'Superman Returns'
And brings back the relevance of virtue
David DiCerto of Catholic News Service
Published June 30, 2006
New York - It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a winner. After 10 years on the drawing board, several stalled starts and a revolving door of writers, directors and leading men, the Man of Steel flies triumphantly back onto movie screens in "Superman Returns" (Warner Bros.).
Together with "Batman Begins" and the "Spiderman" and "X-Men" franchises, director Bryan Singer's visually elegant and emotionally complex film elevates the superhero genre from escapist entertainment to something approaching art.
|
Superman (BRANDON ROUTH) saves the day as he stops a runaway car in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Legendary Pictures' action adventure Superman Returns. | Singer chose to build on the structure of Richard Donner's 1978 "Superman," incorporating John Williams' rousing theme music and snippets of Marlon Brando's performance as Jor-El -- Superman's birth father -- from that movie.
Relative unknown Brandon Routh fills the boots of the late Christopher Reeve as the costumed crimefighter, who returns to Earth after five years of soul-searching in deep space.
Resuming his post at the newsroom of Metropolis' Daily Planet in the nerdy guise of Clark Kent, he finds that the world has moved on without him. Reporter Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) -- the only woman who makes his heart beat faster than a speeding bullet -- is now engaged and raising a young son. (But who's the daddy?)
In his absence, she wrote a Pulitzer-winning editorial, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," to show just how over him she is. But her thesis proves shortsighted as Superman's return rekindles old feelings; not to mention arch-nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is once again plotting mass destruction.
Singer gives audiences their money's worth of popcorn thrills, including an exhilarating, if intense and rather preposterous, scene in which Superman saves the passengers on a plummeting airplane. It's more than a special-effects extravaganza. Superman's body may be indestructible to everything but kryptonite, but his heart is just as breakable as the next guy's.
Some of the story elements are a bit vague. But overall, fans of the superhero should rest assured that they are in good hands, as Singer's affection for the Superman mythology is evident. (One change: He still fights for "truth and justice" but "the American way" is no longer part of the mission statement.) Noel Neill and Jack Larson -- Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen from the 1950s TV series -- have cameos.
"Superman Returns" contains some stylized action violence, including intense scenes of peril, a vicious beating, an implied past premarital encounter, and a few mildly crude expressions.
| Heavily laying on Christian symbolism, some may feel the film's portrayal of Superman as a Christ-like messiah is inappropriate, though the hero's nobility and selflessness makes the allegorical parallels somewhat plausible: A father sends his "only son" down from the heavens to earth to save humanity by being a light "to show them the way."
The Christological allegory is undercut, however, by the suggestion that Superman may have fathered a child out of wedlock, an indiscretion that may ruffle even nonreligious fans of the iconic comic-book character.
Throughout the film, Superman wrestles with his dual nature, and even endures a Kryptonian Via Dolorosa, complete with a passion, death and resurrection.
Two of the more overtly Christian images involve a weakened Superman falling to Earth, arms extended cruciform, and a striking tableau of him hovering in orbit omnisciently listening to the various prayers for help below ("You say the world doesn't need a savior," he tells Lois, "yet every day I hear people crying out for one.")
At its heart, "Superman Returns" explores the relevance of virtue in a contemporary culture that is at once both cynical about idealism and hungry for heroism.
|
