Superman Returns Review

The Decline, Fall and Return of the Man of Steel: In the wake of not one but two really bad Superman films (Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace), it's not surprising that Warner Bros. and many Hollywood producers decided to, at least for a while, to pull the plug on the now-moribund film series based on DC Comics' iconic Last Son of Krypton.

Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Marc McClure and the rest of the stars who had worked together in most of the movies moved on with their lives.  Some, like Hackman, would go on to keep making movies and earning accolades, while others (Reeve, McClure and Kidder) still acted but were relegated to smaller "character actor" roles in features and television, including appearances on Smallville, the WB/CW series based on Clark Kent's "coming of age" years in Smallville, KS.

(Of course, Reeve, whose acting was one of the few saving graces of the two Super-duds directed by Richard Lester and Sidney J. Furie, was touched by tragedy when he was paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a horse-riding accident in 1995.  With almost superhuman resilience, Reeve not only resumed his career as an actor, writer, producer and director, but he also became a fighter for those with physical disabilities.  In recognition of his achievements and those of his widow Dana - who died a few months before the premiere - the movie Superman Returns is dedicated to their memories.)

However, not even the decline and temporary fall out of grace of Warner's Batman movie series could kill Superman fans' hopes that someday, somehow the studio would find a filmmaker with the right vision to bring the Last Son of Krypton back to the silver screen in the same fashion that Alexander and Ilya Salkind had when they financed Richard Donner's first Superman feature film in the late 1970s.

For years, rumors about a new Superman feature film flew hither and yon; at one point, there was a widely-circulated tale that Nicolas Cage had been cast in the challenging dual role of Superman and his "cover" alter ego, Clark Kent.

There was more truth to the story that Tim Burton, who had helmed the first Batman films in 1989 and 1992, was going to do the fifth film, possibly a total reinvention of the Man of Steel myth that ignored the first four movies, but that project, titled Superman Lives, was canceled before it ever, um, got off the ground.

Other projects, including an ambitious one by J.J. Abrams (Superman Flyby), also failed to get the green light from Warner's executives.

Fortunately for Warner Bros. and fans of the iconic superhero, Bryan Singer (X-Men), who had loved Donner's 1978 franchise-starter as a boy, was hired to co-write and direct a "sort of" sequel to the first two films that ignores Lester's Superman III and Furie's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Superman Returns: Written by Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, and Dan Harris, the movie picks up the Superman story roughly five years after the events of Superman II. The Man of Steel, after a brief romantic tryst with Lois Lane and having defeated the alliance of three Kryptonian villains and Lex Luthor, mysteriously leaves his adoptive planet Earth and goes off into space to search for remains of his home world, Krypton. Having heard that astronomers found shards of Krypton way, way out there, Superman flies off, hoping to find some trace (or even survivors) from that shattered planet.

Alas, it's not the best of choices for Kal-El, aka Superman, to make. Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is freed on a legal technicality and the film begins with the supposedly-reformed arch-villain taking possession of a gullible older woman's entire estate even as she lies on her deathbed. (This character, which is named Gertrude Vanderworth, is the second cameo appearance of actress Noel Neill in the feature films. Neill, who played Lois Lane in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman, is also seen briefly in Superman: The Movie playing Lois Lane's mom in a short scene set in the "teen Clark Kent" portion of that film, and also originated the Lois Lane role in the 1940s movie serials alongside Kirk Alyn.)

As the film title promises, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns to Earth - in a similar fashion to his original arrival in the 1978 film - aboard a Kryptonian spacecraft, crash landing in the corn field outside the old Kent homestead near Smallville, KS. There, he is reunited with his silver-haired adoptive mom Martha (Eva Marie Saint) and, while surfing through the various cable TV news channels, finds that Earth has become even more full of chaos, conflicts, crime and other calamities than when he left five years before.

Assuming his alter ego as Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter-for-a-major-metropolitan-newspaper (or, in this case, former reporter), Superman starts picking up the pieces of his life by getting his old job back from Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella) and reconnecting with friends and colleagues, including the still effervescent Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington).

The "friend and colleague" Superman would really like to reconnect with the most, though, is Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), but not only has she "moved on" emotionally (she's a single mom now, and engaged) and professionally (she's even written an editorial titled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman"), but she's aboard a government Boeing 777 new-generation Space Shuttle launch plane as a media observer.

But wait! Lex has made his way to the ruins of the Fortress of Solitude and gotten his hands on a Kryptonian crystal, which he learned about during the events chronicled in Superman II and, being aware of its properties, plans to use it in yet another nefarious scheme to gain power, kill billions of people, and - eventually - defeat the Man of Steel once and for all.

Of course, when Lex experiments with a tiny fragment of the crystal, the resulting pulse shorts out electric power grids and electronic gear in and around Metropolis, and soon Superman is back in action, rescuing the new Space Shuttle and Lois' crashing plane in a truly exciting and suspenseful sequence.

Lois is grateful to be rescued, but she's put up an emotional barrier between Superman and herself. The Caped Wonder left without saying goodbye or explaining his departure.... And now Lois has a son named Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu), and is engaged to Perry's nephew Richard (James Mardsen). So while Lois is happy to be working again with Clark, she's ambivalent, at best, to see Superman has, indeed returned.

Eventually, though, Superman, Lois, and even Jason will cross the paths of Lex and his crew, which includes new moll Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey), whose acerbic observations sometimes cut Lex Luthor to the quick:


Lex Luthor: Do you know the story of Prometheus? No, of course you don't. Prometheus was a god who stole the power of fire from the other gods and gave control of it to the mortals. In essence, he gave us technology, he gave us power.

Kitty Kowalski: So we're stealing fire? In the Arctic?

Lex Luthor: Actually, sort of. You see whoever controls technology controls the world. The Roman Empire ruled the world because they built roads. The British Empire ruled the world because they built ships. America; the atom bomb. And so on and so forth. I just want what Prometheus wanted.

Kitty Kowalski: Sounds great Lex, but you're not a god.
Lex Luthor: [fixes Kitty with an icy stare]

Lex Luthor: Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their powers with mankind.

My Viewpoint: Although Superman Returns is far from perfect - as in most films, there are goofs and continuity errors, and Kate Bosworth, while she's appropriately smart and feisty, is a bit too young for the Lois Lane part - it is, overall, a great Superman film that both serves as a worthy sequel to the first two movies and an interesting "reboot" of the franchise. I think Brandon Routh (who will reprise his Superman/Clark Kent role in the 2009 sequel) did an excellent job of evoking the late Christopher Reeve's performance while infusing his own Midwestern-born-and-bred attitudes into the tricky double-identity character.

Also worth mentioning is Kevin Spacey's take on Lex Luthor, which also takes its cue from Gene Hackman's interpretation of the bald megalomaniac but played in a less growly, less wig-wearing fashion. Spacey and director Bryan Singer have collaborated several times before, including in the brilliant The Usual Suspects.

Even though Singer asks the audience to believe not only that a man can fly but that the 25 years between Superman II and Superman Returns somehow were reduced to just five from the perspective of the characters, he does a nice job of connecting an updated series of new films to the first two movies.

Not only is the underlying "secular Messiah" motif originally intended by the character's creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster and included in the Mario Puzo-Richard Donner 1978 film, it becomes Superman Returns' thematic core, not only in the way in which Superman must cope with the responsibilities he must shoulder in several fronts, but also in the posthumous cameo by the late Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-El:

Jor-El: [Superman is remembering Jor-El's last message to him from the first film] Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son.

Not only does Superman Returns contain visual and anecdotal links to Superman and Superman II, but editor/composer John Ottman wisely incorporates some of John Williams' themes from the 1978 movie. Ottman most often uses the "Superman March," but the beautiful "Love Theme from Superman" is also quoted in an almost subliminal fashion in a few key scenes.