Superman Week: Superman Returns (2006)

Back in the years 2000-2001, I occasionally jobbed as a contributor for a prominent genre magazine. While submitting article ideas for this publication, I was informed that all prospective articles in the magazine had to target sixteen year-olds.

Which means that I couldn't write about Space: 1999 or the original Battlestar Galactica, or anything, for that matter, pre-mid-1980s. 

This edict was a shock to my system; I couldn't accept that popular mainstream magazines would focus only on the "new" and pretend that genre history didn't exist. Indeed, part of the reason that this blog exists today is to serve as a response to that policy. Here I write about whatever the hell I want to write about...old or new.

But that hard lesson about "business" was not so tremendous a shock to the system as Superman Returns, Bryan Singer's cinematic superhero event of 2006. 

Why?

Well, this movie serves as a genuine anomaly in terms of modern Hollywood business-planning. Bryan Singer forged a Superman movie for me...a guy who remembers and adores the Christopher Reeve films of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  

And you know what?  

Today, by-and-large, fans hate, hate, hate the film.  It is described often as being too reverential, or even "boring."

I find it a pretty satisfactory follow-up to the original films of the 1970s and 1980s, and feel that, in some way, this movie proved that there is no sure-fire approach to reviving a classic film series.  If you re-boot with faith, like Superman Returns, people complain.  If you change everything up, well...people complain.

Catch-22, right?

I hasten to add in regards to this film that there are no sixteen year-olds walking around on this planet who remember these old films from their theatrical runs. Yet despite that fact, Singer loyally re-used John Williams' stirring Superman theme, and marshaled archival footage of the late Marlon Brando as Jor-El, Superman's father. Furthermore, Singer has crafted his 2006 film as a direct sequel to Superman (1978) and Superman II (1981).

This is a revolutionary notion in corporate Hollywood, make no mistake. Bryan Singer's approach flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and the tack other films and TV shows have steadfastly adopted. Tim Burton's re-imagining of Planet of the Apes (2001) was not the continuation long-time fans desired or prayed for, but rather a bizarre dead-end, a pocket universe that today nobody even remembers (or likes).

But give Bryan Singer his due for his central conceit here. He has adopted a more respectful, more faithful stance than many of his peers might have taken, and consequently given all those "old" Superman fans like me the movie we wanted back in 1983...when we got Richard Pryor in Superman III instead.  So, this modern sequel is faithful to the cinematic legacy of this character; not necessarily the comic-book.

Considering his creative decisions to honor the past, Bryan Singer had me hook, line and sinker at "it's a bird, it's a plane, it's..." because he actually took my generation's hopes and dreams into account...something that almost never happens with blockbuster movies anymore. 

Singer made a movie he thought Generation X would like and cherish, and overall, I believe he succeeded in that endeavor. He also made a good movie that audiences of all ages can enjoy together; one about fatherhood and the passage of generations.

On the eve of The Man of Steel’s release (2013), I am glad to have a close-out film to the Donner Age, and also ready to experience a new vision.  But I don’t know that I would have felt ready to accept and embrace the new vision without Superman Returns as a kind of chapter ending. 

Thematically, Singer's Superman Returns picks up all the important strands left dangling by the collapse of the franchise in 1983.

More than any version of the Man of Steel legend, Donner's film captured the religious nature of the Superman tale. Jor-El, a wise, God-like representative of a distant, highly-advanced planet, sends his only son (Jesus Christ) to Earth to live among humanity.

The fact that Krypton is almost totally and immaculately white (without dirt, grays, or other discoloration) suggests that the world is some sort of utopia or Heaven. That the Kryptonians in that film wear reflective, glowing uniforms (and in many cases boast white manes of hair...) further develops the Heaven metaphor.

But the Christ analogy goes further. Immediately before sending away the child messiah, Jor-El and his "angelic" people have proven themselves victorious in a war against an insurrectionist named Zod (representing Lucifer). Before being "cast out" to a Hell dimension (the Phantom Zone), this villain threatens to one day return to battle Jor-El and his heirs, an Armageddon that is highlighted in Superman II.

Once on Earth, Kal El is adopted by kindly, bewildered parents (the Kents), regular humans (like Mary's devoted husband, Joseph) and both of them are at a loss to explain his miraculous arrival. Not quite immaculate conception, but close enough. Then of course, a mature Superman becomes nothing less than mankind's savior as he performs miracles (like saving Air Force One).

That Superman is gentle, loving, kind, powerful, and honest also harks back to the stories regarding Jesus.

Superman Returns develops this idea about as far as it can be taken without beginning The Church of Superman.

Superman (Brandon Routh) is referred to throughout the film as a "savior" and Lois Lane has won a Pulitzer Prize for an article "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." It could have been titled, "Why the World Doesn't Need Christ.”  

And then, of course, Superman is stabbed in the side by Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), reflecting the Gospel of John, which reports how a Roman soldier stabbed Jesus Christ in his side. More immediately obvious as a Christ parallel is Superman's telltale pose after saving the world from the emerging Kryptonian continent.

He hovers in space, his arms outstretched horizontally, as if he is pinned to a cross. Christ metaphors are a dime a dozen in horror and science fiction films (see: Alien 3 and The Omega Man), but in the case of Superman, the comparison has been earned since Superman: The Movie, Superman II and now Superman Returns all rigorously develop the notion.

Visually, Bryan Singer has come a long way since X-Men (2000). I didn't like that film as much as many fans did, in part because of the astoundingly weak visuals. The final mutant battle atop the Statue of Liberty was a mishmash of incoherent perspectives and was so corrupted by incongruous cuts of close-ups that it looked like a bad television show (Mutant X, anybody?) I liked X-2 much better and Singer appeared there to develop an understanding of the full breadth of the cinema frame, and how to use scope and composition to vet his storyline. I'd say that arc is just about complete with Superman Returns.

Although it lacks the lyricism of Superman: The Movie (just compare Lois's flight with Superman in that film with Singer's anemic, less-effectively scored version here...) Superman Returns does boast a few shots that are downright beautiful....and touching.

For instance, this is the first time in film history I can remember that Superman's x-ray vision has been utilized to such stunning - and emotional - impact. That's a development of technology as much as anything perhaps, but that's not the point. Singer is finally proving adept at using his filmmaker's quiver in all senses, from CGI to shot composition.

All niggling quibbles aside, Superman Returns is an encore that honors tradition, and speaks to my generation…perhaps too much.   

One of the film's finest conceits, and one rarely mentioned, involves the climax. Superman doesn't catch the crook in the end. Instead, the film ends on an emotional note, not a plot point, and perhaps I sensed in that tiny development a new direction for the superhero genre. One where CGI wonders can finally be eclipsed by the wonders of the human heart. 

We've seen Superman fly, Spider-man vault from building to building, and even the Hulk go green. The only world left to conquer is inner space; the domain where the super must countenance the human and reckon with that. For Superman his greatest feat could be fatherhood, at least according to this movie.  I like that metaphor. This Superman legend is about the son becoming a father and as a father myself I understand the emotionality of that transition.  This was the last movie I saw before I became a father, in fact.  My son was in my wife’s womb as we watched Superman Returns, and I so I sympathized with the Man of Steel’s journey.

I confess that I am sad not to see Brandon Routh return for an encore Superman film.  I would have liked a continuation of his Superman’s journey into parenthood, to dovetail with my own personal journey.  But today, I feel lucky to have gotten Superman Returns.  It is the Superman sequel I wanted to see as a young boy…and I finally got to see it at age 37.  I thank Bryan Singer for giving me a strong close to a cinematic series that I possess great affection for, and which ended in 1987 with embarrassment and shame.

At the same time, I now feel ready to see Superman rise again, in a new shape and form, and I absolutely know I wouldn’t have felt that way without Superman Returns in 2006.