director
Bryan Singer
screenwriters
Michael
Dougherty
Dan Harris
story by
Bryan Singer
Michael Dougherty
Dan Harris
based on
characters created by
Jerry Siegel
Joe Shuster
producers
Gilbert Adler
Jon Peters
Bryan Singer
cinematographer
Newton Thomas Sigel
music
John Ottman
John Williams
editors
Elliot Graham
John Ottman
cast
Brandon Routh (Clark Kent/Superman)
Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane)
Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor)
James Marsden (Richard White)
Parker Posey (Kitty Kowalski)
Frank Langella (Perry White)
Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen)
Eva Marie Saint (Martha Kent)
Marlon Brando (Jor-El)
Kal Penn (Stanford)
Tristan Lake Leabu (Jason White)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 154m
u.s.
release: 6/28/06
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other bryan
singer films
reviewed on this website:
- apt
pupil
- the usual suspects
- x-men
- x2: x-men united
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Consider the poor übermensch
-- always alone, cut off forever from his roots, forced to disguise
himself as a dweeb who has no personal life. In keeping with
the recent string of morose films about the trials and tribulations
of being a superhero, Superman Returns gives us a Superman
(Brandon Routh) who comes back to Earth after five years and
finds the old global problems are far worse, his old girlfriend
Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has had a son with her new fiancé
(James Marsden), and his old nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey)
is out of jail and plotting to create his own continent at the
expense of billions of lives.
Whew! Not too much pressure.
One wouldn't blame Superman too much if he decided to turn around
and fly back into space. But the words of his long-dead father
Jor-El (Marlon Brando, resurrected via computer) echo in his
mind: "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." The true heart of this Superman movie
is not that humankind should be inspired by Superman; it's that
Superman is inspired by the non-superheroic but brave and selfless
humans he lives among. Lois tells Superman "We don't need
a savior," and the movie backs that up by reminding us of
our capacity for good.
Beyond that, Superman Returns
is a cracking good adventure, though sometimes too leisurely
and not without stress cracks: There's only so much radical stuff
you can do with a movie rumored to cost north of $200 million.
Kevin Spacey plays Luthor with his usual hooded suavity, and
it's a relief to see him being a snake again after a long run
of Oscar-chasing. But Luthor's plan barely makes sense, and he
scarcely gets any screen time opposite Superman. Director Bryan
Singer, whose two X-Men films
raised the bar for superhero movies, avoids some obvious narrative
beats but lingers over others, such as a sequence of a grievously
wounded Superman in the hospital. The script seems patched together,
and I can't be alone in thinking they should've saved Lois' kid
for the sequel.
When it comes down to pop apocalypse,
the movie delivers. The plane-rescue sequence is already deservedly
famous, giving you a physical sense of the impossible -- it's
a mini-classic. Superman Returns is not structured as
a clothesline of disconnected computer-assisted thrills, and
that's a surprise; the movie is uncommonly becalmed, reflective.
The action is staged beautifully; it's kinetically dazzling.
But there's very little threat underneath it all -- you know
Superman won't fail or die. At least in the original 1978 Superman,
Lois Lane actually died (even if only temporarily), giving the
hero an ugly reality slap -- even he couldn't be everywhere
at once and save everyone.
I liked and enjoyed Superman
Returns, though I wish I were as sold on it as some
critics who seem to be clinging to it as this summer's savior
after a long string of bummers. It doesn't redeem the cinematic
sins of Mission Impossible III
or X-Men 3; it's merely good,
not great, and the only risk it takes is financial (at this writing
I haven't seen the opening-week box-office numbers). Brandon
Routh is solid and genuine if a little plastic -- he seems to
have been cast solely for his resemblance to Christopher Reeve,
and he doesn't have Reeve's mixture of authority and wry self-amusement.
Kate Bosworth doesn't ring any bells as Lois; if Singer wanted
to cast closer to the original, he should've gone with Parker
Posey, who is mostly thrown away as Luthor's ditzy, Pomeranian-toting
moll Kitty. A $200 million summer blockbuster with Parker Posey
in a small supporting role is good; a $200 million summer blockbuster
with Parker Posey grabbing significant screen time and getting
to canoodle with Superman would've been magic.
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