"Superman Returns" (movie and soundtrack)

I'm critical by nature and a movie critic by presumption, but it surprised me this summer that I didn't often agree with my friends about movies. Some of them liked X3 "just fine," for example. (Ha! See my previous review...) Some of them didn't like Pirates 2 (see my next review). Everyone I know but me hated Elektra. And most of them didn't like Superman Returns, the Project That Stole Bryan Singer Away From X-Men (Oh Yeah, And Cyclops, Too). (Sorry -- still working through some residual bitterness there.) Or they liked it "okay, but..." Some said it was a chick flick. Others said it wasn't emotionally engaging. I say -- to heck with them! I loved it!

I'm a certified (or is that certifiable?) X-geek, but everything I know about Superman I learned from Lois & Clark, the TV series. I watched a little Smallville before it became a smutfest, but I've never seen the original Christopher Reeve movies. (There were four, and Superman Returns, in the kind of retconning only possible in comicdom, is a sequel to the second, kind-of like that offshoot of the periodic table of elements.)

When I saw SR the first time, I think I was subconsciously expecting Lois & Clark, because I remember thinking, "What gives? He's always Superman!" Then I paused for a moment to remember the title of the movie and got over that. Obviously, the plot is about Superman's return (from a five-year journey to find the remains of Krypton). One thread of the plot is its effect on Lois Lane, whose son is five... but who has also been dating Richard "Perry's Nephew" White (James Marsden) for five years. The other thread is unrelated to his return, specifically, but does involve the Fortress of Solitude: Lex Luthor's latest dastardly plan to conquer the world, this time with capitalism (and some alien technology). As played by Kevin Spacey (who also starred in Singer's breakthrough The Usual Suspects), Lex is a surprisingly believable guy -- for being completely cruel and heartless. He also has, strangely, a sense of humor: he's evil and proud of it!

All the ingredients for your typical summer fare were present -- huge action sequences, special effects, stuff going boom and a hot man in tights (maybe that last one is optional) -- but the movie also bothered to give its characters personality and depth, and to give the plot personal as well as global relevance -- not unlike Singer's X-men movies. Sometimes I felt the characters (or perhaps the actors) didn't show enough emotion, because I did agree with the critics who didn't feel completely emotionally engaged (I didn't cry until the end, and crying is typically a good barometer for me of whether I'm feeling the movie or not). On the other hand, it's been a while since I was as enraptured by action sequences as I was in these. I really wanted Superman to save the day! Something about putting very human faces on an overwhelming, tragic situation and then -- boom! You see Superman's boots. Truly thrilling. Some days, a girl just wants to root for a guy who's good through and through.

My guy friends who called it a chick flick might have been noticing strong female characters and a love story, but I think they were mostly thinking, "You know, 'man in spandex' just doesn't do it for me, and Lois Lane's pretty buttoned up." At the very least it's a great date movie, because she'll want to hold your hand for about half the movie and cry on your shoulder for some more.

Speaking of Lois, I felt Kate Bosworth did a very credible job. She wasn't as sassy as Teri Hatcher was, nor as the character is usally portrayed, but then, Lois has never been a mother before. Her care and fear for her son felt believable to me, and I appreciated that she wasn't completely helpless.

John Ottman did a fantastic job with the score. For continuity's sake, Singer wanted to use the original Superman theme (composed, like most iconic theme music these days, by John Williams), but Ottman also adds a few cues of his own that add touching depth to the characters' suffering. He uses choral wash judiciously and manages to make the same cue adapt to several different flavors of sadness (which is, in this case, a good thing, because it makes the melody more memorable). His action sequences aren't terribly unique, but neither are they drab-sounding. The best part is that I can listen to the soundtrack (even in its unsatisfying out-of-movie-order) and feel as heroic or sad or excited as I felt when watching the movie.

I think I'll just leave Singer to describe his own work, and compliment him by saying this: he achieved what he was going for, and the movie will play just as well on the small screen as the IMAX.

"On an external level, the movie's about how an idealistic superhero functions in the modern world," Singer says.... "But it ultimately becomes a story about what happens when an old boyfriend comes back into your life, and about Superman trying to find a place in Lois Lane's world. I'm attempting to make a very emotional film. This is certainly the most romantic, and the funniest, movie I've made, and toward the end it gets a bit intense."
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