Superman Returns

[ironymaiden]

after sleeping on it, that was...mediocre. as markbourne pointed out, it's a drama, not a comic-book action movie. i'm not against that choice, but it didn't achieve the balance and emotional punch of Spiderman 2, and so i received neither drama nor action satisfaction.

there's subtext, and then there's form of a cross with a wound in his side. my response to this in the theater garnered a calming arm pat from E.

it's apparent that Lois knows that the kid is his. nobody on the production read Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and/or saw the brain wipe bit in Superman II? maybe comics fans can explain this to me?

"five years" means the kid can't be older than 4 and a bit. i didn't believe for a moment that that kid was a preschooler, and neither did the writers since he gets letter grades in subjects on a report card like a boy twice that age. poor Cyclops always gets screwed in the movies, doesn't he?

oh no, Lois is going to die of internal bleeding before the movie gets started! oh wait, getting slammed around a tumbling plane for a freaking eternity (where was the editor?) can't even muss her hair - unlike going for a joyride with Supes.

i found myself pretty disturbed by seeing a passenger jet hurtling into New York Metropolis, and by people running for their lives from office buildings and through the streets.

loved the recreation of the Action Comics #1 cover. loved the trainset idea until it went on and on and on and on.

now i am doomed to wander the wikipedia Superman articles.

Comments

[mysticalforest.livejournal.com]

Did you see my post (http://mysticalforest.livejournal.com/555459.html) on the matter?

I posit that Superman Returns is a remake, thus, was a disappointing.

[ironymaiden]

yes! i was thoroughly amused that C had the same response even though he hadn't seen your post.

a remake with a Lois who wasn't born when the original came out. (making her 18 when she had the baby. what a prodigy that she could have that job as a teenager!)

[mysticalforest.livejournal.com]

wwtdd.com/ (http://wwtdd.com/) has some interesting facts/opinions of note regarding the movie...

[markbourne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, also upon sleep-on-it reflection, I agree that it is disappointing, although (for me) not devastatingly so. I like almost everything in it -- especially the thematic tones and much of the imagery that proves someone there has been keeping up with the latterday Superman comics (or graphic novels or whateverthehell they're called these days). However, I would have liked more zing and zap and pizzazz, more of the first Donner film's wit and and fun.

And, as we discussed over food and foofy drinks last night, the internal timeline is cockeyed every which way from Sunday -- never mind the everyday incongruities that would be evident from watching Donner's 1978 movie and this one back-to-back. Typewriters to word processors, Jimmy Olsen's digital camera, cell phones, clothing styles, etc. Yeah, I know, it's all part of the ongoing mythos that the Superverse moves along with our times even if the characters don't notice it, but still.

Ultimately I think that tying this rejiggered Supes into the Donner series was a fundamental error -- worse, a wholly unnecessary one. A whole new generation of Superman fans don't need to be reminded of a movie from almost 30 years ago any more than 1978 audiences needed a direct continuation of the old Kirk Alyn TV series.

And while I buy Bosworth as Losi more than I ever did Margot Kidder, I'm conviced that they'll never get my mental Lois onscreen. Although the animated "New Superman Adventures" (the best "pure" Superman on screen?) sure came close.

[buhrger]

personally, i have no regrets over seeing it in the theatre, and don't know that i ever need to see it again. it was fun, but nothing more than fun.

[ironymaiden]

yup.

Now that it's out

[bhagwanx.livejournal.com]

I can say that I'm glad I saw it for free. This is not a comic book movie. This is a movie about how people like older movies, and want to make them over again. Also, this is a movie that needed to be made quickly after Christopher Reeves' death, so that those of us who saw the first three (noQuestforPeace,noQuestforPeaceneverhappenedneverhappenednanananananananananana) could carry that nostalgia into the theater and forgive its multitude of flaws.

meh.

However, the Super-kid drives me freaking apeshit. From the moment I saw it, I knew it was Clark Kent's kid. Not Kal-el's, Clark Kent's. The Kryptonian super-science of Movie #2 was to have turned him completely into a human. Not a alien from another part of the galaxy whose DNA is remarkably similar to that of a human being's. A 100% match would be required to bring that kid to term successfully, even a few points of variance would have taken it off the table.

Lois only knows who the father is because of the incident on the boat, and Lex Luthor's cleverness. I'd wager she did indeed think it is Richard's kid, born premature (or perhaps even full term, the Kryptonian gestation cycle is unknown) Since she has no memory at all of the second movie (or perhaps a very skewed recollection, thanks to mystery power X), it's not a leap she could make on her own.

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex is no longer relevant with the retconned Superman powers (regretfully used for this movie, the only real nod to comic books other than the name of the main character and a few of the supporting cast). He no longer gets it from the decreased gravity and strange exposure to the yellow sun transforming him into the Ubermensch. Thanks to John Byrne and some spectacularly un-inspired storytelling in the late 80s, Kryptonians now have superpowers on Earth (and some other parts of space) by storing solar radiation from a certain class of star(ours)within their cells. When Jor-el's crystal whammy hit the superwimp, his cells would have become human, without the potential for big fun.

But since that clearly did not happen, it can instead be theorized that the swimmers got whammied as planned, but died before they could recover their full strength. Since half the kid's DNA is human (rant, rant, rant), the cells would need much longer exposure to the sun than baby Kal-el's did, and they kept that kid under wraps something fierce because of his supposed medical conditions (a slight special variance could account for these "birth defects" (check out the liger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger) and the tigon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigon) sometime), but since we later see that they are not permanent, I point to the mother for those inherited characteristics. Or perhaps her FREAKING CIGARETTES). It may have been a year or so's store of solar power used in that piano push, and he couldn't do anything else super beside throw away his inhaler afterwards.

(rant, rant, rant)


P.S. Next time, find us someone WHO LOOKS LIKE SUPERMAN, and not like Christopher Reeves. I understand why they cast him, but he's still the wrong choice. There are much more beleivable (http://www.paulhasenyager.actorsite.com/index.html) actors who could fill those tights.


P.P.S that Lois Lane can sure take a punch, eh?

[buhrger]

http://hubris2.livejournal.com/107469.html