Superman-ish thoughts
Thank you to everyone who read and commented on Showing Sunnydale. Such a relief to finally get something squeezed through the cracks in that writers' block!
I'm currently suffering from a particularly nasty summer cold. And what am I supposed to do to treat it in 100-degree weather? Bundle up under blankets? Hot tea with honey? Hot soup? None of the usual remedies are tolerable!!! I left work early and am now stretched out on my couch, with the fan blowing on me at full speed, and am trying to convince the warm, furry cats that they really don't want to curl up on top of me.
A week or so ago (two weeks? Hmmm...) I saw Superman Returns and said that I'd post more in-depth thoughts when I was more coherent. Guess coherency never really settled in, so this is what you get:
I’ve seen some complaints about this, but I actually liked that they counted on your having seen 1&2, or your being familiar with Superman mythos/canon. The whole abandoned Fortress of Solitude, Lex finding the crystals… I imagine that would have been very glossed-over for someone who didn’t know canon, and I can completely understand the annoyance on the part of some viewers. But I was glad to not have to do much retread, which probably marks me as a snob and an exclusionist. ;-)
Loved Superman using the sun to recharge before going subterranean. Again, that his powers were strengthened by the yellow sun wasn’t something that was mentioned explicitly, but if you knew what he was doing, that moment was magic.
Loved Kevin Spacey. He tread that line between comedic and evil much better than Gene Hackman did. The “killing” of Superman was horrific, when he set his henchmen loose to have their fun… and when Lex used the kryptonite dagger, all trace of comedy was gone. “Now fly.” Brrrrrrr…
Loved James Marsden. Loved that Lois made the adult choice. This triangle actually worked because all three points of the triangle were strong. Whoever would have thought that someone could plausibly come between Lois and Clark? The triangle was one of the best I can remember seeing in a film, because I honestly didn’t want anyone to walk away heartbroken and disappointed. So of course, there’s only one answer to that - threesome!!!
Really liked Lois. I still think they cast too young, but for some reason it was more noticeable to me with Kate Bosworth than with Brandon Routh. I think an older actress would have worked better - and I think that an older actress would have worked better with a younger Superman, giving that sense of humanity vs. immortal godliness. But I do think that Bosworth pulled off the disillusioned edge, while the role of mother (which, frankly, I had been worried about, them making uber-career girl Lois Lane into a mommy) gave her a genuine warmth and softness. And I think she worked really well on a meta-level - the Lois within the movie was reacting to meta-level attitudes about Lois, such as Lois is an add-on to Superman, or Lois' primary importantance is as the "love interest." I saw those attitudes expressed within the text, but also a self-aware Lois reacting to and actively resenting these attitudes, which helped to round her out and strengthen her as an independent character. Kudos, to a great example of a film acknowledging and working against the traditional form, as opposed to caving to it, and saying, "well, that's just the way this story goes."
I loved Brandon Routh. In fact, I’m going to commit sacrilege, and say that I preferred his Superman to Christopher Reeve’s, if only because Routh was given more to work with. The story had more weight, more depth - Superman Returns had a gravitas that the intervening years of steadily increasing in quality comic book movies both made possible and demanded. The Reeve Superman movies weren’t as deep, frankly, and demanded less of the lead actor.
So, kudos to Routh. Because I believed that he was Superman. And it undoubtedly helped that the flying effects were so far superior to the previous movie. Superman didn’t look like a man on a wire. Flying Superman had three-dimensionality.
Also, strangely enough, this Superman felt like an alien to me, in a way that previous Supermen just didn’t. He felt distant from, separate from, the Earth. And I think that also helped strengthen the triangle… Lois and Richard fit together in a way that Lois and Superman didn’t. Lois/Richard didn’t have the epic feel of Lois and Superman (and the flight together was lovely), but they felt real, and grounded, and human, and comfortable.
Loved the reaction of the people (or should that be, The People) to Superman. To his return, and to his flybys, and his various savings of the various days, and to his fall. The crowd standing vigil outside the hospital was amazing and genuinely moving to me. And damn, if I didn’t tear up at Martha Kent standing vigil along with them, prevented by the whole secret identity thing from being by her son’s side as he was dying.
The thing that did feel off to me was Clark. He felt almost perfunctory… this Superman was so… inhuman… that I half-expected him to not bother with an alter ego. I can see a future for this Superman, when all his contemporaries are dead, and he sheds the “civilian” identity entirely. This Clark didn’t do any reporting at all, and his relationship with Lois was nonexistent - so much so that she even derisively questioned his use of the word "relationship." There was no connection there, not even a hint of the comraderie of coworkers, or friendship. I can’t blame this Lois at all for not “seeing” and loving this Clark. Because this was a construct, and as we saw from the opening scenes at the farm between Clark and his mother, wasn’t the “real” Clark Kent. This is so different from verses where Clark is a real - one can almost argue the real - personality. This isn’t Lois and Clark or Smallville - the “Clark” persona isn’t lovable, frankly, and isn’t supposed to be. If SR!Lois fell in love with SR!Clark, she’d be loving something that was as much a fiction as most verses’ versions of Superman.
I’m not sure of the timing on these things; I don’t know whether Brian Singer saw Batman Begins prior to working on/finishing Superman Returns, but I loved beyond words the way young Clark’s fall through the roof of the barn to hang, suspended and awestruck, above the ground, mirrored young Bruce’s fall through the earth to land, hard, at the bottom of the cave, where he was terrorized by the swarm of bats. Two perfectly parallel scenes, in which the future heroes fall, and discover the source of their power - one discovers his abilities, and feels awe and wonder - one discovers his weakness, and feels terror, and will later use that terror as his source of strength. Beautiful, and if it wasn’t an intentional parallel, I don’t want to know about it!
I'm currently suffering from a particularly nasty summer cold. And what am I supposed to do to treat it in 100-degree weather? Bundle up under blankets? Hot tea with honey? Hot soup? None of the usual remedies are tolerable!!! I left work early and am now stretched out on my couch, with the fan blowing on me at full speed, and am trying to convince the warm, furry cats that they really don't want to curl up on top of me.
A week or so ago (two weeks? Hmmm...) I saw Superman Returns and said that I'd post more in-depth thoughts when I was more coherent. Guess coherency never really settled in, so this is what you get:
I’ve seen some complaints about this, but I actually liked that they counted on your having seen 1&2, or your being familiar with Superman mythos/canon. The whole abandoned Fortress of Solitude, Lex finding the crystals… I imagine that would have been very glossed-over for someone who didn’t know canon, and I can completely understand the annoyance on the part of some viewers. But I was glad to not have to do much retread, which probably marks me as a snob and an exclusionist. ;-)
Loved Superman using the sun to recharge before going subterranean. Again, that his powers were strengthened by the yellow sun wasn’t something that was mentioned explicitly, but if you knew what he was doing, that moment was magic.
Loved Kevin Spacey. He tread that line between comedic and evil much better than Gene Hackman did. The “killing” of Superman was horrific, when he set his henchmen loose to have their fun… and when Lex used the kryptonite dagger, all trace of comedy was gone. “Now fly.” Brrrrrrr…
Loved James Marsden. Loved that Lois made the adult choice. This triangle actually worked because all three points of the triangle were strong. Whoever would have thought that someone could plausibly come between Lois and Clark? The triangle was one of the best I can remember seeing in a film, because I honestly didn’t want anyone to walk away heartbroken and disappointed. So of course, there’s only one answer to that - threesome!!!
Really liked Lois. I still think they cast too young, but for some reason it was more noticeable to me with Kate Bosworth than with Brandon Routh. I think an older actress would have worked better - and I think that an older actress would have worked better with a younger Superman, giving that sense of humanity vs. immortal godliness. But I do think that Bosworth pulled off the disillusioned edge, while the role of mother (which, frankly, I had been worried about, them making uber-career girl Lois Lane into a mommy) gave her a genuine warmth and softness. And I think she worked really well on a meta-level - the Lois within the movie was reacting to meta-level attitudes about Lois, such as Lois is an add-on to Superman, or Lois' primary importantance is as the "love interest." I saw those attitudes expressed within the text, but also a self-aware Lois reacting to and actively resenting these attitudes, which helped to round her out and strengthen her as an independent character. Kudos, to a great example of a film acknowledging and working against the traditional form, as opposed to caving to it, and saying, "well, that's just the way this story goes."
I loved Brandon Routh. In fact, I’m going to commit sacrilege, and say that I preferred his Superman to Christopher Reeve’s, if only because Routh was given more to work with. The story had more weight, more depth - Superman Returns had a gravitas that the intervening years of steadily increasing in quality comic book movies both made possible and demanded. The Reeve Superman movies weren’t as deep, frankly, and demanded less of the lead actor.
So, kudos to Routh. Because I believed that he was Superman. And it undoubtedly helped that the flying effects were so far superior to the previous movie. Superman didn’t look like a man on a wire. Flying Superman had three-dimensionality.
Also, strangely enough, this Superman felt like an alien to me, in a way that previous Supermen just didn’t. He felt distant from, separate from, the Earth. And I think that also helped strengthen the triangle… Lois and Richard fit together in a way that Lois and Superman didn’t. Lois/Richard didn’t have the epic feel of Lois and Superman (and the flight together was lovely), but they felt real, and grounded, and human, and comfortable.
Loved the reaction of the people (or should that be, The People) to Superman. To his return, and to his flybys, and his various savings of the various days, and to his fall. The crowd standing vigil outside the hospital was amazing and genuinely moving to me. And damn, if I didn’t tear up at Martha Kent standing vigil along with them, prevented by the whole secret identity thing from being by her son’s side as he was dying.
The thing that did feel off to me was Clark. He felt almost perfunctory… this Superman was so… inhuman… that I half-expected him to not bother with an alter ego. I can see a future for this Superman, when all his contemporaries are dead, and he sheds the “civilian” identity entirely. This Clark didn’t do any reporting at all, and his relationship with Lois was nonexistent - so much so that she even derisively questioned his use of the word "relationship." There was no connection there, not even a hint of the comraderie of coworkers, or friendship. I can’t blame this Lois at all for not “seeing” and loving this Clark. Because this was a construct, and as we saw from the opening scenes at the farm between Clark and his mother, wasn’t the “real” Clark Kent. This is so different from verses where Clark is a real - one can almost argue the real - personality. This isn’t Lois and Clark or Smallville - the “Clark” persona isn’t lovable, frankly, and isn’t supposed to be. If SR!Lois fell in love with SR!Clark, she’d be loving something that was as much a fiction as most verses’ versions of Superman.
I’m not sure of the timing on these things; I don’t know whether Brian Singer saw Batman Begins prior to working on/finishing Superman Returns, but I loved beyond words the way young Clark’s fall through the roof of the barn to hang, suspended and awestruck, above the ground, mirrored young Bruce’s fall through the earth to land, hard, at the bottom of the cave, where he was terrorized by the swarm of bats. Two perfectly parallel scenes, in which the future heroes fall, and discover the source of their power - one discovers his abilities, and feels awe and wonder - one discovers his weakness, and feels terror, and will later use that terror as his source of strength. Beautiful, and if it wasn’t an intentional parallel, I don’t want to know about it!