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The Saturday Morning After A Torrid Friday Night
A couple of decades ago, my family were vacationing with friends in another city, and it was decided that we could go to the movies that evening. My brother and I were pushing hard for us to check out the new Superman movie, and my mom was all for it, but our friend Red, in whose house we were staying, flatly said no. He hated movies like that, because they 'weren't real.'
Red was a big guy, an electronics engineer, been all over the world, a very bright man. But he was cursed with a lack of imagination. No matter how brilliant the film might have been, he couldn't make the leap. He couldn't believe a man could fly. (Not without an airplane, anyway. He had designed a lot of airplane systems.)
Well, now it's 2006 and my wife and I have seen Superman Returns. And we enjoyed it a great deal (especially the flying!) but there are things that have been bothering me about it, and I keep thinking of what our friend Red had said that night in 1979 about the old Christopher Reeve movie. Except, really, I think I have the opposite complaint. It's a little TOO real in spots.
I'm not going to get into an overall review of the movie, you have the rest of the internet for that -- hell, if you're reading this you've probably written your own somewhere. But what I think about is the dynamic of the love story between Superman and Lois and how weird that has been over the years, and how the new movie treated it, in particular.
Superman and Lois Lane has traditionally been regarded as one of the great, timeless superhero love stories. But really it's not. Or rather, it hasn't been a love story very much or very often. Mostly it's been a joke between the creators of the strip and the readers. Something like this: That Lois, what a bitch, huh? If she ONLY KNEW that shlub she's always so mean to was really SUPERMAN! But WE know! Joke's on HER! Stupid skirt.
Over the years this kind of got spun different ways, but that was basically it. Lois was dumb and Superman would have countless laughs at her expense. Kind of the way a rock star would mess with an especially worshipful groupie, except it all stayed very chaste. The premise that they came back to again and again was that Superman and Lois must never, EVER be together, because that would be a disaster.
It was all very weirdly S-and-M in a psycho-sexual way, read from an adult perspective.
Of course, no one was ever MEANT to read Superman comics from an adult perspective, that was Fredric Wertham's mistake and he has been relentlessly mocked and jeered for it. Superman comics and the relationship between Superman, Clark, and Lois makes perfect sense if you're an eight-year-old boy of the late 1950's. Girls are icky and a little scary and always trying to horn in on cool guy stuff. Girls that keep trying to break into the clubhouse deserve to be taught a lesson.
As the years passed and the readership got a little older, the relationship began to change a little bit. Now it was more of a pining kind of love relationship. Superman WOULD be with Lois, honest, if only it was safe for her. But she would be in far too much danger if his enemies ever discovered it, so he must always keep her at a distance. It's for her own good.
This, as an excuse, doesn't really hold up at all and it's a wonder we all bought it as long as we did. For crying out loud, Lois is in danger all the goddamn time. Her most common interaction with Superman is when he is catching her in mid-air. If Superman WASN'T in her life she'd have been street pizza countless times. Clearly she is much safer with him than not.
In the 80's, with the John Byrne revamp, the relationship finally changed into something that made sense. Clark is in love with Lois. Clark Kent is the real guy. Superman is just a show he puts on for the rubes so they won't be able to follow him home and hassle him for autographs or licensing deals or whatever. However, Lois is one of those groupie-types as far as Clark can tell, she can't see Clark because she's too dazzled by Superman. If she could learn to love Clark, then okay, maybe they'd have something.
This played out a couple of different ways and in different places. The best take on it was, for my money, the Lois & Clark TV series. When Deborah Joy Levine was putting together a show proposal she decided to apply the Byrne take on the relationship to a romantic comedy milieu and really it did pretty well that way. It was fun, it made actual sense, it resonated emotionally with viewers (show of hands out there, male readers -- how many of you have been the nice-guy-friend to a girl that you wished, just once, would NOTICE you, instead of always swooning over these big meatheads that treat her like crap?) And in the comics it was basically the same kind of thing, just played a little less for laughs.
Except, nowadays, in series TV and in comics, these are no longer ephemeral entertainments. TV and comics are no longer disposable. We have boxed sets of DVDs and trade paperback collections. These stories are now cumulative installments.
So the storytelling style itself has to change. You can't keep your audience dangling. You have to pay something off. The arc John Byrne laid out for Clark and Lois romantically makes a lot of sense -- Lois has to learn to look past Superman to Clark, Clark has to learn to trust Lois with who he really is and that's Superman just as much as Clark -- and you can think of zillions of obstacles and ways to delay their progress. But sooner or later, you have to resolve it. Otherwise they both start to look stupid.
How do you resolve it? You give the audience what they want, what you've been teasing them with for year after year -- you go ahead and have the happy ending. Clark and Lois finally figure it all out and get married.
The end!
...oh, wait a minute. It's not the end. We still have to keep doing stories about these two.
NOW what?
There is a vociferous faction of Superman fans that think this marriage is the worst mistake DC ever made with the character. I happen to disagree. I just think it's a huge change. It means that the story of Clark and Lois stops being about romance and starts being about life. That's all. There are plenty of riffs left to do, there's still plenty of romance BETWEEN them, but the story itself isn't a romance any more. To put it in superhero terms, it's gone from being a solo to being a team book. (Interestingly, this may be why superhero marriages always seem to come off a little better in team books, you're not changing the nature of the strip when you decide to do a wedding. But that's a different column.)
The writers and editors that actually UNDERSTAND that, that Clark and Lois are done with the romance story and now their relationship should be about building a life together, do fine. There's still plenty of tension to be had there: he has a dangerous job, she has a dangerous job, how much do they tell friends or family, how do they argue, how much of their career is each one willing to compromise on to make this work, what are they giving up to be together and what do they gain from being together, and so on and so on. Your life doesn't END when you get married. It CHANGES. There's lots of drama to be had from the actual process of the change and how you figure it all out. Married people understand this. So do writers who know something about the human condition. The ones that don't are usually the ones complaining that the marriage is too limiting. I suspect that what they really mean is, "I know how to plant a romance in superhero melodrama. I don't know how to incorporate an adult marriage relationship into one, though, it's too goddamn hard. Can't we go back to the love story?"
Which brings me to Superman in the movies, finally.
The natural ending of the story of Lois and Clark and Superman, the one we always have assumed was there, was that they'd eventually work it out and end up together. But the movies eschewed this. They took a different option.
What if the natural ending is that Lois and Superman do get together but they don't work it out? What if it's a bad idea for both of them? What if they really, really DON'T belong together?
It's a valid idea. You can make a really good case for it. Not because of the hoary old idea that Lois is in too much danger, that's crap. But because the two of them are actually bad for each other. Then what you have is not a romance, but a tragic romance.
That was how Mario Puzo first pitched it to the Salkinds when they hired him to do the original Superman screenplay for them back in the 70's, and though that screenplay went through zillions of rewrites and was split up into Superman and Superman II and they added lots of jokes and the movies as they ended up are a lot of fun, the core idea from Puzo is still there. It's a tragic love story. You ever pay it off and get Superman and Lois together, it's going to end badly. They won't be able to work it out.
That was where we left it in Superman II. Lois was in tears, she was a wreck, because she got there before Clark, she's figured out that it's impossible. Clark is still trying to hang in there, but Lois explains it to him. She's not ready to share him with the world. And the world needs Superman. And then she breaks down completely. At which point Clark is so destroyed, seeing Lois having a meltdown that's his fault, or so he thinks, that he does the only thing he can think of -- he hypnotizes her into forgetting the whole thing, hits the reset button. At least Lois will be happy, even if he can't.
Fans have raged for years about the amnesia kiss that ends Superman II, fixating on the stupidity of it or arguing that Superman can't do that, or that it effectively reduces everything that came before it to the equivalent of date-rape, or who knows what-all else. But these arguments are all beside the point. The real fan complaint is simply that it ends the romance story as effectively as a wedding does, only this isn't a happy ending. And we always want a happy ending.
Now many fans are equally enraged about the Clark-Lois situation in Superman Returns, and I think it's for the same reason. The romance story is still basically over, and Singer kept to the Puzo take on the whole thing. Superman and Lois is a tragic romance. The fans got robbed of their happy ending.
I have a hunch that most of you reading this have seen it already. But on the off-chance some have not, I'll try not to spoil too much. Suffice it to say that Bryan Singer leaves us pretty much where Superman II left us. Lois is generally smarter than Superman about their situation, she's moved on, or she WOULD if Superman would quit bugging her, and Superman knows she's right but still can't quite let it go. Both of them are clearly still hurting over it, and there are other complications.
The biggest is that Lois has found a new guy, Perry White's nephew Richard. The amazing thing to me about Richard is that in essentially every way he is the guy that Lois SHOULD be with. He is smart, funny, supportive, heroic (more heroic than Superman himself, in a couple of places in the movie) and he loves Lois deeply. But Lois can't quite commit to him, because she's still dazzled by Superman. She's still ignoring the nice guy right in front of her... it's just not Clark this time. Meanwhile, Superman himself is still hanging around, still a little too selfish to completely let go and get out of her life like he knows he should, and by the movie's end, still fighting the realization that he is the last survivor of a doomed planet, denied love and family simply by who he is, alone on a planet of aliens, and should try to make peace with that idea as best he can.
In short -- Superman has to learn to be "just friends" with Lois, it's what's best for her and everyone around them, but he really doesn't want to.
That's a realistic, valid take on the two of them. On balance, it may be one of the best versions ever of the Clark-Lois-Superman triangle in terms of emotional impact and lending verisimilitude to a situation that is completely rooted in fantasy.
It's just kind of, well... depressing. Superman having to make peace with the ex-girlfriend and fix what he screwed up is maybe a little too realistic for a lot of us. I think that's what's bothering a lot of the fans about it, whether we admit it or not. We don't want to see Superman as the loser ex-boyfriend. We want to see him as the good guy. But in this movie, Richard White is the good guy.
It certainly works. It's gutsy and it makes sense and it was well-rendered. My wife adored it. But it didn't sit all that well with me, seeing Superman act like exactly every other stupid guy I've known (including myself at times.) Superman's supposed to be, I don't know, BETTER than that.
But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's my problem. Maybe we need to do a little letting go ourselves. Maybe the Superman-Lois Lane romance just is over, whether ended by marriage or, in the movies, a hurtful breakup, and we need to make OUR peace with that too and learn to enjoy a different kind of story about Superman and Lois Lane. (Or in the case of some creators, learn how to TELL one.)
See you next week.
- Posted on July 8, 2006 @ 03:46 PM
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24 Comments
Greg Burgas
July 8, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Yeah, but apparently, he doesn't punch enough shit. And that just doesn't work.
(I haven't seen it. You make it sound compelling, actually, but even you admit - it's a chick flick. Why did they make Superman into a chick flick? Can't the chicks see The Devil Wears Prada?????)
gabesummers
July 8, 2006 at 5:52 pm
i never saw it this way in the theater..thnak you...for me dc has always been allusive....it seems cool but ive never bothered to venture out..as far as lois and clark since im not a superman fan per say..to me ..its always been them 2..like peas in apod..but with your post i now see the tragedy in them..and its kinda cool ..im not seeing it as superman should win the girl..i see it as..this guy can punch a whole in the planet..nothing hurts him but kriptinoet (sp?? hahaha ) but the power of love as well is a weakness..and his hugest flaw..this makes him real to me..far more real than any issue ive ever picked up...hes not as god like..he is HUMAN if i can use that word. wow..very cool.that was the reason i never got into him..he was to perfect but what your pointing out is hes not perfect and i see it and it makes sence.thnak you
one day do one on green latern..again im not into dc but the whole corps thing to me..is the coolest thing in dcs stable.id really like to see your point of view on the chareter and mythos..
(sorry so long hahah i keep doing that to you all )
Jordan D. White
July 8, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Ok... I have not seen Superman II in about ten years, so I really don't remember it very well. But... I have a big problem with one of the points in this movie.
Ok. SPOILERS!!!!!
This has been spoiled on most news sites, and such, with discussion of it. But this thing about Lois and Superman having a kid is really disturbing to me. It makes superman a super Asshole for having sex with her and then leaving the planet without talking to her. Yes, it's realistic... but it is something that if someone I knew did it, I would lose respect for them in a major way.
So, hearing people discuss Superman II, it seems that when they had sex, she knew his secret? Well, that makes it a little bit better, except now that means she does not know they had sex?
But seriously, they can't expect ALL the viewers to have seen Superman II, right? It should stand on its own to some extent. And in most ways, it did. Except that Superman comes off as an asshole who screws a woman because he can and takes no responsibility for the emotional impact of that action. Even if she didn't get pregnant, having sex with a woman and then never speaking to her about the nature of your relationship makes you a dick.
muldertp
July 8, 2006 at 6:55 pm
You're completely right Jordan.
SPOILERS -
That really bothered me about the movie, that she has this kid she knows is Superman's (which by the way the role was played, she seemed to know all along) but she doesn't remember having sex with him. You'd think that with all the X-Raying he caually does of Lois (also creepy) that he'd notice she was pregnant (even slightly). Which brings up another point - would x-ray vision give a fetus cancer?
Maybe Singer was just reading too much Superdickery when he was making the movie.
Randy Lander
July 8, 2006 at 8:25 pm
This was just an excellent, excellent column. Nicely done, Greg!
I loved Superman Returns, but I've heard a fair amount of complaints from other fans and friends, and I can't deny most of them. Yes, Superman could be read as a "deadbeat dad." Yes, it's a little weird and creepy that Lois doesn't remember the act of conceiving her kid (would've been nice to have a little clarity on that point, actually... I've got my own theory, but Singer and co. could have spelled it out). Yes, he acts like a super-stalker much of the time, and it comes off creepier than the creators probably meant it to.
And yet... I liked it, and I think you nailed why. Lois and Clark married is a potentially interesting story, but very few have managed to actualize that potential. Most people resort to cliched bickering, "will the marriage break up?" type stuff.
Lois and Clark as unhappy couple, not right for each other and having to deal with that, is also potentially interesting and I think Singer has tapped that potential. I'm not ready to say he was 100% successful yet, but if the sequel plays out well, I think it could be a fascinating new take on the Lois-Clark relationship.
stephen Cade
July 8, 2006 at 9:34 pm
There used to be a site that took a humourous look at Superman covers--and what a jerk he was to Lois, Jimmy, and via World's Finest covers to Robin the Boy Wonder--it was hilarious, and was a result of the older Clark/Lois relationship you mention.
The reasons you liked Clark & Lois getting married are the same reasons I liked Peter Parker & MJ getting married.
The Mutt
July 8, 2006 at 10:00 pm
I hate to say it, but it's time to kill Lois. And Mary Jane. And Susan Silverman. And....
muldertp
July 8, 2006 at 10:20 pm
"There used to be a site that took a humourous look at Superman covers–and what a jerk he was to Lois, Jimmy, and via World’s Finest covers to Robin the Boy Wonder–it was hilarious, and was a result of the older Clark/Lois relationship you mention."
That was the Superdickery site I mentioned above.
"I hate to say it, but it’s time to kill Lois. And Mary Jane. And Susan Silverman. And…"
And didn't we just have this debate about killing off/divorcing super-wives?
Greg nailed right on the head the best argument against doing that. Life doesn't end after marriage. It changes. That lets you tell other stories. It closes a few off, but it opens up many more.
Philip
July 9, 2006 at 7:16 am
I disagree. I don't think it's an interesting take on the relationship. "Superman is a deadbeat dad!" does not sound interesting to me. I also agree with the somewhat sarcastic comment from the first poster that Superman should not be always based on relationships, whether in movies or in fact any media. When Superman was introduced he was an active character that actually could do stuff, take meaningful action, rather than just whine about how Lois feels about him, how no one understands him, etc...
Matt
July 9, 2006 at 8:41 am
great column, and I love your ultimate point, and I love the idea of Supes/Clark/Lois as a tragic romance.
BUT...
even by this intelligent standard of reading Superman Returns, I think Singer et al did a lousy job of it. Lois is supposed to be brilliant, agressive, relentless...and she pretty much is, except when it comes to Supes. Then she swoons and stomps her feet and lets the guy walk all over her--including KNOCKING HER UP, something she DOESN'T REMEMBER BUT JUST SHRUGS AND ACCEPTS.
wha--?!?!?!
i don't think it's being too attached to "realism" in a comic book movie to ask that it at least try to accept its own internal logic. which means they sure could have dealt with all this, but they HAVE to play fair with the audience and the story.
i don't think you get to kiss Donner's feet and make a pseudo-sequel, then turn around and ignore whatever parts of his story you like. that bothers me. it's lazy and stupid.
John Seavey
July 9, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Does anyone other than me think there's a really creepy undertone in the way comics fans will just off-handedly say, "The marriage is wrecking [insert super-hero's name]'s life. They should just kill off his wife."
I mean it. It's like all those loser guys who complain that their new buddy doesn't hang out as much now that he's married, and he should ditch his wife and hang out with the guys more...only added to it is the component of violent misogyny, that it's not enough for Superman/Spider-Man to leave his wife, she has to die for the crime of "changing" her husband.
Unfortunately, it sounds like Joe Quesada, at least, is in that camp. (And even more unfortunately, it sounds like I might have just hi-jacked the topic a bit by involving Spider-Man. But all the parallels are there!)
Rohan Williams
July 9, 2006 at 5:09 pm
John, I tend to agree with you, but I don't think it's really the fan's fault that their thought process veers towards 'violent misgony'. Honestly, they don't have many other choices, and I do blame the Quesada school of thought for that.
It's been stated by Quesada and others that they don't want to see super-heroes get divorced. So, if you as a fan wants to get rid of the wife, and divorce isn't an option, then the only other option available in the comics vocabulary is death.
And honestly, I can sort of understand that. To me, a character like Superman is better off in that Archie/Silver Age/Simpsons frozen state. I don't think it pays to age him all that much.
Lorin
July 9, 2006 at 5:10 pm
What about the fact that the Superman/Lois thing has been done, to death. I don't care anymore. Why not, I dunno, have Superman fight a villain in one of the movies, instead of just lifting things.(Superman Lifts would have been a more appropriate title) This film above all else was a flat out bore. Your analysis of the relationship was pretty solid, but ultimately the Superman movies should move on beyond the whole Lois/Supes dynamic. Everyone shits on X3, but hey, stuff happened in that movie. Nothing happens in Superman Returns, at least nothing that didn't also happen in the other Superman movies.
Robert
July 9, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Wow. Lots of stuff there. Kudos to Mr. Hatcher for a well thought out column. Though I feel kind of slightly off to the side on the conclusion.
I mean: Yes, comics are fantasy - and writers try and inject "reality-like" stuff to draw us into the story, make us invested in the characters. I am firmly of the belief that there is nothing wrong with some superheros getting married - AND - having a successful marriage, at that! Real people with dangerous jobs get married and *some* of them do manage to keep it together. Why is it so very foreign an idea that *some* superheroes could get married and, though it might get difficult, still manage to make things work? Answer: laziness on the writers part, narrow-mindedness on the writers part, and the idiotic marketer's mindset that "successful relatonships that are working AREN'T what keeps viewers coming back next week - it has to be tension & heartbreak every other week to keep the masses interested (and the sponsors happy)" - again - this is just writer laziness. Apparently no one in comics is *skilled* enough to write a successful super-hero-involved realtionship thats good enough to kep us interested. Its just too hard. So let's all just fall back on the old, tired cliche of "tension & betrayal & heartbreak" because its worked before and its just so darned easy to do...
*sigh*
Superman is not a "dead-beat dad" nor a "date-raper" - the writers were just not that good.
JR
July 10, 2006 at 1:09 am
"So, if you as a fan wants to get rid of the wife, and divorce isn’t an option, then the only other option available in the comics vocabulary is death."
Well there's always retcons, reboots, and ye ole magical whammy if you really wanted it done away with. Killing a character off seems a bit too extreme to me, especially nowadays where it always seems to be done in the most over the top manner possible (particularly where female characters are concerned).
The thing about superhero stories is that a large part of the appeal lies not in the just in the personal drama, but in the time travel, space exploration, alien invasions, robots, giant monkies, and super villan battles. The level of those vs the level of drama/soap opera changes periodically but there seems to be a slight rift among fans who specifically prefer one over the other (i.e. adventure vs personal drama).
Where team couples like Sue & Reed Richards or the old Hawkman & Hawkwoman pair differ from Lois & Clark or Peter & MJ is that you can have bits on the relationship while you're in the midst of robot punching and with the latter pairs that's not usually the case (unless Superman is saving Lois from said robot). So often scenes that focus on the group B's relationships are seen as detracting from the robot punching and that just doesn't sit well with a segment of fans (and writers too, I'd imagine) who are into the genre specifically for the action. A couple of previous posters hinted as this as well ("but apparently he doesn't punch enough shit" sums it up nicely even if said sarcastically).
Not that a balance can't be achieved, it's just a lot more difficult to do with modern mainstream comics having this odd desire to focus on every specific beat and moment that space limitations inevitabley make single issues lean more heavily towards one (drama) or the other (action). Hooray for customer dissatisfication.
JR
July 10, 2006 at 1:13 am
Argh... re-reading that and it's a mess, that'll teach me to post at four in the morning.
John Seavey
July 10, 2006 at 3:30 am
"It’s been stated by Quesada and others that they don’t want to see super-heroes get divorced. So, if you as a fan wants to get rid of the wife, and divorce isn’t an option, then the only other option available in the comics vocabulary is death."
That's a statement that actually amps up the "creepy" factor a lot. Because Quesada (and many others) seem to think that marriage, in super-hero comics, is seen as a "problem" with the character that has to be fixed. And I don't think it's a coincidence that most comics fans and professionals are single males--because they see getting into a relationship with a girl as a mistake that has to be fixed, and you can't do it with divorce, because it's depressing to hang out with a divorced guy, so you can just bump off the wife because if she's dead, hey, out of sight out of mind, right?
I mean, does anyone really think that it's sensible to think of widowing a character as being less of a wrenching change than divorcing them?
All of this, of course, is gradually getting further away from Superman, because his relationship with Lois is currently a very solid one--the only other really solid husband/wife relationship I can think of in comics is Reed and Sue, and even that one's being put through the wringer for 'Civil War'.
Jack Potts
July 10, 2006 at 5:56 am
First, great, thoughtful column.
Second, I think the major problem with the Peter Parker/Mary Jane marriage is the fact that fans can't get over that when they got married, Mary Jane was a supermodel. If the lovable loser next door marries a beautiful, wealthy woman, then most folks would think the schlub's got nothing to complain about anymore.
I think in recent years, Marvel's moved away Mary Jane away from her superstar status, which is a good thing. They could still craft interesting stories with them as a married couple. Fame is fleeting. What if Mary Jane finds it harder to get work as the modeling agencies demand fresher, "younger" faces, although she's only in her mid-twenties? What if she becomes inspired by years of tending to Peter's bruises, breaks and tears, and decides to burn through her remaining money going to grad school herself to join the growing field of metahuman physical therapy? This would require the sort of deliberative, mature decision-making and sacrifice that should be a hallmark of any adult relationship. You're right, Greg, marriage shouldn't be the end of anything, but should signify a change that offers numerous opportunities to any good storyteller.
R.Nav
July 10, 2006 at 8:02 am
For one, I was suprised to see a movie where superman doesn't throw a single punch!
All I wanted in the movie was the scene where Lois tells Superman that she loves and chooses Richard. Richard is awesome! End of story. I don't need Superman the homewrecker.
But i would like a "Creepy Stalker Superman" action figure. Acessories could include a plastic bush and total lack of shame.
Dave Ziegler
July 10, 2006 at 8:04 am
Quote:
"I hate to say it, but it’s time to kill Lois. And Mary Jane. And Susan Silverman. And…."
NOT SUSAN SILVERMAN! NOOOOOOOO!
Seriously, Greg, this is very insightful, and clarifies some of my own feelings on the film. An excellent job, as always.
David Thiel
July 10, 2006 at 8:32 am
Another excellent column.
For my part, it's not just that the resolution--if it really is that--of the Superman/Lois relationship is depressing. The whole damned movie is too dark by half: cinematography, production design and script.
The violence is unnecessarily grim. Lois is stalked by a killer who takes a moment to decide which weapon will cause her more pain. Superman is remorselessly beaten, not in the four-color manner of superheroes, but in a realistic, crime-drama style. And then there's the gag with the damned dogs. The line "Didn't there used to be two of them?" is funny because of what it implies; you don't need to see the remaining dog sitting in a pile of fur and chewing on something grisly. (And no, I'm not being prudish. I'd be perfectly fine with this material in another context.)
Superman should be a good time. If you can't have fun being freakin' Superman, what's the point? Yes, power equals responsibility and all that, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy your work. The Donner/Lester films threatened at times to turn him into a joke, but at least they approached the material with a lightness of spirit and a sense of wonder. For all of Singer's slavish devotions to the Reeve films, he seems to have missed that. Superman isn't Batman or the X-Men. He's not about being screwed-up or screwed-over.
Jack Potts
July 10, 2006 at 10:48 am
Mr. Thiel is absolutely right. This movie could have done HUGE Pirates of the Caribbean-style business if it had been a little more fun. Here's Superman flying! Here's Superman punching something! THAT'S what we really wanted to see, not Mopey Stalker Superman. Not Daddy Superman! Not Hit-You-In-The-Head-With-The-Christ-Allegory Superman! It was good but it could have been great, if it had a few more visceral thrills and fun. This should have been a movie that kids would pay to see again and again.
In the end, it suffered from the problem that killed The Hulk movie...they simply overthought the concept instead of embracing the spectacle and excitement inherent in both characters.
David Thiel
July 10, 2006 at 12:31 pm
I always love when someone starts a comment with "Mr. Thiel is absolutely right."
I don't know that "Superman Returns" would've done "Pirates"-level business, simply because the latter had the benefit of a lot of goodwill from the previous installment. However, this weekend I saw "Pirates" for the first time and "Superman" a second time, and I know which of them is more likely to generate repeat business.
"Superman" has many fine qualities. It's far better, I think, than the various abominations that would have sprung from the likes of Burton, Smith, Cage and McG. (I know some will disagree about Burton and Smith, and let's leave it at that.) It's a good film, but it's not a great film. And it's not nearly as fun--pitch-perfect Jimmy Olsen aside--as it needed to be to restart the franchise.
Kevin Street
July 12, 2006 at 11:47 am
This post contains movie spoilers. So if you haven't seen Superman Returns yet, be warned...
You've some interesting points there, Mr. Hatcher. But there's something else to consider - the current movie is just beginning a story, it's not over yet. Not for Superman and Lois, poor Richard White (Talk about a dead man walking!), or the mysterious child Jason. Singer and company weren't delivering a sealed package of story here, imo it feels very much like the beginning of something larger and longer, which is why there's a lack of resolution to so many throughlines.
I'm not even sure that Jason is Superman's son. Superman thinks he is, and so does Lois, but we don't know anything for a certainty.