Movie Make Ryan Sad

7/6/06

There’s something sort of sad and desperate about people using their blogs to pretend anyone cares what they thought of a movie, but since we’re all essentially pretending to be columnists, I guess I can forgive it. Especially since I’m about to do it. Normally I would let it slide, but the following film got pretty good critical reviews and I rarely disagree terribly with the largest share of critics. In this case they can kiss my entire ass.

Okay…so Superman Returns. Okay… I suppose I should preface this by saying that I have never thought Superman was a very interesting character. He just strikes me as too perfect. Not only is he all goody-goody all the time, but he’s nigh-invincible to everything save Kryptonite, which appears to rain down on earth in metric tons every year. That being said, if you are a die-hard Superman fan, you’ll like this movie. I’m not, but I do like superhero, sci-fi and fantasy movies, and I would have like the film had it been, oh, you know, good.

Oh, and yeah…there are spoilers ahead.

I guess my first question, is “why?” Not “why was this made?” I get that; it’s a guaranteed cash-cow even if it’s just 2 hours of Superman taking a Cleveland Steamer on Lois Lane, and there have been some really interesting advancements in special effects since the last Superman movies, but I guess my question is, “why not make a new movie?” This 2 ½ hour behemoth is pretty much the same old thing as the old movies, only with better visual effects, and I dunno if you noticed this or not, but those films aren’t very good.


Brandon Routh’s performance feels like he’s playing Christopher Reeve playing Superman/Clark Kent. I guess that’s touching and nostalgic, but it’s not very interesting and it borders on creepy. I thought Kate Bosworth was adequate as Lois Lane (at least as much as Margot Kidder) but she didn’t blow me away, and, as with Kidder, I found it hard to see what Superman finds so endearing about a thick-headed, sort of self-absorbed reporter fooled by slicked-back hair and a pair of glasses. Speaking of which, I can forgive the whole nobody can tell they’re the same guy! thing, despite the fact that both Superman and Clark return to Metropolis on the same goddamn day after an absence of precisely the same 5-year span. You just have to let that go; it’s part of the Superman story. But don’t do the “how tall would you say Clark is?” bit only to have them dismiss it. It’s cheesy and it points out how fundamentally dumb this disguise is.

The general plot of the movie isn’t bad; Lex Luthor does evil shit, Superman tries to stop him while flirting with Lois. But the execution is so jumbled and poor and fraught with “huh?” moments and reality plot holes it made the story seem exponentially shittier than it was.

With any fantasy film you have to accept that there’s going to be stuff that happens which is hard to swallow. I don’t have a problem with this, as long as it all flows in the reality of that world. But Superman’s reality is all over the place. You know what? I’ll just make a list.

• Nobody but Lois Lane cares about the huge blackout which crippled the Eastern seaboard not once but twice? Hmm…way to go Homeland Security.

• Superman is supposed to be bright, but he can’t figure out that it was Kryptonite stolen from the museum by Luthor?

• Krypton was located 50 light years from earth. Even traveling at the speed of light, Kryptonite wouldn’t be around our neck of the woods yet. (Assuming Superman is less than 50, and his ship got here very quickly.) Even if the rocks were traveling at half the speed of light, and that Superman didn’t age in a slow trip to earth, I doubt Jor-El (Superman’s dad) would have looked at 1906 earth and thought, “Yeah…that seems like a good planet to send my kid.” The wonky physics of the matter makes my chest hurt.

• Somehow Luthor figures out that by combining the Kryptonite with the crystals stolen from the Fortress of Solitude it will create a continent meshed with Kryptonite, despite the fact that he ran only one test with the crystal, stating “I don’t know” what’s going to happen only days before. Neat trick.

• The mythology stuff was rather heavy-handed. You have Prometheus, Atlas and a savage amount of Christ-imagery, what with the whole “father becomes the son” stuff.

• I can pretty much accept this one, since it almost kills him, but Superman lifts a continent infested with Kryptonite, despite the fact that standing on it rendered him weak and mortal. This one is merely difficult to believe as opposed to leaving one shaking their head in dismay, but it’s a tight squeeze.


Now we come to a particularly sticky part of the story. Superman has apparently fathered a child with Lois. I’m sorry, but you’re never going to sell me on Superman being able to impregnate a human. Even ignoring the alien/human DNA issue, he has super-sperm for Christ’s sake. His ejaculation, an uncontrollable muscle reflex, would blow her apart at the torso. Even leaving that alone, each one of his sperm would be “super,” and they would all be trying to tunnel into an egg. Even if the first one didn’t obliterate the poor thing all the rest of them would either puncture it as well or just plow straight through Lois’s body. I have thought way, way too much about this, and even I can’t come up with a scenario where it might work outside of a laboratory.

Like I said, if you really like Superman you’ll like the movie. If you’re not a fan or don’t have any child-like kinship with the character save your money; it’s a hard pill to swallow. Kevin Spacey is his usual brilliant self, with an interesting take on Luthor and I liked Parker Posey’s performance, despite her somewhat 2-dimentional character. Bryan Singer’s direction is always good and visually it’s pretty stunning. If it weren’t for the fact that the story sucked out loud, it would be a great movie, even with the merely adequate performances of the other actors. But for my money, give me X-men any day. Even the mildly disappointing X-3 was better than this schlock.