It's been seven long years since I've gotten to sit in a theatre and watch a Superman movie on the big screen. Unless you count the New Beverly Cinema's 2009 double feature of Batman (1989) and Superman: The Movie (1978). But even then, it's been four long years. The days have slowed in the past week, and the wait has been excruciating. They even uploaded the full Hans Zimmer Man of Steel score to Spotify, but I haven't listened to it because the first time I hear the score should be in the context of the picture. What I have allowed myself is the constant rewatching of this:
That three-minute fever dream has given me a daily kiss of Superman to keep me going. I've also revisited a few other Superman things. A few days ago, I rewatched Superman Returns (2006). This movie gets a fair bit of flack. I've heard some call it the worst superhero movie ever made. Not only is it not the worst superhero movie ever made, it's not even the worst Superman movie ever made. I maintain that it was a ballsy move on Singer's part. It would have been easy to go with a reboot, especially given the popularity of Smallville at the time, but they took the opportunity to make a direct sequel to a movie that was older than most of their target audience, using the old James Bond convention of bringing back specific cinematic interpretations of characters, played by a younger cast. Nobody, at that time, would have ever predicted that that was what was gonna happen. And I appreciate that it did, because a reboot can happen literally whenever, but Singer saw a unique opportunity to do something weird, and he fucking took it.
Brandon Routh was about as close as they were going to get to the inhuman goodness and charisma of Christopher Reeve, although his hair never looked quite right. Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor is, to my eye, a little more unhinged than Gene Hackman. Hackman's Luthor had insane evil schemes, but he went about them with a calm intelligence, like maybe we just hadn't realized how brilliant his plan really was. Spacey's Luthor makes you terrified to be on the same continent as him. He claims to be a man of the people while conspiring to kill billions of them. It's safe to say prison changed him, as early in the film, he explains that in prison, "one needs to make creepy friends in order to survive," because inside, his talents were worth "less than a carton of cigarettes and a sharp piece of metal in your pocket." And indeed, in the climactic confrontation with Superman, Luthor has him beaten by a gang of thugs before stabbing him in the back with a kryptonite shiv. I never thought about it, but this is Prison Lex.
Frank Langella doesn't even bother to model his Perry White after the perpetually agitated Jackie Cooper, instead delivering what could have been angry lines with an air of quiet wisdom. A change I really liked. But when it comes to Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane, how can we possibly believe she's the same character portrayed by the fiery, chain-smoking Margot Kidder? She looks like she's 15. But the casting is not the biggest problem with this movie.
Its fatal flaw is that it values establishing mood over some very necessary exposition. I don't remember where I heard this, but the idea behind the events leading up to Superman Returns is that Lex Luthor, as vengeance for his imprisonment, somehow FAKES the evidence that a piece of Krypton remains out in space, which is what inspires Superman to investigate and basically miss five years of his life on Earth. Superman took five years from Luthor, so Luthor took five years from Superman. This is a nice poetic twist, but it's not in the movie. Another thing that doesn't really land is how devastating it is that Luthor steals the crystals from the Fortress of Solitude. Those crystals contained the recordings of Jor-El. All the knowledge of the extinct planet Krypton. The last sanctuary for a lost Superman. And they're gone. There was supposed to be a line when Superman discovers the crystals are missing. He was meant to whisper, "Father..." That line is not there, so we don't realize that Superman has basically just lost his father again. There's also an extended flashback at the Kent farm of Clark Kent fucking around jumping through fields. Why weren't there any flashbacks of his adoptive father Jonathan Kent whose death so devastated him in Superman: The Movie (1978)? There is a deleted scene in the DVD of Clark looking around his old bedroom at many photos of his father. Why did you cut that and not the stupid thing of him jumping in a field? Oh! Well we can't lose the field jumping scene; they'll burn the theatre to the fucking ground!
But the movie is interesting, and beautiful, and I'm glad it was made. You could never make it again. It's pure and noble, like the man himself. I even like the idea of the boy character. I love how the boy actor plays it, and I love how Luthor immediately figures the kid out and tiptoes around it as much as he can.
The go-to argument since 2006 for why this movie is bad is that "Superman doesn't throw a punch the whole movie." That's the jist, both literally and figuratively. In fact, the only punching is when Luthor's goons beat the shit out of him in the aforementioned shiv scene (I always feel like Bryan Singer is working some stuff out of his own in that scene). But who does Superman punch in Superman: The Movie (1978)? Nobody. The reason why Superman is the greatest superhero of all time is that he doesn't punch you. He has power unfathomable, but he is always holding back. Because his greatest strength is his character. The goodness instilled in him by his parents. That's why Jonathan Kent is so important. Jonathan Kent is Superman.
Bryan Singer should have been allowed one sequel. We saw the incredible leap between X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003). Singer has trouble starting the engine, but when it finally turns over, he makes it purr. And after Superman Returns (a movie filled with payoffs to unseen setups and setups to unseen payoffs), Warner Bros took away his keys and made him call a cab. Superman Returns 2 would have been good, if not great. Oh well. Guess Singer should've put in a scene of Superman doing Catwoman and knocking Joker's teeth in. At least we'll always have Parker Posey as Kitty Kowalski.
I also watched some episodes of Superman: The Animated Series (1996-1999). I know the villain in Man of Steel is Zod, but there's no Zod episodes of STAS, so instead I watched "Blasts from the Past" and "Absolute Power," which are the episodes with Jax-Ur and Mala. Jax-Ur and Mala are basically Zod and Ursa/Faora. In fact, Sarah Douglas, aka Ursa from Superman II (1980), voiced Mala in "Absolute Power." I also watched "Knight Time," which is one where Batman goes missing, so to keep Gotham in check, Superman puts on the Batsuit and starts fighting bad guys as Batman. When is this gonna happen in a live action movie?
Tomorrow I see Man of Steel. I've been looking forward to seeing it for so long that I dread the idea of having seen it. Because there will be nothing left to look forward to. All the anticipatory thrill will be over, and I will enter a very deep depression, not unlike the Post Avatar Depression Syndrome (or PADS) of 2009, where moviegoers across the world had trouble coping with the intangibility of the dream of living on Pandora. Sure, maybe Man of Steel will be good, and I'll have fun thinking about it and talking about it (and blogging about it?) and eventually rewatching it. But nothing will be worse than that moment in the theatre when the movie ends, because that will be the absolute farthest point in my life from Man of Steel 2.
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