'Superman Returns' is a Totally Normal Movie We All Remember

Not a problematic element to be found here!

What an insane movie.

Not on the screen, necessarily. Not at all on the screen if we’re being honest. No, Superman Returns is insane because it is arguably the biggest studio blockbuster that legitimately does not exist to most people. The cast, the performances, the look, the intention… everything about this movie is ill conceived and forgettable.

Even if Superman Returns had turned out to be a decent entry in the Kal-El cinematic legacy, the fact the film was directed by ultra-creepy Bryan Singer and stars the totally normal Kevin Spacey has made this film age like milk. Any time Spacey pops up on the screen, giving an oddly muted and small performance as Lex Luthor for some reason, the only thing on my mind was how much of a nightmare these two must have been together on set.

Anyway, enough about the obvious historical problems with the cultural imprint of Superman Returns. Even if we knew nothing seedy about Singer and Spacey, there is very little to hold onto in this movie. When it was released in 2006, Returns was marketed as a direct follow up to Superman II, thereby erasing the existence of Superman III and The Quest for Peace in order to latch itself onto the more successful movies. As the film opens, after dispatching Zod and his cronies, Superman has been gone from Earth for five years, investigating what he thought was a remaining portion of Krypton floating through space. It turns out to be nothing, so Superman, well, he returns, and before long he has to thwart Lex Luthor’s real estate scheme that involves… it doesn’t matter.

Everything about Superman Returns was made with the intention of being beholden to the first two Reeve movies. That is why Singer hires Brandon Routh, because he looks and sounds like Christopher Reeve. He doesn’t have blue eyes, so he wears terrible blue lenses that look like a brown-eyed person wearing fake lenses. Routh is also, unfortunately, lacking in any of the charm or screen charisma of Christopher Reeve. He may sound like Reeve (exactly like him), but the film gives him almost nothing to say. Even in 2006, I found it odd how little dialogue Routh has as both Clark and Superman.

Routh looked and sounded like Reeve, at least, but for some inexplicable reason Kate Bosworth was hired as Lois Lane, replacing Margot Kidder. There is nothing about Bosworth that recalls Margot Kidder. The two actors have completely different energies, and the fact that they bent over backwards to hire Brandon Routh because of how similar he was to Reeve makes the completely anachronistic hiring of Bosworth all the more crazy. She has no chemistry with Routh, or James Marsden, or the rest of the world here as Lois Lane. She seems bored beyond belief.

You know who would have been a great version of Kidder’s Lois Lane back in 2006? I don’t know, someone like, say… Parker Posey?

But wait! Singer had Parker Posey on set, right there, playing Lex’s new female companion. Not Miss Tessmacher, but the same vibes. The fact that Parker Posey, who would have been pitch perfect as Lois Lane, was in the movie playing another thankless role alongside Bosworth, makes the strange casting decisions all the more bizarre.

Despite wanting to be directly tied into the first two movies, Bryan Singer made another baffling decision: make this movie look like The Godfather but bad and boring. The first two Superman movies are bright and bold, with big blue skies and very few dark shadows. The colors are vibrant and Americana is represented through the pop sensibilities of a shiny savior. Superman Returns is all brown and drab, and the suit itself is dark blue and maroon, not bright red and blue. It’s terrible and not fun to watch, a testament to the mid-2000s desire to ground all these superhero movies in The Real World… boring.

And that is Superman Returns’ biggest sin as a movie, it is boring. the airplane sequence is cool, and that is it. The rest of the time Superman is pouting because Lois moved on, and Lex Luthor is stealing a chunk of the Fortress of Solitude to create new real estate, and the somber visuals and muted performances lull us to sleep. Thank goodness this wasn’t a big enough success (only $200 million domestically versus a $270 million budget, the film ultimately made $391 million worldwide) to warrant another entry.

Henry Cavill may not be my favorite Superman, but at least that movie has fewer creeps and a few ideas…