Superman Returns

A Corpse Dressed Up and Lit Like a Saint

Superhero/Sci-Fi ‧ 154 minutes ‧ PG-13 ‧ 2006 ‧ 4 min read

"You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior. But every day I hear people crying for one."

Superman Returns (2006) positions itself as a direct continuation of Richard Donner's Superman and Superman II, skipping past Superman III and IV entirely and reaching back for Marlon Brando's archived Jor-El recordings rather than recasting the role. Bryan Singer directs, Brandon Routh plays Clark Kent, Kate Bosworth plays Lois Lane, and Kevin Spacey plays Lex Luthor. On paper, that is a film built entirely out of reverence for what came before it. In practice, reverence is not what this movie has for its subject.

Take Superman. Not just a Superman - THE Superman, the one played by Christopher Reeve, a master thespian and disability advocate who defined the role for a generation. Take the hero of Hollywood and stab him in the gut, over and over, and don't give him the mercy of a quick death. Let it bleed out slowly. Take his morals, the thing that made him him, and twist them until he's a man who abandons the people who love him. Take his humor, his warmth, everything that made him feel like someone you'd actually want to know, and gut it, so you can prop up a cold, distant, empty idol instead and call it a hero.

Then hand that mutilation to a director who has faced multiple public accusations of predatory behavior, and who has been credibly linked to derailing a promising young actor's career, and let him force in a romance that is somehow more hollow and more joyless than the one Donner made almost thirty years earlier. Routh and Bosworth generate no real chemistry, not because either performer lacks charm, but because the script keeps Lois engaged to another man while Superman skulks around her house at night listening in with his super-hearing. It plays less like longing and more like surveillance.

To be fair, not everything here fails. Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor has a real menace and a dark humor missing from the rest of the film, and the plane rescue sequence over the stadium is legitimately great blockbuster staging, one of the only moments where the spectacle earns the awe it's reaching for. It isn't enough. A few strong scenes bolted onto two and a half hours of miscalculated character work don't add up to a good film - they just prove the people behind the camera knew what a good scene looked like and chose, mostly, not to make one.

If that sounds like a good time to you, congratulations, you'll probably love this movie. I find it repulsive. This is a film that doesn't just misunderstand Superman, it actively despises everything kind, gentle, and human about him. This Superman isn't a man. He's stone. He's rotting and disgustingly bright at the same time, a corpse dressed up and lit like a saint. This is the Superman I want Lex to kill. Not out of spite - out of mercy. A man so drunk on his own pedestal that he can't manage, not once, not for a single second, to say he might be wrong.

The only thing I feel watching this movie is disgust. Disgust at what it did to the character. Disgust at who made it and how. And disgust, honestly, at anyone who still tries to defend it. Superman Returns gets 0.5 out of 5. THIS is the worst Superman film ever made, and I'd argue it might be the worst superhero film, period.

(Lex should have won.)