jobloffski
Posts: 1844
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: elsewhere
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If nolan is 'overseeing' the new Superman, hopefully he'll have noted some of what I believe is wrong with SR. Other posts have made similar noises, but I'll get specific, and would hope that Nolan is on my page, since I'm arrogant enough to say I don't hero worship anyone enough to assume I'll automatically love what's on his.
Firstly, Nolan is a story 'technician' obsessed with making details serve the themes and character in a story and so there's no need to worry about him trying to 'darkify' Supes a la Batman, because he would, if he has any influence as a mentor at all in this situation, be looking at ways to emphasise the superness of Superman, not impose darkness on him. There can be darkness in a Supes film, but as with Spidey, that should come from the baddies, and the challenge should be for the hero to maintain his status as a light in that darkness. Anyway...
The real problem with Superman Returns was it was way, way too in thrall to the first Reeve film. So much of the film was made of moments that were 'enlarged re-runs of' or 'ironic twists on' stuff from Superman: The Movie that it could never have had a chance of having any real spark of life all its own.
For example: Gene Hackman's Lex refers to his fathers advice to get into real estate because you're always safe investng in land..."It's the one thing they're not making any more of." Spacey's Lex, like, using Kryptonite, makes some more land, which will cause flooding, and raise the value of any land still above water (hardly that different from trying to open up the San Andreas fault for the same reason).
Superman, after an encounter with with Lex and some Kryptonite, almost drowns, in STM and SR. The former in an indoor pool, and the latter in the sea. But while bigger can be better in a superhero film, that doesn't work if its basically the SAME event, repeated.
Superman is drawn into Lex's plot via being tricked into preventing a car accident involving Lex's ditzy moll, who later shows she has a heart by betraying Lex after being upset at how Superman is poisoned by Kryptonite, in STM and SR
While exploring their relationship and seeing where it is going to go, Lois and Superman fly away into the night sky, after a conversation duting which Superman tells her she shouldn't smoke in STM and SR
When we are being introduced to supermans powers in Metropolis in STM, one of the key sequences involves superman not being harmed by bullets. SR basically reruns this with CGI slow mo of a bullet impact, and then what appears to be a gatling Gun, which is a 'bigger version' of the same 'gag. only this time its supposed to be more impresive because of the amount of bullets that bounce off him. This seems to ignore the possibility that if Superman had only been gone for five years, the baddie might have heard of him and legged it, instead of continuing to fire at SUPERMAN. But logic was ignored in favour of the 'bigger! better!' approach, rerunning old stuff.
Many of the shots of superman flying were direct lifts of shots from STM, right up to the closing shot of him smiling at the camera.
With so much basically being rejigged characters/incidents and visual elements from the first movie, there needed to be a solid plot driving the film forward, but that was impossible, because the antagonist plot was a riff on the antagonist plot of the first movie, instead of being a wholly new scheme. There was no reason not to use lex as the villain, but trying the same scam (contrive a way to make land in the USA more scarce in order to profit from it) was a useless way to go. No original threat/plot from Lex = no new feeling to exploit.
About the only thing that was radically different was the relationship between Superman and Lois, but by making it antagonistic, it tore the fun heart out of the tone of the earlier film and sought to replace it with a 'cute kid and a goody two shoes hubby' in order to try and complicate things for Superman emotionally. This shouldn't have come into play until perhaps Superman RE-Returns, when by then we might have given a shit about the 'emotional complexity' if it had just cropped up, and didn't dominate the tone of the movie completely.
And to cap it all, the over use of 'echoes' of the first movie was laid on so thick that we had Superman reciting the Brando lines from the first movie (as the son becomes the father, so the father becomes the son, prob not accurate quote but I'm doing all this from memory). This particular element had its pay off in superman 2, because in both versions of that film, the last of his father's 'life force' is what returned superman's powers. So, depsite the effrots to ape the elements of STM the movie, Singer APPARENTLY FAILED TO NOTICE that the thing he intended to make the emotional centre and emotional climax, the father/son dynamic did not flow from established details and was already concluded, and apparently failed to notice the long history of film sequels NOT being improved by the addition of a 'cute kid' factor.
Also, taking into account the theatrical cut of Superman II, that ended with Superman saying to the President 'I wont let you down again'. SR, by being presented as a Superman III v.2 totally ballses it up by having it appear that Supes simply fucked off for five years, to look for Krypton, without giving him much motivation beyond wanting to see his home. This could have been explained with meatier exposition such as he had to make sure there weren't more like Zod out there waiting to attack Earth again. But why bother with motivation when you can just riff on 'you will live among them, but you will not be one of them' (once again relying on a point that was already played out when Superman chose to fight his own people rather than let them take the earth, so he had already decided earth was his home BEFORE (according to SR flying off to look for pieces of a broken planet on the offchance some kryptonians might have clung to said pieces).
All of these issues could have been surmounted with a better handling of dramatic pacing. If the film had been out and out fun in its style, then took a massive plunge into the dark when the evil plot kicked in, there could have been a very dramatic progression from a 'Yay, Superman!' to an 'Oh my God...Superman..." tone. The kicking Routh's Superman takes is pretty brutal, and the 'evil of Lex' really works there. But because the film was downbeat from the start, there was no fun then, and the plot kicking in didn't grip enough because too much screen time had been wasted establishing antagonism between Superman and Lois and the 'emotional complication; of the child and the nice guy, creating a not very exciting (or emotional) dilemma...will Supes hurt the nice guy by moving in on Lois, whose as close to as human him Lois could have found? No of course he wont, he's an even nicer guy...And, finally, 'oh my god, is he dead?' is presumably what we were supposed to be asking ourselves, but of course not, Superman wasn't returning to die and such a plot point was simply tediousness in picture form.
Had the plot of SR been kick-ass, all the in jokery/riffing on elements of STM (plot, character, incident and visual wise) would have problably added to the experience. But all the effort seems to have been expended on 'honouring' Reeve's time in the 'franchise' and little time at all on making the SIII v.2 a logical progression from the second film (which didn't feel the need to copy/riff/homage its own predecessor at all and just got on with a story that had been planned for and set up in the first film).
It's harsh to blame the cast for the effect on their performances of script/director/direction style that so self consciously set out to exploit nostalgia for the Reeve era, because actors can only work with what they are given, and it is up to the director to give direction. Without any new spark of its own in its plot, and with so many 'homages' to work into the whole deal, it's hard to see how any actor playing Superman could have made any mark of his own on the role.
Bosworth didn't come out of the film well, but with what she was given to do: play a jaded Lois, totally robbed of the spark of almost every other incarnation she had no chance, especially as any character development leading to her being jaded just has to be asumed to have happened between SII and SR. And since that was the case, having her faint upon seeing Superman after the opening, misguidedly 911 seasoned opening sequence was a fatal thing for her performance.
How much more could have been achieved if, for example, she didn't faint, and when she saw supes, pleased to see her, she just gives a brief glare, truns and walks, leaving Supes (and us) wondering what's wrong and in a single moment setting the tone for her portrayal of Lois that the fainting just didn't do?
Sorry to go on and on, but I obviously have what I believe to be very solid views as to why the 'engine' of the film was misudged (too much homage to and saluting at ) at the expense of using the screentime on something better than a soap opera love triangle without any apparent love on display.
Spacey's delivery at times made it seem a better film than it was. But my experience of the film can be summed up as total nostalgic joy when seeing the titles, and hearing the score...followed by a film that, relied so much on nostalgia it had no personality of it's own and despite all the efforts to make things look super, they just didn't feel super, because it takes more to make a new movie than to distill the elements of an older one and just rework them.
Singer was way out of tune on this one. And he confirmed forever that action is not his strong suit, at least in any scene that doesn't have the undeniable selling point of Hugh Jackman, claws out, going apeshit. And even then, that's Hugh's presence rather than the orchestration of the the scenes.
< Message edited by jobloffski -- 13/2/2010 10:09:21 AM >
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Yes, dreamers dream and doers do. But if dreamers DON'T dream, doers don't have anything TO do. Everything that is only here because people exist, only exists because someone thought of it., or in other words, dreamed it.
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RE: Superman 6. - 
It's a dirty job...). 
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