Never mind the world - can Superman save Hollywood from an underperforming summer? Well, with a budget of $204 million, plus another $40 million spent on development, it’s a seismic investment for Warner Studios. But recent event movies – stand up Da Vinci Code and Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 – suggest we should be every bit as weary of those extravagant zeros as the denizens of Pearl Harbor.
Then, there’s Superman himself. Spiderman allows for garish fun. Batman is admirably complex. But Superman? Well, wholesome and chiseled might have played well with the readers of Action Comics in the 30s, but such attributes would count against even a lowly Pop Idol contestant these days. Even presidential candidates are required to have a whoring, drugged-up past to win the masses over.
So has Bryan Singer justified the price tag and reinvented a shamelessly all-American icon for more fragmented times? Well, reinvented is perhaps the wrong word. Certainly Superman (Brandon Routh) is given some angst to nurse. Finding only desolation on his destroyed home planet of Krypton, he returns to Earth where Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has gained a son, a dashing millionaire fiancé and a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled ‘Why The World Doesn’t Need Superman’. Ouch. Wormwood. Could things really change so much in five years? Well, a kiss obliterated everything that transpired in Superman II, so why not?
Meanwhile, super-villain Lex Luther (Spacey) is out of jail and back in business with Parker Posey-channeling Marion Davies as his moll-in-tow. A dastardly plan to sink North America with a rival, neighbouring landmass inevitably embroils all the major characters, and Young Master Routh is required to save the girl, her fellah and her kid in one fell swoop. Hello Alternative Family Unit.
These contemporary embellishments do little to disguise how faithfully Mr. Singer follows Richard Donner’s 1977 version. Like that film, Superman Returns presents all the iconic standards against a setting that is both contemporary and impossible to place. Look up. He’s daringly rescuing a space shuttle. Now bullets are bouncing off his chest. Watch out, Luther has kyryptonite. And so forth. Remarkably, Singer creates enough spectacle around this familiar mythology to make it seem fresh and cool again. Cunningly, the director never pulls back so we can admire the CGI view, but speeds past the chicanery so we’re none the wiser. Tight framing, in keeping with the boxed graphics of the source material, creates a complete world untroubled by unnecessary digital elaboration.
The casting, for the most part, works well. Marlon Brando, reanimated through the magic of technology, once again finds himself in a movie with Eva Marie Saint (playing Clark Kent’s Earth mother). Kate Bosworth, dolled down in mousy hues, is not as brittle or highly-strung as Margot Kidder, who played Lane like the husky-voiced hooker-next-door, but she’s still glum enough to warrant the question, what the hell does Superman see in her? Kevin Spacey has an absolute ball mincing about with the expression of a man who is in the process of losing his innocence to a broom handle. Most importantly, Brandon Routh, doing an eerie impersonation of Christopher Reeves, livens up the screen far more than his vacant prettiness might suggest.
Unfortunately, the film flags toward the two-and-a-half hour mark, but there are enough dazzling nods to Kubrick, comparisons with Christ and bang for your buck to prevent you from fidgeting. When Superman prevents a plane crash and the cheer goes up from a baseball ground, you realise the character doesn’t need an ironic twist to dispel Lois Lane’s Pulitzer winning piece.