The Unavoidable Failure of Superman Returns

Brain Singer’s Superman Returns, while visually interesting and well acted, fails as a cinematic work and as entertainment due to the inability of the Superman character to translate in any meaningful way to a postmodern, post-cold war, post-9/11 world. Singer is a wonderful blockbuster director. His visual sense creates outstanding action sequences such as a tour-de-force scene in which Superman must uncouple a plane from the space shuttle as the two approach orbit. Quieter, reflective moments, frequently involving Superman flying in a vertical position rather than the more familiar horizontal arms out in front position, stand out as well and do an exceptional job at inspiring awe. In these scenes, and there are several throughout the movie, the camera lovingly pans over Superman and lingers on the fine features of the well-cast Brandon Routh. These moments come the closest to capturing the idealization that is at the core of the character of Superman, the great American hero.

Behind these visual elements, however, lies the problem with Superman Returns: a slow and unengaging plot. The movie contains two stories: a love triangle/parentage narrative involving Superman, Lois Lane, Lois’s fiancé, and the main story of the evil villain (Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luther) who must be stopped by Superman. It is the former, rightfully a subplot, that generates any interest, while the main plot produces nothing more than a by-the-numbers take-over-the-world story (and a few good lines from Spacey). That the main plot fails to create any interest and that its development is so labored results from Superman, the first and the greatest of the great comic book superheroes, being nothing other than a hero. As a product of the cold war, Superman has little to say to the contemporary issues facing America or the world.

Unlike the two most profitable Superhero box office commodities, the X-Men and Batman, as a character Superman has no room for evil. He is completely good and completely all-American; the embodiment of American values and American military strength in one body. As Peter Suderman in The Washington Times notes, Singer’s Superman is stripped of some of his Americanness. Yet for a director making a Superman movie today there is little choice. The original Superman represented doubts about America’s strength in cold war terms (what if the Russians build kryptonite?). Today neither conservatives nor liberals, neither war supports nor opponents doubt that American is the greatest power in the world.

The issue is no longer whether America is stronger than its enemies in terms of military might; rather the debate is over how the nation can identify its enemies and whether or not sheer force is the best means to defeat them. What the nation fears and what it is struggling with are issues of secrecy and the unknown, be it the secrecy of terrorists or the secrecy with which America’s government has taken to acting. The basic premise that sustains Superman, what does it mean to be the strongest power, is no longer applicable; Americas know what it is like because that is already the reality of the nation. This creates a situation in which the Superman character doesn’t have a raison d’etre.

It has taken years and multiple writers and directors to produce this latest installment of the Superman story. The struggle to find the right story is suggestive of the fact that no Superman story works for this moment. While it seems that Superman Returns will do reasonable business at the box office, it will leave no cultural mark and the Superman franchise will continue to struggle to invent a Superman who is relevant today. What interest Superman Returns creates is a testament to Singer’s abilities as a director; the material he has to work with has little to offer. One can hope that Singer chooses a more promising project for his next work.