10 things to say about Superman Returns.
I thought I’d follow up that video with something a bit more fun and frivolous.
FIVE PROBLEMS WITH SUPERMAN RETURNS
1. Superman is incredibly lame.
Superman is a boring character. He’s close to being utterly devoid of personality and he’s too strong for any character who doesn’t have a contrived method of hurthing him. This doesn’t matter because Superman gets in what I believe to be less than one fight in the whole movie. This brings me to my second problem.
2. Superman doesn’t fight anyone.
There are scenes where people fight him, but he does little and often nothing in terms of retalliation. It’s kind of a waste of such a muscle-bound character to not have him kick ass. It’s almost an insult in this case that Superman’s baby kicks more ass than he does.
3. The Flasback Scene, wtf?
Completely unintroduced, in the first quarter of the film, there is a flash back scene with Superman first beginning to discover his powers. It makes no sense in the context of the film and is confusing. It really makes me wonder why it was in there.
4. Inconsistent Tone
The film starts out with a great serious bit with Kevin Spacey expertly playing Lex Luther. As soon as Lex walks out of the room, he scares a little girl and it’s hilarious. You’re taken straight from a nice serious bit into a nice comedic bit. Both segments worked well but having them together like that just jars you right out of the movie. If the whole movie stayed serious, it would have worked and if the whole thing was more lighthearted it also would have worked.
5. It’s really long and in the end, nothing really happens.
THREE REDEEMING FEATURES OF SUPERMAN RETURNS
1. Kevin Spacey couldn’t possibly be a better Lex Luther.
He mixes egotism with intellect in the best possible way, making him an interesting and mildly despicable character. He’s a villian you can simultaneously hate and enjoy.
2. Two Pomeranians are implied to be eaten in this movie.
That is more Pomeranians I’ve seen eaten than in any other movie.
3. CGI was truly amazing.
I read a long article on CGtalk about the CGI in Superman Returns. Pretty much every shot where Superman is flying is completely rendered on a computer. It’s amazingly realistic and subtle. The little bits like that help you to not feel jarred out of things when they do more far-out CGI. It’s the kind of attention to detail that truly amazes me. It’s the kind of attention to detail that the script and physics in the movie are completely devoid of.
1. Lex Luther has an extremely detailed toy city he built in an old lady’s basement.
It looks extremely silly in the movie and in one part where parts of it break, there are lots of little details on the insides of the models that just scream that it was designed to break in those specific locations.
2. Physics are all over the place.
You can’t expect any rules or consistency from this movie. What will break and what won’t are pretty much just decided by what is convenient for the plot. How much kryptonite that Superman can take is also something that has no real set value.
That was fun. I think I’ll do one of these for another movie.
August 29th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
batman is better
September 24th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
i quite agree for most of the stuff. superman returns wasnt that good, but really in my opinion at this moment the only truly good superhero movies are Batman Begins, because its actually original in multiple ways, and x-men I and II (not 3, that one wasnt well done). Spiderman gets boring, overdramatic, and lame. All others are just plain bad.
September 24th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Not all super hero movies are bad.
I personally thought thta Spider-Man was awesome.
I also enjoyed the Tim Burton Batman movies.
The Incredibles was fucking amazing.
And don’t start thinking that ll movies based on comics are bad either because Ghost World is also an amazing movie and it is based on a comic book. (Really has almost nothing to do with ghosts except in a symbollic way.)