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Among film directors dealing in the now-profitable world of superheroes, Bryan Singer, like Sam Raimi, is the gold standard. He mixes a love of, and familiarity with, the material, deep enough to know what to use, with the filmmaker's taste to know what to leave out. He made two solid films from possibly the geekiest material Marvel has to offer, the X-Men, that were mass successes with general appeal, that anyone could watch and understand without having ever read a single X-Men comic. More importantly, they were excellent films, most especially the second, that I surprised myself by liking. They had taste and wit, excellent performances, and very little embarrassing geekery. One can see how easily this might not have been the case by watching(though I don't recommend it) the far less accomplished Brett Ratner's X-Men 3, a film made for only the most emotionally retarded Rusty Browns out there. Till these films, only Richard Donner had pulled off this delicate balance.

Singer's SUPERMAN RETURNS, however, takes what one might consider a very comic-bookish tact, in that the film begins from an extreme reliance on continuity. The film, in fact, takes up five years after the events of SUPERMAN 2, which, luckily for them, an awful lot of people have seen. Specifically, though, it follows from the far superior "Donner cut" of the film, which most haven't; it was only released after SUPERMAN RETURNS was released to theatres. (if you have Netflix, add it to your queue. It's rougher, but better and a far more interesting performance by Christopher Reeve) In almost every way, this film follows closely from the events and characters as depicted in the first two films. Ignoring SUPERMAN 3 and 4, which is just fine with me.

This was probably the wisest way to do it. The first two films are among the top-grossing films of all time, and are beloved. Unlike the previous Batman series, which enough people saw for Bats to wear out his welcome and necessitate the complete reboot we saw in BATMAN BEGINS(which was all for the better, in my opinion), few saw the crappy Superman films, and those that did would never admit it. The first two, however, are very good, and need no replacement; but most of all, a couple of generations took Christopher Reeve to heart forever as the movie Superman. To pretend all that never happened almost seems, therefore, obscene. The fact that the Metropolis of the 70s was only supposed to be five years before is something that, again wisely, is completely

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