i saw the movie over the weekend, and i agree with what i read on ain'titcool a few weeks back - "it's a good movie - a VERY good movie - but not a great movie."

the only thing i didn't like about this movie was the story, which is kind of a big thing to not like.

i wanted spacey and parker to come alive more with their characters. here we have two hiLARious character actors, and they both came off as subdued and self-conscious, acting as if they'd been groomed to portray two-dimensional comic book villain characters in a summer blockbuster film. they seemed like set dressing for lois and clark, which sucks - everyone loves a good villain. lex and his gal pal were ultimately just plot devices.

kate bosworth: i really wanted to like her, but YAWN. too young. too khaki and oaty. what was great about margot kidder was her ability to make us believe she was someone who was addicted to trouble. kate's lois seems more like a type-a career girl who goes the extra mile for a story, blah blah blah.

james marsden has more personality in this movie than he did as cyclops, but he's not really likeable or dislikeable. there's nothing delicious in the tragedy of lois marrying this guy while supes was out looking for krypton. good for her. he's nice. next.

so why bother with the movie? THE BIG DUMB ACTION SCENES. cuz they're good. really really really good.

this is a fun film to look at for "ooh! aah!" value, but not so great to analyze afterwards. just wait for the action figures and try not to read too much into anything you saw.

oh, and unless the kid is a set-up for something REALLY interesting in the next movie, i really don't think that subplot was at all necessary, and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Anx said:

list the action scenes!

I remember the shuttle/plane rescue to the baseball field...

but superman lifting up some big kitty litter to space is not good action!

ufoclub said:

there's the parker posey car chase scene, the scene in the little airplane where supes drowns, the stuff on the yacht with the piano and the kid...

Anx said:

I can remember the action scenes because we had to put on our 3D glasses to view them all. In addition to the ones you mentioned, there is the opening scene when Clark first uses his powers and then when the tremor hits Metropolis and Superman freezes the gas explosion with his breath and catches the Daily Planet globe à la Atlas.

So did anyone notice the religious points in the movie?

I didn't but someone pointed them out and I thought, as I'm not that religious and I hate when people have an agenda other than a comic book movie.

The main 3 were

1) Where he gets stabbed with the cryptonite

2) When he picks up the land mass and takes it into space, he sacrifices himself and while falling back to the planet he has the Christ pose.

3) When he takes Lois above the planets he says "You say the world doesn't need Superman but I hear thousands of voices of people that need to be saved"

sextonseven said:

Do you see how none of those additional ones are true action scenes in comparison to the plane rescue? The gas main blow job is the closet thing. The farthest is the rescue of the sinking superman which has the production value of an 80's tv show (all greenscreen, not even a shot of the plane flying over a real actor in an ocean)

The script is not well constructed! In my HUMBLE opinion.

Slave2daGroove said:

Yes. He did say the world needed a "savior," and the biggest nod to him being Christ like? When he and Brando both noted that the "father would become the son, and the son would become the father."

TheBatman said:

Oh yeah, forgot that one, double

ufoclub said:

No I don't see it. Sure the plane thing was the best scene, but I don't think the other action shots pale in comparison.

very cool movie, but makes me wonder about his erections....

Anx said:

did you notice at the end they did the iconic superman pose from the first Action Comics?

TheBatman said:

there's always been a christ allegory thing going on with superman - it's nothing too ethereal. don't worry, they weren't going all narnia on us.

cborgman said:

Love it. Too bad there are no plans to release the Complete Angel DVD box here in the U.S. like in the U.K. It would save so much space on my shelf.

Yawn. These comic book blockbusters get on my last nerve. They ain't even tongue in cheek like the old action movies were in the 80's. They actually take themselves seriously so the geeks wont feel cheated.

Only good ones were the first 3 batman films, but that was because they were dark, moody and did not rely on CGI to make exiting scenes.

It had good effects, that's about all I got. I never liked Supes.....thank god I was high.

jerseykrs said:

all the best superman drama seems to be the stuff that goes on in his head - superman II and the loss of his powers, all the issues with daddy and lex on smallville, etc. - we didn't get that in this movie. but i thought brandon whatshisbutt was good as superman, and the effects were great. maybe next time.

What not even one Superman pic?

ehuffnsd said:

i saw them do that when he puts down the parker posey car.

nurse said:

Giovanni777 said:

If you can, try to watch the director's cut, It's MUCH better than the original version.

meltwithu said:

Because, waaaaay back in Superman 2, for a while Superman was 'depowered' and was for all intents and purposes a normal human being. It was during this time that Lois & Clark got it on, and it was probably then when she got pregnant.

TheBatman said:[quote]

JediMaster said:

Commie, my ass. My guess is that he didn't include the line in reference to Superman's patriotic Canadian roots. Do your homework, man. Supe was a Canadian invention and Metropolis is, in fact, Toronto.

Proclaiming him an American hero is a load of crap. Always has been, always will be.

I liked the movie. Like others have said, it was really good, but not great. My one complaint was Kate Bosworth. What a boring Lois she made.

Superman Returns was as good as X3 should have been. Damn you, Singer.

Frederick96 said:

Hey guys, it's 2 more weeks until this movie is out in the UK & I am desperate to see it...

JediMaster said:

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I only play that scene with HULK in the desert taking on tanks, helicopters and jet-fighters - that's the meat in the sandwich, the rest is crap, agreed, but how expensive would it be to have more HULK time on screen? Still, a sequel is in the works.

As for FF, I have very minor problems with it - it was short, action packed with a lotta cool action and fx - a slimmed down rollercoaster ride with no dull moments Invisible Woman is a babe, Mr Fantastic - a geek, THING - spot on and Torch was hilarious! what's not to like? - just my opinion.

SUPERMAN RETURNS is a lot more serious and dramatic by comparison, dark for a SUPES film, with some strange choices, but overall satisfying and again, in my opinion, a great launching pad for a trilogy or beyond.

In no particular order...

Good, great and/or excellent!...

SUPERMAN
SUPERMAN II
SUPERMAN RETURNS
BATMAN
BATMAN RETURNS
BATMAN BEGINS
SPIDER-MAN
SPIDER-MAN 2
SPIDER-MAN 3 (c'mon, we're all gonna love it!)
X-MEN
X-MEN 2
X-MEN 3
FANTASTIC FOUR
DAREDEVIL

so-so...

HULK

crap...

SUPERMAN III
SUPERMAN IV
BATMAN FOREVER
BATMAN & ROBIN
CATWOMAN
ELEKTRA




[Edited 7/6/06 4:30am]

TheBatman said:

Most disgraceful since Hulk? Dude, did you not see the trailers for Catwoman?



Totally disagree. This movie referenced Donner's original, and maintained a continuity with it, yet also did its own thing.



Lois having a kid didn't bother me. It added to the drama between Supes and Lois. Lex wanting "real estate" provided continuity to the first film, yet this time he was going for a much more comic-book type scheme. Personally, I thought that worked really well.



Totally disagree. Spacey managed to have just a hint of Hackman's campier portrayal (once again, this provides continuity to the previous films), while moving the character towards his more sinister comic-book counterpart (which you could totally buy if this guy had spent 5 years in prison). To me, this was the perfect blend, and Spacey was the best portrayal of Lex outside of the animated series yet. He had a humorous side, but when he shanks Supes, or cuts the brakes on his girlfriend's car, we see the sinister bastard he really is.

As for Posey, she was a colorful character that harkened back to the original Donner film, yet she was not quite as over-the-top as that. I thought it totally worked.



Dude, have you never read a Superman comic? Jimmy IS goofy (I didn't get gay from his portrayal at all). The fact that he idolizes a dork like Clark just cements what a total nerd he is.

As for Lois and Clark, Lois always ignored Clark for Superman. In the light of Superman re-appearing, she wouldn't give a flip if Clark was showing up as well.



Again, have you ever read a Superman comic? If anything, they DOWNPLAYED the effect of Kryptonite. Its effect on Superman is instantaneous, and if it was all throughout the landmass, it WOULD effect him like that.

In Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Night Returns, we see a Superman who is rejuvenated almost immediately from the sun after he is whithered away by a nuclear blast (after having been cut off from the sun). In recent years, they've re-tooled Superman's powers so that he acts more like a battery, absorbing sunlight over time, so in that context he wouldn't have had an instant rejuvenation. Still, it is consistent with pre-Zero Hour Superman abilities.



I think that was the point. Superman is going through a "dark night of the soul" throughout this film, yet emerges at the end triumphant.



Superman isn't an "American hero". That was the result of him being made into a propaganda tool during WWII, and continued into the 1950s with the George Reeves' TV series (The line was just thrown in there to reference that anyway, much like the "it's a bird..." bit). Superman, in comics from the 1960s on, has been depicted as a GLOBAL guardian, and his iconic status has made him beloved by people of all different cultures the world over. Singer was consistent with this, and it would have made NO sense at all to have a guy who is saving people in countries across the planet being referred to as a keeper of "the American way". This hardly makes him a commie.

If they had done a Captain America movie, but ignored any reference to America in that, then I'd agree with you, but this is a guy FROM KRYPTON. Sure, he is an all-American farm kid, and in many ways embraces the ideals of America, but he is a character that belongs to the whole planet.



Sorry to hear that. I personally loved the movie, and my kids did too. So far, the vast majority of the comic geeks I've talked to have at least liked the film.

Oh, and BRING ON THE SEQUELS!!!! Brainiac!!!!! We must have a Brainiac movie!!!!!

sextonseven said:

...and the scene where he takes on the guy with the huge, friggin' machine gun! The shot of the bullet bouncing off HIS FRIGGIN' EYE was cool beyond belief!!!

Anx said:

Singer was just keeping it consistent with elements that have always been there. Siegel and Shuster were both Jewish, and deliberately added messianic overtones to the character.

Note that Singer also made reference to OTHER gods and god-like beings in the film, such as the aforementioned Atlas nod. Singer's inclusion of Christ-like imagery was more for dramatic effect, not to try to be subversively converting people to Christianity (although, I would have gotten a kick out of it if that were true, since it would have really pissed off the funamentalists. Having an openly gay director witnessing with his film would have really riled up Pat Robertson and his ilk).