Superman's return just isn't that interesting.
Director Bryan Singer doesn't waste any time before going retro for his franchise re-boot
Superman Returns
. The block-letter opening credits swoop and whoosh just the way they did in Richard Donner's 1978
Superman
; in the background, John
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Williams' rousing fanfare plays. Marlon Brando intones the voice of Superman's father,
Jor-El, from his original performance. Even Brandon
Routh's
squeaky-voiced delivery as Clark
Kent provides frightening echoes of Christopher Reeve. Singer wants to return us to that time when, as the tag line famously announced,
we could "believe a man can fly"-because at last, special effects technology had allowed comic book pages to come to life.
Nearly 30 years later, it's no longer exactly a problem convincing audiences that a man can fly, or shoot webs, or sprout adamantium claws, or burst into flames. But the bar has been raised for the psychological depth given to super-powered folks in tights. That's a crucial missing piece in a story that embraces
Superman
as an icon rather than an individual.
Singer, of course, has plenty of experience by now with big-budget comic book adaptations after his work on the first two
X-Men
movies, so it's not surprising that he has a firm grip on action sequences like the crackerjack jet-in-peril set piece. He also gets great work from Kevin Spacey, whose take on Lex Luthor brings more pure malevolence than Gene Hackman's interpretation. Great villains are half the battle
in comic book adaptations, so
Superman Returns
would
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seem to be on solid ground.
But the other half of that battle is creating a compelling dramatic dilemma for the protagonist, and it's there that the script hits a wall of steel. The big hook is supposed to be the romantic triangle involving Supes, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) and her new
beau Richard (James Marsden), and the lingering bitterness represented by Lois' Pulitzer Prize-winning essay, "Why We Don't Need Superman." That would, however, require some kind of spark between Bosworth and Routh. We never feel the tension of lovers separated by a hero's duty or desire for normal life-the kind of tension that drove the Peter Parker/Mary Jane relationship in the
Spider-Man
films, just for instance.
Perhaps, that's because-at least as far as we can tell-Lois is only really in love with the idea of Superman. And that's not terribly surprising, because Singer himself seems mostly to be in love with that idea as well. He's making a movie about our need for hope in a dark time, trying to cobble his Superman/Jesus metaphors to the necessary machinations of a Hollywood blockbuster. The result is something slightly aloof-a hero only briefly allowing us to touch his cape before he's off to the Fortress of Solitude.
