Superman Returns...and then leaves again.

Superman sure loves hovering above the earth all Christ like. 

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while and with the hotly anticipated release of Man of Steel on DVD about a week ago (and yes I bought it the first day), there seems no better time for me to share my thoughts on why Superman Returns just didn't work as a Superman film, in my opinion that is.  I was seventeen when it came out in 2006 and couldn't have been more jazzed to see Supes return to the big screen considering I'd never gotten to see any of the Chris Reeve films at the cinema.  It had been more than twenty years since he soared in theaters and the general feeling was that he was long overdue to return, especially given that Batman Begins had come out a year earlier and revitalized the Batman film saga.  I saw it first with my dad, also a big Superman fan, and came out simply thrilled that Superman was back.  I saw it at least 4 more times with friends and family, extolling it as a terrific film.  As time went on however, and the film's initial glow began to wear off, I began to feel disappointment creeping in as I re-examined what I'd seen.  At first I couldn't quite articulate what I was feeling, all I knew was that something just didn't feel right.  Now years later, I can say resolutely that as much as I tried to love Superman Returns, the film simply doesn't work for me.
I think one of the main issues right out of the gate was trying to pick up where Superman II left off all those years ago.  Despite feeling a little dated now, the first two Superman films were epic, game changing blockbusters which set the tone for virtually every superhero film that followed.  The first established the film formula for the superhero origin and the second cranked up the intensity by having him battle three fellow Kryptonians.  Ignoring 3&4, which did for Superman what Batman Forever and especially Batman and Robin did for Bats, those first two were pretty great.  Having said that, Singer should've honored that storyline by just leaving it alone and instead retold Superman's origins like Nolan did in Begins.  Instead he picked up where things left off and the result is a film that feels out of place.  Of course the film has modern elements but the tone still feels stuck in the time period of the original films.  What made Donner's original so thrilling and captivating was that the film's tone and environment was contemporary to that time and updating Superman with a new look and state of the art special effects made it look and feel so real and grounded, even though it's still fantasy.  Superman Returns wanted to ground it's Supes in some realism too, but was unable to do this because it clings to facets of the Donner films that no longer seem fresh and relevant or easy to accept these days.   
One of the biggest issues is Lois's continued inability to figure out the Clark is Superman.  I know that at the end of Superman II, Clark erased her memory of knowing his secret with an "amnesia kiss" to spare her pain and that's still the case in this film, but since Lois is still deeply pinning for Superman, you'd think she'd finally be able to recognize him behind those glasses and figure it out like she did before.  In the late seventies, her not knowing was easier to accept as a playful suspension of disbelief, but these days, especially in these films, it's harder to swallow.  If we're to believe Lois is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, she should be able to put it together, as should everyone else at the Planet considering that both Clark and Superman vanished for five years and show up on the same day.  As Gob Bluth would say, "Come On!"  Lois seems to be merely a caricature in this film and it's hard to understand what Superman would've seen in her.  Superman's five year disappearing act is another bothersome point given that he leaves earth and travels to where Krypton was under some notion that it might still be there.  The writers needed some excuse to get him to leave so he'd have to work to regain earth's trust, but his believing that Krypton might still be intact makes no sense considering everything he's been through in the past.  Not only did he learn all about Krypton's demise from the hologram of Jor-El in the fortress but he's come up against actual radioactive pieces of his home planet.  Another issue is that Superman would never leave earth unguarded for that long given that he feels guilty for every person he's unable to save, even when he saves thousands.  I feel that his struggle to regain earth's trust after his cosmic "vacation" was supposed to be an inner conflict, but as soon as he catches Lois' plane and lands it in a baseball stadium, the world unanimously welcomes him back.  Only Lois and of course Lex Luthor are cheesed off about his return, although for different reasons. 
Kevin Spacey is a fantastic actor and he did a good job bringing some darkness and edge to Luthor, at least compared to Hackman, but he was stuck playing a version of Hackman's real estate obsessed Lex, which simply isn't threatening or sinister these days, if it ever was at all.  Spacey along with much of the cast, doesn't have much to work with in the film; his character is merely a thin shade of how diabolically badass Lex is in the comics or on Smallville.  His Lex is simply itching for revenge against Supes and follows the same plot he unleashed in Superman The Movie, only this time using crystals he steals from the fortress, which for some reason grow like chia-pet crystals when put in water.  You'd think Lex would be onto a new scheme by now, but he's already in re-runs.  What bothers me about the film is how it tries to be a continuation of the original but ends up being more a pseudo-homage to the first.  Many of the situations and lines of dialogue are virtually the same and recall the first film.  I think the film's most thrilling scene comes about a half hour in when he stops Lois's plane from crashing; after that the film never reaches the same level of intensity.  That doesn't mean there aren't some cool scenes, such as when he stops a bullet with his eyeball.  The rest of the film is kind of by the book as we see Superman pinning for Lois, who's married to Cyclops from X-men and has a son named Jason.  Supes spends a lot of time mopping around and even follows Lois to her house and X-rays her with her husband and son like a super-stalker.  I didn't have a problem with Brandon Routh as Supes; he's got the Chris Reeve look and mannerisms of bumbling Clark, but again he didn't have the opportunity to make it his own, it feels like he's simply emulating Reeve but adding in the stalker parts. 
One of my biggest sore spots is the revelation that Jason is Superman's kid.  This is confirmed when Lois is taken hostage by Lex's goons aboard his yacht and the 5 year old manages to shove a grand piano at a thug who's beating on Lois.  I didn't like this as soon as I saw it, but I still tried to justify it to myself.  The problem is that the film took a giant leap with something that hasn't even really been explored in comics while playing it safe with everything else.  Fans wanted to see a film about Superman's return, not Superman and son.  Who even knows if Superman's DNA is compatible with human DNA.  For more on this, watch Jason Lee's Superman coital discussion in Kevin Smith's Mallrats, it's hilarious.  It's as if the writers wanted to throw something in for shock value in a film that's otherwise pretty predictable.  Luthor manages to create a landmass made of Kryptonite which rises from the Atlantic and creates an earthquake in Metropolis.  Superman saves the day like he did in the original film, although this time he catches the Daily Planet globe as it hurdles towards Perry White in a pretty cool scene.  Supes then confronts Lex on his Kryptonite island and after being weakened, Lex stabs him with a shank of Kryptonite and breaks it off in his side, after which he falls into the ocean.  Lois, in Cyclopes' sea plane, rescues him and he ends up rocketing down under the sea floor and lifting the whole landmass out of the water and into space.
I have a few problems with this.  First off, the entire landmass is made of Kryptonite and though he put a tons of rock between him and it, the sheer amount of radiation should affect him, not to mention the fact that after Lois pulled out the shank, he still had a little shard in him and that's all it take to rob him off his powers.  He shouldn't have been able to lift that thing, but he does and pushes it into space before blacking out and plummeting back to earth.  I hope he pushed it out far enough, otherwise I fear it to will fall back to earth and take out Metropolis.  Anyway, he's brought to the hospital in an unconscious state and the audience is tricked into believing he'd dead for a moment, but of course that's not the case.  Really long story short, while comatose Lois tells him Jason's his son and when he wakes up he flies to her house and gives the sleeping boy essentially the same spiel that Jor-El gave him about the son becoming the father, implying that Supes will watch over the boy from a distance. 
He then talks to Lois outside, telling her he's always around, minus the 5 years he wasn't and flies over earth just like in the Chris Reeve films.  Ironically, Returns' budget was almost as much as Man of Steel's but there isn't a single Super punch in the film and not much action aside from flying and catching things.  This makes sense given that Luthor is the villain, it's just an interesting side note.  As mentioned, it's not as though the film has no positive attributes, but even when I really tried to love it, it's not the Superman film I was dying to see.  The film seems to have trouble figuring out what it wants to be; it wants to be grounded and serious but there are too many aspects that just don't work believably.  It wants to show that Lois and Superman have this undeniable connection and are destined to be together but she still can't figure out he's Clark and it wants to continue the story in the past films but ends up being a pseudo-homage to the first.  Luckily I can now say I've seen a new Superman film that brought to life what I've been dying to see for years and also made Superman fresh and relevant again, adding depth and reality to the character.  All I'll say is thank the gods for Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan for returning the Man of Steel to his place as the granddaddy of all Superheroes.