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annathepiperSo then! As promised, a separate posting on Superman Returns. I found it an entertaining matinee-type movie: nothing spectacular, but certainly with some good qualities that made it worth my time. Its overall problem for me is that while I found the cast mostly quite enjoyable, the story they had to work with wasn't worthy of their efforts--it really felt like a Superman fan film. Which is not what I want to see when I go out to see a big-budget motion picture, y'know?
(But heh--clearly I liked this film well enough to go find me an LJ icon for it. I've been wanting one for my Supes fandom for a while now, and this'll do me nicely until I find either a really good one of Christopher Reeve, or perhaps one from the animated Superman, which I adore! This particular icon is by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meryddian, now credited on my userinfo page. Y'all can blame this on the fact that I really did rather like Brandon Routh's portrayal, way more than I was expecting going in! More on this behind the cut.)
Let me elaborate on this fan-film feel problem. While I am not as deeply immersed in fanfic as many folks I could name, I've certainly read my share of it. And I've played on MUSHes for many years, which is really a kind of interactive fanfic. So I've had the opportunity to get familiar with a great number of common plots that fans tend to come up with, because they're really easy ways to try to build tension.
And in this film, I spotted at least two plotbunnies that I've seen all over the place in fan efforts, to wit: pregnancy and huge medical emergencies. I've seen both of these in particular all over the Lois and Clark fanfic archive site where I was amusing myself earlier this year. It's full of plots involving Superman getting Lois pregnant without his knowing about it, and later sequel stories where the kid grows up (or kids grow up!) to inherit Daddy's Kryptonian powers. There are also quite a few stories involving Supes in a medical emergency, and I very clearly remember at least one where he was in a coma and thought to be in danger of dying.
Now, to this film's credit, they handled both of these things fairly decently. This film is a sequel to the first two Christopher Reeve flicks, and he and Lois do sleep together in Superman II. That she therefore got pregnant as a result of that is not a stupid idea in the slightest. Neither did I have any real issue with Superman falling into a coma. I mean, he had suffered a huge dose of exposure to Kryptonite, thanks to Lex's little island being laced with the stuff and because of Lex stabbing him with the Kryptonite shard. That the titanic effort of yoinking that island out of the ocean and shoving it into space almost killed him is totally reasonable. Furthermore, I appreciated that the scriptwriters very specifically avoided a couple of the schmaltzy things that they could have done with Superman in a coma--i.e., having him wake up when Lois was whispering to him, or having the kid somehow be able to magically wake him up. I really liked that they had him hear her even while unconscious, that the heart monitor blipped to show this, and that Lois gave it a "you have got to be KIDDING ME" look--and that he did not actually wake up. The boy coming over to give him a smooch on the forehead was also a very sweet little touch, which was exactly how much you needed of the kid in that scene, and not a whit more.
But that I have seen similar plotbunnies in fanfic a lot detracted from the film for me. So did the constant hammering of the concept of Superman as Christ figure, and the too-heavy stealing from the first movie. I caught all the noticeable large chunks of dialogue that were lifted right out of the movie, whilespazzkat and solarbird remarked upon how big chunks of the cinematography were also swiped from it, not to mention the entire sequence where Supes zips all over Metropolis doing his string of Superdeeds. It was all too heavily reminiscent of Supes' first night out in the first flick. Lex's female sidekick this time around was also way, way too reminiscent of Miss Teschmacher--flighty, really kind of a decent person deep down, crushing hardcore on Supes, and doing something behind Lex's back to help him out. With her, too, we had rehashes of some of the best Lex lines out of the original movie: "When I was six, my father said to me--" "Get out!" "Heh, no, before that!"
I was really kind of torn, musically speaking, by hearing John Williams' theme playing over the opening credits. Don't get me wrong--I really, really love that theme. It's one of the most iconic movie themes ever, and it never fails to fill my little heart with joy. But to hear it here overall just played for me as another example of this movie swiping way, way too many things from the original Reeve one.
Cast-wise, while everyone was mostly fun, I disliked both the guy playing Jimmy and Frank Langella as Perry White. Jimmy was overly effusive and fawning to Clark and Perry both and really contributed nothing to the plot, and Langella's Perry White was a disappointing non-entity to me, with neither the voluble charm of Lane Smith's Perry in Lois and Clark (Perry White will always, always mean "Great Shades of Elvis!" to me now, thanks to him) nor the caustic gruffness of Jackie Cooper in the Reeve films.
While I was hugely thrilled by Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor (more on this below), I was also deeply disappointed that his grand master scheme was really kind of lame. At the beginning of the movie, we see him talking about how he fancies himself a new Prometheus and wants to bring fire to the people--and just happens to want his cut. That is a very interesting take on Lex, but that Lex vanishes very quickly. Though he goes on about how he sees endless potential in the crystals from the Fortress of Solitude for creating any number of technological advances, ultimately what we see him doing is, um, making an island. And very little else. Moreover, the island really seemed mostly an excuse to set up a "Hell" environment analogous to the "Heaven" of Krypton and the Fortress of Solitude, complete with contrasting color schemes--its creation really didn't even seem to seriously threaten Metropolis. Hell, we got more scenes of chaos and destruction out of the model train world being destroyed than we did out of any threat to the actual world. Overall, I feel like it was hugely unworthy of the potential of Spacey's Luthor, because acting-wise, he really was fabulous.
The failure of Lex's grand scheme really rather underscores my overall great problem with the film, which is to say, it had the potential for real greatness, setting up some really neat thematic ideas but ultimately not delivering on them. The idea of Lex as New Prometheus was really, really cool--and we totally should have seen Lex milking the crystals for things he could sell at first, getting as much monetary gain out of it before kicking it up another notch and being willing to destroy all of North America if he had to in order to get what he wants. We needed to see him researching how to use those crystals a hell of a lot more than he actually did--he needed to do more than just build the black spiky island. We needed to see him bringing that fire to the people, and we didn't.
We got the contrasting themes of "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman" and "Why The World Needs Superman"--both of which are exemplified in Lois. The problem is, though, that these two themes got a bit too tied up in being metaphors just for her. All she winds up telling Supes is that "the world has moved on, and so have I". We don't get any of the real meat of what she put into that editorial, and it would have been really good if we could have seen that. I would have liked to have seen a real taste of the Pulitzer-worthy arguments Lois made for why the world can stand on its own two feet and not have to rely on Superman all the time. And, I would also have really liked to see her reach a measure of peace and actually write words to go with that new title, "Why The World Needs Superman". We get her hesitating over her keyboard instead, clearly not really yet at peace with the idea of having Superman back in the world as she knows it. If you're going to set up these contrasting themes and center them on Lois like this, you really need to take it to its logical conclusion and have her reach that state of peace.
Tied in with these themes are the idea of Superman inspiring others to acts of heroism. We do certainly get that with Lois, Richard, and the kid coming back to save the wounded Superman--that part was fabulous. It would have been better to see other acts of Superman-inspired heroism as well. Maybe while the shockwave was hitting Metropolis, we could have seen the city's emergency forces on alert and working their asses off to hold it together, specifically because they've been revitalized by having Superman in the skies again. The bones of the idea were there as well when he falls back to Earth, but again, not quite enough. We saw people holding vigil in huge crowds in Metropolis--but I think it would have been far, far better to get reports of similar vigils all over the world, maybe even reports of forces in war-torn parts of the world temporarily calling cease-fires just because the whole damn world is worried about Superman. If you're going to set up the idea of him being a global hero and not just an American one--which the movie was certainly trying to do--then you need to show us how the threat of his death affects the world at large, not just one city. If you're going to go ripping Jor-El's best lines out of the first movie--"they can be a great people, Kal-El, if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way", for example--you really need to give us some indication that Superman's light, as it were, is showing the way.
Yet at the same time, I really wish they could have tackled this theme without turning him into a Christ figure, either. Seeing him go limp in space once he shoves the island out of Earth orbit--good. Having him fall in such a way as to be reminiscent of Christ on the cross--not so much. Way too heavy-handed with the symbolism there, and they were way too fond of having Kal-El hovering like a god in the skies, backlit by the sun, too.
All this said... there were also things I really liked about the flick.
It was gorgeous, to start with. Even though they used the backlit-Supes shot way too often, it really did look neat. The overall sleek retro look of the world at large was cool, as was the Daily Planet. I especially liked how they handled the effects for Superman's powers, especially his X-ray vision--no cheesy glowing, just a melting away of walls to show what's behind them every time he uses it. His heat vision was similarly nicely subtle, needle-thin spears of light. Very nicely done!
Like I said, Spacey was fabulous in his portrayal even if the scheme he was given to work with was lame. I loved his overall smoothness--but with a crazed edge. I loved the way he trilled "Krrrrryptonite!", and how he tried to egg Lois into delivering the obligatory "Superman will never let you--" only to cut her off with "WRONG!" His exchange with Lois about her son was great--especially where he asks her who the boy's father is, she says "Richard", and his voice dips down into a purr as he inquires, "Are you sure?" I loved the handling of his bilking of the widow at the beginning, just enough to show you he'd taken her for every cent and that he had it down to a totally smooth operation. I loved how he dropped his wig into the little girl's hands and told her, "You can keep that. The rest is mine." And then strolled out, waving to Kitty in her maid's uniform, adding, "We're done here." Great.
I loved the bit with the dogs, when Lex and company came back to the widow's house, and Kitty asks, "Weren't there... two of them?" Muahahaha. That was just sick and wrong. >:)
I loved the piano-playing thug. That was a fantastic touch, showing us not only that Lex had surrounded himself this time with people who weren't idiots, but that they weren't just mindless thugs either. That that dude then, after playing piano with Jason, could calmly get up and advance on Lois with clear intent to beat the living shit out of her made him doubly effective.
I was surprised and pleased that little Jason was not only not annoying, but really rather... normal, despite his obvious Super parentage. He wasn't overly brilliant or cutesy, and was really just kind of a five-year-old kid. I loved Lois telling Clark all about how he's "fragile, but he's going to grow up big and strong just like his daddy!" The bit where he took a good long look at Clark while Superman was on the TV screen beside him, when you could totally see the kid thinking "Hey..." was also really neat--and a nice subtle way of the film saying, "Here's the obligatory five-year-old who can totally tell Clark is Superman when none of the grownups around him put it together." Snicker. And I really, really loved the bit where fear for his mother drives him into slamming the thug with the piano--the first sign that we get that ohhh yeah, this is Superman's boy. I had the obligatory "awwww" at the picture he drew of Superman rescuing him and Lois and Richard, and as I said above, I liked that all he did in the hospital scene at the end was smooch Superman's forehead before trotting out with Lois.
I was hugely, hugely relieved that Lois' new love interest Richard was not in any way, shape, or form a jerk--another fanfic-y thing that they could have done but didn't. He was clearly Lois' "replacement Superman", a pilot who could fly her places, tall and rugged and handsome, not only a good man but really rather heroic. But that really was okay, and it was a good way to play with the overall theme of Superman inspiring humanity to heroic acts of their own, since it's Richard who has to bring the plane back so that they can pull the wounded Superman out of the water.
Lois... I liked her. Not as hard-edged as Margot Kidder's Lois, or as driven as Teri Hatcher's. She came across to me as somewhere between Kidder and Hatcher, decently on top of things. I liked that she was asking WTF was up with the blackout (even as it annoyed me that Perry seemed totally oblivious to the potential story there--I mean, geez, you'd think that he'd be better willing to listen to his star reporter's instincts by now, y'know?), and that she pursued that angle even after Perry yanked it off her plate and gave it to Clark.
And speaking of Clark, that brings me, last but not least, to Brandon Routh.
I liked him way more than I was expecting, once the film actually got underway. He was an absolutely charming Clark, cutely geeky without being overly so, the way Christopher Reeve's Clark was. And once we saw him smiling a few times, with that smile set off by his glasses, I started thinking, "Okay, yeah... he's cute. It's official." ;) And I have to admit, those big gorgeous lambent eyes of his were awfully, awfully pretty as well.
As Supes, he did a fine, fine job channeling the best aspects of Christopher Reeve's portrayal--the unshakeable goodness and integrity, the absolute disregard of his own mortal peril if the fate of the world is on the line, the wry little gleams of "Damn, I'm good" humor. And even if they were stealing way too many of the first movie's lines wholesale, having him come full circle with "the son becomes the father, and the father the son" at the end as he's visiting Jason was a nice thematic closure. I've come to prefer the more modern portrayals of Superman, like the one in the 90's animated series--still ridiculously powerful, but not quite so invulnerable--but young Mr. Routh did a perfectly fine job with the Silver Age godlike Superman, and did indeed make me start believing he had the stuff to pull off wearing that cape. His performance did go a long way towards making me like this film.
Final verdict--working way too hard to ride in the wake of Superman: The Movie, and flawed in many important ways. That the seeds of greatness do exist in this film without being adequately nurtured, that it sets up several interesting themes and then goes nowhere with them, is a disappointment. But I did also genuinely enjoy many aspects of it. Which is what I can say about a lot of Lois and Clark fanfic that I've read, too. I just wish they'd written something with more substance than fanfic!
(But heh--clearly I liked this film well enough to go find me an LJ icon for it. I've been wanting one for my Supes fandom for a while now, and this'll do me nicely until I find either a really good one of Christopher Reeve, or perhaps one from the animated Superman, which I adore! This particular icon is by
meryddian, now credited on my userinfo page. Y'all can blame this on the fact that I really did rather like Brandon Routh's portrayal, way more than I was expecting going in! More on this behind the cut.)Let me elaborate on this fan-film feel problem. While I am not as deeply immersed in fanfic as many folks I could name, I've certainly read my share of it. And I've played on MUSHes for many years, which is really a kind of interactive fanfic. So I've had the opportunity to get familiar with a great number of common plots that fans tend to come up with, because they're really easy ways to try to build tension.
And in this film, I spotted at least two plotbunnies that I've seen all over the place in fan efforts, to wit: pregnancy and huge medical emergencies. I've seen both of these in particular all over the Lois and Clark fanfic archive site where I was amusing myself earlier this year. It's full of plots involving Superman getting Lois pregnant without his knowing about it, and later sequel stories where the kid grows up (or kids grow up!) to inherit Daddy's Kryptonian powers. There are also quite a few stories involving Supes in a medical emergency, and I very clearly remember at least one where he was in a coma and thought to be in danger of dying.
Now, to this film's credit, they handled both of these things fairly decently. This film is a sequel to the first two Christopher Reeve flicks, and he and Lois do sleep together in Superman II. That she therefore got pregnant as a result of that is not a stupid idea in the slightest. Neither did I have any real issue with Superman falling into a coma. I mean, he had suffered a huge dose of exposure to Kryptonite, thanks to Lex's little island being laced with the stuff and because of Lex stabbing him with the Kryptonite shard. That the titanic effort of yoinking that island out of the ocean and shoving it into space almost killed him is totally reasonable. Furthermore, I appreciated that the scriptwriters very specifically avoided a couple of the schmaltzy things that they could have done with Superman in a coma--i.e., having him wake up when Lois was whispering to him, or having the kid somehow be able to magically wake him up. I really liked that they had him hear her even while unconscious, that the heart monitor blipped to show this, and that Lois gave it a "you have got to be KIDDING ME" look--and that he did not actually wake up. The boy coming over to give him a smooch on the forehead was also a very sweet little touch, which was exactly how much you needed of the kid in that scene, and not a whit more.
But that I have seen similar plotbunnies in fanfic a lot detracted from the film for me. So did the constant hammering of the concept of Superman as Christ figure, and the too-heavy stealing from the first movie. I caught all the noticeable large chunks of dialogue that were lifted right out of the movie, while
spazzkat and solarbird remarked upon how big chunks of the cinematography were also swiped from it, not to mention the entire sequence where Supes zips all over Metropolis doing his string of Superdeeds. It was all too heavily reminiscent of Supes' first night out in the first flick. Lex's female sidekick this time around was also way, way too reminiscent of Miss Teschmacher--flighty, really kind of a decent person deep down, crushing hardcore on Supes, and doing something behind Lex's back to help him out. With her, too, we had rehashes of some of the best Lex lines out of the original movie: "When I was six, my father said to me--" "Get out!" "Heh, no, before that!"I was really kind of torn, musically speaking, by hearing John Williams' theme playing over the opening credits. Don't get me wrong--I really, really love that theme. It's one of the most iconic movie themes ever, and it never fails to fill my little heart with joy. But to hear it here overall just played for me as another example of this movie swiping way, way too many things from the original Reeve one.
Cast-wise, while everyone was mostly fun, I disliked both the guy playing Jimmy and Frank Langella as Perry White. Jimmy was overly effusive and fawning to Clark and Perry both and really contributed nothing to the plot, and Langella's Perry White was a disappointing non-entity to me, with neither the voluble charm of Lane Smith's Perry in Lois and Clark (Perry White will always, always mean "Great Shades of Elvis!" to me now, thanks to him) nor the caustic gruffness of Jackie Cooper in the Reeve films.
While I was hugely thrilled by Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor (more on this below), I was also deeply disappointed that his grand master scheme was really kind of lame. At the beginning of the movie, we see him talking about how he fancies himself a new Prometheus and wants to bring fire to the people--and just happens to want his cut. That is a very interesting take on Lex, but that Lex vanishes very quickly. Though he goes on about how he sees endless potential in the crystals from the Fortress of Solitude for creating any number of technological advances, ultimately what we see him doing is, um, making an island. And very little else. Moreover, the island really seemed mostly an excuse to set up a "Hell" environment analogous to the "Heaven" of Krypton and the Fortress of Solitude, complete with contrasting color schemes--its creation really didn't even seem to seriously threaten Metropolis. Hell, we got more scenes of chaos and destruction out of the model train world being destroyed than we did out of any threat to the actual world. Overall, I feel like it was hugely unworthy of the potential of Spacey's Luthor, because acting-wise, he really was fabulous.
The failure of Lex's grand scheme really rather underscores my overall great problem with the film, which is to say, it had the potential for real greatness, setting up some really neat thematic ideas but ultimately not delivering on them. The idea of Lex as New Prometheus was really, really cool--and we totally should have seen Lex milking the crystals for things he could sell at first, getting as much monetary gain out of it before kicking it up another notch and being willing to destroy all of North America if he had to in order to get what he wants. We needed to see him researching how to use those crystals a hell of a lot more than he actually did--he needed to do more than just build the black spiky island. We needed to see him bringing that fire to the people, and we didn't.
We got the contrasting themes of "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman" and "Why The World Needs Superman"--both of which are exemplified in Lois. The problem is, though, that these two themes got a bit too tied up in being metaphors just for her. All she winds up telling Supes is that "the world has moved on, and so have I". We don't get any of the real meat of what she put into that editorial, and it would have been really good if we could have seen that. I would have liked to have seen a real taste of the Pulitzer-worthy arguments Lois made for why the world can stand on its own two feet and not have to rely on Superman all the time. And, I would also have really liked to see her reach a measure of peace and actually write words to go with that new title, "Why The World Needs Superman". We get her hesitating over her keyboard instead, clearly not really yet at peace with the idea of having Superman back in the world as she knows it. If you're going to set up these contrasting themes and center them on Lois like this, you really need to take it to its logical conclusion and have her reach that state of peace.
Tied in with these themes are the idea of Superman inspiring others to acts of heroism. We do certainly get that with Lois, Richard, and the kid coming back to save the wounded Superman--that part was fabulous. It would have been better to see other acts of Superman-inspired heroism as well. Maybe while the shockwave was hitting Metropolis, we could have seen the city's emergency forces on alert and working their asses off to hold it together, specifically because they've been revitalized by having Superman in the skies again. The bones of the idea were there as well when he falls back to Earth, but again, not quite enough. We saw people holding vigil in huge crowds in Metropolis--but I think it would have been far, far better to get reports of similar vigils all over the world, maybe even reports of forces in war-torn parts of the world temporarily calling cease-fires just because the whole damn world is worried about Superman. If you're going to set up the idea of him being a global hero and not just an American one--which the movie was certainly trying to do--then you need to show us how the threat of his death affects the world at large, not just one city. If you're going to go ripping Jor-El's best lines out of the first movie--"they can be a great people, Kal-El, if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way", for example--you really need to give us some indication that Superman's light, as it were, is showing the way.
Yet at the same time, I really wish they could have tackled this theme without turning him into a Christ figure, either. Seeing him go limp in space once he shoves the island out of Earth orbit--good. Having him fall in such a way as to be reminiscent of Christ on the cross--not so much. Way too heavy-handed with the symbolism there, and they were way too fond of having Kal-El hovering like a god in the skies, backlit by the sun, too.
All this said... there were also things I really liked about the flick.
It was gorgeous, to start with. Even though they used the backlit-Supes shot way too often, it really did look neat. The overall sleek retro look of the world at large was cool, as was the Daily Planet. I especially liked how they handled the effects for Superman's powers, especially his X-ray vision--no cheesy glowing, just a melting away of walls to show what's behind them every time he uses it. His heat vision was similarly nicely subtle, needle-thin spears of light. Very nicely done!
Like I said, Spacey was fabulous in his portrayal even if the scheme he was given to work with was lame. I loved his overall smoothness--but with a crazed edge. I loved the way he trilled "Krrrrryptonite!", and how he tried to egg Lois into delivering the obligatory "Superman will never let you--" only to cut her off with "WRONG!" His exchange with Lois about her son was great--especially where he asks her who the boy's father is, she says "Richard", and his voice dips down into a purr as he inquires, "Are you sure?" I loved the handling of his bilking of the widow at the beginning, just enough to show you he'd taken her for every cent and that he had it down to a totally smooth operation. I loved how he dropped his wig into the little girl's hands and told her, "You can keep that. The rest is mine." And then strolled out, waving to Kitty in her maid's uniform, adding, "We're done here." Great.
I loved the bit with the dogs, when Lex and company came back to the widow's house, and Kitty asks, "Weren't there... two of them?" Muahahaha. That was just sick and wrong. >:)
I loved the piano-playing thug. That was a fantastic touch, showing us not only that Lex had surrounded himself this time with people who weren't idiots, but that they weren't just mindless thugs either. That that dude then, after playing piano with Jason, could calmly get up and advance on Lois with clear intent to beat the living shit out of her made him doubly effective.
I was surprised and pleased that little Jason was not only not annoying, but really rather... normal, despite his obvious Super parentage. He wasn't overly brilliant or cutesy, and was really just kind of a five-year-old kid. I loved Lois telling Clark all about how he's "fragile, but he's going to grow up big and strong just like his daddy!" The bit where he took a good long look at Clark while Superman was on the TV screen beside him, when you could totally see the kid thinking "Hey..." was also really neat--and a nice subtle way of the film saying, "Here's the obligatory five-year-old who can totally tell Clark is Superman when none of the grownups around him put it together." Snicker. And I really, really loved the bit where fear for his mother drives him into slamming the thug with the piano--the first sign that we get that ohhh yeah, this is Superman's boy. I had the obligatory "awwww" at the picture he drew of Superman rescuing him and Lois and Richard, and as I said above, I liked that all he did in the hospital scene at the end was smooch Superman's forehead before trotting out with Lois.
I was hugely, hugely relieved that Lois' new love interest Richard was not in any way, shape, or form a jerk--another fanfic-y thing that they could have done but didn't. He was clearly Lois' "replacement Superman", a pilot who could fly her places, tall and rugged and handsome, not only a good man but really rather heroic. But that really was okay, and it was a good way to play with the overall theme of Superman inspiring humanity to heroic acts of their own, since it's Richard who has to bring the plane back so that they can pull the wounded Superman out of the water.
Lois... I liked her. Not as hard-edged as Margot Kidder's Lois, or as driven as Teri Hatcher's. She came across to me as somewhere between Kidder and Hatcher, decently on top of things. I liked that she was asking WTF was up with the blackout (even as it annoyed me that Perry seemed totally oblivious to the potential story there--I mean, geez, you'd think that he'd be better willing to listen to his star reporter's instincts by now, y'know?), and that she pursued that angle even after Perry yanked it off her plate and gave it to Clark.
And speaking of Clark, that brings me, last but not least, to Brandon Routh.
I liked him way more than I was expecting, once the film actually got underway. He was an absolutely charming Clark, cutely geeky without being overly so, the way Christopher Reeve's Clark was. And once we saw him smiling a few times, with that smile set off by his glasses, I started thinking, "Okay, yeah... he's cute. It's official." ;) And I have to admit, those big gorgeous lambent eyes of his were awfully, awfully pretty as well.
As Supes, he did a fine, fine job channeling the best aspects of Christopher Reeve's portrayal--the unshakeable goodness and integrity, the absolute disregard of his own mortal peril if the fate of the world is on the line, the wry little gleams of "Damn, I'm good" humor. And even if they were stealing way too many of the first movie's lines wholesale, having him come full circle with "the son becomes the father, and the father the son" at the end as he's visiting Jason was a nice thematic closure. I've come to prefer the more modern portrayals of Superman, like the one in the 90's animated series--still ridiculously powerful, but not quite so invulnerable--but young Mr. Routh did a perfectly fine job with the Silver Age godlike Superman, and did indeed make me start believing he had the stuff to pull off wearing that cape. His performance did go a long way towards making me like this film.
Final verdict--working way too hard to ride in the wake of Superman: The Movie, and flawed in many important ways. That the seeds of greatness do exist in this film without being adequately nurtured, that it sets up several interesting themes and then goes nowhere with them, is a disappointment. But I did also genuinely enjoy many aspects of it. Which is what I can say about a lot of Lois and Clark fanfic that I've read, too. I just wish they'd written something with more substance than fanfic!
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 05:57 am (UTC)It was really rather weird how the film kept up with that head-beating on some things and yet had subtlety on others. Part of the reason why I saw the seeds of greatness there. If they'd used the same subtle, deft touch on everything in this movie that I saw with things like oh, say, Jason's "hey, wait a minute" thoughtful look up at Clark, it could have been a much better film.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 02:11 am (UTC)Christ didn't fall in a blaze of glory from the sky. Lucifer did.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 09:03 pm (UTC)Now, speaking as a photographer, if there was ONE thing I didn't like about it, it was the "photos" the kid with the cell phone camera got. I know, I know, it's a movie - but the shots of Superman lifting the car and holding Kitty were the kind of shots I'd have expected from Jimmy's SLR, not some little cameraphone. I wouldn't have cared as much if Perry didn't try to turn it into a "look at what this kid got - why can't you do that?" thing.
Overall, a very minor complaint. I'm anal that way. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 09:18 pm (UTC)Plus, the whole idea of Jimmy needing to suck it up and stand up to Perry--I've seen that before, too. Lois and Clark did it early on in first season. It works when Jimmy is really a new guy and hasn't earned his place as a photographer yet. But when Jimmy is supposed to have been around for several years and presumably already has earned his place as a photographer, and is in his mid-twenties at this point... feh.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 09:25 pm (UTC)Hell, the camera on my Treo is a 0.3 MP thingy. I've talked to a couple people and they said their cameraphones are maybe 1.3 MP or so. Hardly award-winning capabilities there.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 10:16 pm (UTC)And they don't get to handwave and say that the tech is better in the Superman universe, not when they're clearly also trying to make that world look as much like our own as possible so's to raise the question of whether the world needs Supes in the first place. ;) If you want to make us believe that it's "the real world", get the damned details on the tech right!
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Date: 2006-07-06 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 09:26 pm (UTC)