Blowing Smoke: A movie about poker, cigars, women, and getting screwed

Monday
July 03, 2006

A few quick, stupid Superman Returns thoughts, in no particular order

Male Jim Treacher | Category: Movies
2> Comments

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers...

  • Brandon Routh looks more like Superman than Christopher Reeve did. That's right, I'm the blaspheme. Hell, Brandon Routh looks more like Superman than Superman does. The acting? He doesn't need to worry about preparing an Oscar speech, but then, Reeve was no great shakes either. I know they don't shoot movies this big in chronological order, but I could swear I was watching this guy learn how to act. His first few scenes were really shaky, but by the end, I did believe a man can cry. (You bet I said it.)

  • Krypton is still all blowed up, but apparently there were a few unbroken beers floating around. What's with the spare tire, Supes? Well, we did see him knocking back a few with Jimmy...

  • Lois & Clark's kid: Half-human, half-Kryptonian, all-autistic. Seriously, I kept expecting him to say "I see dead people." I actually like this whole development, though. Superman's always been kind of Dad to the World. You know, he bails you out of trouble and tells you to eat your vegetables before he flies off on another business trip with his secretary. Er, I mean mission. With saving people. Superman, I'm talking about. Right, so he's gone from Dad to the World to Dad to This One Special Needs Child Who's Never Been to the Barber. It looked like that other dude, whatsisface? Richard? It looked like he was out of the picture by the end. So is Supes going to help with the kid's expenses and shit? Do half-breed alien children need braces?

  • French house fires: Worth his time. Suicide bombers: Not so much. That's always been the problem with Superman, deciding how real you want his world to be. The "Truth, justice, and all that stuff" is just a throwaway line from Grouchy Perry WhiteTM, and the writers would have been fine if they'd just kept their yaps shut.

  • 9/11 echoes everywhere, at least to my eyes. Flashes of Middle East mayhem on the news; the gnarled black crystal city Luthor raised up out of the sea that looked an awful lot like Ground Zero; people falling out of skyscrapers; Superman coming back in late Sept. '06, after being gone for 5 years. Etc. I was registering that a lot more than the Jesus stuff, the gay stuff, and any of the other stuff.

  • So Luthor winds up stuck on a desert island with Parker Posey? Wow, what a comeuppance. If they really wanted to show him the error of his ways, why not have the Dharma Corporation airdrop in a 10-year supply of Twinkies and heroin? Not that Spacey is into Posey, but you know Luthor is gonna be on her like green on Kryptonite. Work off some of that frustration. Oh, and speaking of Sex Luthor and other things you'd rather not think about, how about the rich old lady and her "Lex, you showed me pleasures I'd never known." Yeccccch. You ask me, he earned that money fair and square. Sorry, Noel, you had your day and it was in black & white.

All in all, it was too long by at least half an hour, but I still liked it. It gave me the same feeling the original did when I first saw it. They really did a great job of making me believe that this guy exists in this world, and that's how everybody reacts to him. Oh, and the special effects are astonishing. I'll probably see it again.

P.S. Does Superman actually hit anybody in this movie? I don't think he does. Most of his supertime is spent pushing stuff, pulling stuff, or stopping stuff from falling on people. Which is amazing to watch, especially the whole space shuttle sequence, but I hope next time they give him some robots or supervillains to clobber.

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Comments

Well, thanks so much - now I'll probably have to see the damn thing. Still don't see how Spacey ("the toes knows") can do a better Luthor than Hackman:

"Mush, Ms. Tessmarker, mush!"
"I just want a little beachfront property - say, Australia?"

Comment by Dmac on July 5, 2006 8:42 AM

I saw the 9/11 echoes too....maybe we're just both being obsessive, but c'mon, the movie starts with a plane plummeting to the earth (albeit not because of hijackers) and then moves to people falling off skyscrapers and buildings starting to crumble. Oh yes, and the bit about Superman apparently being en route to Krypton on 9/11/01 of his timeline. The Jesus stuff came through, definitely, but this was a 9/11 movie, in essence...just with a happier ending. The plane part is especially eerie if you've seen "United 93" - however, post-9/11, the bit about the world enthusiastically applauding the last-minute save of a falling plane rang very true.

Also agree on the Perry White line. In the movie, Superman's essentially serving as the world's policeman, clothed in red and blue - not a bad analogy for the U.S. in 2006. It was the filmmakers blabbing on about that that made me roll my eyes.

On the action....Singer is good at getting down the grandeur and epic scale of comic books onscreen, but he's not so good with the knock-down, drag-out, god-level fights between two super-powerful opposing forces. X-Men 3 had many flaws (MANY flaws), but at least it gave us a real pitched battle between two sides that really, really knew what they were doing. Bring back General Zod! Or at least someone that can go toe-to-toe with Supes without Kryptonite.

Comment by marion on July 7, 2006 11:24 PM