Film, Literature, & the Human Condition

When I watched Superman Returns back in 2006, I kind of liked it. I thought Brandon Routh was perfect, able to maintain the essence of Christopher Reeve, but he wasn’t given too much to do. I liked Superman Returns, I felt it did a lot more right than it did wrong, but there were two major issues I had with the movie. One was the screenplay. A close second was Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, but primarily the screenplay. Everything else was okay to me. Bryan Singer’s direction very closely followed the style which was established by Richard Donner in the 1978 original, which added a warm welcomed dimension of nostalgia. Kevin Spacey’s performance as Lex Luthor paid tribute to Gene Hackman while staying unique itself. Like I said, the main flaw is the narrative ambitions of the screenwriters, which were a bit overreaching. While maintaining the philosophy of verisimilitude as emphasized by Donner, I felt maybe they took the material too seriously, thereby detracting from the magic of the first film. Towards the end, it began to adopt soap-operatic elements, introducing a paternity dispute to the whole mix. There’s nothing wrong with Superman having a son, but the Man of Steel is about a lot more than being envious of another person filling his gap with Lois Lane. The quiet romance between the two in the original was refreshing in its simplicity. The direction it took in the second film was only to show what would happen should Superman give into the banality of blind devotion to a single person over the rest of humanity. He has certain responsibilities to those weaker than him. Something else I thought the new script did wrong was emphasize a kind of Christ-like quality of Superman. Obviously Superman’s attributes naturally procures that sort of comparison, but it’s not supposed to be that serious, nor does Superman ever allow himself to recognize he is above everybody else because of his powers. He knows that he is special, but he strives to never place one human being over another. One of his conflicts does stem from his feelings for Lois Lane, but Superman Returns strays away from that discussion in place of melodrama. I didn’t think it was real interesting, or fun. (continue reading…)