Why The World Needs Superman Returns

The British Film Institute offer a Film Journalism course that looks really interesting. I enjoyed my time with Q News as their film reviewer, and thought this course might be a good why to formalise my interest. Applicants are required to submit a review of a recent film, written in the Sight & Sound style. I applied in January, by reviewing Match Point. Unfortunately there were almost three applications for every place, and so I missed out on that occasion. This time round, I reviewed Superman Returns - a film I really enjoyed, and I'm quite the fan of the earlier films. This past weekend I was advised that I was accepted into the course! Yay! But sadly I have to decline the offer. There is a compulsory attendance seminar, which clashes with my vacation to Sitges in October. I'll apply again next year.

Anyhow, I thought I'd post my review. There are no major spoilers but I strongly advise that you stop reading now if you haven't seen the film. If the title seems somewhat dramatic, then you might remember it's a play on the title of a newspaper article which appears in the film. Enough preface, here's what I wrote:


Why The World Needs Superman Returns

Released at the dawn of high-concept cinema, Superman: The Movie had a simple mission summed up by its punchy tagline: “You’ll Believe a Man Can Fly”. The film was a spectacular success, and the genre of comic-book adaptation was born. But how does one follow that film, with a new sequel, twenty-eight years later? Franchise film entertainment may be a function of momentum, but it’s often the case that each new sequel leeches something from its predecessors, potentially undermining the franchise as a whole. Batman & Robin is often cited as the nadir of franchise disasters, but really, one needs to look no further than Christopher Reeve’s fourth outing in Superman IV. And yet, while both films were panned by critics, their box-office suggests that Bryan Singer could have slept on-the-job, Joel Schumacher style, when directing Superman Returns, but still found an audience and still had a moderate hit. It’s little wonder that genre films, especially those with £110 million price-tags, are often overlooked for artistic value.

While effectively rebooting the franchise, Superman Returns is not an origin story, as was the case with last year’s Batman Begins. Instead, Singer ignores the calamity of the latter sequels and consciously picks up the action five years after the events of Superman II. It’s a conscious decision by Singer, and perhaps the most important of all. He’s crafted a sequel that is respectful of the franchise’s myth, yet enriches and builds on it through post-modern appropriation. Singer does have an original story to tell, and does reference other works (a child’s telekinesis subplot hints at The Shining, even going so far as include characters locked in a kitchen), but he also manages to texture the story with subtle references to the franchise’s own cinematic canon. (At the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor is asked if he’s been there before. Luthor says nothing, nor does he have to). The synchronicity is impressive. At times, it’s as if Superman Returns was written concurrently with the first films.

The first two Superman films, (mostly) directed by Richard Donner, were scripted as a two-part feature, (mostly) shot back-to-back, and intended to be viewed as a single coherent story. Tom Mankiewicz infused his script with religious symbolism, telling Superman’s back-story through a Christ metaphor. Rather than going it alone with his sequel, Singer, a self-avowed Donner fan, has consciously reused, rather than reworked, the most successful elements of the earlier films: John Williams’ original score; the ground-breaking opening titles; the allusions to screwball comedy, some of it directly lifted (regarding flying: “statistically speaking, it’s still the safest way to travel”); more Judeo-Christian mythology (by film’s end the characters of Superman, his son, and Jor-El, become the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost); and the myth-making of an unknown actor in the title role who sounds very much, and occasionally, even looks uncannily like Christopher Reeve. As mentioned, the Fortress of Solitude makes a return, though fans will remember it was destroyed at the conclusion of the theatrical release of Superman II. (Singer is faithful to Mankiewicz’s script, rather than Richard Lester’s edit). But Singer’s greatest production coup, firmly tying this film to its predecessors, is the appropriation of Marlon Brando’s likeness (recreated in CGI), and some of his dialogue, recorded for Superman II, but excised from that film for litigious reasons.

At its heart Superman Returns is a story about religious myth (read: cinematic myth) and the cyclical nature of life. Speaking from beyond-the-grave, literally and cinematically, Brando, as Jor-El, is the film’s Holy Ghost. On more than one occasion, he says, “the son becomes the father, and the father the son.” The plot arc of Superman Returns can be reduced to that single line of dialogue, taken entirely from an earlier film. Superman leaves Earth to search for his past; the search for one’s own history (which we’ve witnessed in earlier films) is the search for the father. Later, near death, Superman is reborn with the reincarnation kiss on the forehead from his son, just as Jor-El kissed his own son, Superman, in the first film. By the film’s end we can fairly ask, who is father, and who is son? But one might also ask what is original, and what is sequel? The line is deliciously blurred.