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Superman Returns redux

When I first wrote about Superman Returns, I said I had the flu, skipped through it, and would really need to sit down and watch it start-to-finish. I thought I might need to have Kleenex handy.

Well I watched and no, I didn't need Kleenex. I did need caffeine, though, so luckily I had my Starbucks Barista Expresso Machine.

I stand behind most everything I wrote initially. The strongest part of film is that it offers no easy out of the threesome, Superman, Lois, and New Guy. The inner conflicts involved are nicely rendered, if never solved. I hope that Spider Man 3 does as well in this regard.

But now having seen the entire thing -- twice, mind you -- the overall feeling is...ugh. The entire Lex Luthor plot is as bad as I first thought. He's not a menacing villain, or even particularly funny. He's just...ridiculous. And he's surrounded by morons. No, seriously, genuine morons. Only Parker Posey does well, but then again, she always does. (Yeah, I've got a crush. Shoot me.)

And there's just a succession of little things that make me queasy. Like Luthor's shout of, "Bring it on!" Hmm, who is that supposed to represent? There's the vague messianic aspects of Superman here, where he tells Lois how she wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, yet he hears them calling out for one, every day. Savior? And his fall from high orbit is particular Christ-like.

Then, Superman is not Christ and, in this film, he's not even particularly noble. He spies on Lois at home, for crying out loud. Is this some allusion so some other aspect of our current world, or is Superman being reduced to a high school kid who wants the girl who probably doesn't want him so he's stalking her, yeah, that'll make her love him! I can see the sequel now, Superman: The Steel Stalker.

And so it goes. I still love Ottman's music, especially when he weaves in bits from the Williams' scores. For the most part the cinematography is spot on, though Metropolis was mostly a dull, dull looking place. The visual effects are notable for being...bland.

I need to single out the sequence with the Boeing 777 as particularly pathetic. It starts badly and just keeps getting worse. It also continues a trend from Jackson's King Kong, wherein the heroine is visibly subjected to gee-forces that should snap all her bones and turn her into a pretzel...yet her hair is only vaguely mussed. It's one thing to ask an audience to willingly suspend their sense of disbelief, it's another to abuse that willingness. Watching Jack Sparrow prance about a water wheel in a sword fight was more convincing.

So, at the end of the day, my overall feeling for Superman Returns is...feh. I'll stick with Christopher Reeve and the first two Supe films, plzthnkx (copyright Cleolinda of Movies in 15 Minutes).

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