Superman: The Homage

Whilst Batman Begins was being filmed Warner Bros sought to resurrect their other superhero franchise and bring Superman back to the big screen.  The project was called Superman:Flyby and the premise was a complex trilogy to make Superman dominate the cinema for the next ten years.  Playing with timelines and resurrection it's little surprise the story had JJ Abrams' fingerprints all over it.  Production meandered as the traditional problems with a Superman film reared their head; difficult casting, directors in and out whilst even choosing locations was difficult.  Abrams loitered as Warner Bros approached Bryan Singer whose idea of a returning Superman was approved when presented to Richard Donner.  Singer was a safe pair of hands having superhero experience with X-Men and the shining light of The Usual Suspects in his back catalogue.

The silly decision to cast Josh Hartnett as Superman was annulled amid typecasting and commitment fears.  The door opened for a pre-vegan Brandon Routh.  He certainly looked the part.  It's rumoured Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth signed on without reading a script whilst James Marsden began a quest to appear in as many superhero franchises as possible.  If they reboot The Green Lantern you know he'll be fishing around.

Routh is pretty darn good as Superman and as Clark Kent.  He manages to capture some of Reeve's charm as Kent without overdoing the goofiness and then step into the blue suit retaining a level of vulnerability that we haven't seen in previous Superman incarnations.  The main problem is the story he finds himself in.

Superman has been absent for five years, looking at the space debris of Krypton. Quite why is never really explained.  Neither is Kent's parallel absence.  He's been away 'finding himself' or something yet returns without so much as a suntan.  Verisimilitude goes so far but now it's got to the point that Lois Lane will only know if Clark Kent is Superman if it's announced via neon sign.  That rohypnol kiss back in the day was mighty powerful.  Maybe it's because Lois Lane now has a son, a son full of afflictions and weaknesses that he may as well have a neon sign that says 'Son of Superman.'  This brings worrying thoughts though.  When Supes and Lois got their freak on what stopped him getting carried away and blowing her head off?  Why was she so blase about shagging an alien? How defective are Lois' genes that they make the son of Superman so sickly?

Right, that's enough of that. Lex Luthor is trying his old real estate ploy again albeit with a twist.  Spacey looks like he's having immense fun as Luthor and hams it up darkly, changing wigs willy nilly whilst actually getting down to the nitty gritty of trying to fight Superman by levelling the playing field.  The Luthor trip to the Fortress of Solitude is inspired in it's villainy, matched only by the look on Spacey's face as he demands to learn everything from Jor-El and the Kryptonian crystals.  The inclusion of Brando as Jor-El takes us all the way back to 1978 and the supersaturated whiteness of Krypton.  It's comforting after Nuclear Man and the wilderness years.  Odd use of a model train set sees Luthor's real estate scam updated.  The only nagging doubt is just how he managed make a Kryptonite sheath for his island crystal.

Luthor's Return to Oz moment

Back to Superman, he's returned and had a beer with The Liability Formerly Known as Jimmy Olsen, but now what?  As Kent and as Superman he's alone, discarded.  The world has, seemingly, moved on.  The world doesn't need Superman anymore.  Or does it?  Handily, Luthor's model train set experiment has some aeronautical ramifications and affords Superman the opportunity to extol the virtues of air safety but ruin a ball game.  It's good, and quite the spectacle, but you can't help feeling that Superman Returns could have done with one more big set piece like this one.  The tumbling Daily Planet doesn't count.

Hey, that's an interesting theme. Shall we explore...oh, no. OK then.

It's clear that Superman Returns is a sequel and an homage to Donner's original Superman two parter but it's in this homage that sit jarring anachronisms.  Superman isn't really updated, it seems the only real updates have been rolling news channels and a ban on smoking in the workplace.  In this Internet age what would Kent really be doing in print media? And just who gets to walk back into a job after five years? Especially as he wasn't really any good.  It's lovely that Eva Marie Saint lives on the old Kent farm and plays Scrabble but in the city you'd expect a little more advancement even if the city is the misty eyed Metropolis.

Superman Returns is an OK film, not a great one and it did well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel.  Sadly, the studio and director would get distracted whilst the option on Routh's contract would expire.  It's telling that he's more remembered as Scott Pilgrim's confused vegan foe.

Superman: The End?

The ejaculation of Superman

Hang about. Superman doesn't need oxygen again? He can speak Russian? He's got another glowy crystal space dildo?  Superman can make things invisible just by squatting near them?  Has Superman's outfit faded in the wash?  These are just a few of the many, many questions raised by Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.  The biggest question of all is just who thought this would be a good idea.  Donner wouldn't go near it and Lester wouldn't touch it with a bargepole either.  The previous films had been huge affairs, lavish almost but here is the Poundland version.  The unmistakable concrete of Milton Keynes dominates as New York's Metropolis becomes a memory.  The Salkinds had sold the rights to the franchise, presumably in a moment of prescience, and despite a halving of budget Cannon Films still put the film into production.  Perhaps it was assumed that the sheer earnestness of the storyline would drag them through.  Cannon obviously weren't content with releasing Masters of the Universe in 1987 so along came another outing for Superman.

Despite the return of Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor as well as Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder everything is just a bit flat.  Reeve didn't really want to come back and was effectively lured in with promises of stroy input, a Street Smart shaped carrot and maybe, just maybe a directorial pop at Superman V.

Reeve wanted the story to be more serious; more faithful to Superman lore and a step away from the good time slapstick of Superman III.  Unfortunately, it seems Cannon Films' scattergun approach to production and corner cutting took greater precedence.  Solid gold nobility in the form of ending the Cold War and nuclear proliferation is the soup du jour.  Croutons take the form of tedious underdeveloped sub plots. The corporate takeover of The Daily Planet is uninteresting and Luthor's newly acquired nephew (who is most definitely not Matthew Broderick) is annoying.  Gone are the days of Puzo's grand vengeance story arc and Mankiewicz rewrites.  And then......then there's Nuclear Man.  Dolph Lundgren was away having a dust up with Frank Langella so the 'role' went to the unknown Mark Pillow.  Poor old Mark couldn't build a career on these fragile foundations.  A flimsy script, dodgy locations and cheap special effects are a plague on all their houses.  Oddly enough, no one seems remotely bothered that Lex Luthor's hair has grown back.  If I'd been Hackman and was playing a role for the THIRD time I think I'd have had a word.  Or a shave.

United Nations based peril

The last time I saw the United Nations on my tellybox Cary Grant found himself in a spot of bother, now Superman goes for his Polaris Missile Removal Scout badge.  ICBMs in their hundreds are rounded up and cast into space.  Yes, it all sounds vaguely familiar and Superman really should have worked out how The Phantom Zone broke two movies ago but on he goes.  These aren't the only feelings of deja vu suffered during Superman IV:The Quest For Peace.  Meanwhile we are asked to accept that Luthor has become a master genetic and nuclear scientist whilst behind bars.  Some pre-Jurassic Park genetic tomfoolery sees Luthor make his evil Superman clone and Nuclear Man is 'born.'  It's all a bit pointless, Superman first appeared in 1938 and so was nearly 50 at the time of production.  As proven by Batman there is a plethora of material to plunder for effective villains.  Couldn't we have had an attempt at Bizarro, Brainiac or even Mister Mxyzptlk?  No, instead we're left with the strangely animated Nuclear Man.  In two year's time Tim Burton will use animated techniques to help The Joker and Batman to much more successful ends.

Everything's just so flimsy,  it's hard to invest or arouse any real interest and you begin to get itchy feet around the 40 minute mark.  From 1978 to 1983 Superman was, literally, on top of the world.  Superman IV: The Quest For Peace was such a hammer blow to the hero's heart it's surprising that even 1999 was early enough for Warner Bros to bash the reboot button.  Especially if those Tim Burton and Superman Returns rumours were true.

This film's only redeeming feature is the double date sequence.  Superman and Lois versus Clark and the entirely forgettable Lacy Warfield.  Superman rekindles his slapstick tendencies but it's Reeve's charm that pulls it all together.  You can almost forgive him for another Rohypnol Kiss earlier in the film.  An epic lunar conclusion is sadly a wasted opportunity as is the Great Wall of China spat and I'm struggling to even wonder that much about all those deleted scenes.  Even The Liability Formerly Known As Jimmy Olsen is an afterthought.

For now, Superman's star has fallen.  There's a bigger shadow coming to take over the late 80s and 1990s.  The Dark Knight is coming back and he looks a lot like Beetlejuice.