"Whatever happened to the heroes?" sang the Stranglers. Well, ever since Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve brought us the original superhero movie in 1978, they've been raking in vast amounts of cash courtesy of the paying public, whose appetite for flying saviours, angst-ridden vigilantes and mutated monsters remains as strong as ever, ensuring they're kept in spandex and continued employment. It would now be a strange summer indeed without at least one big-budget comic book extravaganza, a genre that has, for the last 5 years or so, been the bedrock of Hollywood's summer schedules, propping up the otherwise declining profits of the multiplexes.
You've got to get this kind of thing right, though. If there's one group of fans that will burn you to the ground for ruining their favourite characters, it's the comic book crowd. Think of Batman & Robin being skinned alive by critics and audiences back in 1997, or the distinctly lukewarm reception given to the Fantastic 4, or the commercial failure of Ang Lee's Hulk. It hasn't kept any of them down though. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale simply wiped the slate clean with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, with stunningly effective results. The Hulk received an unprecedented reboot a mere 4 years after his movie debut courtesy of Edward Norton, while the X-Men, Fantastic 4 and Iron Man continue to expand the Marvel movie universe. Busy people, your superheroes of today. And few would argue that if it hadn't been for 1978's fondly remembered Superman, none of these movies would have come to pass.
Richard Donner's achievement in 1978 was to take a character that, even then, would have been easy to parody, and create a lovingly rendered popcorn spectacle which remains arguably the best film of its kind (and Superman II isn't far behind). Thanks in no small part to the late Christopher Reeve's warm portrayal of Clark Kent and the Man of Steel, Donner crafted such a definitive origin story that, almost 30 years later, Bryan Singer saw no need to hit the reset button. Approaching Superman Returns as a loose sequel set in the "Donnerverse", he instead created an almost slavishly beholden tribute film, which admirably aimed for so many right buttons but ultimately failed to hit them all.
Singer's approach is to pretend that Superman III and IV simply never happened (or so we have to assume - such vague and left-unsaid continuity is a big part of this movie's problem). Some introductory text informs us that Superman (Brandon Routh), "earth's greatest hero", disappeared 5 years ago. We then see the spectacular explosion of Krypton's sun, and immediately have our nostalgia glands tickled by those familiar zooming opening credits and the most rousingly heroic theme music of them all, the appropriation of which may be the single best reason to see Superman Returns (and for which, it must be said, John Williams is given a surprisingly brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it credit, while John Ottman makes a good job of other composing duties).
After astronomers discover a chunk of Superman's home planet, the man of steel flies off at a moments' notice to have a poke around his cosmic birthplace. He comes crashing back to the Kent farm five years later to the shock of his adoptive mother (Eve-Marie Saint), and heads back to Metropolis to regain his reporting job at the Daily Planet. To his chagrin, not only has his coot-like nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) been released from prison and conned an old woman out of a vast fortune and a flash yacht, but Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is in line for a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial piece explaining why, in Superman's absence, the world is better off without him. Miaow. To cap it all, she has a new man in her life and a young son, and seems less than pleased to see him again, even when taken on another free flight through the night sky.
Luthor, hell-bent on revenge and still with ambitions of becoming a real-estate overlord, visits Supeman's fortress of solitude in Antarctica to watch a hologram of Jor-El (Marlon Brando, proving death is truly no object in Hollywood) and pilfers several crystals, with which he intends to grow a colossal landmass in the ocean and flood a huge portion of America. Arming himself with generous quantities of Kryptonite and some awful outfits, the scene is set for another Superman/Luthor rematch, while the man of steel must also attempt to win the hearts of the woman he lost and the world he left.
The movie spends much of its painfully padded-out running time dwelling on Superman's emotional meltdown at the discovery of Lois's new family and antipathy towards her former idol. On paper, the idea of a superhero returning to a changed world, unsure of his place and, in spite of all his superpowers, still as fallible and vulnerable as any human when it comes to relationships, is an interesting one, and the film does throw up one genuinely daring revelation. Unfortunately, in this instance, Singer lacks Donner's ability to balance humour with human drama, and the end result is a lethargic, sombre movie, which Superman spends mostly in a state of mild depression. Hmm.
While Brandon Routh produces a creditable performance in the face of the intimidating shadow of Christopher Reeve, Kate Bosworth is a fatal mistake. She lacks Margot Kidder's playful edge (or even Teri Hatcher's knowing sass), and is for the most part rather hard-faced and even bitter. The casting of Bosworth (23 at the time) as a supposedly older and emotionally wiser Lois Lane is inexplicable. To be fair, she doesn't look 23. She looks 16. Which unfortunately means that incredulous audience eyebrows are raised whenever she reminisces on the past and says something like, "that was a long time ago." Bosworth simply doesn't look old enough to have any kind of past, never mind a 5-year-old son and a successful career behind her.
Quite why Singer never noticed this, or thought the audience wouldn't notice, only he can answer. Routh himself is also too young for the part, considering he is meant to have been away for five years, but just gets away with it because of his confidence in the role and, it must be said, his spooky resemblance to Reeve (particularly as Clark Kent). Kevin Spacey gives us a satisfyingly nasty Lex Luthor, and special mention has to go Parker Posey for her turn as his sidekick, Kitty.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is its bizarre cherry picking of the Donner mythos. It is confusing that this is a movie so deeply in hock to the Reeve era that it uses excised Brando dialogue from the first film, and then picks and chooses which elements it is going to keep, and which are simply ignored, to say nothing of the glaringly obvious problem of these characters apparently now being 10 years younger than they used to be. None of which would really matter if Singer hadn't gone to such lengths to connect his film to the originals. He could have done one of two things: either make it a direct sequel, set in the correct time period with appropriately aged actors, or break completely with the Reeve movies and do entirely his own take on it. As it is, Singer made something hazily in-between that ended up being frustratingly vague, and ultimately failed to pull it off.
None of which is to suggest that Superman Returns isn't good. It is. In fact, it's occasionally excellent, particularly when Singer cranks up the gears for the action sequences, such as a thrilling space-plane rescue that ends in a touchdown in a crowded baseball stadium. The moment when the crowd rise to their feet to wildly cheer Superman's triumphant return captures perfectly the spirit of the John Byrne comics, and the final third of the film delivers some impressive spectacles (and some overly heavy-handed religious symbolism). But with a two and a half hour running time the film veers precipitously close to becoming an endurance test. With Singer padding things out to such an unnecessary length, we are left fidgeting, bored and restless during what are presumably intended to be the quiet and emotional' closing scenes. Singer's intentions in adding emotional heft to the story of a man in blue tights may have been admirable ones, but Superman's return ultimately failed to fly.