While doing work on The B/C-L Index—you are using it, aren't you?—I come across reviews that haven't been thrown on here. This one is an oddity. It's the first movie review I wrote after a long time of just letting movies rattle around in my head. It's rough with way Too Much Information about my personal life for me to be comfortable with it, and too much "What I Had for Dinner"-type information that just seems irrelevant to the subject at hand (that being the movie). Still, it was an interesting read (for me, at least). If I haven't improved since then, I've at least learned to stay more on track...which for a blog about movies is important.
You'll Believe a Man Can Float
Driving home from Superman Returns in 4-story IMAX and 3-freepin'-D on Wednesday night, I was listening to KIRO Newsradio. Thousands were evacuating, fearing the cresting of the Delaware River. Andrea Yates was convicted (again) of killing her kids. A public official was lost in the Olympic Forest.
"Man!" I thought. "We could really use Superman."
I knew I needed him. It had been a rough week of moving furniture and hauling myself from The Island to The Redmond. I was swamped at work and I had to take Tuesday off for the transfer of our big stuff from The Place What We're Selling to the current domicile, so my Wednesday started at 4 am (just in time for the sunrise) to get started early on due assignments. After all this, I was looking forward to seeing friends I hadn't seen...in ages, and seeing the new "Superman movie". I was really looking forward to that. I've been pretty discouraged lately, and a new Superman movie...well, that seemed just the ticket. The previews for it were great.
But everyone will be comparing it to the first one. As well they should. Superman Returns should be called "Son of Superman" (*ahem* cough!) as it's so closely tied to the first film. It recycles Marlon Brando as Father Jor-El, and recycles whole sections of the first film's Mario Puzo/Robert Benton/David Newman/Tom Mankiewicz script, including my favorite Lex Luthor line: "My father always told me..." "Get out!"
But, Superman: The Movie was really three films: The deadly earnest Krypton section ("This is no fantasy" intoned Brando at the beginning); the equally serious Smallville/Fortress of Solitude section (with Glenn Ford's last great performance, and a farewell to Ma Kent scene in a seemingly endless epic wheat field); and finally, the Metropolis movie, with its antic screwball comedy pace (brilliantly achieved, by the way), it's cartoonish villains ("Otis-burg? O-TIS-BURG???!!!") with their absurdly successful attempts at stealing nuclear missiles, and at its soul the "Superman Meets Girl" romantic comedy story-line. I've always felt that lurching shift in tone was a bit out of step with the rest of the film (though you could make a case for showing that stalwart Superman is needed in such a crazy, zany world). Now, I'm not so sure. Because Superman Returns keeps the earnest tone of the first couple sections of the original throughout its considerable length. More cohesive it may be, but it's not more entertaining. In fact, it tends to bog down the proceedings, which consists of "regrets and things unsaid" which would have made Richard Donner's His Girl Friday pacing inappropriate. Which only points out how large the gulf is between that first film and this one.
Donner's Superman was a frothy entertainment, that, in the days of disco, long sideburns, and flaired pants, winked at the concept of heroics. This one is heavier, darker, meaner and less entertaining. There's less joy to it. And it takes its heroes deadly seriously. You think a guy like Spider-man has great power, thus great responsibility? Hell! Try being "Superman!"
Donner's flying scenes in the first (with a lot of credit going to licensed pilot Christopher Reeve) showed the joy of flight--the freedom of it--the grace. Who wouldn't want to fly after "Superman?" "SR's" flights are rarely graceful, and powered by stress. This Superman is always in a hurry. He doesn't stop to smell the up-drafts or do a lazy roll through the clouds. He's making a bee-line from one emergency to another. There's another quality to the SR aerial scenes--isolation. Superman is often seen as a small speck in a big, empty sky with life going on far below him. He's not a part of this Earth, and Singer drives the point home again and again. It's no fun being Superman.
I'll bet audiences have a problem with that: if they were Superman, of course, they'd enjoy it. It brings to mind the Superman scene I'd like to see. Howard Chaykin, of "American Flagg!" comics fame said in an interview how he'd like to start off a Superman comic. Lots of panels of ordinary Metropolitans going about their day only to have them interrupted by a blue-red streak going by their window. BOOM!Another about to sip his coffee. BOOM!A couple more of those until you get to the "splash" page: Superman, over the ocean, wearing a pair of shades, and popping his fingers, listening to "I Believe in You" (from "How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying)) on his Walkman. "You have the cool, clear eyes /of a seeker of wisdom and truth."
Yeah. I'd love to see that Superman.
But despite Returns' seriousness, there are joys. Brandon Routh looks and sounds so much like Christopher Reeve that it doesn't take a big leap (or a single bound) to accept him in the role. He exhibits a bit more life as Clark Kent than the more stalwart Superman, breaking into a goofy grin at the slightest provocation, and restraining the klutz routine (he doesn't constantly punch up his glasses the way Reeves' CK did). I also like the fact that his performance doesn't have the same "I'm sharing a joke with the audience" quality that Reeve brought to the role. Kate Bosworth is damned cute as Lois Lane** (as a blonde, she barely registers on the screen, but here, her hair darkened brown, she seems to have a bit more depth) and has little of the Margot Kidder neuroticism and (here's a plus!) I don't remember hearing her scream once. I do miss Kidder's whiskey baritone cracking on "Clark!," however.
There could be a bit more life to Frank Langella's Perry White and Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. Spacey's Luthor is self-contained malice and only sparks to life during a confrontation scene with Lois. Gene Hackman expertly tred the mine-field of jokes in the first film, but it was tough to buy him as a real threat to anybody but his cronies. Spacey's Luthor is a villain who does bad things...and enjoys doing bad things. Unfortunately, here, you mostly see him prepare to do bad things, and so there's no real pay-off for the character until 2/3 of the way through the film.
There is one cracker-jack sequence involving a doomed airliner that shows that it's pretty darned hard task to stop a plane in free-fall. It's note-perfect, right down to showing the skin of the craft buckling from a lurching halt. The movie has a good bead on the concept of heroism, too. There are a lot of heroics in this film (not just from der Ubermensch) where people who could take the easy way out, go against their better judgement and do What Must Be Done, despite the jeopardy it may put them in. It makes a statement that heroism doesn't come from powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. It comes from the heart, the conscience and the will.
Good movie/bad movie? Thumbs up/Thumbs down? Hard to say at this point. There are some movies that are merely okay while you suffer through them, but are better in memory (Napoleon Dynamite is one of those films: I can laugh at parts of it in retrospect, but I'd have to be kidnapped and a gun placed to my skull to watch it again***). Superman Returns was just the opposite: enjoyable while sitting through it (though I was aware of just how long it was, I didn't quite get to the point of checking the time), but the farther I get from it, I remember what's wrong with it more than what was right. If I had my "druthers," Superman Returns would be lighter than the Batman Begins, the "X-men" films, Spider-man, certainly lighter than Ang Lee's Hulk. At least it wasn't as frivolous as the Fantastic Four. My opinion of it is evolving, and that brings up another issue.
I've noticed an interesting trend in on-line reviews over the weekend. Initially, they're scathing, criticizing every aspect of the film..and harshly, to a ridiculous , often hysterical level. Second viewings produce a more favorable response, even admiration. I suspect that folks go, expecting to see the first film or worse yet, their idealized memory of the first...or second film. In that regards, this one will fail, but it can't help but fail. You can't fight a cherished favorite, or the memory of a cherished favorite. My advice: Go, expecting Superman IV. I know I'm going to see it again. Through the double exposure of the 3-D glasses, I couldn't tell whether the cribbed...sorry, the "homage"...final shot of Superman flying up, up and away past the audience had its Superman smile benignly at the audience. Like the George Reeves wink at the end of some of the TV shows, and Christopher Reeve's shared smile, it would have been nice to see it in this one. The fact that I didn't disappoints me, and makes me wonder why a decision not to include it, was made. Don't we want Superman on our side? I'll have to see it again.*
My favorite sum-up is by The Stranger's Andrew Wright who grumped: "For a movie featuring a hero who can conceivably give God a wedgie, there's precious little zowie to be found." "Zowie!" as in Adam West clobbering Ceasar Romero "Zowie?"
* And, sad to say, there is no smile on the final fly-by of 2006 Superman. He merely scans the audience with his eyes on the way past, ever vigilant. He probably isn't smiling because of the relatively few bodies he sees in the seats. And the ones that were there are already heading for the Exits. Not exactly what a super-hero expects when he sets out to "watch your back."
** Hey, c'mon, younger me: Lois Lane shouldn't be "cute". Lois Lane would curl her lip if you called her that.
*** Yeah, I don't know what my problem was here. I watched it a few years later and fell in love with it and regard it fondly.
A bit of hind-sight from here in 2024: James Gunn is making a new Superman movie with a new "from-scratch" cast and I just read the Internet News says that the "CW" is making a Superman series with Brandon Routh playing the role again—although as it's from the Internet, I'll believe it when I see it on my TV screen. I like Routh. He's gotten looser and more charismatic with age and I bet he could do a fine performance as "Supes" these days (as he did on those recent CW shows).
But, my long-distance memory of Superman Returns tilts it to a "bit of a drag" movie. There WAS no "ZOWIE!" to it. It was dark, dispiriting, mean and vengeful. It lingered on the negative and dismissed the positive. It should be bright, three-colored and direct. It should take pride in the right and look down on the wrong, not dwell on it. Bad guys shouldn't be taken so seriously; they should be ridiculed...but not by Superman. That would be mean. But, they should be dispatched so that life can go on positively.
And no brooding. Zack Snyder spent so much time having Henry Cavill doubting himself and "his way" that he never got around to showing a good portrait of Superman. And I, for one, am glad he got stopped before he could carry out his "Superman-as-villain" scenario for his planned Justice League series. That would have been just a dreary exercise. As dreary as making Superman a "fair-weather father" as he is in Superman Returns. Not to mention a serial-peeper. The crux of Superman is he's a good guy. Just because he CAN do something, doesn't mean he does. There's a thinking, moral filter there...that the recent incarnations have forgotten about.
Maybe it's because all I see these days (because they're the loudest) are politicians as "anti"-Supermen who don't believe in "Truth" (that's for damn sure!), "Justice" ("Delay, Delay, Delay") and I don't know what the Hell their idea of "The American Way" is (but it probably involves a lead pipe). It would be nice to have that...as an alternative for what America supposedly stands for now.
The Stalking Moon(Robert Mulligan, 1968) Only a few years after teaming up on their multi-award-winning adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of To Kill a Mockingbird, its producer Alan J Pakula (only a year before making his own directorial debut), its director Robert Mulligan and its star Gregory Peck came together once again to work on this western about revenge, the clash of cultures, and its inherent affect on those caught between them in the post Civil War era in The Stalking Moon. Given the scenario, one could think of the film as yet another variation of John Ford's The Searchers—with different souls, certainly, and different outlooks, but a similar set of circumstances that are a continuation of that story if it was set a few years after the timeline of its captor, and runs closer to the story on which The Searchers was based—the true story of the capture of Cynthia Ann Parker, taken by Comanche warriors in 1836 at the age of 10, during a raid on her family's settlement. She was mother to the last Commanche chief, the formidable Quanah Parker.
But, that's history. The Stalking Moon is merely fiction. Sarah Carver (Eva Marie Saint) is found in a Cavalry raid and returned to "the White Man's World" after 10 years of living in the Apache's. With her is her son (Noland Clay), his father being the Apache warrior Salvaje (Nathaniel Narcisco), whose name means "Ghost" or "He Who Is Not Here."
Carver is at the Army camp awaiting a military escort to take her and her son to the town of Hennessy to board a stage for her original home of Columbus, but that will be in five days and Carver will not wait, wanting to get out of military custody...now. She implores a retiring Army scout Sam Varner (Peck) to take her to Hennessy. He's on his way to his home in New Mexico, so it's just one more stop along the way, so it's just a matter of leaving her and the boy at the stage station and moving on.
But, it's not that easy, and should give Varner reason to wonder what the hurry is all about. There'll be a wait for the stage, and the Boy (he's never named) runs off—Varner is once again persuaded by Carver to go an another errand, one complicated by a sandstorm that will make the search difficult. The child is found hiding in a cave and the three ride out the storm during the night.
The one they can see, anyway. There was another storm that they were lucky enough to miss, one that was man-made—when the three return to meet the next stage, the town of Hennesy is wiped out of any life. Salvaje, apparently, is tracking them, but what his ultimate plans are, like his tactics, unknowable, and Varner decides to waste no more time waiting for stages or locomotives. The timetable, now, is Salvaje's, and the near-mythic Apache warrior is calling all shots.
Which makes Varner's plan to take Carver and son back to his ranch in New Mexico somewhat perplexing. Perhaps, it's the mountainous terrain surrounding his ranch, maybe "the-country-you-know" will give some advantage in the fight, but it seems like giving the Apache plenty of room to hide runs counter to a safe strategy, and one thinks that knowing the territory might allow for some better preparedness, maybe even a snare or two. Without it, the desert gives very little cover and might be a better idea.
But, it's back to New Mexico they go, and The Stalking Moon becomes more of a thriller with the protagonists having to make a stand against a highly-estimated antagonist that is far too trained to go bump in the night and give away his position. And even allies like Varner's wizened ranch-hand (Russell Thorsen) and his ranger-trainee (Robert Forster in a wonderful early performance) become merely red-shirts to increase the suspense without impinging on any domestic situation that may ensue. Director Mulligan thought the project (handed down after director George Stevens bowed out) as a Western/Hitchcock hybrid, but one doubts The Master of Suspense would play it so safe and not toy with the audience's expectations of an ultimately happy ending.
But, give Mulligan credit for giving it a try. His eye for composition is comparable to Hitchcock's in making emotional use of the frame, although his way of communicating the point-of-view of his players is far more organic and less stylized than his British counterpart (who, at the time, was struggling to make Topaz a signature film). The film is spare on dialog—contrarily, Peck's Varner is the most loquacious in the film and even gripes about it during a quiet dinner—so there's a lot of communicating through looks and glances (which is handy when you have a legendarily crafty Apache warrior targeting your house.
Finally, this is where the film ultimately fails—false advertising. After building up a "boogey-man" persona for Salvaje's character, he is not as good as he's said to be. The man has massacred whole towns and still pursues his prey in the course of the movie, but how what he does in the final set-piece is not what one would expect of such an antagonist. Perhaps those unfortunate way-stations (two of them) merely got that way because he's just very thorough—an OCD Apache warrior. He certainly is persistent. Either that, or he had to be given a bit less skill in order to be believably (or otherwise) defeated by Peck's Varner. In either case, somebody compromised in order to have a standard outcome—they way TV writers do when they know that a character has to return next week. It's drama by contract, and except for having to sit with the lawyers, there's no suspense (or terror there) there. But, think what a better movie it might have been if they hadn't.
Mulligan is on record of why he wasn't satisfied with the film: “It just didn’t work, and a lot of that may have to do with the basic silence of the movie.” On the contrary, the silence works in the film's favor...and has in westerns whenever the dogs start barking (then stop) or the insects get quiet. The quiet of the outdoors is one of the things that draws us to sparser settings...while also keeping us awake the first couple of nights.
No, the silence that hurt the picture is the one didn't object to weakening the script.
You'll Believe a Man Can Float
But, my long-distance memory of Superman Returns tilts it to a "bit of a drag" movie. There WAS no "ZOWIE!" to it. It was dark, dispiriting, mean and vengeful. It lingered on the negative and dismissed the positive. It should be bright, three-colored and direct. It should take pride in the right and look down on the wrong, not dwell on it. Bad guys shouldn't be taken so seriously; they should be ridiculed...but not by Superman. That would be mean. But, they should be dispatched so that life can go on positively.
