superman returns

Saw it today. Seemed appropriate for the 4th of July, I suppose.

It was a fun a movie, and it looked really great. But hardly the best movie--or for that matter, the best movie based on a comic book--I've seen this summer.

I recently picked up a copy of Robert Heinlein's long-lost first novel at a bookstore, and after reading the forward in the store, decided to leave it alone. The forward stated that the book, in a way, contained all of Heinlein's subsequent novels in their nascent forms...that it read almost like a sketchpad. Perhaps this sort of thing is useful from a scholarly perspective, but as someone who literally grew up on Heinlein's books as he intended them to be seen (it is likely no accident that Heinlein himself saw to it that For Us, The Living was never published in his lifetime), I didn't want to sully the experience by peeking behind the curtain, so to speak.

The analogy isn't perfect, but Superman Returns, for all its stunning imagery (the point-blank bullet bouncing off of Superman's eye in Matrix-style slo-mo was pretty cool), plays like a sketchbook of the big themes in the Superman world. Unfortunately, none of them ever really pay off. Allusions are made to Lois Lane's Pulitzer-winning editorial "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman", but that's pretty much all we get. Lex Luthor sneers about Superman's selfishness in not sharing his power with the world (and when we get a look at everything in the Fortress of Solitude, he kind of has a point)--but by the time Luthor confronts Superman, he seems merely intent on avenging his 5 years in prison. The complexities of Superman's relationship with humans (and especially Lois) is touched on only briefly--and this is where the movie actually does attempt to break some new ground, so it's a shame they didn't do more with it.

I'd like to think that they're setting up thematic material for the inevitable sequels, but that's probably too much to hope for...

Anyway, Spacey's Luthor is worth the price of admission, if you prefer a plausible (and vaguely sympathetic) supervillian to the typical scenery-chewers (see also, Sir Ian's Magneto) and Brandon Routh does goofy Clark Kent as good as Reeve ever did. Kate Bosworth does nothing for me. Parker Posey makes a great evil sidekick.

Final word...if you were going to see it anyway, you should. If you weren't inclined to begin with, you should probably go with that...unlike Batman Begins, which I think managed to transcend its fanboy base in terms of appeal, this one is pretty much for the in crowd.