It’s a SUPER disappointment…
**SPOILERS AHEAD – STOP HERE **
It pains me a great deal to tell you this. I really hope you ultimately DO NOT agree with me. This is not a dodge; I actually feel that way. Also, I think the movie will be a huge success, despite whatever kind of reviews it gets. Maybe we just need a “Superman” escapist movie this hot summer. Brandon Routh (rhymes with “mouth”) a handsome, relatively unknown 26-year-old actor from the small town of Norwalk, Iowa, who looks quite a bit like Christopher Reeve, can certainly fill the bill as Clark Kent/Superman. Any movie that has a budget of $260 million dollars deserves your attention. It’s just that I believe it could have been done better.
So, before you verbally bludgeon me, let me explain some things about myself. Please don’t call me a stupid old lady who knows nothing about superheroes. I am a true media child of the 1940s. My mother tells me that I mimicked radio and later TV commercial scripts beginning at age four. I can recall going to the movies as the highlight of my week – Saturday mornings at the tiny North Miami Theater on West Dixie Highway, or the Rosetta in Miami Shores. If I was a really good girl, I got to go to the Olympia Theater on E. Flagler Street in downtown Miami, Florida, the theater that had a dark blue ceiling and twinkling “stars” which were little lights in the ceiling. I was always glad Mom gave me the middle name “Star” – it’s even on my birth certificate!
I loved to read “Superman” comics, as well as the adventures of many of the other superheroes, if I could afford the price of the comic books, which I think was ten cents each. Even after I could read pretty well in elementary school, there was someone named “Uncle Don” on WQAM-AM radio and later on television, who read us the Sunday comic strips, while we followed along with the newspaper. I really liked “Batman” too – and “Wonder Woman.” I remember Mom buying me big clunky metal jewelry so I could fantasize playing “Bullets and Bracelets.”
But my favorite was “Superman.” Maybe it was that little dark haired spit curl in the middle of his forehead – well, it worked its magic. I was hooked, and have been ever since. I watched George Reeves, and then I watched Christopher Reeve – and Dean Cain.
While visiting in New York City last month, I was so hyped about this movie that I took a picture of the huge poster for the film (I don’t usually do these things, mind you). I was happy that the film company reset the movie to open two days before that poster said it would. (Notice it says June 30, not June 28). Then, when we flew home on June 2nd, and I had a chance to open a box of typed movie reviews from WEEI-AM Boston. I looked for my original review for “Superman” (1978). When I couldn’t find that, I thought I’d check for a tape of the radio interview I did with director Richard Donner. We had a little chemistry going as I recall… His birth year was 1930, but he later married Lauren Schuler Donner, born in 1949. Oh, drat. I talked to him about “The Omen” in 1976, but not “Superman.” Perhaps those were bad signs, but I ignored them.
Then I thought I wouldn’t be invited to the press screening. I heard that this was going to be the biggest movie of the summer, and really didn’t want to miss it. I put out a distress email to other reviewers and the publicist, and found out the invitations were in the mail.
The cherished letter finally arrived on Monday 6/19, but I was not allowed to bring a guest. (Sometimes access to preview movies is restricted to just the person with press credentials.) My husband usually accompanies me to most screenings. His mind works differently than mine, and I find his input quite valuable in sorting out characters, plots, motivations, script problems, other possible endings, and all kinds of details –- things I might miss. Truly, two heads are better than one. It must be his engineering and software-oriented brain. Plus, he was a big fan of comic books and movies even before he met me, and he’s five years older, too, born in 1934.
But I went solo to the “Superman Returns” screening. No problem. Thursday 6/22 was a beautiful day, cool, almost crisp, and clear – and the screening was in downtown Portland at 9:30 AM. I got up at 5:00 AM to shower, get dressed, have breakfast, and do all my household chores early – so I could have the whole morning free. I drove to the Tri-Met station and enjoyed the train ride into town. (I’m an Honored Citizen now, so the all-zone ticket cost me just eighty cents!)
The sky was exceedingly blue – and so were the rap lyrics some fellow was singing on the train! I recalled my days on the subway while living in New York with my ex-husband, who wanted to be a film director. I would have been happy as a script supervisor, or some other film crew member, but it was harder for women to get these jobs in the 1960s. I thought about all the new techniques used by film directors these days. Dr. Sidney Head of the University of Miami, and Rudy Bretz from UCLA, my film teachers at college – would be amazed at all the technology if they were here now! I recalled the bright blue, yellow, and red “Superman” of the printed comic books – before the “Superman” story was ever filmed.
The preview theater was mostly empty. Just a couple of other reviewers from the print media – not as many as usual. The movie began with fabulous visuals, accompanied by the soaring John Williams music (with new film music provided by John Ottman) during the opening credits. It was gorgeous and my heart jumped. I hummed along in my softest voice; this was music I remembered and enjoyed tremendously. What followed the credits was about an hour of (for me) unnecessary exposition. How “Superman” was sent to Earth by his real parents, etc. etc. Krypton was a dying planet etc. etc. Did the audience even need that kind of trackback? There was a trumped-up scene of Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) apparently getting the Kent legacy by a faulty will signing with Kent’s adopted earth mother on her deathbed. There were no witnesses and this would be truly illegal – any person knows that. After that, there was a kind of a creepy and jumbled flashback rendition of the original story as the planet Krypton was in its last days. The little boy arrives from space and then he grows up to explore his super abilities, jumps off the roof of the barn, and bounds through the corn as if on a bungie cord attached to a “sky hook.”
OK. I kept looking at my watch, and so did the reviewer sitting in front of me. When would the backtracking end and the current story really begin? I am not in the audience to relive my childhood recollections of “Superman” comic books, movies, and television, but I kept a grip on it. After all, it’s superfluous to me, but maybe not to the movie’s target audience.
The computer graphics images – and there were supposedly more than a thousand of them in this film – were quite fantastic. Maybe they could be compared to the Hubble space imagery on steroids! But we are now dripping in movies with CGI getting better and better – and the “ho-hum” factor is beginning to fatigue me. The art deco Metropolis has been visually stitched together and looks like no other city I’ve ever seen (it isn’t New York City, folks).
Now we get to the real story. Clark Kent returns to his old stomping grounds, the City Room of the imaginary “Daily Planet” newspaper. Only – can you even believe this? There are no computers. What era is this? Are we set back in time here? This is all very confusing. Never mind, here’s Perry White (Frank Langella), in his brusk fashion, demanding reporters get coverage on “Superman” once again. It would be good if they had cellphones and laptops and it seemed like the 21st century in reality.
Another slight hitch here. Although Clark gets his job back, the ever-youthful photographer Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) tells him that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) hasn’t been waiting around for him while he was gone. She has somehow acquired a live-in boyfriend named Richard (James Marsden) and she also has a small son! All of this without benefit of marriage! And whose son IS he? I’ll leave you to ponder if this is a family movie. I thought Clark and Lois got married somewhere along the line. How do I tell my young grandkids that Lois is a…a…? You get the point.
What insues for the next bunch of the total of 154 minutes is “Superman” dodging and weaving around Lex Luthor (the only really bad guy in the film), now out of prison and figuring out some idiotic plan to dissolve pretty much the whole East Coast of the United States and develop huge real estate holdings somewhere in what looks like the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. (With real-weather flooding from South Carolina northwards into Maryland yesterday and today, looks like he got a head start.) Clark Kent/Superman is stymied and relegated to looking on (or being saved by) Lois, her boyfriend (who is seemingly not the least bit jealous), and the young boy. It’s a complete and ready-made family of three -- oops! Superman makes four, this handsome, extra-added God-like appendage.
I’m not going to try to expose you to any more of the plot machinations, or the astounding and controversial ending. Yes, there is more grist for the mill if this picture is successful. (Sarcastic suggested title for a sequel: “Superman Returns XXX: And We Hope, For The Very Last Time.”)
Something extraordinary has been lost here. The main actor has saved Metropolis, for now. But he has traded real love for what? Two males, one female and a little boy more or less in a living arrangement -- and only because Superman decided to "find himself" and searched the Universe for five years looking for signs of life from his former home on Krypton. Quick! Get another script doctor! I don't really buy it at all.
I give it a “C+” on my Entertainment Report Card. Plan to see it for yourself; I'm going to go with my husband to see it again next month.
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some intense action violence.
Runtime: 154 min
Country: Australia / USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Certification: USA:PG-13 /
Radio Lady’s rating: C+