Superman GBU
I have just returned from the Superman IMAX 3D experience. I am in no mood to give a well-though-out review for several reasons. It's late and I want to go and watch another movie right now, and it just doesn't warrant a full review. So here's what I'm thinking. I am going to patent a special brand of Willow Crossing Movie Review, that I will use from now on. This special new format will tell you everything you need to know regarding my visceral reactions to movies, without the annoying need to plod through my pathetic attempts at segues. I am going to call it "Willow's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." It will be in convenient list format.
*****SPOILER WARNING*****
Willow's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly :
Superman Returns in IMAX 3D
The Good...
- Visually stunning.
- Brandon Routh is very much the Superman you want to see, with all the gawkish Clark Kent goodness, but perhaps a little less masculine than Christopher Reeve, but also better-looking.
- It lacked Margot Kidder, who always played Lois too harsh for me.
- Nifty special effects and gimmicks a la The Matrix.
- Kevin Spacey.
- Good, old-fashioned movie fun.
- For what it's worth, the parts that were in the 3D kicked butt, even if the glasses on/glasses off routine was a bit of a distraction.
- Occasional funny moments.
The Bad...
- A plot with about as much structural integrity as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
- Parker Posey, who I normally ADORE, played it pretty stiff. I can't blame her for this. It must be Bryan Singer's fault. When a good actor goes bad, one has to take a look at the director. I can't help but wonder what my beloved Chris Nolan would have done with this movie. His take on Batman was so bucking frilliant. I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.
- Superman being given oxygen in the hospital? Perhaps you experts out there can clear this up for me, but why would they give Superman oxygen? Doesn't he, like, totally go out into space and stuff? For that matter, my advice would be to ax the entire Superman in the hospital part. It worked even less than the rest of the story.
- Pandering, cliched emotional moments. One wee tear in the eye of Kate Bosworth as she writes a story entitled "Why the World Needs Superman." YAWN. Or is this just my X-treme emotional repression showing? See the film, then you tell me.
- The airplane scene is almost DIRECTLY out of my recurring nightmares. Who's been in my brain?
- Really kinda gay. Yep. Gay. Lemme put it this way: I think that, if I were a gay man, I would see this movie 67.8 times in the theatre. It's hard to explain, but you'll understand once you see it. Seeing as I'm straight, and a girl, I have seen Batman Begins that many times.
The Ugly...
Perhaps it's just paranoia, but I couldn't help but wince at this line: "Does he still stand for truth, justice, and all that other stuff?" Now, I am no blind patriot, but has "The American Way" suddenly become filthy language? I think that maybe in Hollywood, it has. They didn't have any problem with "It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman." No, that bugged me. They also showed gratuitous footage of Superman saving people at the Eiffel Tower and other world locations. OK, that's fine. But it looked like it was thrown in there in a preachy sort of way. Again, I may just be paranoid, but is anything allowed to be all-American anymore? It's Superman, for cryin' out loud. OK. Done now.
Overall, I give it 3.5 out of 5 Willow Switches. (I'll have to develop a graphic for this.) And that's saying something, especially given how much I prefer Batman. Now see it and tell me what you think.
posted by Kristine at 10:51 PM
8 Comments:
We saw it last night too, but not at the IMAX. I enjoyed it, but thought Spiderman 1 & 2, X-Men 1 & 2, and Batman Begins were all much better movies. I was disappointed in the film when I thought of it as a Bryan Singer movie; he did such a good job with the X movies that I really thought he'd pull off a masterpiece here.
As far as omitting the "American Way" out of the truth/justice slogan, that's not really new. We've been rewatching the old Lois and Clark series from the 90s and they left it out there too, just said "truth and justice". I find it a little offensive on both counts, but not enough to take away any significant enjoyment of the series or movie.
It may be nit-picky, but the oxygen mask annoyed me too. That, and why would a young Clark Kent be wearing glasses? He's Superman, he shouldn't have anything wrong with his vision and why would he need an "alter ego" at a young age??
I don't agree with your gay comment. I mean to say, yes, you could say it's gay, but if you go there, really aren't all the main superheroes gayish with their skin-tight outfits?
Kelly, I do not watch any other Superman-related stuff, so I was not aware of previous omissions of the American way. And certainly I'm more sensitive to that kind of thing now than I would have been when I was in high school, which was the last time I saw a Superman movie. So I could be overreacting.
But I'm standing my ground on the gay thing. It's not the outfit, and I can't put my finger on it, but this Superman is vaguely gay to me. Or at least he seems to have a lot of blatant gay appeal. Much more than other superheroes, in my opinion. I'll have to ask my one gay friend, and see what he thinks. ha ha ha ha
The fact that Hollywood is too damned gutless to have Superman continue to stand for "the American way" really makes me worry about the mess they're going to make of this movie
I haven't seen it yet, but it would surprise me if lack of "the American Way" put me in a tizzy---any more than its inclusion did when I was a kid. But that's my reality.
I'm still in the Batman Begins honeymoon suite, and have trouble imagining that Superman could boot me out of it.
Lorna: I'm still in the Batman Begins honeymoon suite
I feel the same way. It's going to be a long time before ANY super-hero movie can measure up to that. My hopes are high that Spidey 3 will at least get close to being that good. The legit Spidey 3 trailer, as opposed to the fake one that I fell for and posted the other day, looks promising.
It's a common misconception that Superman can breathe in space. He breathes air the same as the rest of us; any mammal would. His physiology is tougher than a human's, but he still has lungs. His skin is invulnerable and can withstand pressure and the heat of reentry, and he can hold his breath a LOT longer than a normal person would, but not for an extended period of time. The most recent animated series often portrayed him using a space suit and even a ship for his space adventures, and this film opens with him CRASHING in a Kryptonian ship(which I'd assume he built using knowledge in the crystals and studying the smaller one he arrived in as an infant). The other thing that might not be clear to the casual filmgoer is that Superman is a solar battery and the further he gets from a YELLOW sun and the closer to a RED one, his powers eventually diminish. Krypton orbitted a red sun, so his powers would be greatly reduced by the time he got there.
As for WHY the doctors administer Oxygen, the explanation is far simpler; that's standard procedure. When would Superman have ever been in a hospital? How would doctors know how to treat a Kryptonian? They do all the normal things like the paddles and trying to put in an IV, but once they pull the Krypotonite sliver he starts to become invulnerable and the needle breaks on his skin. The only good thing they did was pull out the green K. That whole scene I kept wondering why they didn't get him under sun lamps, but honestly in hindsight I have to admit that the functionality of Superman's abilities wouldn't be public knowledge. In the comics and cartoons, someone like Professor Hamilton at Star Labs might have more knowledge how to treat him, but the average ER doc wouldn't know as much as we the viewer.
The part that bothered ME was how the island formed and then stopped long enough for all that plot to occur, and didn't follow Lex's prediction that the East coast would flood. I guess if that happened the only way out would be to reverse the Earth's rotation, and NO ONE wants to see that again. So I forgive Singer for buying Supes enough time to avert all those disasters in Metropolis, be stabbed, drown, and then lift an island into space by diving well below the portions with Kryptonite in there.
Also on the glasses thing, I'll submit that in this continuity his abilities don't develop until he's older and, much like Lois' son's asthma, he may well have had bad eyes as a kid. Lot's of people have allergies and other afflictions they outgrow. Even the comic lore acknowledges that he became more super the older he got, and started out leaping tall buildings before he could actually fly.
MCF, despite your perfectly acceptable explanation of the oxygen, it still bugs me. I mean, it may be technically correct, but it looks dumb. Even my husband, who just accepts plots, said, "Why don't they just throw him out into the sun?" HA HA But I do appreciate your insights. I had no idea he was EVER shown wearing a space suit.
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