# Superman Returns (2006)



## ravenus (Jan 14, 2005)

*Bryan Singer* will be soon getting into the production of the new Superman movie.

 The current buzz is that he will resume the tale from _Superman II_ onwards. Metropolis devastated by Superman's battle with the Phantom Zone criminals, he banishes himself away from earth. After 6 years a new kind of terror strikes and it is time for the Man of Steel to return.

*Kevin Spacey* plays Lex Luthor and Superman/Kent is played by newbie *Brandon Routh*.

 Sounds pretty decent to me so far. I hope they retain the classic Superman costume...I'm not interested in the more recent Superman avatars. Routh looks OK as Kent in a pic I saw of him. Hope he is able to fill the cape and red boots as well.


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## Princess Ivy (Jan 14, 2005)

Here is his piccy. hot off the press. he seems more along the lines of Dean Kain and Tom Welling than of Christopher Reave who made superman step off the comic book pages for me.
This will be a wait and see for me...


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## Sirathiel (Jan 14, 2005)

According to Kryptonsite.com Kate Bosworth will play Lois Lane.


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## Foxbat (Jan 14, 2005)

Singer is a good director so I've got high hopes for this


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## ravenus (Jan 14, 2005)

One of the coolest things about the original _Superman_ movie for me was that they had Superman starting his career after he'd crossed 30 or something. I'm not a big fan of the teeny bopper superheroes.


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## Sirathiel (Jan 14, 2005)

ravenus said:
			
		

> One of the coolest things about the original _Superman_ movie for me was that they had Superman starting his career after he'd crossed 30 or something. I'm not a big fan of the teeny bopper superheroes.


But still they were teenagers at a time. I'm sure if it's well done even the stories of a teenager struggling with extraordinary abilities can be interesting. But it's also very easy to mess up such a story line horrendously.


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## ravenus (Jan 14, 2005)

Sirathiel said:
			
		

> But still they were teenagers at a time. I'm sure if it's well done even the stories of a teenager struggling with extraordinary abilities can be interesting. But it's also very easy to mess up such a story line horrendously.


 I regard recent movies of a certain webslinger as a good example of messed up. Too much of a Hallmark channel movie with incredible amounts of screentime given to utterly bland and inane dialog.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 15, 2005)

Looks more like Superboy than Superman??


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## Leto (Jan 15, 2005)

As long as Krypto the Superdog has no part in, it'll be bearable.


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## ravenus (Nov 18, 2005)

*Teaser Trailer Link*

My impressions of the trailer (I think this is the same that was shown at some Comics convention a while back):

Refrain of John Williams music - you can't imagine how much of a smile it brings to my face  . It harks back to the magic of Chris Reeve and the 1975 movie. Chalk one up also for the Marlon Brando voiceover (which I think comes from the original movie, not some previously unreleased material)

Bright visuals and a similar sense of grand old-skool superhero story-telling as the classic films - I've had it with superhero movies that revolve about dark cities and brooding whiners / wiseass mutants.

The classic costume - only a small glimpse but it does seem to work well in motion. I'm still a bit iffy about the cape no longer bearing an 'S' (I heard they nixed that because it'd make the CGI harder)

The flying FX in the trailer seem placeholder (still nice in part) and the last scene where Routh opens his eyes looks distinctly like he was responding to a verbal offscreen "wake up!" cue 

The Quicktime video in fullscreen made my task bar disappear and I had to restart explorer.exe  . Frankly WMV kicks QT's ass any day.


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 18, 2005)

That is a good trailer - the music hits just right.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 19, 2005)

Feels like an arkward cross between the origanal superman films and smallville!
You really need a superman who looks big and musclely, brandon still looks like the smallvile teen/young man verion of Clack Kent/Carlel(sp?)


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## ravenus (Nov 19, 2005)

dreamwalker said:
			
		

> Feels like an arkward cross between the origanal superman films and smallville!
> You really need a superman who looks big and musclely, brandon still looks like the smallvile teen/young man verion of Clack Kent/Carlel(sp?)


Brandon's build looks only slightly lankier than Reeve who was the definitive big S/Kal-El, so I think he'll do fine so long as he gets the acting right.


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## Alysheba (Nov 22, 2005)

I have no desire to see this movie. I saw the previews and still... nada... though I do like Kevin Spacey. Maybe I will see it. Possibly on DVD... It's gonna take a lot of convincing to make me watch this one.


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## Rosemary (Jan 21, 2006)

Superman Returns from Down Under
Just a little insight into the making of the movie.  The producers brought in 6 tonnes of timber to the Breeza Plains of Australia (1 hours flight from Sydney) and built a Kansas farmhouse, windmill and an ox-blood red bar.  They planted 2ha of corn and paved 9km of road.  For Hollywood filmmakers it makes more money than sense to build Smallville, USA on a different continet.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Jan 24, 2006)

Actualy, I'm looking forward to Spacey's Luthor (he is playing Luthor, right?). Post John Byrne continuity still has Superman firmly established as donning the cape and tights only when he is out of college, perhaps in his early 20s. It's a good thing that long-haired emo Supes from the 90s has been firmly forgotten, and I'm hoping this will be a back-to-basics movie, because the basics are what made this character a legend. 

I don't think Superman needs to be portrayed as musclebound - he's a living solar battery, which is where he gets his strength. He stays fit because he's very exemplary and commendable in all respects, natch, but even a chain-smoking Superman with a beer gut would be the mightiest mortal on planet Earth!


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## Omega (Jan 24, 2006)

Yes Spacey is playing Luthor, can't wait.


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## dwndrgn (Jan 24, 2006)

I have no desire to see Superman. I was never very fond of the character or his story in the first place and the loss of Christopher Reeve just makes me want to keep the film in the can on this one. Not a logical reaction - but there you go. I'm a woman, I don't have to be logical  

Though Kevin Spacey as Luthor may convince me to see it anyway.

JP: you've just inspired me to create a comic book character who is fat, lazy, drinks beer and forgets to shave...but somehow still saves the earth on a regular basis.  He's Couch-Potato Man!


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## ravenus (Jan 25, 2006)

I'd once read a fairly entertaining pulp superhero spoof called *Super-Folks* by a *Robert Meyer*, where the lead character was quite obviously modelled after the big S. In the story this superhero is leading a middle-aged 'kids & beer-belly' existence after being forced out of action by a mysterious weakening of his powers. Then stuff happens which makes him want to re-don his boots. Lots of good laughs, lots of weak ones and some surprising emotional depth.


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## polymorphikos (Jan 26, 2006)

That was a pretty unimpressive trailer.


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## ravenus (Jan 26, 2006)

Well if you're saying it doesn't have a lot of visual spectacle, that's not at all the point of the trailer, which was just something put together quickly to show as a teaser at a comic book convention even while the shooting was going on in Australia. Don't especially judge the CGI since the proper work on that would have started only after the major shooting was completed. Call it if you will a statement of intentions, giving you the basic look and feel of the film and its relation to the seminal Richard Donner / Chris Reeve effort which it intends to follow up on.


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## Sparks the Knave (Jun 30, 2006)

*Superman Returns*

I saw it today with a friend, and I must say I went in with low expectaions, but was suprised that I found it enjoyable enough. I've never been a real fan of the man of steel, he's too good, if you know what I mean, and only has one real weakness, which therefor comes into play each and every comic/movie. blegh. 

At any rate, i liked this and wondered if anyone else was in the same boat (the not liking, but now liking boat, that is to say).


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## Marky Lazer (Jun 30, 2006)

I haven't seen it (yet), but saw a preview with Kev Spacey as the bald bad guy. And that short scene in the trailer was pretty nice.


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## Sparks the Knave (Jun 30, 2006)

I actually thought he'd be a bad thing for the movie. but I was proved wrong. 

All in all, it was very supermanish just the same.


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## suentius poet (Jun 30, 2006)

I was underwhelmed, I expected more from Singer. It was beautiful but it was basically Donner's Superman redux.(except Supes returns insted of being first introduced) Lex wanted real estate through devastation of US Coast, used Kryptonite against Supes, falls in water, saved by a girl. Supes saves Lois in from an aerial accident as in 1st, Romance with Lois, Lois in danger from Lex's destruction of Coast saved by Supes. Against odds Supes saves day. 


Give me Zod anyday, the only realy good thing was Spacey, I wish he had more to work with.


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## ravenus (Jul 2, 2006)

I personally liked the movie a good deal, although it IS too much of a homage to Donner's story (Luthor is still into land gran scams and still has retard sidekicks bimbo assistant who screws him up when it comes to cashing in on the chips? Man he ought to change his lackiey recruitment agency)


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## ravenus (Jul 3, 2006)

OK here is Ravenus' full review of... 

*Superman Returns - Bryan Singer* 

Being an avid fan of the Superman character and almost fanatically so of the first 2 films (*Superman I & II*) where *Christopher Reeve* embodied the hero, it was with equal parts of anticipation and trepidation that I approached this new film which purported to continue the story and characters from those films onwards. 

In those earlier films director Richard Donner and script consultant Tom Mankiewicz constructed a majestic story arc that told the comic book legend with love and a respect that did not allow the legend to fall into overt camp territory that many may have feared. It is with a sense of immense relief I can say that Bryan Singer has successfully revived that tone and once again brought alive those characters for a new generation. 

Story-wise the film is as much of a continuation of those 2 Superman films as say, the Two Towers is to the Fellowship of the Ring. This means that if you haven't watched those films or are not in general aware of the world and relationships of the Superman characters, you will find several parts of the film abrupt and unexplained / barely explained. In converse, people who have watched those 2 films will find an almost seamless continuation of the legend with many (some might feel too many) knowing nods to those predecessors. 

The story is set some time after the events of Superman II, when, after a tipoff from scientists about the possible location of Krypton, the big S abruptly leaves his adopted planet to see if there is anything he can salvage from the remains of his now-destroyed original home. In the meanwhile Metropolis and his beau Lois Lane come to grips with living in a Superman-less world, Lois embittered to the point of getting into a relationship with another person (and having a son) and writing an article about "Why the world doesn't need Superman". It is to these changed circumstances that the Man of Steel returns and concomittantly his nemesis Luthor who has fresh plans of world domination. 

The film straddles a confident line between the action-packed blockbuster and the emotional turbulence drama. Between rescuing people from various disasters of immense magnitude, Superman and his alter ego Clark must come to terms with the aspect of having to forgo the expectation of Lois's love. Thankfully, unlike the Spider-man movies, the drama is kept mostly at a brisk clip with issues nicely touched upon but not beaten to the point of wearing one's patience. The story also presents Lois' new companion as a nicely rounded character, good-intentioned and chivalrous, but also believeably apprehensive of his girlfriend's super-powered ex. As for the action sequences...they are simply terrific. The scale is immense and the availability of current-gen CGI allows the Superman character to do things they couldn't have dreamed of in the earlier era. But the technology is never abused, and Singer pays a lot of homage to the Chris Reeve era flying shots. 

*Brandon Routh* as the titular character was the biggest question mark for the new film. Would he be able to fill in the shoes of the late Chris Reeve? Well Routh is not Reeve, his Superman a little more awkward and less charismatic than Reeve's wonderfully affable and supremely confident persona. But he does the job quite well and it is to his credit that there are various moments where his resemblance and adoption of Reeve's trademark mannerisms for the character ring uncannily true. I suspect that short of finding some way of reanimating the Reeve of the 70's you can't get better than this. Kevin Spacey as Luthor also does a fine reprisal of Gene Hackman's role adding his own touch of chic menace. Kate Bosworth as Lois is less palatable to me, especially since her character was supposed to be a follow-up top Margot Kidder's lovely turn as the ballsy reporter who turns all tongue-tied and dreamy-eyed with the big S. Frank Langella as Perry White seems too tired and resigned to essay that cigar-chomping righteous curmudgeon Perry White. 

I do have some issues with the film (*May contain some spoilers*): 


From what I'd originally heard, of the script Superman was supposed to have banished himself from earth after most of Metropolis was wrecked in his battle with the Phantom Zone criminals. But with the new plot angle, it seems to me a little trite tha he would go all the way to the remains of his dead planet without informing the love of his life. The film tries to answer this aspect but it's all very half-baked. 

The relationship between Clark and Lois is very disappointing here. You'd think having a bashful asthmatic son, she'd understand something about shy misfits, but she still treats Clark like the proverbial heel. Superman IV for all its blunders opened up a nice vein of companionship between Lois and Clark where she confides about her feelings for Superman to her buddy Clark. 

The other aspect that can in parts get embarassing is the degree to which this film reprises the Chris Reeve films: Superman still thinks flying is statistically the safest mode of travel, Lois still has trouble with spelling, Luthor is still into land scams, he still hires a bunch of incompetent nerds, his bimbo moll still trips him up in the climax. 

But all its flaws considered, Superman Returns is an excellent new instalment to the series and hopefully the beginning of a new set of exciting adventures in cinema for the classic Man of Steel


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## orionsixwings (Jul 8, 2006)

MY REVIEW.

THE PROS:

 - Brandon is not Christopher --- but they are equally hot! However,  Brandon looked more like a superboy than a superman, while Christopher was ALL MAN, and though he may come a bit awkward for the role, it is only because everyone was used to seeing Christopher Reeve filling that body-hugging unitard, and it's very difficult trying to fit into a role that looked as though it was custom-built for someone else.  In due time, I'm pretty sure he'd be able to do the same thing.

 - The special effects have been greatly enhanced.  One of my fondest fantasies, even now, is flying.  The flying bit was so naturally done and most of the superpowers like the laser eyes, the icy breath, the x-ray vision, and that bullet proof chest (and contact lenses!  Wow!  Does Bausch and Lomb have those?) all looked natural and realistic.

 - Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor was also perfect!  The Casting for the original Superman films was impeccable -- perfect casting!  I love Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor just as much as Chris' Superman.  You can't help but love and hate that guy!  Well, Kevin Spacey fit those shoes fairly well, as if he had been playing this role for a long time.  Then again Kevin has always been a treat!

THE CONS

 - Lois Lane.  Kate Bosworth may be prettier than Margot Kidder but she was also duller.  One thing I love about Lois is her spunkiness and fire and Kate just didn't have any of that.  All she brought to the role was a pretty face and cheesy acting.  It made me ask the question -- what the hell did Superman find in this girl?




Well, that's it, my two-cents worth.


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## dreamwalker (Jul 8, 2006)

still not out in the UK!?!?!
Just just about to watch it with friends when I was informed that it's not out until the 14th over here


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## Rane Longfox (Jul 9, 2006)

I thought it was a very good movie. I don't generally watch super hero films (never seen any spiderman or batman ones) but this was a pleasant suprise. Spacey was far and away the best actor in it, but the others were all pretty good.


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## Nesacat (Jul 9, 2006)

Finally gave in and went to the pirates and got a copy of Superman. I have to say I liked Kevin Spacey a lot. He made the movie.

Was very underwhelmed by Superman himself, but then again have always been. Maybe it's the squeaky clean image that always makes me want to check if he's plugged into a wall socket someplace.

Or maybe it's the red underpants being worn outside.


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## ravenus (Jul 9, 2006)

I'm really surprised about this movie not yet released in UK since it got released here in India on 30th June, just 2 days after the US release. Maybe with all the Indian natives in the UK, they forgot which country was which


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## j d worthington (Jul 9, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> Finally gave in and went to the pirates and got a copy of Superman. I have to say I liked Kevin Spacey a lot. He made the movie.
> 
> Was very underwhelmed by Superman himself, but then again have always been. Maybe it's the squeaky clean image that always makes me want to check if he's plugged into a wall socket someplace.
> 
> Or maybe it's the red underpants being worn outside.


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## dustinzgirl (Jul 9, 2006)

Watched it yesterday with the family. The boring and uncharismatic acting was barely compensated by pretty cool special effects. Brandon is not Christopher, but oh, my---he could have been more, um, I don't know. More something. The whole time I watched him I was thinking, _this kid is trying way to hard. _AS for the plot line, the superman son thing was very cool. I loved the very end when he was giving the daddy speech. Adorable. But that was the only part that really made me care. The girl that played Lane, however, was not only boring but so internalized it was hard to follow her motivation and behavior....The best acting came from the little boy and Lois's fiance. And Marlon Brando, but those were OLD clips put into the movie.


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 19, 2006)

went out last dight. i really enjoyed the dinner before hand but i found the film overly long. as with previous superman movies it was a bit short on action. Lex luthor is the best thing in it, and i have to say, after sleeping on it, i still prefer Christopher Reeve. I though Routh looked odd. just out of proportion. yeah, lois seemed to have lost her spark (although i;'m prepared to give the benifit of the doubt and consider that maybe that was intended as a consequence of having lost supes) and why in hell didn't someone take a pair of clippers to that little boy? never seen such dreadful hair. i found the ending very mawkish and overly sentimental.  But after saying that, I didn't hate it. it was a pleasant enough way to spend an evening and i don't regret seeing it.

But Hugh Jackman's Wolverine has nothing to worry about.


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## Cloud (Aug 25, 2006)

I was somewhat disappointed in this movie.  I am a big Superman fan, but this movie did almost nothing to advance the story or enhance the legend.  

I liked the use of the music from the earlier films, and appreciated the special affects.  But Luthor was EXTREMELY disappointing--nothing new, original, or commendable about the role.  Lex Luthor on Smallville is leagues ahead of this character!  

And Brandon Routh is wimpy.  Why do they keep casting ectomorphs as Superman?  Superman is big! His chest is as wide as a semi! His neck is . .. well, you get the idea.


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