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Just some thoughts after two viewings ...
Bit of a flawed masterpiece this, I reckon. Very much a homage to the '78 film, almost to the extent of being completely in thrall to it, but I can't help feeling that there are things it does better.
For one thing, I ended up preferring Brandon Routh's performance to Christopher Reeve's. I never thought that could happen! His Clark Kent seems less comically clumsy and grating, more likeably geeky (somewhere between Reeve’s klutz and Dean Cain’s smoothie, I guess).
His Superman seems less laid-back and at ease with himself and more like, as Mister Six said above, a 'simple country boy … with the power of a god'. Oh sure, he's fine zipping around catching people who've just fallen out of a thirtieth-floor window, but as soon as Lois Lane starts asking those difficult little questions like "where the fuck have you been all this time, ya big galoot?", he seems … a bit lost. Left out, like the fat schoolkid when the team captains pick sides. Lois has basically just told him nobody needs him any more (and isn’t that Superman’s overriding psychological drive, to be needed? What other use are super-powers if you’ve not been brought up to be venal and selfish?) and he flies off – the camera cuts from a full-body shot (yay, Superman’s flying, ain’t he great?) to a slow-zoom close-up of the heartbreaking expression of loneliness etched across his face (jesus, poor guy). I don’t know, just seems like a really effective way to approach a character that is, let’s face it, pretty hard to empathise with if he’s flippin’ invulnerable. Yeah, the Donner movie hinted at that somewhat when Superman flies up into the sky screaming at the injustice of Lois’ death, but this version has the nuts to actually build the whole movie around it.
I hate to say it, but I think Kevin Spacey phoned his performance in a bit. He was terribly watchable - funny and sinister and a wee bit creepy all at once, but … ah, he can do that shit in his sleep. I certainly don’t agree that he carried the movie as some have said on this ‘ere thread.
Pleasantly surprised by Kate Bosworth’s Lois (at least partly because she tends to bear the brunt of most of the negative reviews I’ve read, probably) – okay, she might be a shade too young for the part, but I thought she played older pretty well. I bought that she might be about thirty, albeit a baby-faced thirty. More to the point, though, she nailed petulant Lois and persistent Lois even if it was at the expense of a sweeter, slightly more girlish Lois. Maybe the film-makers were scared of characterising her as a tough, grizzled reporter one minute and a soppy get slinging goo-goo eyes at a dude in blue tights advising her on the dangers of smoking the next. Can’t say I blame them, really. Still though, watching it for the second time last night I spotted a missed opportunity here and there where her softer side could have been subtly hinted at.
* * * SPOILERS * * *
Overall, the movie is a bit of a mess in terms of an overarching plot structure. But, Singer is, I think, a deft enough director to paper over the cracks so that you almost don’t notice. The stylish little touches are intact (sonic booms, dust falling off trees, hypodermic needles failing to penetrate Kryptonian skin etc.), the finer details serving the director’s struggle for authenticity, for believable characters in an ‘unbelievable’ world. The cracks do show, of course - the bit near the (rather long-winded) end where Lex and Kitty are on the desert island seemed particularly awkwardly timed, as if the writers couldn’t decide where to put it but had to cram it in so people wouldn’t wonder where Lex and Kitty were. Ultimately though, it couldn’t help but break up the emotional tension of Superman’s near-demise.
Incidentally, the person I saw it with actually suggested it might have been better to actually have him die saving the world, but … hmm, I’m not sure. I absolutely loved that Superman nearly died saving the world (or in the first instance, North America) but to have actually had him die? Well it wasn’t really going to happen, obviously, but … for a while there they had me believing that it might have. I guess that says it all for me, really – if any movie is going to make me believe not so much that a man can fly but that a god can give two shits about us lesser beings, it’s Superman Returns.
* * * END SPOILERS * * * |
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