"SUPERMAN RETURNS"

Hard to imagine why a man as smart and as talented as Bryan Singer would let the burden of the world that Richard Donner created with the first Superman, a film that many can call classic but none could call a fine piece of cinema, weigh him down in his new entry for the series. It is an unironic world, which of course is certainly welcome these days—one with an unapologetically bright palette of primaries, with reds, blues, and yellows streaking across the screen. However, while its visual backdrop can still function three decades later, other elements of that film’s world could not. For example, the almost childish “golly gee” acting of Christopher Reeve. He comes across as an action figure come to life—and, with all due respect, I mean that in the worst way possible. Superman Returns runs into trouble when its lead, Brandon Routh, takes the same acting cue as Reeve, an approach that not only doesn’t work these days, but makes him come off like he’s trying a bit too hard to imitate Christopher Reeve. But Singer deserves some of the blame as well—Donner’s visual scheme may work, but why attempt to imitate it so closely?
The film’s devotion to being a sequel and not a film in its own right is what really gets it down. An astounding problem—you’d think that Singer would take the cue from Christopher Nolan and use the 19 years since the last Superman installment as an opportunity to retell the story in his own voice, in his own world. This does not mean it must be dark and extremely brooding, like Nolan’s Batman, nor ironic. Neither X-Men nor X2 were either of these things. But when you see the scenes in the newspaper office of The Daily Planet, the production design of which is caught between the bowtie and suspenders Art Deco aesthetic of the 1930’s and that of the information age, with its multiple flatscreen TV’s and CNN crawl headlines, you see that Singer is a man whose style is torn in two.
Also, when the film readily accepts its status as sequel and not reinvention, the pitfalls extend beyond matters of stylistic originality. Singer takes for granted answers to questions that the plot inherently poses. Superman has returned from Krypton, where he went looking for his origins. All he found was a graveyard, he says. Question #1 then becomes so why the hell was he gone for 5 years? Does it take that long to get to Krypton and back? Did he stop for a few years at the Molly Pitcher rest area? These questions could be dismissed as trivial; undoubtedly all that a viewer is supposed to understand is that the Man of Steel was gone for a long time. Thus, it would be interesting to explore his difficulties readapting to the world around him; it would almost be like discovering that he’s Superman all over again. In fact, it would be the perfect way for Singer to do an origin story—tailoring the caped hero to his own vision--without doing an origin story. A sequel, sure, but as fresh as the original. Instead, Singer’s Superman goes through the first half of the film (and here, that means an hour and a quarter) without any sort of struggle whatsoever. The people at The Daily Planet seem to think nothing of the fact that Clark Kent was mysteriously “traveling” for five years. Sure, Clark still lusts after Lois Lane, but Routh doesn’t give us much to go on as far as his reaction to Lois having a son and fiancé, except a little “ho-hum” disappointment. In terms of going back to the old grindstone of saving the world after a five year vacation, Routh’s Superman plays it off like he never took a day off work. One second he’s in The Daily Planet office, the next he’s singlehandedly wrangling a crashing airplane.
One must give Singer credit—misled as he is here, his talent can’t help but shine through. A few scenes—for example, when Lois’ son plays “Heart and Soul” on the piano with one of Lex Luthor’s more menacing henchmen—and shots—like that of the glare of passing hospital lights on Superman’s “S” emblem as he is wheeled through ER hallways on a stretcher after being knocked into a coma—exhibit a directorial intelligence that the rest of the film would never lead you to believe is there. And, fortunately, Lex Luthor concocts an evil plan that keeps us entertained for the half of the film when Superman isn’t doing much. But alas, at the end of the day, the film has only accomplished what the most basic of superhero sequels must accomplish—the main villain has been defeated but not killed, a stunning piece of narrative information has been revealed but not developed, and the romance has been inflamed but not consummated.