Is this a sequel or a remake? Bryan Singer has said the film is intended to a sequel to the Richard Lester version of Superman II. So why does he spend the entire movie rehashing material from the previous films? And why is the movie so ugly?
I love the original Superman. Richard Donner brillantly recast the Superman ledgend (he's my favorite superhero) as modern myth. I also thought that Christopher Reeve was absoltley perfect in his part and could hold his own a big name cast that included Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and Terrence Stamp. Although I didn't like Lester's interpretation of the Superman mythos, I at least gave him credit for having some kind of original idea. It seems that Singer has tried to recapture the magic of the first film by slavishly immating it. He plays the notes, but not the music.
Singer even tells his actors to base their characters on the actors from the original. But Bryan Singer is no Richard Donner, Kevin Spacey is no Gene Hackman and Brandon Routh sure as heck is no Christopher Reeve. I will concede, however, that Kate Bosworth is a better Lois Lane than Margot Kidder, perhaps because she comes up with an original charactaztion. Although I am not a fan of Spacey, he might have been a good Lex Luthor, but no one can play Gene Hackman as Luthor better than Gene Hackman. The same might be said of newcomer Routh, who could be a good actor but here mostly just does a bad impersonation of Reeve. The James Bond series lasted as long as it did because Roger Moore did his own version of Bond instead of just immitating Sean Connery, Routh will have to take the same approach and give his Superman a new spin or this series is going to get really old really fast.
And what is the deal with the whole romance between Superman and Lois Lane? Didn't we see this whole thing played out in Superman II, in a better, smarter and more interesting way?
And then we come to the visuals. The whole movie has this drab, browinish/yellow Heaven's Gate tinge. Yes, I am exagerating a little, but when Superman's cape looks brown, there's a problem. There's also problem with the CGI-it looks fake. The original films had acual photographed background that gave a sense of movement, matte lines and all. Superman Returns looks like a cartoon, an early shot of a ship at sea looked so fake it could be a graphic for a Discovery Channel documentary, and a late shot of an obvious CGI Superman is laughable if it wasn't so soulless it's kind of sad.
So in the end we have a really boring and disapointing movie whose final insult is that it's unforgivabley long. Whoever looked at this cliched and thin story and thought it needed to go on for two and half hours actully needed to find a better script, and while there at it, a director who can make movies with actual heart. I have now seen four films by Bryan Singer, and I have zero desire to see another one.
Superman Returns (2006)