Superman Returns (2006) – Review

Almost twenty years stood between Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns and the last Superman movie, the laughable bad Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, so audiences were more than ready for a good theatrical Superman movie, and don’t get me wrong, what we got was a marketed improvement over that atrocity, unfortunately, it wasn’t without issues of its own.

I believe the biggest problem with this film is that it was a love letter to the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeves films and it’s this love that causes the film to fail, as Superman Returns neither works as a sequel nor does it stand on its own. I will give Singer credit for making a Superman film that doesn’t bother with another rendition of the origin story but then he ruins that by taking certain elements of the Donner film that would have been better left forgotten i.e. The Kiss of Forgetfulness.

Clark is seen here hitting the Superman II reset button.

In Bryan Singer’s film, Superman (Brandon Routh), who is doing his best Christopher Reeve impression, has been missing for five years as he’s been off looking for remains of an exploded Krypton (which defines the term “waste of time”) and when he finally returns to Earth he discovers Lois has a five-year-old son. This is very disturbing because we later learn that it is Superman’s child but Lois doesn’t know that, well, that is until the kid chucks a piano, and the reason she didn’t realize who the father was earlier was that the one time she and Supes had sex he had been erased it from her memory. So she had this kid without a clue as to who the father was or how she even got pregnant. We have to assume that around the time she slept with Superman that she was also maybe seeing Richard White (James Marsden) on the side so she wouldn’t think she had some kind of Immaculate Conception.

A little Super Afternoon Delight

One of my biggest complaints about the Superman movie universe is that the Fortress of Solitude is possibly the most inaccurately named thing in the universe. IT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE DOORS! What part of the “fortress” do these writers not understand?  People just waltz right in and screw around with his shit. In the original comics, he had to use a giant key that only someone with Super Strength could possibly lift and then in All-Star Superman we see it as a small key laying right in front of the door but it’s made out of immensely heavy dwarf star matter.

Even his Kryptonian computer has terrible security. In both Superman II and this film, Lex Luthor strolls on in, pops in a crystal and then starts asking questions with no problem whatsoever. WTF? So not only does Luthor “break” into the Fortress of Solitude TWICE but Jor-El’s hologram just assumes he’s speaking to Ka-Ell and coughs up sensitive information without even asking for a bloody password.

“Son, what happened to your hair?”

You would think an advanced alien race would have a computer system that could tell if the person standing in front of it was, in fact, Superman or at least be able to tell the difference between a Kryptonian and a human. Basically, all the destruction in Superman Returns can be laid at Superman’s feet on the grounds of gross negligence.

“I rely on the ineptness of my enemies.”

Speaking of Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), who is hands down the best casting choice in this movie, we run into another major problem with the story, and that would be the fact that his plan is terrible. Even dumber than dropping California into the ocean and hoping no one notices. In this film, he gets some Kryptonian crystals and information from the ever-talkative Jor-El and this somehow sets him off on a plan to create a continent from which he can, I don’t know…rule the world? He gloats about how this new continent will displace enough water to flood much of the planet, leaving him sitting pretty with tons of Kryptonian technology to back him up. The problem is we see none of this and his continent is rather small and, to be perfectly honest, looks like a bit of a shit hole.

Talk about a fixer-upper.

When it rises out of the ocean it causes Metropolis a bit of a bother with a minor quake that Superman handles with ease, but where is that rushing water we were promised? Even an island as small as we see it should still cause massive tsunamis that would lay waste on the coastline. And what about this super science that the Kryptonian crystals were to bestow on Lex? Bupkis. Not one Kryptonian weapon or defence system is seen, which would pretty much guarantee that Lex’s rule would last for as long as it takes the nearest Navy vessel to arrive and blow him to kingdom come. Even if this didn’t happen, who would want to live in that bleak hellscape he created? What kind of rent could Lex charge on a place like that? It doesn’t even seem to have any soil so you’d have to import food, and seeing as you supposedly just wiped out much of America’s heartland that could be tricky to come by.  And how exactly is Lex not in prison?  We are told that Superman was off in space so was unable to testify at Lex Luthor’s appeal hearing but there are a couple of things wrong with that starting with the question “Can Superman even testify in court?”  He has no legal identity to be sworn in by, and the second more important question is “Wasn’t Lex Luthor a wanted fugitive even before trying to drop California into the ocean?” So he’d still be stuck in jail for all the other things the authorities wanted him for even if they let slide the whole nuking of the San Andreas Fault.

“Is this the place to audition for Newsies?“

The next issue to discuss would be “Why the world doesn’t Need Superman” which is the title of Lois Lane’s (Kate Bosworth) Pulitzer Prize-winning article but is more fitting as maybe an editorial in a small college campus paper (Note: Miss Bosworth looks like she just got out of college and not at all like the Lois Lane from the Donner films, who at least looked like a grown-up). Sure the world doesn’t need Superman but he is really nice to have around when planes fall out of the sky and natural or man-made disasters threaten the lives of millions. Without Superman, the world and humanity would trundle on, only with a slightly elevated casualty count, but in the case of Lois Lane herself, that’s a completely different story. I’m not sure how she survived the five years Superman was off in space.

I’m assuming Lois barely left her apartment while Superman was off planet.

Now there are many good moments in this movie; the shuttle disaster where Superman saves Lois and a plane full of reporters is pretty fantastic as is his walking into the mini-gun fire and taking one of the rounds in the eye was boss, and even his flying around Metropolis during the earthquake gave us some truly decent Superman stuff, sadly those nice moments were undercut by a superhero who turns out to be a deadbeat dad and is now stalking his ex-girlfriend who he mind-wiped years ago.

Superman doing his Ayn Rand impression.

More Super-Fails:

• No one wonders why Clark Kent never answered emails or phone calls for those five years that Superman was off in space.
• On the farm Clark Kent’s dog wants to play fetch, Clark throws a ball into the next county. What a dick.
• Our hero whines, “I’m still Superman!” as he gets his ass kicked by Lex Luthor. This is not a very heroic moment.
• Superman lands and walks around on an island made of kryptonite and does not notice this fact until he is punched in the face.
• Space Jesus

Seriously, no more Christ imagery!

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Damn.

So as a loving tribute to a classic seventies superhero movie it kind of drops the ball, and as a stand-alone Superman movie it’s saddled with too much baggage for it to work, but Bryan Singer is still a talented director and at no point are you bored during this film. Superman never kills anyone during its entire run time though, so it does have that over a certain other man of steel.