It’s conceivable to feel affection or nostalgia for the hokey, visually clumsy 1978 Richard Donner Superman. But reverence? Yet, that is what Bryan Singer, director of the new Superman Returns, has been professing in publicity interviews. Singer is a great talent, and the new movie is vastly superior to the old one. But the careful respect with which the director approaches the material is ultimately what keeps this from being a really exciting or important movie. And it so longs to be important.
Like Batman Begins, last summer’s DC Comics spectacular from Warner Bros., Superman Returns wants, above all else, to avoid ridicule. Studio executives seem to have said, we’ll give you mountains of money, as much as you need — just don’t embarrass us with another Batman and Robin or Superman IV: Quest for Peace. In this aspect, both movies succeed; they are rarely, or never, cringe-inducing or campy-silly. But there’s also a certain dullness to them, a lack of risk-taking, or exhilarating imagination. Compare them to Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, Sam Raimi’s second Spider-Man movie, or even Ang Lee’s much-maligned The Hulk. Whatever their flaws, in those movies, there seemed to be real creative fire at work, and real feeling — and a willingness to go for broke visually and emotionally, to risk absurdity, in order to reach operatic heights.
There is much to admire in Superman Returns. It has a visual elegance and consistency that couldn’t have been easy to bring off — gigantically budgeted spectacles can look patched together and ugly, as the 1978 Superman often did. And the holy-holy-holy tone applied to Superman’s relationship to us Earthlings (he’s our Savior, we are repeatedly reminded), which might be expected to wreck the movie, actually provides some of the emotional high points. (Grandiose superhero mythology seems to play to Singer's strengths.) The unfulfilled love story between Superman and Lois Lane also produces a surprisingly strong emotional tidal pull. And there’s not a dry eye in the house when the words of wisdom spoken earlier by a magically reincarnated Marlon Brando, as our hero's father, are repeated by Superman to someone I can't name without spoiling a clever plot point.
Article comments
1 - Ty
"magical sharpness and clarity"
WTF?????
IMAX may be big, but it's the equivalent of a old school 70" big screen (4:3 ratio) TV.
If you want sharpness, clarity, the whole works, it's all about DLP.
If IMAX is the equivalent of one of those old big screen TV's, DLP (in movie theaters) is the 42" crystal clear HDTV.
Your proposition that IMAX is sharp and clear is laughable at best. You have obviously not seen a movie in DLP at the movie theater. It will BLOW you away. It uses no film, purely digital, so no cigarette burns or anything else filmy.
Many more colors and LITERALLY the sharpest picture you will ever see.
Check it out. You'll be amazed.
2 - Anna
I thought that superman wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. To me they skip 1 and 2 and went straight to 3. It left me confuse but, I loved the grahics and the actors. Me personally I pefer the old Superman because of the story line. I was happy to hear the same old music thou =).
3 - Sterfish
You make an intriguing point about directors "wasting" the best time of their careers on comic book films. I think it's a little elitist to say that by doing these films they are getting away from "true" artistic development. Both Nolan and Singer succeeded in bringing art to the superhero genre, something that hadn't been the case in recent memory. In the case of Singer, he's actually honed his skills on these types of films. Compare the direction of the action sequences in X-Men, X2, and Superman Returns, and you will see a progression in his ability.
Nolan and Singer (along with, to some extent, Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi) are trying to redefine the way people view a blockbuster. They have succeeded in creating films that are as good dramatically as they are entertaining. Hollywood has always lived by the notion that big budget summer films are mind-numbing and that only the dramatic films of fall are worth honoring in non-technical categories. I believe that with directors like these at the helm of big movies, we might get to a point where budget and time of release do not dictate a movie's artistic worth.
4 - handyguy
No elitist here...Jackson's Lord of the Rings and King Kong are among my favorites of recent years...and as I mentioned in the review, superhero movies with more directorial personality, including some by Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and even Singer's own X2, are a lot more interesting to me than these two play-it-safe, restore-the-franchise Batman and Superman entries. They're not terrible, just not very exciting. And Nolan in particular could do better. Singer seemed inspired by the X-Men material in a way he does not in Superman Returns, so maybe he could stick to this genre and make a great film...probably should be based on something more Marvel-neurotic than DC-square, though.