Superman Returns
Story by Bryan Singer & Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris; screenplay by Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Directed by Bryan Singer
Warner Bros.
2006
Rating:


"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of this strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders — what would you tell him to do?"

"I ... don't know. What ... could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."
— From Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"

Five years ago, Superman shrugged.

After astronomers thought they found Krypton, Superman left Earth in search of his home planet. The world continued to spin without him. Superman's absence led to Lex Luthor's (Kevin Spacey) release from prison: without Superman's testimony, Luthor won his fifth appeal and married a wealthy, dying widow whose inheritance allows Luthor to return to his diabolical ways. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) moved on, too, giving birth to son Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu), whose asthma seems to knowingly nod to the Greek god Hephaestus; getting engaged to Richard White (James Marsden); and penning a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial titled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman."

In "Superman Returns," the reentry of Superman (Brandon Routh) into the atmosphere — imagery that evokes the arrival of Krypton's last son to Smallville in 1978's "Superman: The Movie" — prompts the Man of Steel to contemplate Lois' words and wonder if he can ever truly belong to this world.

With this film, director Bryan Singer ("The Usual Suspects," the first two "X-Men" movies) addresses the Superman mythos with Technicolor splendor and poetic melancholy. Singer carefully recreates the cinematic world fashioned by Richard Donner and Richard Lester in the first two "Superman" movies while placing the American heroic archetype into a timely story of "Inconvenient Truths" and diminishing principles.

Returning to a post-9/11 America, Superman must contend with real world fanboys and political pundits who see him as, at best, an irrelevant artifact of a bygone era and, at worst, an anthropomorphic representation of unilateral self-righteousness.

"Superman Returns" resoundingly answers those who condemn Superman's perceived well-intentioned fascism. In lieu of "Batman Begins'" more literal-minded metaphor, "Superman Returns" treads in subtlety and turns Lex Luthor's plan for world dominance into a parable of post-9/11 America.

To achieve his scheme, Lex steals the crystals Jor-El (posthumously played by Marlon Brando) sent with his son to Earth. These crystals formed Superman's Fortress of Solitude and the technology within them taught Superman about his heritage and the importance of altruism and civic duty, turning him into an avatar for the underprivileged and the dispossessed. These qualities once made Superman the ultimate representation of America. Lex uses these crystals in an effort to destroy America and the rest of the world, corrupting the very essence of Superman and, by extension, the now infamously unutterable "American Way."

Before Singer and his "X2" screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris get to the heavy political lifting, they establish "Superman Returns" as a magisterial work of entertainment and the best superhero movie ever made. Singer and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel meticulously recreate the primary color comic book aesthetic with warmth and feeling that serves as a counterbalance to the superbly detached black-and-white of "Sin City." Each action set piece stands as an already classic moment in filmmaking, from the minor geek joy of Superman stopping a bullet with his cornea to the immensely remarkable feats of Superman catching a plane in the middle of a ballpark and carrying a small continent into space. The action also nods reverently to the past, with one exploit reenacting the cover of 1938's Action Comics #1 and another updating the way Superman first met Lois in the comics.

The relationship between Superman and Lois looms large here, turning "Superman Returns" into a surprisingly character-oriented film. Even after Superman saves Lois, she remains hurt by his inability to say a word of goodbye five years ago. Superman, for his part, spends a better part of the film brooding over her, and his inability to experience something as commonplace as a romantic life makes him feel even more like an outsider.

Many of the film's most lyrical moments feature Superman yearning for Lois. Superman flies by the home Lois and Richard share and uses his X-ray vision and super-hearing to view the domestic bliss he may never know. In the Daily Planet office, Clark Kent pulls down his glasses to watch Lois ride an elevator to the roof. Clark then quickly changes into Superman to take Lois soaring above Metropolis. Another rhyme to the original "Superman" film, this moonlit flight's contrast to the original brings to mind the difference between Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset": the former finds buoyancy in possibility, while neglecting that possibility weighs down the latter.

Routh ably fills the red leather boots of Christopher Reeve. The story wisely rejects John Byrne's recreation of Clark Kent as Superman's "real" identity in the 1986 "Man of Steel" comic book series to maintain the continuity with Reeve's goofy affability as Clark, the real alter-ego.

As "Superman" comic writer Alvin Schwartz points out in his metaphysical journey "An Unlikely Prophet," Superman needs Clark as a safety valve, a "retreat where one [can] live normally." Schwartz convincingly supports his theory using philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's "Spirit of Christianity," in which Hegel notes that Jesus' miracles arose out of anger and that Jesus couldn't remain in that state for long without burning up his earthly shell. (The iconography of "Superman Returns" easily lends itself to Christian interpretations, what with Superman's descent from the heavens and outstretched arms, but Superman's influences also include Moses, the mythic Golem, Atlas, Prometheus, Mercury, Philip Wylie's 1930 novel "Gladiator," Doc Savage and The Shadow, among others.)

However, Routh's Superman holds more gravitas than Reeve's. Where Reeve could show Superman reveling in his powers, Routh's Superman feels overwhelmed by the world's need for him and his inability to live a normal life. Singer elegantly shows Superman floating over the world like an angel from "Wings of Desire" as he listens to the people of the world and waits for a call for help. Superman's instantaneous transition into action mode compounds his existential crisis, as his attempts to save the imperiled force him to, as Schwartz says, "live entirely in the now" on the "highest point of individual consciousness" to converge completely, "with all his mind and strength and energy, on a single demand out of a single moment." When Superman says to Lois, "You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, but every day I hear people crying at for one," the expression on his face shows a man who in some sense would like to shrug, but his devotion to the world prevents him from doing so again.

To that end, "Superman Returns" consistently rebukes Ayn Rand's worldview. The film does share Rand's adoration of architecture in Guy Hendrix Dyas' sumptuous Art Deco production design and somewhat takes the media to task for catering to the public's basest instincts in Lois' op-ed and the insistence of Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella) that Lois write about Superman instead of a citywide blackout.

The rest of "Superman Returns" objects to Rand's primacy of the individual and her distaste for collectivism. Many read Brad Bird's Pixar triumph "The Incredibles" as a Rand-ian allegory about society's championing of mediocrity at the expense of self-interested excellence (this interpretation ignores the fact that the Parr family only defeats its foe by joining forces).

"Superman Returns" willfully refuses such a reading. Superman discovers the folly of acting independently of society and rejects the idea of serving as "the fountainhead" of civilization. Superman even relies on the help of others to save him in his most dire moments.

By the end, Superman again quite literally takes the weight of the world upon his shoulders, but in the process he inspires others to ease his burden. As Jor-El says, humanity's capacity for goodness only lacks the light to show the way. By reigniting that beacon, Singer proves why the world needs Superman.

Posted Friday, June 30, 2006

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