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Director Bryan Singer, of X
Men fame, accomplishes the super-heroic in bringing a definitive Superman
to the screen in the epic Superman Returns. The narrative picks up loosely where
Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman
left off. Superman disappeared five years ago, and both the world and Lois Lane seem to
have given up on him. Superman’s search for remnants of his destroyed home planet,
Krypton, requires the plot to go back and retell the entire saga from the beginning, from
the cataclysmic end of Krypton to Superman’s humble Midwestern upbringing, to his
secret double life as mild-mannered Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent and savior of
the world and Lois Lane.
Singer manages to revivify the icon with mastery bordering on genius.
Brandon Routh’s Superman captures the nuances of Christopher Reeves’ performance
– the impish half-smirk, the gracefully acrobatic exits and entrances, the almost
tremulous yet firm voice, the spirit of a humble clean-cut boy who grew up to become a
god. Routh has the look and comportment from the classic-era DC comic books and inhabits
an idealized vision of Metropolis and America. Crusty Art Deco-era architecture melds
seamlessly with a nostalgic vision of the newspaper racket. A 1967 Mustang careens out of
control in comic-book fashion through crowded Manhattan-Metropolis streets. Even the
emerald-green kryptonite seems exactly comic-book right. Akin to Tim Burton’s Batman
(Michael Keaton), this Superman is haunted by his past and nobly bears the burdens of
being the last survivor of a lost world.
And yet, true to the original conception, while withdrawn into the
crystal palace retreat known as his Fortress of Solitude, Superman learns from recordings
left by his dead father Jor-El his intended role in this new world. Marlon Brando is
brought back from the dead, in the form of remastered tapes, to play Jor-El, projected
against various crystal walls. Fittingly it is Jor-El-as-The Godfather who
tells Kal-el (Superman) he, as the father’s only son, has been sent to Earth as a
savior, to bring light into the world of humans. Singer handily frames the return of
Superman to the film-going public’s consciousness as a five-year hiatus in
Superman’s universe. Singer adds the twist that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), who has
won a Pulitzer for penning "Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman," has a
five-year-old son and a live-in partner, editor-in-chief Perry White’s nephew Richard
(James Marsden). Sam Huntington plays a moderately plausible Jimmy Olsen with an obvious
crush on Clark Kent, while Frank Langella’s Perry White is uninspiring, but
serviceable.
The opening crisis-as-amusement park ride, involving a plane ensnared
with a space shuttle, a massive power failure, and, later, the quaking of skyscrapers, all
express a post-9/11 anxiety. The supreme show-stopping scene-stealer and Superman
Returns’ best feature is Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luther. The diabolical genius
outsmarts the Man of Steel once again, bringing him to his knees, stabbing him in the back
and tossing him into the pits of kryptonite hell, all while taking over the world, one
wisecrack at a time. Singer reaches back to the serious heroic Superman of World War II
years and holds up to post-9/11 America anew this heroic vision of salvation. In doing so,
he reinvigorates an original American archetype. Superman Returns gets it exactly
right.
- Les Wright
