Superman Returns: While Pretty on Screen, the Film has Flaws

Superman left Earth five years ago, apparently without telling anyone, particularly his perhaps girl friend Lois Lane. It turns out that he took a long trip to Krypton, in the vain hope that his home planet did not after all explode. At the beginning of the movie, Superman Returns, he has landed in the same Kansas corn field that he did as an infant for a reunion with his adopted Earth mother, Martha Kent, played with grace by Eva Marie Saint.

The idea of Superman Returns is that in the Man of Steel’s absence, the world has moved on, perhaps not feeling the need for a super hero savior any longer. This is particularly true of Lois Lane, who has just won a Pulitzer for an editorial entitled “Why the World Doesn’t need Superman.” She also has a kid and a fiancÃ?©, played by James Marsden, who also happens to be a relation to Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet played by Frank Langella.. Superman must now not only win back the affections of a world he essentially abandoned, but that of Lois Lane, his once and perhaps future true love.

In the meantime, Lex Luthor, played with too much understatement by Kevin Spacey, is out of jail, due to the fact that Superman was not around to testify at his appeals trial. And of course he is up to no good. If he is not stopped, the face of the world itself will change and millions (“Billions!” insists Lex Luthor) will die.

This all sounds like an interesting reimagining of the Superman story. Unfortunately and for various reasons, Superman Returns falls short.

First of all, the timeline doesn’t really add up. We can suppose that along with the five years of Superman’s absence, there was a period of time (say, five to ten years) in which Superman made his name saving lives, fighting crime, and standing up for truth, justice, and-well that’s another item we’ll need to touch on. The problem is that Superman (and Clark Kent) is played by Brandon Routh, age 26, and Lois Lane is played by Kate Bosworth, age 23. That would mean, taking into account the timeline previously suggested, that Clark Kent and Lois Lane were working for the Daily Planet at age 16 and 13 at the oldest.

The makers of Superman Returns evidently wanted to play tribute to Chris Reeve and the series of Superman films he made starting in 1978. This was a fine idea, as not only did Chris Reeve make Superman an iconic movie character, who was celebrated for his heroic advocacy of spinal cord injury research during his final years after he suffered one after falling off a horse.

Unfortunately the homage to the Chris Reeve Superman consisted of lifting pages of dialogue out of the first film and putting them into Superman Returns. These included Superman’s speech about how flying is really the safest mode of travel and Lex Luthor’s speech about land as the only good investment. This sort of thing extends beyond homage and dangerously close to plagiarism.

There’s another problem with Superman Returns that involves an alteration of an iconic line that has been Superman’s own since nearly the beginning. Superman likes to say of himself that he fights for, “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Superman is, like many other immigrants to America, a patriot, who deeply loves the country that gave him, the last son of Krypton, a refuge.

But the screenwriters deliberately left out “the American Way” for fear, they say, that it would offend movie goers in such places as Abu Dubai. Of course this is a slap in the face for film goers in Atlanta, Denver, and Phoenix. One should never go out of ones way to offend one’s primary audience, in this case Americans. This is especially true of super hero films, which tend to do better in the United States than overseas.

How does the world react to Superman returning? Most welcome him with great joy, forgetting instantly the five year absence. There is nothing like having someone who can carry a falling air plane down to a safe landing, even as it sheds things like the wings. Lois Lane, the woman who feels scorned, is not so sure. She has a new man (a decent, brave man, by the way) and a kid. She also apparently has those old feelings, despite herself, for the Man of Steel.

Lex Luthor has mixed feelings as well. The return of Superman means that his nefarious plans, which involve lots of land speculation and the deaths of billions, are in jeopardy. On the other hand, he gets a chance for his final revenge against his life long nemesis.

The special effects, as befits a film costing 260 million dollars, are no less than first rate. Superman not only flies, he floats and he looks like a young, achingly beautiful god while doing so. And the scene where bullets bounce off in slow mo against various parts of Superman’s body is eye popping (almost.)

Finally, check out who is in the cockpit of the space shuttle in the aerial rescue scene. The bearded guy is none other than Sir Richard Branson, owner of-among other things-Virgin Galactic, which proposes to be the first space tourism company. The shuttle depicted on the screen a generation or two ahead of SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital touring craft that Branson is building. But it does nevertheless represent an interesting form of product placement, albeit one that does not exist yet.