Superman Returns

Yesterday I mentioned that I was off to see Superman Returns in IMAX 3D. Boy, is that a big movie screen. Of course, I've been to IMAX theaters before, but this is the first time I've seen a bona fide Hollywood movie on that screen. I think the closest I've come to a mainstream movie up until now was the Rolling Stones' At the Max. Yes, it's a big screen, but it's not too big (although the seventy-five foot closeups take a bit of getting used to). The 3D was mostly good, but some of the scenes they chose to put into 3D were a bit too frenetic. (I suppose I should mention that I'll be discussing spoilers, so I'll start a new paragraph. I apologize that Blogger doesn't support jump pages to hide it from people whose eyes just can't help straying.)

The first 3D scene was the one in which Superman/Clark remembers running at superspeed through the cornfield. Unfortunately, once 3D was introduced and, like good sheep, all of us in the audience put on our 3D glasses, the corn stalks were flapping in our face, distracting us from the actual action in the scene. The second scene was the space shuttle take off, and the cuts and changes in perspective were awfully quick when we had to keep readjusting our focus, as well. I suppose that we'll get used to it if this becomes common, so I won't complain too much. On the balance, I'm quite happy to have experienced the new technology.

The space shuttle scene highlights one problem that I had with the film. It's probably been a drawback of all Superman stories since he became nigh-omnipotent (he didn't start out that way, you know), but Superman's powers seemed to fluctuate depending on the dramatic needs of the moment. We saw that he was "faster than a speeding bullet" (and that sequence was very impressive), but he sure took a long time to catch up to a plane falling from the sky. Sure, I know 32 feet per second per second and all that, but he didn't have any trouble outracing those bullets.

Another problem I had was the movie's odd sense of pacing. I guess everybody's pretty familiar with the Superman mythos, so there's not a lot that needs to be explained. But it still took its time getting started. (And I was sorry that I wasn't enough on the ball to notice Noel Neill as Luthor's benefactress, though I did enjoy the scene with the two Jimmy Olsens embracing). When Superman came crashing to Earth, I guess we all knew what was going on. But shouldn't we have had some explanation about why Ma Kent was still alive and Pa was dead? If I recall, both parents died during the 1978 Superman, which was the current status quo of the comics, but since then, they've both been resurrected in the comics and are still alive. Of course, on Smallville, Pa Kent died. I'm not a regular watcher of the show, and my understanding is that Ma is still alive, but I could be mistaken. So are we taking the TV show over the comics because the viewership is larger than the readership? (On a side note, was anybody else excited over the fact that Ma Kent dated Jor-El back when he coulda been a contender?) And speaking of casting, while I thought Brandon Routh was fine in the role of Superman, he was far too young. Although this theoretically takes place after all (or maybe just some, in case we want to ignore any) of the Christopher Reeve movies, he seemed younger than Reeve did when he first came to Metropolis in the original. He also seemed younger than Dean Cain. I would've put him about the same age as Tom Welling. And although Kate Bosworth didn't bother me as Lois Lane, I agree with Mike Chary (even if he does back off of it later) that Parker Posie would've been a better choice (although she couldn't have matched that metamovie tension that proved neither she nor her dream lover ever got over the hard feelings of the last time).

But back to the pacing, I'm not exactly sure what the climax of the movie was. My dramatic sense is that it was when Superman threw the new continent into the sun, but then that gave us an exceedingly long denouement. Was the climax when Superman died and was resurrected (yes, I'll get to that in a minute)? Perhaps, but I must say that I never felt any tension over whether or not Superman would survive into the sequel, so it was just a wait until the inevitable. But it certainly wasn't terribly exciting when that inevitable came. It was almost as if Bryan Singer was aware that we all knew what had to happen, so he was afraid to milk it. But by downplaying it, we had an exceptionally uneventful last few minutes (it felt like it was twenty minutes to half an hour, but I neglected to look at my watch).

And it sure did seem as though Superman dying to save Earth but then coming back to life was a metaphor for something, but I'll be darned if I can figure out exactly what. When you look at it, the Christ imagery (unless, of course, it's Moses imagery) in Superman has always been explicit but vague, so why did Bryan Singer have to hit us over the head with it? I knew of one revelatory spoiler before I went in, but I didn't know quite what we had in store on the religious front. At one point before Superman went back to his final face off with Luthor, getting annoyed with the heavy-handedness I muttered half aloud, "Just die for our sins, already." And then he did, floating back to Earth in a crucifixion pose. Excuse me? Superman isn't Christ, and he shouldn't be Christ, no matter what Mario Puzo may have implied twenty-some years ago. One of the most significant Superman stories from back in the day was "Must There Be a Superman," by Elliot Maggin. (I just discovered that you can read it here.) This is where Superman learns that not only can't he solve all the world's problems, he shouldn't. Humanity has to deal with its own issues, and a strange visitor from another planet can't come in and make everything right. I wondered if Lois's Pyoolitzer-winning essay, which, as I recall, was titled, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," covered any of the same ground, but by the end of the film, it seemed to be dismissed as an angry screed from a jilted lover. Whether the world needs Superman or not, we don't have him--even in any sort of "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" metaphorical sense--so the movie fills us with false promises. The filmmakers do us no favors in arguing that yes, we do need Superman--and oh, yeah, he's really Jesus, besides!