If I had to review this movie in two words , it would be "Television Show." Why television show you ask? Because in a movie, what holds everything together? It's the storyline. And the storyline that Superman Returns brought to the table was well, no better than a television show.
In a normal sitcom, the storyline runs in an "A" Story and "B" Story format. There is one important story, and then another lesser story that are both going on in the show. While they both deal with the same characters, they're rarely intertwined (And when a show comes along that can successfully bring the two together, such as
Seinfeld, it's a huge hit).
This is exactly what Superman felt like to me. There was your A Story, which in this movie happened to be his conflict with Lois having a kid and a new man. So it ended up being that The Man Of Steel's conflict with Lex Luthor ended up taking the role of the B Story.
Now in my mind, this is totally wrong. He is The Man Of Steel, not the "Man Of Worry About His Relationships." Yes, Lois Lane does and should play an integral part in any Superman story, but here it seemed that he was being less of a hero and more of a regular guy. I read an interview with director Bryan Singer in
USA Today the other day, and he was talking about how he wanted Superman to be more easy to relate to than he had been in previous years. Now I think there's nothing wrong with trying to get the audience to better relate to a character, but if you can't do it by any means better than having two stories that are completely unrelated until the last 30 minutes of the movie, you should just stick with what you know works. I think they would have been better off focusing more on writing a more villainous plot for Luthor (Having him try to build a new continent with crystals ... I mean come on, he can get more badass than that), and then tying in Lois after so the story flows much better. It seemed like there were two seperate writing teams who at the end of finishing the script went "Oh shit maybe we should be working on this together."
So all in all I would actually say it was good. Not great, not something I'd say was a good
Superman Movie, but it is a film that you can sit down and watch, and not really notice that it's not great. The main problem I think was the hype this movie got. It was supposed to be Superman Returning from a long break and it was supposed to be epic; that's where it let me down.
Pros:
- Technically done very well
- Cool reference to the old films in the opening credits
- Kevin Spacey was awesome as Lex Luthor
- There were some great scenes
Cons
- The two stories seemed distant from one another till the end of the film
- Lex Luthor seemed was timid and not nearly as badass as he needed to be
- Superman looked very plasticy in some of the scenes
Happy July 4th
