{"id":694,"date":"2011-02-20T18:31:13","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T18:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=694"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:19:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:19:25","slug":"superman-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=694","title":{"rendered":"SUPERMAN RETURNS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The infuriating thing about Superman is that the mythology of his origin \u2013 two Jewish boys (Siegel and Shuster) reacting to Naziism by creating a golem \u2013 is far more interesting than the hero they created.<\/h3>\n

Superman is a hero so hollow and untouchable that writers must constantly fall back on improbable gimmicks (fifty-seven flavours of Kryptonite) to inject any element of physical drama. Superman could bring rain to the desert and end world hunger, he could destroy every tyranny on the planet. He doesn\u2019t because there are, apparently some problems mankind has to work out for itself. Why those problems don\u2019t include crime against property in Metropolis or engineering failures on planes remains unexplained.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Superman\u2019s boundless self-sacrifice. He could have anything, and yet he never uses his powers for his own advancement. Superman isn\u2019t a real character, he\u2019s a cipher: incorruptible, unknowable will all the intrinsic charisma of the lumps of clay that are used in the creation of a golem.<\/p>\n

None of this is addressed in Superman Returns<\/em>. Brian Singer is a film-maker I\u2019ve admired for a long time. Usual Suspects<\/em>, Apt Pupil<\/em> and the X-Men<\/em> films are well-made entertainments from a director with considerable skill and vision.<\/p>\n

But all that is missing here. Singer has approached Superman Returns<\/em> with a stodgy, fanboy reverence that abandons critical thinking in favour of obeisance before an over-familiar mythos.<\/p>\n

There is no perspective on the character, no sense of what he might be for or what he might signify in a world where the exercise of power and the ideals of \u201ctruth and justice\u201d have long since fallen out of synch. Instead Singer crow-bars his film into the continuity of Richard Donner\u2019s first Superman<\/em> (1978) \u2013 as if nothing has changed in thirty years. Then he beats the viewer over the head with facile references to Christ and resurrection, imbuing the whole thing with a po-faced drabness that even Luthor\u2019s (Kevin Spacey) flashes of lunacy can\u2019t dispel.<\/p>\n

The acting doesn\u2019t help. Spacey is entertaining, but the rest of the look as though they\u2019ve been prescribed a heavy dose of downers.<\/p>\n

The majority of screen time is devoted to the pretty but vacant Routh as Clark Kent\/Superman. Yes, he does look a bit like Christopher Reeve, but that\u2019s not enough. Bosworth, meanwhile, is the least convincing Lois Lane I\u2019ve ever seen and (and perhaps this is an indication of a general backwards slide in Hollywood) she is notably less able, less spunky and less independent than Margo Kidder was thirty years ago in Donner\u2019s film.<\/p>\n

But most annoying is the fact the entire plot of this film relies on the fact that everyone is stupid.<\/p>\n

If Superman uses his powers to their full extent, or even if he takes some basic precautions, Lex Luthor\u2019s plans can\u2019t work. It is only because Superman behaves like a buffoon that there is any drama in this story at all. Superman leaves Earth and his \u201cFortress of Solitude\u201d \u2013 with all the information of an advanced alien civilisation \u2013 and not only does he not lock the front door (if there is one), but he doesn\u2019t even have a password protecting all that dangerous information.\u00a0 When he learns Luthor (his great nemesis) is free, he doesn\u2019t keep one x-ray eye on his scheming to ensure his own safety or that of the people of Metropolis. Instead he ignores him, too busy mooning over Lois Lane. Then, when he finally meets Luthor, Superman doesn\u2019t bother to check whether his implacable foe is holding anything that might be dangerous, he just walks up to him \u2013 arrogantly certain of his own invulnerability \u2013 and lets a middle-aged man stab him with a Kryptonite blade. So much for x-ray vision and super-speed!<\/p>\n

This Superman is arrogant, lazy and stupid \u2013 and so are the film-makers. These characteristics may be essential to move a weak script forward, but it hardly makes the film or the character more appealing.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a room full of crack reporters can\u2019t tie together the mysterious return of Superman with the reappearance of Clark Kent and Luthor, the supposed genius, sets out to create a new continent no one could possibly live on and with Superman at his mercy, fails to finish him off,<\/p>\n

Some of these problems are an inherent part of the nature of the almost omnipotent character created by Siegel and Shuster and would plague any film-maker. Superman is capable of almost anything, so devising real plot devices that provide him with an actual challenge him is almost impossible, so creators have to fudge things. They have to make Superman incompetent and ignorant \u2013 or assume that the audience are idiots \u2013 to generate any tension. However, perhaps because of the uncritically fannish nature of this production, no one seems to have been interested in even acknowledging that such problems might exist.<\/p>\n

In the end, desperate for some sort of emotional punch to this sterile toss, Singer resorts to that tried and tested Hollywood stand-by \u2013 he turns everything into a parable about the relationship between a son and his father \u2013 even going so far as to give Superman his very own illegitimate son. Both Superman\u2019s fathers (Jor-El and Pa Kent) are dead, so obviously Clark\/Kal-El feels abandoned \u2013 which no doubt leaves Ma Kent feeling suitably devalued \u2013 but luckily he learns he\u2019s not really alone and so has a little bit of wisdom to pass on to his sleeping child in a final, vomit-inducing monologue.<\/p>\n

This moment is a crass attempt at emotional exploitation wedged into a film that, otherwise, has nothing original or interesting to say. Its cloying sentimentality is the final nail in the coffin of an underpowered, unrewarding movie.<\/p>\n

There are one or two nice touches in Superman Returns <\/em>(I liked the extended destruction of the railway model recalling the earthquake sequence in the Donner film) but it isn\u2019t a patch on Christopher Nolan\u2019s recent Batman movie, Sam Raimi\u2019s Spider-man films or Singer\u2019s own X-Men outings. It is too long, too slow and too pathetically reverent.<\/p>\n

The closest thing Superman Returns<\/em> has to a moment of genuine emotion is the opening credits, when John Williams fantastic, familiar theme thumps out triumphantly. It\u2019s all downhill from there.<\/p>\n

(Originally published in Matrix<\/em> 180, Aug\/Sept 2006)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The infuriating thing about Superman is that the mythology of his origin \u2013 two Jewish boys (Siegel and Shuster) reacting to Naziism by creating a golem \u2013 is far more interesting than the hero they created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,8,10],"tags":[51,76,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/superman.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-bc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}