Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Half-Assed Superman Returns Review

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So...... Superman Returns. Sigh.

If you've visited The Pants in the past, oh I dunno, twelve months, you may've noticed I was excited for the film. Just a lil' bit.

And for big chunks of the film (specifically, the first half or so) my expectations were met. The airplane rescue? Jaw dropping. I'll see the film again, this time in IMAX, just for this scene alone.

But then, the film just kind of... sat there. I think I can pinpoint it to once we were onboard Lex's yacht that the film just... lost me. And kept losing me for, what, another hour?

If I had to compare it to something, I'd say it reminded me of the last half of the first X-Men movie - the beginning, the set-up, was so great, but then everything that happened on Liberty Island just felt sort of flat. Same problem here - as I said I loved the ariplane rescue, but all the nonsense on that Kryptonite-Island? Blah. And it just kind of... kept happening. Oh, what, we're still on this hunk of CG-Rock? Okay.

Brandon Routh was terrific. Really liked his take on the role, and I didn't think he was aping Chris Reeve at all. Kate Bosworth... well, I didn't hate her, which given my reaction to her having been cast, it was an Olympian feat that she managed to make me not wanna rip her face off.

Kevin Spacey made a fine lex Luther, but I really didn't feel like they utilized him all that well. The "prison fight" type scene on the Kryptonite-Island should've been much more effective, and somehow it wasn't; I never felt the weight of what was happening.

Loved Parker Posey.

I left the movie wishing about 40 minutes had been cut, and thinking that, like with the original X-Men versus the astonishing leap forward that was X2, the Superman Returns sequel is gonna kick total ass.

Just.... edit yourself a little bit, Bryan! And try, just maybe, to pack some real punch into the end. Think Jean Grey, times 50.

What I don't get, and I've been thinking about this ever since watching X3, is why these massively-budgeted superhero flicks are holding back. Dark Phoenix was supposed to blow up a galaxy, not some wallpaper. Something tells me that, seeing as how no-one's actually ever watched a galaxy explode, an audience of X3-watching rubes might be open to however one wanted to represent it visually, and since you wouldn't need to, say, actually buy an abandoned galaxy and blow it up yourself, you could, ya know, create it with CG, and it wouldn't cost any more than elaborately splitting the atoms of a two-story home's interior design. So... why not show it?

Same with Superman - here we've got the most powerful man in the universe, and we're not watching him do the shit we know he can do. Raising the Krptonite-Island (man I'm tired of typing that phrase) into outer-space was nice and all, but somehow... kinda boring.

I dunno. Maybe my expectations are just too much anymore. But I was honestly awed by the airplane-scene, so maybe not. I just wanna see some shit I haven't seen before, and something about that K-Island just bored the life out of me. Give me the Superman who reversed time itself by turning Earth's rotation around!!! That's some good shit there.
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