He's been called "the ultimate immigrant," "a secular messiah" and "the world's most boring Boy Scout," but to those of us who've worshiped him our whole lives, he's just Superman, as familiar to us as George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Daniel Boone or Babe Ruth. Like all mythical figures, Superman seems to have been around forever, but he was actually born during the Great Depression, when people were looking for somebody to catch them on the way down. And in the intervening years, he's constantly adjusted to his surroundings, leading the fight for truth, justice and the American way during the early years of the Cold War, lying low during the Vietnam War, then resurfacing as a Sensitive New Age Guy during the Carter-Reagan years, courtesy of Christopher Reeve's indelible movie performances. Then he faded again, faded so far that DC Comics tried to kill him off in 1992. Was there a place for the celebrated Man of Steel in post-industrial America?
That's the $363 million (including $100 million for marketing) question posed by Superman Returns, Warner Bros.' attempt to bring this quintessential 20th-century icon leaping and flying into the 21st. A lot has happened in the 19 years since Superman last touched down in a movie theater Ã?' Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, "Lois & Clark," "Smallville," the lambada. And the challenge of bringing him back is in proving that there's still a place for him. As its title suggests, Superman Returns speaks to this issue. Picking up where 1980's Superman 2 left off (Superman 3 and Superman 4 having been discreetly swept into history's dustbin), it presents us with a Superman who, you guessed it, has been away for a while. Holed up in the Fortress of Solitude, paring his nails? Well, not exactly. It seems that astronomers have discovered chunks of Krypton floating through outer space. Superman has gone to see whether any of them happen to contain friends or relatives.
They don't. And as the movie opens, Superman...returns, crash-landing in a Kansas cornfield all over again. (When will he learn how to fly that thing?) By going the sequel route, director Bryan Singer and scriptwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris have cheated themselves out of the "Smallville" years where Superman slowly develops his powers and starts to secrete hormones. There's a flashback of him as a young teenager, running and jumping from one side of the Kent farm to the other, and it's an early indication of how astonishing the special effects are going to be. Singer, who directed the first two X-Men movies, knows how to bring out the lyrical side of a superhero's superpowers. And there's never been anything more lyrical than Superman flying through the air with the greatest of ease, his cape fluttering like a flag. It's every kid's dream come true, one of the reasons we love Superman so much, and Singer turns him into an airborne Baryshnikov.
On the ground, he's more of a klutz. Newcomer Brandon Routh, who's the same age Reeve was when he first donned the apparel, sometimes seems like a boy sent to do a man's job. He looks enough like Reeve to be his younger brother, and he has no trouble filling out what TV Superman George Reeves, in a moment of weakness, called "the monkey suit." But he lacks Reeve's physical grace, especially when it comes to playing that tall drink of water that Lois Lane refuses to take a sip of, Clark Kent. They threw away the mold after Reeve worked out his bumbling, stumbling routines, but Routh seems to have found it, copying Reeve tic for tic. Alas, he doesn't bring anything of his own to the role, doesn't show us how a Clark Kent of the 21st century might have his very own bumbling, stumbling routines. Actually, he seems more comfortable playing Superman, despite that whole men-in-tights thing. As his biceps pop, all but ripping the fabric, it's easy to imagine him saving the world.
But do popping biceps work for Lois (played by Kate Bosworth) anymore? When Clark catches up with her, she's clearly moved on, as any woman would if the man of her dreams wasn't there when she woke up in the morning. Lois has even written an article, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," that won the Pulitzer Prize. More important, she's gotten engaged to a guy who's arguably better looking than Superman (James Marsden, Cyclops in the X-Men movies), and she has a somewhat sickly son who's just old enough to be Superman's own. (Don't let the inhaler fool you; the kid clearly doesn't know his own strength.) "I call it my first chick flick," Singer has said about Superman Returns, alluding to Lois' being torn between a mensch and an ubermensch. But her dilemma isn't developed in the script, just stated. There isn't even much of a rivalry between the two men in her life, the mortal one gladly taking a backseat. Winning Lois' heart? That would be a job for Superman.
And during their scenes together, he basically gets the job done. It's the scenes between Lois and Clark that seem a little lacking, perhaps because the filmmakers were determined to avoid "Lois & Clark." That whole Tracy/Hepburn thing, which made Reeve's pairing with Margot Kidder such a romantic-screwball delight, has been largely dropped, and not because Routh and Bosworth weren't up to the challenge, although neither of them appears to have seen His Girl Friday. Apparently, Singer had bigger fish to fry, a moody meditation on Superman's Christ-like split between divinity and humanity, Superman and man. As in the X-Men movies, Routh's Superman is the eternal outsider, a bit of a social misfit in or out of the costume, destined to be a loner. The religious overtones have always been there, but Singer runs with them, even bringing back (via doctored archival footage) Marlon Brando's Old Testament-ish Jor-El for some patriarchal musings about fathers and sons.
"Where does that leave Lex Luthor?" as Lex Luthor would be the first to ask. It leaves him all dressed up with nowhere to go on and on about Lex Luthor. From the beginning, there's been a shortage of memorable villains able and willing to take on a guy who's faster than a speeding bullet, among other things, and so Lex keeps getting sprung from prison Ã?' time off for bad behavior. This time, Kevin Spacey takes over from Gene Hackman, and he clearly didn't want to go as far in the direction of camp as Hackman did, but what other direction is there? How else to put over Lex's dreams and schemes Ã?' in this case, a real estate swindle of biblical proportions? Or his taste in women? As Kitty Kowalski, a lady who lunches (on those less fortunate), Parker Posey is obviously going for something in the Funny Department, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is. Did her performance get left on the cutting-room floor? Eaten by the dog? Valerie Perrine, come back, all is forgiven.
Although Superman Returns leaves much to be desired, it's no bomb. On the contrary, it often soars, held aloft by Singer's way with an action sequence and his contrary ability to slow and quiet things down. The movie also looks great, Metropolis restored to its Art Deco glory, the bubblegum flavors of the last go-around darkened and deepened into a more somber palette. (Superman's cape is the color of dried blood.) But was darker and deeper really the way to go? And if so, why didn't the filmmakers hurl their revitalized superhero into the contemporary maelstrom? There's not even an oblique reference to 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq or Ã?' Dr. Evil to Lex Luthor's Mini-MeÃ?' Osama bin Laden. What's the point of bringing Superman to the 21st century if you're not going to bring the 21st century to Superman? With $363 million at stake, Superman Returns both takes itself too seriously and doesn't take itself seriously enough. Yes, the Man of Steel is back, but he's a little rusty.
