SUPERMAN RETURNS: Post-release Discussion

Too bad everyone was in a rush, I *love* these tag team reviews.

Wasn't Spider-Man 2 high on emo and low on action sequences? I guess it's a fine line. I will agree that Lex is solely there because people know him. The drawn-out ending(s) of LotR never bothered me, really, so it remains to be seen how bad this will be. I know it will have my money, at least.

Twice, maybe.

Hopefully this thread will continue the great topics of discussion that the pre-release thread had, such as having too many trailers, Florida penises, and the annoyance of hearing a clank when reading the name "Richard Donner."

One of my favorite forums arguments of late....

Spider-Man 2 has three major setpieces (the bank robbery, clock tower/train fight and the climax), plus some smaller scenes in scale that can still qualify as action sequences (those being the opening pizza delivery, the chase with the thieves, Ock's failed experiment, his awakening ar the hospital, and the burning building rescue). All of those combined must take up something like 45-50 minutes out of a two-hour movie. So nope, not particularly low on action.

wasnt that CLUNK more of a robot taking a dump? or something of the sort..

These tag team reviews are really something special. Somehow these highly-anticipated films demand a group think-tank discussion. Thanks, guys.

how can you argue needing lex in this, batman begins didn't use the joker and i think it survived reasonably well. i just maybe would like to see a superman movie that doesn't bore me or retread the same goddam movie i thought was bland even as a child.

Batman has a far better rogue's gallery than Superman does. There's Luthor, and everyone else is silly.

In short: KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. Batman has a bigger, better, more-familiar-to-the-mainstream rogues gallery.

EDIT: Or what Nordling said.

Yep. Although I was never bored by SUPERMAN RETURNS, I was often frustrated by it.

Fun read, guys. I want to avoid spoilers so I'm gonna post lightly, but it seems like with most of Singer's recent output, there's quite a bit of good stuff in there. My hesitation with his work comes from the fact that his films doesn't hold up to repeat viewings for some reason. I wonder if this film is similarly, um how to put it, problematic.

And the dilemma with Supes' villain roster is that most of the big ones are extraterrestrial. (is Brainiac?) By reminding audiences in this film that Supes is an alien who is capable of interstellar travel, here's hoping Singer & Co. gonna go to that well for the inevitable sequel because that's something genuinely new for the film franchise.

Looking at these first reviews, I've noticed that this first wave of reviews from the big-name (mostly print) critics have had predominantly glowing reviews. A lot of the Internet site reviews, some with people more familiar with the character, have had less enthusiastic reviews. Not saying these print guys are somehow better, just an observation.

Genuinely new except for the fact that it happened in Superman II.

Well he's an "alien machine" of sorts, w/ a really wacky Pre and Post-Crisis history.
I prefer the version presented in Superman: TAS, myself.

Same here. By far the best interpretation of Brainiac that, imho, even makes him more of a natural nemesis to Superman than Luthor.

However, I'm not sure how that would work given how Krypton has been established in the continuity of the films, which is that the technology comes from cystals and molecular objects not computers and AI (as in TAS).

I meant besides other Kryptonians.

I don't know if Returns goes into any sort of detail about Krypton's technology, but there's plenty of holes in Superman 78 in which Brainiac could be weaseled in. Possibly making Brainiac an abandoned technology instead of the current mainframe, an intelligence which quietly engineered the explosion of the red sun, or at least tampered with the council's findings. There's enough left unexplained so far that it shouldn't be too big a deal.

All I do know for sure is I want Kiefer Sutherland playing him.

I sat down this weekend and read through a couple of boxes of Silver Age Marvel comics with my daughter--we had a great time discovering and rediscovering Captain America, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, The Inhumans--it was wonderful. That evening, I saw a commercial for Superman Returns on TV and I realized that, far from looking forward to it, I felt something like dread. Sure, I'm going to go see it, but it feels like duty more than pleasure. Maybe it's because I'm not that big a fan of Supes to begin with. For me, it was always Marvel first, then Batman and the secondary characters at DC (How 'bout a Deadman movie? I'd go if it was good). I've always thought that Superman had a kind of iconic blandness, and the movies never did anything to make me feel any different about him.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I really want to see any more comic book movies. I've looked forward to a lot of them, and there are a couple that really touched me. Raimi's Spider Man was beautiful. I was thrilled at the look of Hellboy, but the I think that the story faltered and GdT's characterization of Hellboy seemed too shallow. Batman Begins flirted with something great but lost it in the last reel. Parts of X2 were pretty good too.

But in the end, most don't do anything more than just spark a little pleasure of recognition. I like it too when I see something that I already know--when the director got the look of something right, or when an actor really seems to inhabit the role. I just don't think that's enough anymore. Comic book movies ought to be good movies in their own right instead of non-disappointing adaptations. Is that too much to ask for?

Nick said this wasn't even the second best Superman film. Considering that all but the first are horrible, horrible movies (with entertaining moments), that seems like a very silly thing to say.

btw if i didn't mention it great article, loved it. too bad i was looking for a reason to get excited about this movie, still hope for a sequel.

I didn't end up emphasizing it at all in my part of the piece, but the plane rescue is tied with the subway car sequence from Spidey 2 as my favorite onscreen superhero sequence. It totally gets Superman right, and offers the most incredible action sequence in this movie. It's probably reason enough to see the film.

Utterly off-topic, but the Hellboy of the movie is far more fleshed out than the quipping slugger of the comics.

The scene with Hellboy and Liz after Broom's funeral automatically negates any claim of Del Toro's characterization being shallow.

Off-topicness over.

I dunno. I pretty much agree with Nick on that. For all its cheese and flaws and stupidity, SUPERMAN II (in its current form) ultimately delivers the goods and has a very clearly defined story. I can only hope the upcoming Donner Cut improves things even more. Fortunately, SUPERMAN RETURNS doesn't repeat the mistakes of the previous sequels but it does create a few maddening ones of its own.

Well, if he had used the word "enjoyable," then I'd understand. And I agree that #2 has a clearly defined story, but the execution was infantile and amateurish, to say the very least. Unless the new one has a lot of cheap, clumsy slapstick (the "blowing" scene is unparalleled in awfulness), unexplained and unprecedented powers, uneven and poorly paced action scenes (I won't even mention Luthor's escape from prison, which is children's theater at its worst; sorry, I just mentioned it), and frequently horrible dialogue, then there's no way the new one can be worse.

It's not. Devin's comparison to Begins is pretty accurate. The movie is much more consistent than Begins, and thus by default MUCH MUCH more so than Superman II . Compared to more recent fare, it doesn't reach as high a note as Spider-Man 2, though its got fewer chinks in the armor (no poor Dunst performance, no awkward Aunt May speeches). Personally, to me, it felt a bit like the first Spider-man movie in that it's got some incredible chill-inducing moments, nails the character, yet has a second half that feels like less of a cinematic ride. What I feel makes it better though is that it does avoid any cheesy or very awkward moments, and has the most iconic superhero shots ever put on film. There weren't any spot the cgi moments in it for me like with the Spider-man flims. When Superman is in action, it's utterly beautiful, which is why it never bothered me that the action mostly wasn't confrontational. That's the odd thing about the action in this movie. It's not rousing, it's poetic (well, except the plane sequence, which is both, in spades). I do wish there were more of it for that very reason. You don't quite get a full action meal like with SM2. Overall, I'd rank it between the two Spider-man films, though I feel more of an urge to watch it again than I did with Spider-man 2 (not sure why yet, possibly because the theater I saw it in had pretty awful sound, and there were crying babies aplenty). Personally, I don't feel like the first two Superman movies are even close to this one. The first gets points for pioneering, but the second one is pretty unwatchable next to this one.

The comment about it being an audience film really really hits the mark though. Even with a poor theater performance (the movie even cut off at one point, mercifully after the plane sequence), the crowd was eating out of the movie's hand every step of the way, with reactions to pretty much every beat that was asking for such. I found Devin's remark about wanting to cheer at the end of the plane sequence amusing, because a lot of people actually did cheer at my showing. There was applause at the end as well, and despite the loss of momentum as it got there, I felt it was earned for the most part. For whatever flaws the movie has, a lack of class certainly isn't one of them.

Very good post. Your thoughts on the film very much echo my own, especially in comparison to the original Superman movies and other recent superhero flicks.

One quick note: the "prison shiv" scene that was regarded as a "spoiler" in the review WAS IN THE PREVIEW I SAW.

In other words, mentioning it in the open is akin to letting everyone know Gandalf would come back in The Two Towers.

Gandalf comes back...?

You fuck!

A couple of the trailers show the second-to-last shot in the film too.

Choke on it, bitch - you should know that from reading the books!

You heartless bastard. You know I can't read.

And movies are pretty!

Yeah, but it's basically a recreation of the same shot in each of Reeves' films.

I saw Returns tonight and have to say I enjoyed it. I'm too young (born in '85) to have grown up with Donner's film and its sequels, but I have a few nice nostalgia-fueled memories. This week I took the time to rent Superman and Superman II and found I wasn't incredibly impressed with them. Reeves was excellent, but Margot Kidder was grating more than half the time she was on-screen, and Lex's band of sidekicks were way too goofy for my tastes. In the end, I liked Superman Returns more than anything that's come before.

And I really, really liked the final scene between Superman and Jason. For whatever reason, that just struck a chord with me.

pretty great movie as far as im concerned. wouldnt change a thing.

A question for those who have seen it ( I have tried to remain relatively spoiler fresh for this one so please excuse my ignorance of more than the general story) But is there anything objectionable in the film for das kids? My six year old rather wants to see this and I am tempted given the IMAX 3D-ness of the situation. He did see Episode 3, but that was an exception to the general violence rule. Any parents who took their kids?

If you're waiting a few days, I can give you a father's perspective Thursday. I do know this is a long movie. Over 2 1/2 hours, right?

There are two scenes I would be hesitant letting a 6-year-old see:

1) One of Luthor's thugs roughing up Lois on the Gertrude. Not quite Gandolfini in TRUE ROMANCE but still disturbing. Especially because it's Lois, now a mom, with her own child in the same room watching as it's happening. I noticed some people in my row actually averting their eyes or looking appalled...and the only reason I saw that was because I had to look away from the screen to see if anyone else was as disturbed by this as I was.

2) Luthor's thugs beating the shit out of a Kryponite-weakened Superman, followed by the infamous Kryptonite shiv moment where Luthor joyfully stabs Superman in the kidney. A brutal scene for someone of any age if they care about the character or have any shred of humanity.

Kenneth Turan's take in the L.A. Times...

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/c...op-blurb-right

Seeing it again tonight. Hoping for an epiphany.

I'm noticing way too many reviews getting miffed over "The American Way" not being in the film.

That and Bryan Singer saying this was his first chick flick...

Hey, people who have seen this:

If I don't remember a damn thing about the first Superman and never saw any of the sequels, am I going to be totally lost here?

Some would say you're totally lost already.

Every since the trailer it's been a highly discussed topic on the boards I visit. It's an omission that is unthinkable.

As that tagline is simply from the 1950's Television series opening, I don't see that big a problem with it vanishing from this or subsequent films.

Conspiracy theorists will differ.

RECAP: There's this buff space dude, in a cape and tight blue pants and shit, and he totally flies around saving people. And sometimes he wears glasses and works at a newspaper - like, whatever!

Not really, since the character has evolved since the 50s and this film makes it clear that Superman is here for all the people of Earth, not to enforce "the American way".

Given the global climate, that's a more than thinkable omission and is no worse than changing "where no man has gone before" to "where noone has gone before".

And his kisses give you amnesia.

I'd forgotten that. OMG!

A spoiler warning here wouldnt be offensive at all...