Superman Returns

“What do you call a fly without any wings?” “A Walk!”
- old joke

The rule set by this old joke also applies to Superman, it seems, as director Bryan Singer’s latest attempt at franchise renewal no doubt proves. Not only does Superman Returns refuse to soar, it instead lurches forward like a sumo wrestler with cement blocks strapped to his feet. This is the most disappointing summer movie since the Star Wars prequels (notably the travesty that was Episode 2), by taking a beloved fantasy series once bustling with exhilarating entertainment and seriocomic style, and thrusting it into the waters of suffocating seriousness and cornball melodrama.

And like Episode 2, the best thing about the film is its opening credits, which blatantly force the audience to compare the film with its classic predecessor, namely Richard Donnor’s 1978 Superman. Resurrecting John Williams’ still-rousing main theme, as well as the wispy angelic tones of Marlon Brando’s voice (returning through the use of archival footage as Superman’s father Jor-El), the film’s magnificent opening features titles identical to that of its predecessors (soaring three-dimensional names which fly directly at the screen). Yet the gloriously revitalized nostalgia brought about by these first moments becomes to seem more and more like a sick joke, as Singer gradually reveals the film to be the most downbeat cinematic portrait of a savior since…well – Passion of the Christ!

The Man of Steel himself is played by model/soap-star Brandon Routh, who may be a worthy recipient of a “Christopher Reeve look-alike” contest (and he is), but lacks both the original actor’s neurotic comedy as alter-ego Clark Kent, as well as the superhero’s genuine warmth and nobility. While doing nothing more than a pale Reeve imitation, Routh seems to be treating this performance as nothing more than a mere modeling gig, barely using more than one facial expression in an individual shot. He’s not acting so much as he’s posing. The incredibly lame “plot” finds Superman returning to Earth five years after Superman 2 (a film Singer hopes this to be a worthy sequel for), and attempting to reunite with old flame Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), who has gotten engaged to a colorless lout (James Marsdan) while giving birth to the superhero’s son (Tristan Lake Leabu).

While the 1978 masterpiece got us to believe that “a man can fly”, this film asks us to accept an even less probable feat: that a woman as stupid as Lois could win a Pulitzer Prize (which she earned for her bitter expose “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman”). Not only can’t she spell the word “catastrophic”, this Lois treats her superhuman lover (upon his return) like a mere high school cad who cheated on her, while inexplicably dragging her young son onto a stranger’s boat (that ends up belonging to the evil schemer Lex Luthor). More importantly, Bosworth (while a natural beauty) offers none of the rich humor or depth displayed by Margot Kidder, while never creating a compelling personality of her own.

Although the film runs for two and half hours, it barely scratches under the surface of its characters’ personalities, to the point that they seem as paper-thin as the page of a comic book. As Luthor (Kevin Spacey) schemes to create land that will cover America in water (while offering diagrams not a million miles removed from those on display in An Inconvenient Truth), he plays the role like a cold-blooded sadist reminiscent of Brando’s Col. Hurwitz in Apocalypse Now. His “Evil” (with a capital E) is so insufferable that we have to constantly be reminded that “billions” of people will die from his plan. Perhaps the only person having any fun at all is Parker Posey as Luthor’s long-suffering girlfriend Kitty Kowalski, who drops sardonic, detached observations as if she’s a jaded moviegoer in the audience.

The cast is such a mixed bag that everyone seems to be performing in a separate film: Routh and Bosworth in a bottom-of-the-barrel WB rerun, Spacey in a drama about the Nazi regime, and Posey in another Christopher Guest laugh-fest, while Brando and Eva Marie Saint (wasted as “Clark’s” earth-mother) hover over the proceedings like the forgotten ghosts of cinema’s character-driven past. To be sure, director Singer is a gifted filmmaker (he led Spacey to an Oscar with The Usual Suspects, and made the first two X-Men installments terrific fun), and his ambition runs high in this film, making it a fairly fascinating failure (for its first 90 minutes).

There are several great individual images and visceral moments (among them: Superman hovering over Earth listening to human dilemmas, walking into a torrent of bullets, and leaping over his hometown cornfield in a single bound), and Singer’s insistence on straight-faced drama is admirable to see within the smirk-laden summer season. The fatal flaw of this approach is that the entirety of the film’s drama is completely unearned. The character motivations are so vague that we are never even given a sense of how Superman feels about his son, who is played by such a bored-looking kid actor that he might as well be a statue (while Routh might as well be a CGI creation).

As in Tim Burton’s first two Batman movies, the central hero of this film is reduced to a dull supporting role, and is then made into a martyr in a sequence so uncompromisingly cruel that it is sure to terrify the children rooting for their superhero in the audience. Thus, any shred of the film’s fantasy crumbles under misdirected dramatic emphasis, and in its final hour, falls into an abyss of kryptonite that puts the franchise (as well as its hero) on life support. This makes the film’s few lighthearted asides seem forced to the maximum degree (most of which are delivered by Sam Huntington, doing a desperate Jimmy Olson imitation).

The real question I felt like asking during the film was, “Why Does Bryan Singer Think the World Needs Superman”? In the past, Superman exuded an eternal optimism for the human race, delivering helpful anecdotes and ushering in peace like a caped Gandhi. In a post-9/11 world, however, such a figure seems to have been deemed by the filmmakers as painfully naive. Superman is therefore made to suffer for humanity’s sins (in a film brimming with not-so-subtle references to airline terrorism, global warming, and Christ’s sacrifice), and we are left feeling forced to pity him instead of being amazed or excited by his heroism.

The film’s determined solemnity becomes so monstrous that you begin asking questions no one should be asking during a Superman movie. How can Superman enter an elevator and fly up its shaft without hitting a ceiling? Why is Daily Planet editor Perry White (a thoroughly joyless Frank Langella) devoid of his feisty zest, and instead broods in his office until Lex’s mischief forces him to leave, and why oh why does he insist on standing directly under the falling “Daily Planet” globe, looking helplessly up at it until Superman swoops to the rescue, and inspires White to recite his catchphrase (“Great Caesar’s Ghost!”) with all the reverence of a Shakespearean actor? Why does Lex’s tattooed henchmen share a piano duet of “Heart and Soul” with Superman’s kid, before attempting to bash his mommy to a pulp? What does Kitty think about Superman, Lex, or anything for that matter? Why is Lois so dumb, and Superman so weak?

While last year’s Batman Begins took a franchise laden with cheese, and revived it with smashingly effective multi-dimensional characters (that had room for both humor and drama), Superman Returns seems to be so depressed and disenchanted with the icons its bringing back, that it’s “rebirth” of the material feels more like a “miscarriage.” The entire sad experience of this film can be summed up by a line of Kitty’s, as she re-enters her old mansion, “This place is so tacky, Lex. Why are we back here?” That’s one question no one in this film seems motivated to answer.

Rating: ** (out of *****)