Superman Returns
Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey
My great-grandfather was a cattle and horse trader. One of the secrets he had to getting a few extra bucks for his livestock was to find a couple of the most pathetic cows that ever graced this planet. He would first parade these creatures in front of a potential buyer, knowing that any cattle that followed would look like textbook examples of perfection, and his wallet would grow fatter. One of my best friends in the world has the exact opposite effect when it comes to humanity. Not only does he look like a long lost Kennedy brother, but he has the perfect family and is a huge business success. If you lived next to one of his homes, woke up in the morning next to your snoring spouse, pulled your cellulite-filled backside out of bed, stepped over the clutter that your ungrateful children left the night before as you made your way towards the front door to get the newspaper, you might see him drive his Hummer past or he might be jogging by. (He runs marathons.) He would stop, turn off his Yanni music, as you grunt trying to pick up the newspaper, and he would invite you to his Stepford Wives church or ask if you had gotten his family’s Christmas card, the one where everyone in the brood is wearing matching sweaters in front of a brick fireplace, or rave about the wonderful weekend they just had at some tropical getaway where brown skinned natives served you drinks with umbrellas in them by a pool. Leaving, he would wave. You would wave back, and the moment his back was turned his back, your fingers, no longer under your control, would form a gesture that your mother would not be proud of because you know that in comparison to him you are one of the pathetic cows that has been put on earth just to make him look better. Who wants to spend the evening with someone so perfect?
I have the same reaction to most soap operas. I cannot get into feeling for some picture perfect model that has just broken up with her Boys From Brazil boyfriend. What is sad about that? By next week, she will need a number taking machine to maintain some kind of order for the men who will be lining up to date her because she is hot. Give me a fat girl with a unibrow, a limp, and looks like Lem without the cheesy goatee. That is tragic; because if she breaks up with her boyfriend, the only men who she will be spending every evening with for the next decade are named Ben & Jerry. It is the same reason I rooted for the villains in the comic books that I read when I was a kid. Here are these muscle-bound, chiseled-featured do-gooders who are never selfish and always do the right thing, never trying to make a buck out of the deal or are using their powers to pick up chicks. Every male in America knows what they would do if they had x-ray vision. I always liked the villains. They were better characters, more well rounded, over the top, and always looked more like the people around me than the cape and cowl crowd. Just once I wanted to see the Joker with a steel pipe in his hands standing over the dead body of Batman or see Captain Cold enjoying a wonderful retirement next to his swimming pool filled with all the gold that he just stole from the banks of Central City. The one superhero I could not stand was the Big Blue Boy Scout, The Man of Steel, The Man of Tomorrow, The Last Son of Krypton, The Metropolis Marvel, i.e. Superman. As an ankle biter, I found most Superman stories to be visual sleeping pills. It takes a very good writer to make stories about someone who is perfectly interesting. He is always stronger and/or smarter than anyone he is going to face. Unlike Batman with his twisted psyche or Spider-Man who had to live with the guilt over the death of his Uncle Ben, Supes always did what is right. He is Jesus Christ in a cape and boots. (Kal-El sounds like the Hebrew phrase that means “All that is God.”)
It was not until I was older that I came to understand the power of Superman as an icon. In a world where everything is all shades of gray, there is something wonderful in stories where there are clear good guys and bad guys. It allows for flights of fantasy. What young man with glasses doesn’t believe that somewhere inside of them is a superhero. While the world sees them as just another Clark Kent, maybe someday, some girl will see the Superman that lies underneath. You can almost picture the two Jewish teenagers from the streets of Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel, (who created the Man of Steel), trying to work up the courage to talk to some young girl, hoping she might see something special, that they are not just part of the herd. Superman also represents the best of America. It was one of the darkest moments in this country’s history. The stock market crashed and a depression had spread like a pall across the nation. Science fiction allowed young men to take a break from the grind and dream of a better world where men could still be heroes. Drawing on this pop culture and the pulp novels and magazines they read, Shuster and Seigel tried to find a publisher that would be interested in printing the tales of an illegal alien crime fighter. After being rejected by 17 publishers before Harry Donenfeld of National Periodicals (which later would become DC Comics), needing some filler material for a new comic called Action Comics, gave the boys a chance. Within a few weeks, kids across America were asking the guys at the newsstand if he had anymore comics featuring the strongman in the red and blue tights. By their eleventh issue, they were selling nearly half a million issues and would eclipse the million mark within a few years. When the McClure Syndicate picked up the Man of Steel for newspapers, twenty million readers were enjoying his adventures. (To put this in perspective, if you sell more than 100,000 copies of an issue in the current market, you have a huge hit.
If you want to know how badly mismanaged AOL Time Warner was in the first decade of the twenty-first century, all you have to do is pay attention to how badly they have screwed up the Superman franchise. In 1978 Christopher Reeves put on the boots and tights for the big screen version of The Man of Steel. The first two movies were blockbusters, but by 1987 the franchise had fallen apart due to weak scripts. It would take 19 years and a director, Bryan Singer, who showed that epic superhero stories can be huge successes on the big screen. (There is a great book that could be written about the awful ideas and millions wasted in trying to bring Superman back to the big screen.)
Taking a page from the Reeves’s casting, Singer cast an unknown soap opera actor and Des Moines native named Brandon Routh as Clark Kent. (The name is a combination of actors Clark Gable and Taylor Kent.) While Routh appears a little young to be The Man of Tomorrow, Singer does a wonderful job of bringing back Superman to the big screen. He makes the relationship between Clark and Lois more than just the standard superhero and arm candy variety. The movie picks up with Superman returning to Metropolis after a long absence due to his traveling to the remains of Krypton. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on with her life and Kal-El must try to pick up the pieces of the past relationship. (There is a big surprise in regards to their past.) In the midst of trying to figure out who he is, an old enemy, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has just gotten out of prison. He has a plan to get the Man of Steel back and possibly kill millions of people. What is Luthor’s scheme? What is the secret that Clark and Lois share? This film is an A-minus or B-plus. While not as good as Spider-Man 2 or as dark as Batman Begins, Singer has made an outstanding film. He is a master storyteller who has given depth and meaning to a character that numerous directors and writers struggled with over the last two decades and ultimately given up on. Look to the horizon. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a surefire sequel in 2008 and I am looking forward to watching this perfect person on the big screen.
Verdict: If You Loved the Spider-Man Films, This Film is For You.