Superman Returns is a great movie
I just finished watching Superman Returns• again. It is brilliant, more so every time I watch it. It has a depth far surpassing the two great originals from the seventies and even Singer’s own great X-Men movies. What I said at first blush about it being “not as good as I’d been hoping for, but it was very good” was probably just over the hype. Whatever the reason, I was wrong about the first part, and right about the second.
This is a beautiful movie that builds with every viewing, and it sets up what promised to be an epic tale of heroism and the responsibility of power, a clash between the farm and the city, of good intentions and freedom. It’s too bad it looks like Singer won’t get to finish it. This could have been a story for the ages. It almost is even unfinished.
In response to Superman vs. the X-Men: Superman Returns wasn’t as good as I’d been hoping for, but it was very good, and much better than X-Men 3.
- Superman Returns•: Bryan Singer (DVD)
- A fine restart to the Superman movies, Superman Returns restores Superman’s status as a hero of mythic proportions.
- Superman Returns Special Edition•: Bryan Singer (DVD)
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The two-disc special edition adds some interesting deleted scenes among about three hours of documentaries and other special features. There’s an amazing scene where he reads through all of the disasters that happened while he was gone—train crashes, climate problems, epidemics, massacres, burning buildings, even locusts—but no mention of September 11. Lois’s “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman” is juxtaposed with “Train crash kills 127”.
More Superman
- Superman II
- A respectable enough sequel, although it threw away character development in favor of big fights. The big fights were pretty cool. Superman II took the weird science at the ending of Superman: The Movie and really went wild. Superman gives up his powers so that he can have sex with Lois Lane. And then gets beat up by a trucker (with a payback that is in retrospect eerily reminiscent of Superman III, a movie best avoided).
- Superman: The Movie
- One of the most incredible movies of my youth, I watched it on VHS for a decade—it was one of the handful of movies I was willing to buy on VHS—and when my VHS copy died, I got the DVD version. The DVD version unfortunately adds some extraneous scenes that hurt Stuart Baird’s editing of the movie, but it’s still great. If you can justify it, I recommend spending a little extra to get one of the collections that contain the theatrical version; but one way or another, get this movie.
- Superman vs. the X-Men
- Superman Returns wasn’t as good as I’d been hoping for, but it was very good, and much better than X-Men 3.
- Superman: Last Son of Krypton
- “Last Son of Krypton” explores the responsibility of power and the side-effects of universal good deeds through the super-powered adventures of Superman.
- The Complete Superman Collection
- The Fleischer studios released seventeen “Superman” animated shorts during the forties. While the storylines are lacking, the animation is very interesting: shadowy, with art-deco backgrounds and ‘props’.