Superman Ain’t Returning

So I suppose it’s only fair to give a slightly more balanced review than I did yesterday of Superman Returns.

First of all, it’s awesomely, glacially, earth-shatteringly slow. Which is never a good thing in a comic-book adaptation. We’re talking 145 minutes – two and a half hours – and my god, does it feel every minute of that. We weren’t the only ones to be saying “Thank christ that’s over” when we eventually stumbled to the end.

Some spoilers and/or discussion follow, so if you don’t want to know, don’t click for more…

Slowness aside, there’s some really bloody huge plot-holes too. Plot-holes you could drive a bus through. But the biggest one is this : if the entire land-mass is based on Kryptonite, how can he lift it up and out of the atmosphere? It’s already weakened him once, and yet he goes straight back and this time can conquer the Kryptonite. It’s bollocks. Utter, utter bollocks. Things disappear into these plotholes too – not once does anyone ask what happened to the power blackouts, once they’ve served their use to get Lois Lane into trouble. Once the co-ordinates have been faxed through, no-one says “where’s Clark Kent got to?”

Ah, the Clark Kent/Superman thing. Isn’t it amazing how a pair of glasses can change a face so no-one recognises that they’re the same person? It has to be one of the most patronising conceits of the comic book, and it’s even dumber in the movies. In the same way, how come no-one says “Hey, Clark’s back in town and five minutes later so’s Superman. After five years?!? How’s that for a fucking coincidence? And man, they’re the same kind of size, shape, weight, etc. Nah, that’d be dumb…”

Speaking of dumb, the film is really patronising when it comes to explaining ideas/punchlines in the film too. I know we’re in an age of dumbing-down, but fucking hell, I really don’t need these things to be sledgehammered home with all the subtlety of a lead-lined baseball bat. (The line about “weren’t there two of those?”, followed by another shot of the dog chewing on something red, for example) And there’s just too many assumptions, too many “oh, no-one’ll ever notice that” (such as being in hospital, no pulse, and doctors unable to do anything, then zap next scene in a hospital bed, but no devices, no monitors, no nothing. Miracles of modern science, eh?)

I don’t mind dumb and stupid movies that don’t need you to activate your brain in order to watch them. I do mind ones that just assume their audience is dumb, and won’t notice fucking great holes, and stupid premises. I do mind that someone as previously good as Bryan Singer can churn out execrable toss like this. I do object to paying £7 each in order to get our arses numbed and our brains imploding.

But it’ll make money. It’ll make millions. That just doesn’t actually make it good.