Superman Returns
Superman Returns is a fraud.
That’s what I felt walking out of the theater, John Williams’ music pumping ad nauseum. I wanted to punch Bryan Singer or John Ottman or both for making me listen to this music as if it made the movie somehow a more official Superman movie. It made me angry, because this was a Superman movie that lied to me.
I grew up with the Donner movies. For me, they are iconic films. Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, everyone played the part with a knowingness, a kookiness that was oddly reminiscent of the crackling pages of a great comic book. But nothing would have pleased me more than Singer doing something different and hitting it out of the park.
Instead, Singer turns a fun summer blockbuster into a heady soap opera novel. Ang Lee’s similar approach to Hulk didn’t cut it either. Suddenly all of our characters who were so breezy and busy and full of the energy of Metropolis are now full of angst and regret and indignance. Where we used to have scenes of Superman interacting with people as he showed them the error of their ways, now he is relegated to a TV news item flashing across plasma screens. In the old Superman people would come up to him and comment on his suit (”That is a bad OUTfit”). Now they just stare passively waiting for him to do something cool.
This works against the movie for several reasons. One is that it makes the city seem tame, which I guess may be Sydney’s fault since it was shot there. Superman once interacted with the bums on the street, treating them with respect. Now apparently he only saves the well-dressed. And it also makes the Superman story seem small. It doesn’t involve the whole city, just people that Clark Kent knows. When you see the city cheer or mourn for him, you don’t feel that populist connection to him. In the first big action scene, people in a freefalling plane see Superman outside trying to help…in the old movies, they would have jumped for joy, “It’s Superman!” Now they look out the window and don’t say a word. Just weird.
Of course, all this comparison between Singer’s movie and Donner’s would be moot were it not for the fact that Singer wants to remind us of Donner. He needles us with the Williams themes (the love theme, the Kent farm theme, the iconic rhythmic ostinato, the perfect fifth melody). He gives us glimpses of characters that are not fully realized. He casts a Christopher Reeve lookalike. He exhumes Marlon Brando’s performance. Like Tarantino, he directly lifts shots, err, pays homages to the earlier movie. It’s as if you went on a date with a girl who decided to dress up as your ex-girlfriend.
On the structure, Singer really fumbles. Tonally, he sets up a greater sense of emotional investment. The editing of the opening really sets us up for a kind of lonely, tragic character. Strangely, he saves these moments for a 20 minute ending that feel like a Hail Mary pass. Where was all that emotional stuff when people were in need of rescue, when it would have added a dimension to the action. What’s even more frustrating is the lack of any kind of closure….if they were going to leave it this open ended, they should have made it snappy. It plays like Singer had final cut and pushed it as far as he could.
To all those who liked this movie, I understand why. It is a lack of familiarity with Donner’s films. It is a belief that Bryan Singer can do no wrong. It is the want, or maybe even the need, for Superman to be super. I sympathize greatly and there were moments that achieved that aim. The climactic action scene becoming a sort of Passion of the Clark was really good.
My issue is feeling like someone slapped a Superman logo on a movie with all the trappings but none of the substance…for me, this movie felt like Superman left.
