Superman Returns

June 29, 2006

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 154 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Superman Returns is faithful to the spirit of the original movie and stretches the story out enough that we can be sure to see many new Superman titles in the coming years. My only complaint about it being so respectful to its’ material is that it made the film a bit longer than it needed to be. Trim 20 minutes out of this and I’d be screaming for a sixth star.

Superman Returns Sometime after the first movie, astronomers discovered remnants of Supermans home planet. Clark felt he needed to go check for himself to make sure there weren’t any survivors or other traces that he could use to find where some might be. Turns out it was nothing but a graveyard so he returns to earth after his 5-year trip (let’s just ignore the whole time-space thing here.) During his absence things have pretty much gotten back to normal.. crime is there, but not outrageous, and the world has moved on. So has Lois.. she has a boyfriend and a son, and is planning to get married “soon”.

Lex Luthor has been paroled and conned a rich widow into leaving all her money to him, so he’s well funded and has hatched a new scheme. This time he’s being quite ambitious and plans to grow himself some land using the crystal technology Superman used to build his Fortress of Solitude. There are consequences in doing this, but he doesn’t care.. he’s the bad guy after all!

Things really get started when Clark returns to the Daily Planet after “travelling” for 5-years and learns about Lois and her new family. She’s not in the office though, she’s on a plane that’s about to launch the new space shuttle design. Of course, things go wrong and thus the world learns that Superman has returned in a most spectacular rescue. This is one of the best action sequences I’ve seen, truly superb film making.

From this point on the movie revolves around the feelings between Lois and Superman, how he deals with a world that’s moved on without him, and him confronting Lex of course. Yes, that’s a lot of relationship stuff and that makes this an extremely date friendly movie, but you aren’t going to be disappointed in any way (and those aspects might just work in your favor post-movie…) The action sequences are excellent, the special effects are top notch and the acting is superb. I have a few minor quibbles with the story that I’ll leave be, and one big rant about a change in dialogue that makes the movie a little too PC for my taste, but nothing that takes away it’s full 5 star rating.

Simply put, Superman rocks and needs to be seen on the big screen. Period.

Posted by John | Filed Under 5 Stars, Action, Brandon Routh, James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, PG-13, Parker Posey, SciFi, Theatrical