Superman Flops

Russ! (decaf) wrote,
@ 2006-07-02 16:41:00

Current mood: aggravated
Current music: "I Ain't Got No Home" by Woody Guthrie

Superman Flops (Spoilers Ahoy, Mateys)
A month and a half or so ago, my friend Zach came to see me. He brought with him a can of the new Sobe Superman energy drink; I don't remember exactly what it's supposed to have inside it, but it had a big Superman Returns S-insignia on the front of it, and Zach thought that, as the comic book guru of our circle of friends, I ought to at lesat give the Super-drink a try.

It was awful.

Warner Brothers, who are both the parent company of Superman's owners DC Comics and also the distributors and producers of Superman Returns, are notoriously protective of their more lucrative properties. Lawsuits are filed all the time defending the trademarks of things like Harry Potter, and within the comics industry, I once had a writer tell me that DC will let you get away with "pretty much anything if you want to screw with Black Canary or The Enlongated Man. But if you want to do a story that involves Superman or Batman, everything has to be vetted through Warner." That being the case, I thought, how in the world could DC/Warner/Bryan Singer/whoever have allowed such a poor-quality, destined-to-fail product to be released to the market with a big Superman logo slammed all over the front? I wondered about this for a while, and then eventually let it go. Having seen Superman Returns, though, I finally have my answer. Apparently they're going for the "steaming pile of crap" theme with this film.

The picture starts off on sound footing; it feels like what's going on in DC right now with the post-Infinite Crisis "One Year Later" stories. Characters whose backgrounds have become too long and complicated, were given a year's worth of "time out" to get their shit together, and now they're back, and by and large characters are returning to their roots. Luthor, at the open of Superman Returns, has gotten out of prison on appeal (he was sent there at the end of Superman II, the 1980 superhero classic for which Superman Returns is officially a sequel. More on that later), and has seduced the elderly widow who bankrolled his legal defense. In the opening moments of the movie, her family pounds on the locked bedroom door, begging her to cast Luthor out, but he's there by her bedside while she dies. She sings his praises with her last breaths and, halfway through signing her earthly posessions away to Lex, dies. He finishes the signature for her, drops his engagement ring in her cup of Alka-Seltzer and pushes the grieving family aside as he leaves to begin his...whatever it is he's doing. Strong start.

Just like back in Superman Forever #1, the 1998 comic book in which Superman's "electro-blue" powers dissipated and he became "himself" again, Kal-El crashes to earth in the opening moments of the film, landing in the North Forty of the Kent Farm just like he did as an infant. As in Superman Forever, he's disoriented and passes out, waking up hours or days later in his bedroom at the farmhouse. Martha Kent is played perfectly in this picture, for the five minutes of screen time she gets, but the role of the Kent family is sadly played down in this film--one of the many thematic and character mistakes made by the writing and direction team.

One of the great things about Superman and Batman being published (and in this case, produced and distributed) by the same people is the ability to draw some parallels. Batman is a product of his childhood in that the trauma he suffered watching his parents killed before his helpless eyes led him to grab as much power as he could in his life, and harness it to his own ends. He uses his terror to scare people into behaving--because if you don't, The Batman might get you. Superman is the opposite. He's never really known helplessness. He, too, is a product of his childhood. He lost his parents, but was blissfully unaware of the fact while the kindly, good-hearted Kents raised him as their own. His is not to scare people into submission, but to be an inspiration. Superman's role is to be a light to the world. It's not the powers, it's not the cape. What makes him a hero is his heart, his values. And those didn't come from Krypton, they came from Smallville. Superman Returns strives to take that away from the Kents, leaving Clark with a moral code laid down for him by holograms of Jor-El (Marlon Brando, in unused footage from the unreleased director's cut of Superman II), and repeated like some strange cultish doctrine by Superman to his son in the closing moments of the film.

Yes, his son. This is the main plot device bound to alienate comic book purists, and it sure as hell got me. About 2/3 of the way through the movie, Lex Luthor turns to Lois. He's (somewhat accidentally) taken she and her son hostage, and asks the $25,000 question: "Who's the father?" Lois assures Lex that it's her fiancee Richard, which seems good enough for Luthor. A pity, in the grand scheme of things, because if he hadn't just taken her word for it, it might have saved the henchman who the kid later flattened with a piano. The notion of Superman fathering an illegitimate child with Lois Lane, and then leaving for Krypton and essentially abandoning it for several years, begs a number of questions. The clear impliication in the film is that he doesn't know it's his until the end--a contention that could be bolstered by a simple explanation: in 1980's Superman II, Clark reveals his identity to Lois and the two bump uglies in the Fortress of Solitude, after Clark's powers are taken away by a Kryptonian Red Sun Generator. This would allow her to be fertilized without having to worry too much about the practical, biological aspects of it (ie the Mallrats-inspired "Do you think her fillopian tubes could handle the sperm?" question). Better still, by the end of the film, both Lois and Clark have been "mindwiped" to forget the whole thing ever happened.

A few things, though: First, he's Superman. What's the chance that he would be unaware of the pregnancy? Granted, it's implied that he would have left while she was pregnant and maybe she wouldn't have known yet...but it seems likely that of all people, Supes would be able to "hear" a second heartbeat beginning to form inside of his lady fair.

Second, if he was really unaware of the fact that the boy is his, then he's a pretty spooky dude; he spends the first chunk of the movie stalking Lois and her son, using x-ray vision to spy on them. At first, you think he's just pining for Lane, but when he starts watching the kid a little too much, there's only one of two possibilities...and one of them would mean jailtime for the Man of Tomorrow.

Third, if all of this is based on Superman Ii as a basis, then there's an inherent issue to this story: After stepping briefly away from his responsibilities as Superman in that film (everything goes to hell), Kal-El promised the President at the end that he'd never make that mistake again. So leaving for five years without telling anyone seems unchracteristically irresponsible, selfish and unheroic.

Most important, there's just something about the "shining beacon of truth, justice and the American way" being a deadbeat dad that doesn't ring true. It's hard to put my finger on exactly how, but this film feels like it's got a fundamentally disingenuous portrayal of Superman as a character. This, ultimately, is its greatest weakness, and one of the many ways in which the film should have, but did not, take cues from Batman Begins.

The conflict of the film--as well as a lot of the imagery and almost all of the music--is cribbed from Superman: The Movie. Routh, who does a good enough job, is clearly channelling Christopher Reeve. There are moments when he's more Reeve than Kent, which hurts him, but overall it's a good thing. There are some beautiful shots and an attempt by Singer to make a real "film" out of a summer superhero blockbuster, but ultimately the silly plot falls on its face in spite of strong acting and a commitment to great art photography. Like in the 1978 version of Superman, Luthor is campy. He's played for a bit of a clod, and his genius--the thing that's made him a great foil for the Man of Steel for the last sixty-plus years--is only mentioned by himself, and poo-poohed by everyone else. Again like the '78 version, Luthor's plot is a land scheme. This time, he's stolen Kryptonian artifacts and intends to use them to "create" expensive beachfront property that he'll be able to defend using advanced Kryptonian weaponry. I kept waiting and waiting for the Kryptonian battle armor to show up, or--far better--The Eradicator. But alas, it was not to be. This movie shuns the comics in favor of using Superman: The Movie and Superman II as its exclusive source material. Again, the Batman people got this right--you don't have to USE comic book villains or whatever, but it's nice to at least have a nod to them where appropriate. The fact that dozens of Metropolis reporters appeared for cameos in Superman Returns and not one of them was identified as Ron Troupe, Cat Grant or any other recognizeable name is a testament to the fact that Batman Begins and its recognitions of LexCorp and Lucius Fox have a huge leg up on Superman Returns.

And the big thing, as far as tone goes: There's the only "fight scene" in the movie, where Superman gets dizzy on Kryptonite and has the snot kicked out of him by Luthor and three goons. Leaving aside the fact that the goons are flattened by falling rocks and Superman does nothing to help them, there's the fact that Luthor keeps rambling on and on about Superman not being super, etc., and the moment is perfect for Superman to step back, clock him for real with a de-powered "Clark" punch, and say definitively that it's not about the powers, but about how you use them. What needed to happen here was for Superman to identify what makes him special, in the same way that Batman did during his "I need to become an idea" monologue. The scene begged for it. The character begged for it. It would have improved the ending of the film tenfold.

Instead, lacking powers, Superman falls into the ocean and has to be rescued by Lois.

Ultimately what it boils down to is pretty simple: I'm not a comic-book purist, who takes umbrage every time there's a perceived slight to continuity or who gets my panties in a twist because they used Luthor again instead of introducing Metallo or Conduit or Doomsday. I could care less, frankly. What bothers me is when there are fundamental problems with the character himself. Watching Superman Returns, it's obvious that Singer decided on a story he wanted and pushed forward of it--and sixty-eight years of Superman stories be damned, if Singer wanted the deadbeat Superdad, it was going to happen. Spider-Man is a good example of a movie where great liberties were taken with the comics--events happen that never did or never would in the comics, and characters live and die in the wrong places, etc. But the fact remains that Peter Parker's motivation, his underlying moral code, and his personality are so consistent that nobody could say Sam Raimi doesn't understand the Spider-Man character (although you could--and I do--say that his execution isn't that great). Singer, meanwhile, clearly doesn't care about Superman. And that's bad. Being entrusted with a property like Superman demands caution--these are someone else's toys that you're playing with, and if you break them, it could take years to fix. Now, to a mainstream audience (remember, more people saw this movie over the weekend than will read Superman or Action Comics this year), Superman has a bastard out of wedlock. That's going to take years of writing and commitment from the Mark Waids and Grant Morrisons of the world to repair. And also people like me. The readers, who have read these characters for years. We feel like we know them, we care about them and about what happens to them.

So I guess it's time for me to get to work, too. Back to basics. Where's my copy of Action Comics #1?