call it a day but lets try and figure out what is good and bad about this movie. I'll also try to ignore Man of Steel as well, maybe in hopes that none of what that movie did will influence what my opinion on this is.
First, lets start with the cast and how well they did their job. I'll include some of the supporting cast towards the end of this section but this will focus on the main cast first. The main leads who played Superman and Lois Lane (Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth) I think did a decent job but of course there are some issues that are rather noticeable. One of the bigger points is the ages of both of them, though I might give Routh a pass on this due to him and Christopher Reeve being around the same age during their first appearance as Superman when comparing the two (around 25-26 for both). But still, in this movie, both of them do look a lot younger than they really should, especially since it is supposed to take place 5 years after Superman 2. The experience is kind of jarring especially with Bosworth as Lois, since in Superman Returns, she is supposed to be engaged and have a 5 year old son yet she looks like she could easily be in her early 20s. Aside from that, they both do a rather okay job in their roles and it still is kind of intriguing how similar Routh looks like Reeve but isn't like a carbon copy. Now lets go onto the main villain of the movie, Lex Luthor played by Kevin Spacey. I do have an issue with Luthor being the main villain in a Superman movie again (as he was at least involved in three of the previous four movies) and his plan being similar to the first movie but it is kind of nitpicking really since I do think that Kevin Spacey does a wonderful job and it was an example of near perfect casting. It would be easy to compare it to the way Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor in the previous films and there are some simiarities but while Hackman's portrayal was kind of campy, like a regular comic book villain, Spacey does make him rather a serious villain. It is rather over the top at times as well but that's to be expected and it makes his performance all the more enjoyable.
The supporting cast all does a rather decent job. There is James Marsden as Richard, Perry White's nephew and Lois' fiancee who as a character was rather underdeveloped, just seeming to be nothing more than a wall between Superman and Lois. There was also Frank Langella as Perry White too, who was not in the movie that much but still did a decent job. I didn't know who Parker Posey was for a while (she played Kitty, Lex's henchwoman) but it was a rather interesting role and she seemed to fit as a decent foil to Luthor at times. Also looking up at the credits, the movie also had cameo appearances from people who were involved in the Adventures of Superman show from the fifties. Those people being Jack Larson and Noel Neill, who in Superman Returns appeared as a bartender and the elderly woman Lex Luthor married for her money respectively. Those are some rather nice touches although kind of obtuse as well for cameos.
There is now the movie itself, one of the things that I'll start off with is the plot. It starts off with Clark Kent returning from his five year voyage in search for any other surviving Kryptonians, which proved a fruitless effort. During the time, Lex got out of prison and acquired money from an elderly woman. Using that money, he goes to Superman's fortress of solitude and steals some crystals, learning later on that they can be used to create new land masses. His evil plan is similar to that from the first movie, where Lex Luthor wants to create new land that he can end up selling for a high profit at the expense of destroying part of the USA; in the first movie, it was using missiles to separate the east and west coasts from their respective spots and in this one its creating a large land mass that will cause sea levels to rise and flood out other parts of the world. There is somewhat a lack of originality in this as it is kind of a retread of the first film but that also kind of comes with the territory of having Lex as a villain in the first place. Because he is unable to fight Superman one on one, he has to rely on his smarts in order to get a plan to work. There is also kind of a similarity to Lex's endgame from Superman 2, as he sold out Lois and Superman to General Zod in order to get his hands on Australia, again for real estate money. It would be interesting to see Lex have a plan that doesn't rely on real estate gains for once in a movie.
Now for Superman, he returns to Earth and struggles with being away for the past five years. The most noticeable being the relationship with Lois Lane, as she is now engaged and has a child. She also has won a Pulitzer Prize for an article called "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman." This brings up an interesting point as to whether or not an article like that is actually true or not. I could bring up Batman as an example, as in that series, Batman acts as a protector of Gotham City from all the crime that has run rampant throughout. It may seem like a good thing but there have been discussions on whether or not he actually has worsened the crime in Gotham by his presence, inadvertently creating or bringing in super criminals who may not have come into the city if it weren't for Batman. As for myself, I have not read enough comics to attest for the truth on this but from some of the Batman movies like the '89 film, he was partially responsible for the Joker in that one. This could also be attested to Superman as well. I don't know if Lex Luthor would still be doing most of his schemes the way he does without having to worry about him, but there is also the case of General Zod, Ursa, and Non. In the events of Superman 2, Superman threw a hydrogen bomb into space in order to stop a terrorist plot and as a result, accidentally freed the three kryptonians from the Phantom Zone. There is more I could go on but I'm already getting ahead of myself. How this can relate to Superman Returns could be that (although my memory might be bad on this) but that the kryptonite that Luthor and Co. steal in this movie came from Superman's reentry to Earth. It is purely coincidental but isn't that usually the case for most of these things and the kryptonite I'll get to later.
So Superman returns to action during a scene where a flight test involving a space shuttle is disrupted due to the experiment Lex was doing with the crystals, leaving the plane in a free fall. He tries to stop the plane from crashing and to be honest, this was a really well done scene. It does serve as a way for Superman to get back into the whole superhero business and the physics that actually goes into him trying to find out how to slow the plane down makes the scene all the more suspenseful, with the wings breaking off as he tries to grab a hold of them is an example. In the previous films, which is probably due to the quality of the effects at the time, would have had him stop the plane by holding it from the wing and having it just stay in place. This is one of the problems people had with the movie though as while the actions scenes are well done and the special effects are pretty good, they are few of them in the movie itself. This does leave the movie as more of a character driven film as most of it does revolve around Clark trying to readjust to his life after all the time he has been away, which I actually like. This does have to do with the issue of Superman being nearly invincible that it would be hard to make a tense action filled movie without having villains like Zod or Doomsday to fight or having people equipped with kryptonite at all times.
So after a while, Lois and her family are taken hostage by Lex, who reveals his evil plan and it is discovered that Lois' son was conceived by Superman, which would bring up a lot of questions to Lois which makes the whole memory wipe kiss from the end of the second movie all the more worse. Superman then goes to rescue them and afterwards tries to stop the villains who have succeeded in creating their landmass using kryptonite. Superman is made weak as he comes into contact with the land and Lex's henchmen end up beating him up, leaving Lex to stab him in the back with a shard of kryptonite and throw him into the ocean, leaving him for dead. He does get saved by Richard though, so at least he serves a point in the movie after all. After being saved, Superman lifts the land mass and throws it out into space, which weakens him to the point where he free falls to the earth and is assumed dead. But in the end, he is alright and the movie ends as he is ready to continue being a superhero. There is the problem with how in the world Superman was able to survive long enough to get the landmass out of orbit due to it being filled with his number one weakness which when he first came into contact with weakened him rather easily. I guess it does serve as kind of the suspenseful climax but that does make it somewhat illogical.
Now comes the consensus of whether or not Superman Returns is a good movie that does not deserve all the hate it gets. I haven't talked about Bryan Singer and some of the stuff he was involved with prior to this film as it does sort of get into my final opinion which is: it is a rather good movie. Now it isn't a perfect movie and the lack of action does hinder it a little but I think that it is a well done character driven film involving Superman, which is kind of the only way this could have worked. Now with Bryan Singer having left production of the third X-Men movie to do this, I think that it was the best thing he could have done even though it was kind of a bad move on his part due to leaving that series high and dry. And as of recent, the X-Men movies really have not aged well and reception has grown negative which could be due to the success of the Dark Knight trilogy and maybe Singer directing The Last Stand would not have saved that movie from being the train wreck people consider it to be. So back to Superman Returns, it has its problems but it is a better film than people give it credit for, especially compared to the other superhero films Singer directed prior.
Next On In Defense Of: Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
No comments:
Post a Comment