Thirteen things about Superman Returns
1. I love how alien Superman was. Some of Brandon's expressions caused a thrill to run through me. He made Superman really beautiful. I don't know. Beautiful and so... far away.
2. Dear Superman, please to bask beautifully in the sun more often. And please to look with intense purpose at least once every fifteen minutes at a spot upon the earth beneath you before racing there to save lives. Also, please to continue looking hot while things are crushed against your naked eyeball, followed by looking hot as you smile the smile of the Complete Bad-Ass as a thought bubble appears over your head bearing the words "Yes, even my naked eyeball is really really hot."
3. "My Heat Ray Expression is really really hot, too."
4. I loved how Clark wasn't a big dork. Dork, yes, but not a big dork.
5. I was terribly pleased that I didn't have to kill myself on account of Kate Bosworth. I think she did a good job becoming someone else. But in the end I wasn't compelled by Lois as a character, so that was a letdown.
6. Actually the whole Richard-Lois aspect of the story was an energy suck. I thought Richard was a stand-up guy and not at all unlikeable, and yet I couldn't get into him. I did like that quiet, horrible moment when he realizes that he's going to drown with his family -- because in that moment it became clear to me that I thought of him as a good guy, and that I felt sorry that he had to experience that realization. And I liked that when Superman lifts him (plus two) out of the wrecked boat, the dynamic between them during the whole sequence nicely reflects how these two men are not really in competition with each other. I like that a lot because having Superman and Richard being in petty ordinary competition with each other would have been Grade A stupid.
7. I loved when Jason glances from Superman on the TV to Clark standing next to him. Bwahahaha! I loved Jason spontaneously running over to kiss Superman on the forehead.
8. I had been spoiled by Entertainment Weekly for the paternity thing, and I liked it a lot more at the beginning when you're not supposed to know, but Jason is so perfectly Clark's son and they like each other right from the start. (I loved that Clark was not weird or weirded at all when they met. And Jason using the inhaler in that scene! So cute and not cloying.) I didn't like that the script then had Lex going there explicitly in the scene on the boat, with the kryptonite cylinder and everything. Don't spell it out, for god's sake! And then I loved the whole asthma attack followed by Grand Piano Special Attakku. But in terms of the big picture, I'm just not sure what they were thinking having a son of Superman introduced into the first movie in a renewed franchise. I liked it as part of this story, but it's very hard for me to think of where they can go with it that wouldn't be really annoying.
9. Lex... ack. He certainly wasn't a cardboard cut-out from the standard textbook of evil, but near the end of the movie I had a moment where I thought to myself, Wow, Lex is not really a very interesting character at all. I keenly missed MichaelRosenbaum-Lex right then. Then when they did the coconut scene, I was like, What?! You want me to reconcile this vaguely ridiculous person with the guy from the rest of the movie, the guy who was A-okay with growing Evil Kryptonite Atlantis right into the Ozarks? It was very jarring, and when the camera pulled back to show how ridiculously tiny the little desert island was, I laughed out loud -- then immediately went WTF, why am I laughing.
10. What was Singer doing with the completely nasty way Lex and his minions were enjoying beating Superman into the ground? It felt very gratuitous, which is not to say it wasn't very effective in making me freak out with worry and anxiety, but it did so in a way that made me aware of having my emotions manipulated. Also, cut it out with having Superman's arms out in the Meaningful Cross Position, floating above the earth near death after flinging Evil Kryptonite Atlantis into space. That very nearly ruined that sequence for me because it just threw me right out of the story-in-itself and made me have to Make A Connection. ANNOYING. I just feel like the Superman story by itself has more than enough emotional resonance by now to stand on its own.
11. Speaking of emotions, and getting back to the positives, there were lots of times when I was overcome with that familiar mixture of excitement, happiness, and yearning that comes from seeing Superman do his thing. The shuttle/plane sequence was just... can you imagine being that woman who looks out the plane window in that frightening situation and sees Superman out there pulling back on the wing? That sequence from beginning to sexy heat raying to hoisting the shuttle into orbit to stopping a flaming plummeting giant airplane with your bare hands and setting it safely down on a baseball field was absolutely incredible. I wanted to stand up and shout and cheer like the crowd. I wish Superman were real. We need him.
12. I'm looking forward to the sequels. I was really, really pleased with Brandon Routh and I can't emphasize enough how much I liked the alien-ness he brought to the role. It was completely entrancing. But he also brought a familiarity, and the combination of these two qualities was just beyond wonderful. I really found myself intrigued by what could be going on in Superman's mind, for example when he finally gets a chance to talk to Lois on the roof. I mean, he says some things and obviously his face reveals some things (oh my god when they have lifted up and Lois is surprised and instinctively pulls in closer, and his eyes close for an instant... good moment, heart seizing moment), and he is enough like us for me to be able to read those things. But there is always the feeling that I just don't know what he's thinking. That's not a feeling I remember from the previous movies, and that's definitely not something I get from Smallville (which is not to say that SV Clark's apparent motivations always make sense -- it's just that those motivations mostly are, in fact, apparent, as befits the primary goal of that series to explain how Clark becomes Superman). This Superman, however, is a mystery to me, and I want to learn a lot more about who he is, if that's possible.
(P.S. on Smallville: even though I enjoyed the cornfield-sprinting-leaping sequence in this movie, I think the similar, briefer scene in the pilot episode of SV is better because TomWelling-Clark captures the same exuberance and sense of freedom in a simple grin, which is followed mostly by the suggestion that he's tearing through the field. And I missed having a Martha who is a character in her own right.)
13. Superman doesn't have any chest hair. At all.