When my brothers and I were hyperactive little kids who wouldn't go to bed, my dad would put John Williams's “Prelude and Main Title March” from Superman: The Movie on the record player and we would race each other around the finished basement until we collapsed, dizzy and exhilarated. When Bryan Singer's long-in-development rethinking of Superman began deep in space to the vibrant tones of Marlon Brando, and the horns of that prelude swell, something forgotten and childish reared up and swallowed me in that dizzy joy. Simply put, Superman Returns is as elementally old-fashioned and splendid as any fan could hope.
I won't proclaim to be a Superman loyalist. I've never read any of the comics and I've never seen the fourth Christopher Reeve Superman film. (I kind of wish I'd never seen the third, but that's another story.) But for a brief crush on Dean Cain in my misguided youth, I haven't followed Smallville or any of the character's latter-day incarnations. And unlike my mind-set going into Singer's 2000 X-Men, I had practically no expectations for the Man of Steel's return, so it was surprising and pleasant to watch a movie re-create something I'd half-forgotten; the familiar and the new blend together to create a pastiche of nostalgia and awakening.
Singer's Superman, embodied by the quite Reevian Brandon Routh, does indeed return to Earth and to Metropolis, after a five-year sojourn to the ashes of his home planet, Krypton, to find that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has shacked up with Daily Planet editor Perry White's square-jawed nephew, and has a rugrat as well as a Pulitzer for a piece titled “Why the World Doesn't Need Superman.” Unsurprisingly, he also still finds that no one cares about poor dorky Clark Kent except for goggle-eyed Jimmy Olsen. (In a manner reminiscent of Christian Bale's Batman, Routh employs a higher-pitched Clark voice to contrast with his deeper, heroic Superman voice.) As Clark struggles to hold Lois's eye and Superman glides arrogantly back into her life, Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor, deliciously villainous and exactingly evil, is plotting an otherworldly land-grab that will, wait for it . . . destroy Superman!
The story, by Singer and his X-Men collaborators Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, is refreshingly straightforward. It's the kind of tale that doesn't rely on backtracking to find the double-cross or someone pulling off his face to reveal that actually, the Pope did it. Routh and Bosworth have a sweet and simple chemistry that's at its most poignant during a nighttime flight over Metropolis, even if Lois isn't the most convincing heroine (pouting and making idiotic blunders like wandering onto the villain's yacht might be a superhero-movie female lead's tradition, but that doesn't mean it's not annoying).
In a story this solidly retro and unironic, a healthy dash of snark might have lightened up some of the more canonical and unbelievable moments. Singer's X-Men films had the outsider Wolverine to comment on the action and remind viewers not to take this all too seriously; Superman lacks any sort of equalizing force. Maybe the movie doesn't need it, though—Singer's film takes period indicators spanning 60 years, like Lois's '40s fashions side-by-side with camera-phones and what look like 64-bit PCs, to create a setting that defies categorization. The whole effect is much like watching The Lord of the Rings: an entire world, created for the simple purpose of telling a story that at once feels huge and intimate.
This Superman is like nothing you've ever seen before, but it tickles something primitive and comforting at the back of the mind. Gorgeously detailed and meticulously realized, it's a homecoming of a movie. Just wait for the theme; you'll understand. —Sara Brady
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.