Superman Returns (Spoilers)

Went out with the family to see Superman Returns at the Cinerama last night. It was a pretty funny scene. Lots of people in their Superman wear, including an entire family down to the pajama clad 5 year old (complete with cape).

Spoilers follow.

I basically enjoyed the film. The new Superman was good and looked about perfect for the part. Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey also did well. The FX were nicely done and certainly Superman flying looked a lot cooler than it did in the Christopher Reeve era. It had some genuinely funny moments without becoming campy. I did, not, however, like the film as much as I had hoped. I basically had three problems with Superman Returns:

1) Lex Luthor’s evil scheme is just deeply stupid. Who the hell wants to live on an island made of crystal? When Kevin Spacey did the big reveal, I sat there thinking, “That can’t be the real evil scheme, can it?” Apparently so.

2) You never get the sense that Superman lives in a world of superheroes and supervillains. Thus most of his heroics are about stopping disasters. This is fine as far as it goes but man, it’d been nice to see some good superhero vs. villains fights. As it was one of the few times Superman is actually in a fight he’s so weakened by kryptonite that three goons Rodney King him.

3) The movie was too long by 20 minutes. At the end when he’s plummeting from space, I thought he would catch himself inches above the earth in a scene reminiscent of his childhood flashback from early in the film. Instead we got 15-20 minutes of complete tensionless “is he going to live” bs. Like there was any doubt.

Final verdict: entertaining but not as good as X-men 2. And really, I’d think I’d rather have seen Bryan Singer finish X-men 3 instead of doing Superman Returns. That would have had the added benefit of saving the X-men from the Brett Ratner.

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