Superman Returns : A review
In today' article I will try to follow the textbook definition of a film review. Call it practice...I have to sharpen my claws for the future!
Plot -You obviously know the background to Superman's story or you have no place being here...Superman has been absent for 5 years and the world has moved on. Even Lois Lane, she is married and also a mom now. Luthor has been freed from prison due to lack of evidence/testimony against him. A rocket ship crashes into the Kent farm again and out steps Superman. He had gone to explore the remains of his dead planet. In the mean while Luthor finds important Kryptonian technology which leads to his 'brilliant' plan...expenditure of 300 Million Dollars ensues...
Critique - Before I begin with that let me reveal to you a few things. First and foremost, although the official budget fo the film has been declared as 260 Million,in reality it is well above 300 million. They spent close to 50-60 Million on publicity and product placement.So officially, barring Spiderman 3(which has a budget of 270 Million exclusive of publicity,and it is being made still so it doesnt count yet) Superman Returns is the costliest film in the history of cinema. A comparative idea will tell you,in this budget James Cameron could have made Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3 times over. Thats right,the total expenses for T2 was around 110 Million. Now ,before I digress further let me retrace my steps. For me,Superman has always been a second rate superhero. Dont lynch me yet, let me explain. Superman comics for me, was always over the top. Whereas my all time favourite Batman, tried to be more based in reality. Whenever I encountered a versus situation in my mind, I allways rooted for Batman(and I suspect I will till the day I die). Its not because of him being an alien. Its just that Superman always seemed unreal. Nothing seemed to affect him, nothing seemed to cut him deep. But later when I got my hands on more Superman comics I realized, not all was well in his world. Even he suffered. Superman did not seem so stupid to me anymore. The more I read, the more I liked him. Admittedly, he wasnt as great as Batman still, and he never will be but he is still pretty damned good. The most irritating factor of Superman was the punchline that was used for him-Truth,Justice & The American Way. Thankfully, in the film they avoid the last line. Anyway, lets get the review out of the way first. I had seen the first Superman film with very little expectations. But along came the great Christopher Reeve. He didnt look stupid inspite of the dated special effects. In fact he looked like THE Superman. Wide jawed, eyes the color of unearthly blue and still having enough acting chops and charisma to pull off a role of this proportion. When I saw what they had done with the new Batman film, I was more or less sure that the Superman film would be the same. There you see,I am deviating again. Sorry, I will be to the point this time.But with Bryan Singer helming this I still hoped for something good.Sadly,it was not to be so.
The film starts with a true homage to the original film. The credits are in the exact same style as in the original film. This I liked a lot. Let me first outline whats good about the film. Around 10-15 minutes of CGI action. Thats about it. This movie has it all, expensive costumes, the whos who of technical experts, bottomless budget...you name it, its got it. The only thing it lacks is heart. The movie fails in almost every way imaginable. I am not counting the special effects because a film of this scale always boasts the best in the business. The romance,the chemistry between Routh and Bosworth is almost non-existent. I will deal with Routh in the end because to be frank he is the cherry topping in this abortion of a work. Kevin Spacey delivers a performance which doesnt demand much from his considerable talent. He is a good Lex Luthor, but again hardly explored. I dont remember any comics where Luthor seemed idiotic...he seldom boasts of his genious but his plans proved to be extremely effective. This is the quirkiness of the film version of Luthor. From the very beginning,Luthor has seemed as a two bit villain suffering from delusions of grandeur. But admittedly thats a problem with all Superman films.This is something that has always bugged me.
In one particular comic that I own, Batman and Superman are fighting together against a host of super villains who have been sent by Luthor. Batman is thinking to himself and he comments that inspite of having dealt with people like the Joker, it still makes his skin crawl to be in the same room with Luthor. This is just to show you how deadly Luthor actually is. The dialogues in this film attempt everything from humour to seriousness and fails miserably. The jokes arn't funny. The emotional dialogue is too lacklustre. Luthors oh so briliant plan is so lame that words cant describe it. It seems like an alternate version of the first film's plan. The supposed 'twist' about Lois' son is quite predictable, I for one figured it out when he first appeared. I will admit one thing though...the suit as I had later guessed was color enhanced and later turned into red for the film. So on screen it looks ok. Another irritating factor was the quick cuts that plagues this film, along with the constant moving shots to showcase big budget sets. Now for Brandon Routh. Oh god, he cant act. As the film progressed I was thinking that he looked decent as Clark Kent, but he looked horrible as Superman. Why was that? Kent is supposed to be meek and sheepish and with the lack of dialogues for Kent it wasnt very difficult for him to pull it off. As Superman, he has even less dialogue but to pull that off one needs a certain amount of screen presence. Needless to say, Routh doesnt have that an iota. In a long shot he looks faintly like Christopher Reeve, but up close we see that his face is vastly different from that of Superman. So basically you have an actor who is stiff, can't act, can't emote, who looks like a twinky/gigolo playing arguably the most famous comic book hero of all time who doesnt even look like him. Great. Just brilliant. Imagine this, these people had 19 years to develop Superman Returns. And they came up with this script? Was this really the best they could manage? Its hard to believe that this is the culmination of 19 years of development hell. One could say that its near impossible to bring a comic book successfully on screen, but I could argue that the original Superman, Batman , X-men, Hulk and Hellboy(and I still say that its one of the most faithful comics to film transition ever) did that quite successfully. And to think, the Batman film had actors who looked nothing like their comics counterpart. But they still made it work.
You are probably thinking that I am being too harsh on a summer film. But let me describe 2 scenes. First, Superman travels back to earth on a crystal ship and whats more, crash lands on the Kent farm. Whatever happened to sattelite imagery? Is Superman not worried that the sattelites would take photos and find out his identity? Why does he even need a space ship when he enters the Solar system? The second one is where he recharges himself full of solar power and heads down to pick up the Kryptonite continent. I am sorry but why didnt he take precautions? Superman isnt a genius, but considering the times he has faced radiation poisoning, dont you think he would have put on some lead suit or a hazmat suit of sorts? One would say there wasnt enough time, but apparently the cataclysm clock stopped ticking while he was down...oh well...
So let me summarize this film for you. If you havn't grown up on healthy doses of Superman comics and/or films, if a good plot isnt your thing and you have always wanted to see a crossbreed between a twinky and a gigolo try to look like Superman, if you go ga ga over Brandon Routh then Superman Returns could not possibly get better. I for one, dont fall in this category. Christopher Reeve,we miss you, now more than ever. You are still the only man who could make us believe that a man could fly.
posted by Tamal @ 11:55 PM
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