Superman Returns: Appreciation

Tools    





I am the Watcher in the Night
I know the movie isn't universally loved, in fact, many despise it but, having just watched the trailer for the "Man of Steel", the "reboot" that many people wanted so feverishly, I was left thinking of all the themes that had so much potential in Bryan Singers film. The whole story involving Lois Lanes' son, with his own powers, how was that conflict going to resolve itself?? I think it was one of the most powerful storylines ever delivered in a movie about super powered individuals. Yet that will never be resolved, not now, with Zack Snyders, Batman-isque take on the Man of Steel. What was lacking in Returns, was a truly life threatening plot and villain. How many times must we see Lex try and take over the world?
So, I just wish, Singer had been allowed to complete his vision. The current reboot may well be good but it will never be brave enough, not initially anyway, to introduce Superman's son.



It was a nostalgic trip to be sure... but all the flash had very little impact on what was an already marred Universe.

Basing it in the same world as Reeve's Superman, but with a different actor trying to emulate Reeve was the first mistake.
The other thing is that this universe was pretty much killed off anyway with Superman 3 & 4. Reeve himself has been quoted as saying Superman 4 is a pile of tosh and the third wasn't much better either.
After the film was recieved the way it was... the studios then realised they'd made a huge mistake.

Returns was pretty brave with the son storyline, but it just wasn't enough for fans to get behind nor for studio execs to risk carrying on flogging a dead horse that had been dead for near 20 years.

If they'd rebooted the story and still kept the son story arc going, it may have worked, but it's doubtful.
After all the false starts too and the money piled into the project over the years, it was the biggest box office flop for a long time. Which is a another reason the studios decided to cut their losses.

Returns was more for the older generation to get doughy-eyed over and reminisce about the good old days.

I agree with you on one point, it might have been nice to see where the son story goes... but with the many cons outweighing the one single pro of The Supe having a kid... it was never going to happen.



Singer's version was wrong on many levels, his biggest mistake was to link it with the first 2 Superman films, instead of going for an entire fresh take.

& the whole movie pushed the sympathetic outcast thing (only for the romantic scenes) all the way to the top, which was a big turn-off...

& I doubt the son storyline would have done anything to the saga if Singer had continued it. It had been over decades anybody saw a Superman film & laying the storyline about Lois Lane having Superman's son was a bit too much to digest in the first film itself.

& then you have Lex Luthor, the mad genius who's greatest accomplishment to start the film off is to con an old woman?
Haven't we ad enough with the Real Estate storyline & him wanting to be the president in the previous films.

I didn't hate Brandon, but somehow his face didn't suit the costume, but that's just my opinion.



Precious tritium is what makes this project go.
I loved Brandon Routh as Superman and Clark Kent. Not as good as Reeve. But still good (to me at least). I really enjoyed the symbolism of the film and how it really focused on Kal-El being an alien in this world.
__________________
Oxfords not brogues.



I am the Watcher in the Night
I agree, Superman 3 and 4 were piles of horse dung but Returns tried to start where 2 left off. It was a edgy, risky move no doubt and extremely flawed but by no means was it a bad movie. It definitely could have warranted a sequel, rather than yet another origin story. Having said that Nolan is a master, and Goyer can write.



Yes, I love Goyers writing, But I wonder why he never writes well for movies he directs himself.

Superman 3 was in no way a bad film, it was far superior to Superman Returns IMO.
& touched upon ideas that were far better than the themes used in Returns.
& noone can deny that Clark Kent Vs Evil Superman scene was brilliant. inspite of not having a supervillain like the 2nd movie, it still manages to be entertaining.

The 4th one was garbage, no doubt about that.

The only thing I liked about Superman Returns were the dialogues written for Luthor.
& Kevin Spacey did a terrific job with that.



I am the Watcher in the Night
No doubt, Spacey was a great villain. I didn't quite like 3, it didn't touch the same notes as the first 2. Superman 2 for me, is still one of the greatest comic book adaptations ever made.



Great to see some appreciation for my favorite superhero film of all time. I just can't understand the hate this one got. I thought it took every other Superman adaptation together and blew them out of the water. I honestly can think of little I didn't like about this film, and the good far, far out-does the bad.

My #1 reason for loving it, though, is the great Christ allegories. They're strong in a few parts of the film, but it becomes most obvious when Superman dies. I remembering hearing about how Singer had Superman set to be in that pose, and one of the people working with him said something like, "We need to change that. Do you realize what that looks like?" Singer responded, "This is the story we're telling." I sure hope the new Superman is allegorical also, but we'll see what happens.

Finally, I want to say, that though Hans Zimmer is my all time favorite composer and it's cool he's doing the music for Man of Steel, he has some big shoes to fill, because John Ottman's beautiful score for Returns should've won as Oscar (partly thanks of course to the original score by John Williams that his was based on, but Ottman did a good deal of incredible new music himself).



Good points, but see what my last post was about.

The movie was marred with failure before it even got off the ground. Look at the developement hell it went through for over 15 years.... and Routh eminating Reeve was a huge mistake too.
Plus... no villain, no real expansion... no genuine screenplay except that of a crude copy of the Reeve engine Superman The Movie.

It's a good carbon copy... but a bad film overall.



Good whiskey make jackrabbit slap de bear.
I think Bryan Singer succeeded in creating a reboot with all the heart, spectacle and magic of the original. And Brandon Routh's Reeve impersonation is dead-on. And Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor is a great villian.

I'm one of the few who rates this film fairly high, but as a Superman fan, this is a wonderful continuation of the Superman saga.
__________________
"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."



I mean there really isn't much I can take from the teaser they released but to be honest I will probably go see this one which I normally wouldn't do because they haven't seemed great. This one has great potential just because of the people writing, producing, and directing it



I mean there really isn't much I can take from the teaser they released but to be honest I will probably go see this one which I normally wouldn't do because they haven't seemed great. This one has great potential just because of the people writing, producing, and directing it
Did you even bother to read the original post or atleast the thread title?



I am the Watcher in the Night
Surprised to see more Returns fans, and Jeikobu you are spot on, Ottman's score was brilliant. I'm just wondering what other movies were released that year that could have impeded it from winning an Oscar?



It was a nostalgic trip to be sure... but all the flash had very little impact on what was an already marred Universe.

Basing it in the same world as Reeve's Superman, but with a different actor trying to emulate Reeve was the first mistake.
The other thing is that this universe was pretty much killed off anyway with Superman 3 & 4. Reeve himself has been quoted as saying Superman 4 is a pile of tosh and the third wasn't much better either.
After the film was recieved the way it was... the studios then realised they'd made a huge mistake.

Returns was pretty brave with the son storyline, but it just wasn't enough for fans to get behind nor for studio execs to risk carrying on flogging a dead horse that had been dead for near 20 years.

If they'd rebooted the story and still kept the son story arc going, it may have worked, but it's doubtful.
After all the false starts too and the money piled into the project over the years, it was the biggest box office flop for a long time. Which is a another reason the studios decided to cut their losses.

Returns was more for the older generation to get doughy-eyed over and reminisce about the good old days.

I agree with you on one point, it might have been nice to see where the son story goes... but with the many cons outweighing the one single pro of The Supe having a kid... it was never going to happen.
Singer's version was wrong on many levels, his biggest mistake was to link it with the first 2 Superman films, instead of going for an entire fresh take.

& the whole movie pushed the sympathetic outcast thing (only for the romantic scenes) all the way to the top, which was a big turn-off...

& I doubt the son storyline would have done anything to the saga if Singer had continued it. It had been over decades anybody saw a Superman film & laying the storyline about Lois Lane having Superman's son was a bit too much to digest in the first film itself.

& then you have Lex Luthor, the mad genius who's greatest accomplishment to start the film off is to con an old woman?
Haven't we ad enough with the Real Estate storyline & him wanting to be the president in the previous films.

I didn't hate Brandon, but somehow his face didn't suit the costume, but that's just my opinion.

And do you both agree Nolan did it better with his version of Batman as he knew the Batman series was dead and needed to be updated for 21st century and 2000s audiences, his take was to distance itself from the late 80s and 90s Batman series and he succeeded as his take was a fresh view of Batman which was innovative and unique eh?

And i agree Singer made the mistake of having a dead horse series revived with a sequel in the same series when he should had rebooted it fully like Nolan did on Batman including making a retcon sequel to a dead series.

Thank goodness for Man of Steel which was a true Superman movie for 21st century audiences.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
I liked the two recent movies better than the originals. The originals were just so cheap looking that they were never believable.

The only thing I take from those movies are Hackman being awesome and the weird "lady sucked into the machine monster" being one of the creepiest things from my childhood.



I didn't like Superman Returns at all...as another poster mentioned, director Bryan Singer seemed to be trying to recapture the spirit of the first two Christopher Reeve films but this film is missing the one essential element that made the 1978 film and the 1981 film so much fun...a sense of humor. Singer directed this film with a straight face which made it very slow going...the only thing in the film that was fun was Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor...even the usually effervescent Parker Posey seemed stilted here. Brandon Routh's resemblance to Christopher Reeve helped but it wasn't enough to be convincing in this larger than life role. The other thing that really bothered me about this film was we learned that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is involved with another man (James Marsden) and has had his child. Lois having a child with another man just seems to go against the whole Superman legacy and I couldn't get past it. Not to mention the fact that Kate Bosworth can't act.



I'm not old, you're just 12.
You know, I initially enjoyed Superman Returns. It's a fantastic looking film, and at times it feels like a classic Superman flick. But then there are just too many issues that sink it for me.

-The basic plot has been done before. Lex Luthor given a real estate scam as his evil scheme? Seen it. That said, I absolutely LOVED Kevin Spacey as Lex. Guy was frightening, and the seething HATE in his performance is impressive.

-Lois Lane. Lois has none of the spiky personality that her character is known for. She's just a lovestruck little girl here instead of the tough lady reporter that every other version of Superman gave us. Plus the actress is too young looking. I don't believe this woman had a child.

-Brandon Routh is alright as Superman, but he has almost no dialogue in most of the film, so we get no sense of him as a character. Clark Kent is nearly a mute in his short screen time.

-None of the characters are really well fleshed out, except Lex. The film just expects us to care about them based on past films, and that's lazy.

-The plot is a total violation of the character of Superman/Clark Kent. If this is supposed to replace Superman 3 and 4, it makes NO sense that he would leave earth totally unprotected for years after Zod's invasion in 2. He could have flown to space and back to earth in a matter of HOURS. Superpowers! And it also makes no sense that he wouldn't have known that Lois was pregnant after their night together. Superpowers! He could have either seen it with his x-ray vision or heard the child's heartbeat, right? And I'm sorry, the big ol' farmboy who was raised in the heartland of America wouldn't have left his pregnant girlfriend. Making Superman the world's strongest deadbeat dad was lame.

-Finally, there was NO action. Like at all. We got the Super Jesus metaphor, we got the adoption metaphor, what we didn't get was Supes throwing down with a bad guy.

Man of Steel was a vast improvement. It had a fresh take on Clark/Superman, giving us a new version that doesn't also contradict what we know of the character. It had some fascinating glimpses of Kryptonian society, which was really well thought out. It had some edge of your seat action scenes, the first time he flies is pure joy, and yes, it had it's divisive ending that some really hated, but I think it will pay off in the sequel.
__________________
"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/



I remember liking the machine gun scene because it couldn't really have been done in the earlier films. Also I really enjoyed Parker Posey's moll character which I immediately saw was an homage to the Reeve films. And Kevin Spacey was great as well.



It was terrible. Man of Steel was just slightly better.
__________________
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa