Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

2/4

The Zack Snyder cut of Justice League – something the fans clamored for after the original’s lukewarm reception – is overpadded and badly paced. Nearly two and a half hours go by before the story emerges from its first act and when it finally does it turns into a meandering exercise in repetition. The final climactic battle between the heroes and Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) doesn’t feel like a climax at all as it is barely distinguishable between any of the other fights in the movie. They fight him again and again and again and then the film just kinda stops suddenly. While I didn’t particularly like the original theatrical version when I saw it in theaters I like it better than this one. The original’s final act was poorly written and made too many awkward unfunny attempts at humor, but what it had going for it was a real sense of being climactic. Pacing is more important than length in any movie, and at 4 hours and 3 minutes Zack Snyder’s Justice League is just plain boring.
An issue I had was its use of intertitles that divide the film in a series of parts. It comes across as pretentious and the fades to black to show us these only drag the movie’s pacing even more. I was taken out of the movie each time they appeared and they seemed to serve only as a reminder that the movie was still going.

The plot revolves around a new villain named Steppenwolf – an armored CGI giant straight out of Diablo – who has fallen out of favor with his nephew, Darkseid, and now wants to redeem himself. Steppenwolf is seeking three macguffins called Mother Boxes with which Darkseid wants to gain ultimate control of all life in the universe or something. I mean, look, macguffins and villain plots are not that important in most superhero movies because the resolution is always the same. The heroes win some, lose some, and then ultimately win some again and then the movie is over. We know who the bad guy is and we know who the good guys are and we want to see them fight each other. It’s like PPV wrestling or a video game without interactivity or an ability to skip the cutscenes. The Roger Moore Bond era had the same problem. No one cares what the bad guy is doing, just grab a pair of skis and stop him like always.

One of the Mother Boxes is in the possession of new JLA member, Cyborg (Ray Fisher), who was created with it after suffering injuries from a car accident. This same Mother Box is used to revive Superman (Henry Cavill) who now dons a black suit with a silver S.
Superman’s revival makes for the best and most interesting part of the movie. He awakens with no memories of who he is at first and starts attacking the Justice League before being snapped out of it by Lois Lane (Amy Adams). My favorite shot during the attack is when the Flash (Ezra Miller) tries to get around Superman at high speeds. Whenever he does this he disappears and the rest of the world goes into slo-mo similar to what happens to Quicksilver in the X-Men movies. As he passes, Superman’s eye slowly shifts in his direction revealing that he is able to keep up with the Flash at all times.

The majority of the movie’s first few hours is Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) meeting with the future Justice League members and trying to recruit them. He meets with Aquaman (Jason Momoa) in Iceland who makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with whatever Batman and co. are planning. Obviously he comes around later.
The writing and casting of Aquaman in the DCEU is a conscious effort to distance the character from the memes and jokes that have been made at his expense on the internet. Shows like Big Bang Theory and Family Guy are largely to blame. There is now a consensus among non-comic readers that a man from Atlantis with a three-pronged spear, who can control the power of the seas, and talk to sharks is somehow lame. Here, Aquaman is a rough brawler who drinks heavily and tries to intimidate everyone with his surliness and physique. Momoa’s performance is good enough, but this choice is definitely an odd one.
Batman’s first success is with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who is first introduced in the film stopping terrorists from blowing up a building full of schoolchildren. It’s the usual plot armor gimmick with a bomb with a timer that goes down at a varying rate. If you actually try to count the remaining seconds you realize everyone should have been blown up a minute ago.
Gadot’s Wonder Woman is not strong on personality. She gives dull pep talks and plays at being serious. She is not convincing as a character and her action scenes continue to suffer from special effects tricks that don’t look real.
Cyborg is more reluctant to join than perhaps even Aquaman. He doesn’t relish being in the suit he is in and his prolonged isolation from society has left him bitter and angry. What makes him more interesting than the other characters is that his origin story is ripe for a villain. The circumstances of his condition and his anger says a lot about free will when he ultimately joins the good guys anyway. He has the ability to tap into any network, computer, and camera feed making him an asset that rivals the resources of the Batcave. Before joining JLA he tries to find purpose in life helping poverty-stricken single mothers by hacking their bank accounts and making them millionaires overnight. Even when he is being bad he does it kindly and with pure motivations. Bruce Wayne tells Flash in the movie that his superpower is being rich. But all we have seen him do with that is pay for Clark Kent’s funeral. What does he have to say for himself?
Lastly is the Flash played by Ezra Miller. In the established lore he is prone to causing crisis events, coming in and out of reality, and being an overall nuisance to the space-time continuum. But enough about Ezra Miller.
The Flash character in Justice League is written as comic relief. He is eager for friends and to be liked, but is socially awkward and tends to say the wrong thing or too much at the wrong time. Occasionally he can be funny, but often his bits don’t land and his utterances make me wince. The funniest moment is when he tries to say goodbye to a Russian family, but says Dostoevsky instead of do svidanya. Sadly that moment was cut in this version. Miller puts in the best performance of any of the other actors in Justice League, but he could have been given better lines.

As far as the action set pieces, special effects, and cinematography go, the film has the same problems I had with Batman v Superman. They’re dimly shot, over-reliant on cartoonish CGI, and use so much fast-cuts and quick editing that I doubt even Flash could understand what he was seeing without pausing it off and on again. With the far superior Wonder Woman (2017) released between this movie and BvS it is clear that this is just Zack Snyder’s style. I’m not a fan. His films tend to look drab and ugly and they’re soullessly written.

This movie certainly didn’t anger me the way Suicide Squad did. But it is not exciting like Wonder Woman or as interesting as Batman v Superman. The theatrical version is slightly less good than Man of Steel (another film I disliked), but the Snyder Cut fatigued me. What made movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Gone with the Wind justify their run-times was that there are no wasted shots and the writing is engaging throughout. With Justice League the reincorporated footage and added pickup shots are just mere padding. Stuffing everything back into a movie for a vanity project doesn’t make it good. It just makes it long.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Chris Terrio, Zack Snyder, Will Beall
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Ben Affleck, Wesley Coller, Curt Kanemoto, Benjamin Melniker, Christopher Nolan, Jim Rowe, Chris Terrio, Emma Thomas, Michael E. Uslan, Madison Ainley, Marianne Jenkins, Tamara Watts Kent, Madison Weireter, Andrea Wertheim, Gregor Wilson
Cast: Ben Afflect (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Henry Cavill (Superman/Clark Kent), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg/Victor Stone), Jason Momoa (Aquaman/Arthur Curry), Ezra Miller (The Flash/Barry Allen), Willem Dafoe (Vulko), Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), J. K. Simmons (Commissioner Gordon), Ciaran Hinds (Steppenwolf)
Composer: Tom Holkenborg
Cinematographer: Fabian Wagner
Editors: David Brenner, Carlos M. Castillon, Dody Dorn)

Wonder Woman (2017)

3/4 stars

Wonder Woman is where the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) finally gets it right. Upon its release it was the best of the series and the best looking. Man of Steel was a turgid misfire and Suicide Squad was an execrable display of incompetence. Batman v Superman had many great qualities, but had flaws that alienated its audience. With Wonder Woman next on the slate, director Patty Jenkins approached the material by making what the audiences had wanted all along: a superhero movie. Instead of following the subversive pattern set by Zack Snyder she tears a page from Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s playbook and makes a superhero origin movie that follows the writing philosophy of the first Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger.

These types of movies are what they are. They aren’t movies in the usual sense. They are not made to stand on their own, but designed to revolve around a larger cycle of other movies. Modern superhero films are part of an expensive serial that releases two to three 2-hour episodes a year. Even origin stories like this one serve only to introduce its character. What they don’t do is give the characters a solid resolution. Story is an afterthought, the writing being pooled into setting up the ensemble event to come later. A lot of auteurs in the industry resent them for reasons I do not necessarily disagree with, but accepting them as something different I can review them for what they are and not for something they aren’t intended to be. I happen to enjoy serials, after all.

Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) starts out as a young woman who is trained and honed for combat on an island inhabited by Amazons. Diana – the future Wonder Woman – was made of clay and brought to life by the god Zeus. She is raised by the Amazonian queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) who delays her combat training because she wants to keep her sheltered. But, Hippolyta’s sister, Antiope (Bonnie Wright) trains her in secret. Diana is told that the god of war, Ares, had slain all the other gods except for Zeus who had banished him to who knows where. The Amazons were created to protect the race of humans against Ares who wants to exterminate them and they fear his eventual return. I don’t rightly recall reading this in Bulfinch and Hamilton, but comic book gods are a different ilk from their classical sources and merely share their names. I’ve had similar thoughts about Rick Riordan.
When American fighter pilot, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes his plane nearby while being pursued by Germans they learn from him that outside of their cozy island the world is currently being embroiled in WWI. When Diana first meets him she asks him if he is a man. She had never seen one before and they are seemingly scarce on the island. This begs a lot of questions since the movie explains – too thoroughly, I thought, for a family movie – that only Diana was made of clay and the others were sexually reproduced. There are so many things I want to ask. Where are the men? Do they keep them sequestered out back? Are they only kept for breeding? Is there a way to sign up for the job? And so on.

Diana believes that the war Steve is describing could only be the work of Ares and she negotiates a deal with him to return him home as long as he takes her with him so she can find and kill Ares. Steven thinks she is being naive, but agrees. The eventual reveal of Ares later on is a serious weak spot in the movie since it undermines a more poignant theme that had been running in the film up to that point. Trevor understands that true evil is not found in a single external force and he tries to tell her this several times. The fact is, wars like WWI are not waged by gods and monsters. They are brutally executed on the battlefield, but they are conducted by bureaucrats and men in suits with trimmed nails. They murder men, women, and children by edict and paperwork, call it a day, and then take their families out for ice cream. Evil is not men twirling their mustaches and cackling. Evil looks scarcely different than you or I. So when after so much is made of her being naive on the nature of human wickedness, the sudden reveal of Ares as an instigator behind the war didn’t sit well with me.

The strongest moments in Wonder Woman are when Diana is slowly adjusting to modern culture and when she is fighting Germans on the front. The action scenes are much better than what the DCEU had done so far. In the earlier films the fights are shot dimly and rely on quick editing to give the viewer a lot of visual noise, but nothing that can be clearly made out. This time, the camera never loses focus on Wonder Woman even when the fighting speeds up and intensifies. Like in the classic Superman movies with Christopher Reeve she charges heroically into action in closeups. We never lose a clear view of Wonder Woman and the side characters which was sadly lacking in the Snyder pictures. Where the action scenes fail is an overuse of slow-mo. Slow-motion photography tends to telegraph events and it steals away their surprise and oomph. When an arrow starts moving in slow-mo around the same moment a character slowly dives into frame you know they are about to get shot. It’s a waste of dramatic tension.

Wonder Woman’s cinematography is otherwise flawless. As I said above it is so far the best looking of the DCEU films up to this point. It drops the drab colors of the previous flicks replacing it with beautiful shots that, for once, contain color and detail. Throughout the late 2000s and most of the 2010s movies started sucking color out of their movies in favor of dim lenses that make everything appear in shades of grey-blue. For reference, see what happened to the Harry Potter movies’ cinematography as the series went on. But around 2016-2017 we started seeing more natural color and lighting in movies again and the trend has mostly stuck around for now. The best shots are when Diana and Trevor are in London. There is a gorgeous attention to detail in the set design and palette. The scenes when Diana is trying on modern clothes in a shop, while deliberately silly, look fantastic.

The music in Wonder Woman, like in Man of Steel and BvS, is largely composed of incidental pieces with nothing in particular that stands out, save for Wonder Woman’s main theme. It was first heard in BvS and it’s a real banger. I’d accept it as the definitive Wonder Woman theme along with John Williams’ Superman and Danny Elfman’s Batman scores. It’s that good, even if they really don’t make great music that much in movies anymore.

I enjoyed Wonder Woman a lot. It showed that the DCEU series was capable of reproducing the sort of content that made the Marvel movies so popular. The mismanagement that caused the series’ demise later was preventable had they made more movies in the same vein as this one.
When Trevor mentions that saving the day would involve finding the man who can, Diana quips back, “I am the man who can.” Looking at the DCEU’s fallen house of cards compared with the success that was this movie, I think she was on to something. Women, especially Wonder Women, often are.

Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder, Richard Suckle, Jon Berg, Wesley Coller, Geoff Johns, Stephen Jones, Steven Mnuchin, Rebecca Steel Roven, John Bernard, Tommy Gormley, Curt Kanemoto, Enzo Sisti
Cast: Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), Robin Wright (Antiope), Danny Huston (Ludendorff), David Thewlis (Sir Patrick), Said Taghmaoui (Sameer), Ewen Bremner (Charlie), Eugene Brave Rock (The Chief), Lucy Davis (Etta), Elena Anaya (Dr. Maru)
Composer: Rupert Gregson-Williams
Cinematographer: Matthew Jensen
Editor: Martin Walsh

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

3/4 stars

note: This is a review of the Ultimate Edition, an expanded edition of the film not initially shown in theaters

When I first saw Batman v Superman ten years ago I hated it. A lot of people did. Many still do. But, having seen it for a second time a decade later I find myself in the awkward position of being one of its defenders. Bear in mind, the Ultimate Edition is the only cut of the film I have seen, so I can honestly inform the reader that the extra thirty minutes are not what made the difference to me.
No, what I think happened this second time around was a mixture of acceptance and comprehension of what the filmmakers were trying to do. Being dark is not necessarily an issue for me. What made Man of Steel a bad movie was that its darkness extended to its main character as well as the plot. Putting Superman in a dark story is fine. Wholesome, good people live in a dark world and how they adapt to it and learn to live in it is ripe for good storytelling. But, in Man of Steel Superman comes right off the bat as someone angsty and angry which suited him not a bit. The kinder more winsome Superman of old would have made that film more palatable since light versus dark is what he is all about.

Superman (Henry Cavill) is not much better in this movie either, but, perhaps I have got used to him. He is not as unsure of himself as he was in Man of Steel for one thing. And, also, Batman v Superman is not all about him. It’s not really about Batman (Ben Affleck) that much either. The angsty Superman is here to stay and the movie accepts this and moves on without dwelling on his character as much.
For me, BvS’s saving grace is that the dark tone is not just a gimmick like it was in Man of Steel. This movie has something to say for once. What made many people angry, I suspect, is that they purchased their tickets and expected to see a superhero movie. Can’t really blame them there. But, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – an admittedly awful title – is not a superhero movie. It’s an epic social thriller that takes the subject of Superheroes (or meta-humans as the film calls them) seriously. It’s a commentary on what the ramifications of beings like this would have in a world that is post-9/11. In many ways I view the movie as a companion piece to Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.
Much of the film’s scenes are set in newsrooms, congressional hearings, and foreign lands falling apart under unstable regimes. The frequent cameos of real life figures like Charlie Rose, Nancy Grace, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson commenting on the existence of superheroes is just another way the film tries to posit how a world inhabited by meta-humans would react to them.

The film is set two years after General Zod wrecked devastation on Metropolis and now the world is questioning whether it needs another all-powerful Kryptonian living amongst them. Superman is a good man who is on the side of humanity, but that fact is not unquestionable to the many people who were maimed and lost their loved ones in the fallout. It was Snyder’s conscious decision to spend more time on this subject than on the pure unadulterated superhero flare we have come to expect in these sort of movies. Just before I rewatched it I read this comment from director Zack Snyder that he made about the movie in 2023: “I think that probably is what caused the movie to be so polarizing. I think … a lot of people went into the movies for going like, “Oh, it’s the superhero romp, right? Let’s have fun with it.” And we gave them this sort of hardcore deconstructivist, heavily layered, experiential modern mythological superhero movie that … you really need to pay attention to. That was not cool. That’s not something anyone wanted to do.”
At first when I read that comment I got annoyed. I thought it patronizing and a failure to take ownership of the issues that people actually had with the movie. Watching it again, though, I hearken back to that comment and understand somewhat of what he was trying to say. I believe he was mostly right, but a few people did have other reasons for not liking it. The characterizations of Superman, Batman, and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) are hardly traditional. The film still languishes under its fast-edited action sequences and unconvincing special effects. And a lot of people bristled at the reason for Batman sparing Superman’s life being that their mothers’ names were both Martha. The latter issue was meme’d and mocked to death back in 2016 and a lot of people still complain about it today. I am not as angry about it as they are. The scene intended to give Batman an understanding of Superman’s humanity that he had not seen before. He had a mother. The scene only failed because of a lack of subtlety and Batman’s animosity died down too quickly to be believable. I thought Batman’s issues with Superman were not wholly addressed here. Having a mom named Martha should not have been enough to convince him that Superman was not a threat and the movie should have resolved this concern a bit more. I also believe the addition of visual flashbacks to Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot was too on the nose and the scene would have been better received without them. But, the fact that Supes also had a mom named Martha being a turning point in Batman’s relationship with Superman didn’t bother me. It’s not as stupid as people say it is. It just needed some adjustments to its execution. But, people like their bandwagons, you know.

Batman is a big point of contention, and I do understand why. He is a bit hard to swallow. He is much more brutal and violent than any previous incarnation of the character we had seen on screen before. He also shows a shocking indifference to human life. Much of his actions are reckless and indirectly cause the deaths of the men he is fighting. The reason I still am able to accept him, however, is that the reinterpretation of the character is not so jarring as it is with Superman. Clark Kent and his alter ego don’t align at all with what he is supposed to represent, whereas Batman has always been a more edgy character. Making Batman this grim was the only logical thing the filmmakers could do if he is to contrast with Superman as he is presented here. It helps that he is not the movie’s main character. Batman serves the majority of the plot as an antagonist who has become misguided by suspicion and paranoia. The movie focuses most on the loneliness and the near sociopathy of the character which, let’s face it, has been with Batman since the beginning. Batman has always been the sort of guy whose trauma and internal rage at injustice had driven him to becoming a violent vigilante who beats the wicked and corrupt to a bloody pulp. Must I also point out that he dresses up in a vampiric bat costume and has the power of fear and the cover of darkness as his primary weapons? I can forgive the movie for knowing what everyone else knows that such a man in real life would likely be mentally ill.

The actual fight between the two is instigated by Lex Luthor. Instead of the usual self-congratulating Bond villain played by Hackman and Spacey, Jesse Eisenberg plays him…well…as Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg is not a bad actor, but he is a one-trick pony. He only plays one guy in all of his films and that is Jesse Eisenberg. His Luthor is neurotic, talks fast, and eats up attention like a child eats up sugar. He clearly loves the sound of his own voice and becomes grandiose and prone to demagoguery. He thinks of Superman as a sort of god in the classical sense and wants him dead on that basis alone. Instead of cutting his teeth on Sesame Street and Dr. Seuss like most normal people, he lives by cherrypicking the philosophies of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. I’ve known people like this and they aren’t much fun at parties.
By staging a number of terroristic plots that are deliberately centered around Superman’s presence he turns him into a controversial figure. A vocal minority of the citizenry are now leery of Superman and Batman is convinced that the world will not be safe and secure until he is dead.

Another newcomer to the franchise is Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who spends most of the movie in disguise as Diana Prince. Her purpose in the film is limited and she is there by and large as a justification for the “Dawn of Justice” part of the movie’s title. She is meant to foreshadow the eventual rise of the Justice League. The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman also make very brief appearances, but they don’t inundate the movie with too many characters as a lot of superhero movies do with their villains. Secret archived footage is shown of them on computer screens to give us our first look at them before they make it to the main event.
Gadot’s performance is a bit bland, but she is not given a whole lot to do in her defense. As Wonder Woman she doesn’t spring into action until the final climactic battle and when she does she contributes little. Action movie directors must find writing for women hard or something, because I complain about this often.

The final battle is where the movie tends to fall apart. It’s a CGI-laden mess. The three heroes get tossed about frequently, transitioning from CGI models to actors when they land. CGI is supposed to be like a magic trick and when done poorly the trick is revealed to the audience and takes them out of the illusion. Doomsday, a monster made of kryptonite designed by Luthor, looks like a cartoon. It stomps about, roaring its head off and fighting the heroes in front of bluescreen that is so obvious it’s more like watching a video game.
The modern filmmakers have seemed to forget that fight scenes need personality as well as action. There is a lot of emotion involved when fighting someone. There needs to be a personal connection that has to be shown during the fight and not just in the moments leading up to it. This is done through simple emoting, facial expressions, and signs of physical exhaustion as the conflict becomes prolonged. What this movie fails to do is show us any of that. It’s all fast blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kinetics, explosions, loud noises, and whole shots where not a single thing on screen is real. All of which is dimly lit for reasons I suspect have to do with disguising the fakeness of the special effects. It’s more exhausting than entertaining.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is at its strongest when it is not trying to fulfill its obligations as a superhero movie. The social commentary is brilliant and the pacing of its first act is near perfect. It suffers during its action scenes, but provides a much more profound experience when it is being serious. It’s not perfect, but I rather liked it.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer
Producers: Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Wesley Coller, David S. Goyer, Geoff Johns, Benjamin Melniker, Steven Mnuchin, Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Michael E. Uslan, Trevor Christie, Curt Kanemoto, Bruce Moriarty, Jim Rowe, Andrea Wertheim, Gregor Wilson
Cast: Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Henry Cavill (Clark Kent/Superman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Holly Hunter (Senator Finch), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Scoot McNairy (Wallace Keefe), Callan Mulvey (Anatoli Knyasev), Tao Okamoto (Mercy Graves)
Composers: Junkie XL, Hans Zimmer
Cinematographer: Larry Fong
Editor: David Brenner

Man of Steel (2013)

2/4 stars

I believe that movies are best viewed on their own and on their own merits without constantly comparing them to other movies that they were not intended to be like. So when Warner Brothers finally saw fit to reboot the Superman franchise there ought to be a little latitude for reinvention. But, while Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is not beholden to the Christopher Reeve canon, it is still beholden to Superman as a character. And that is where the movie fails.
Superman is more than Christopher Reeve. By a long tradition of comic books, movies, video games, and television series Superman has entered the cultural mythos as an established character whose lore, values, and personality have become sacred.

My objections to Man of Steel are not solely due to my preference for Christopher Reeve. What I object to is how the heart and soul of Superman has been so thoroughly sucked out. Even his costume is drab and colorless. Henry Cavill plays the role without personality. Instead of the idealistic boy scout we have grown to know and love, he is angsty and much too serious. His performance is like that of a robot. Instead of being Superman as I know him, Cavill plays the sort of impersonal hero that I would expect to address everyone as “Citizen!” As Superman he is dull and emotionless. As Clark Kent he is constantly anxious and facing existential crises.
It is not until the end of the film that he dons the glasses and becomes a reporter at the Daily Planet. The scene is too brief to say much, but in those brief seconds I saw little sign of the winsome mild-mannered reporter that he is supposed to be. He strides in with confidence and makes a charming smile. He is more like an adolescent fantasy of a handsome intern.

Clark’s childhood in Smallville is handled differently than it is in the original film, Here it is doled out in a series of flashbacks that come and go throughout the first act. These scenes run parallel against his adulthood right before he puts on the cape and boots. Clark is unsure of himself and desperately wants to know what his destiny and purpose in life is. As a child we see him struggle to adjust to his powers and his relations with his peers is strained and distant. Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) raises Clark to try to find the right outlet for his powers and to maintain a sense of self-restraint. To the film’s credit these scenes do a great job at revealing how Superman came to be responsible with his abilities without becoming corrupted and tyrannical by them. There is a key moment where Clark has to contend with middle school bullies trying to get him to fight. Instead of refraining from violence out of sheer goodness of heart, the scene more realistically shows how difficult it is to maintain self-control when one is angry. While cornered he is gripping a fence behind him which, after the bullies run off, is shown to have been crushed by his hand. Pa Kent praises Clark for not giving into his baser nature, but admits that a part of him would have been satisfied had Clark knocked their blocks off. Being a good person is hard work and the film presents those difficulties remarkably well.
But the movie never quite develops him into the character that we know. Up to the very end his uncertainties and trauma remain with him. I would have much better liked seeing these pieces of his past add up to the kind and idealistic man he would later become.
One thing I heavily disliked about the flashbacks is how far Pa Kent takes the lessons in self-restraint. His dialogue and actions suggest that he doesn’t want Clark to become a hero at all out of fears for what it would do to society. After saving a bus full of schoolchildren his dad seems more concerned about the attention it would draw to Clark than the lives he saved. And the way the film handles the death of Jonathan Kent is unforgivable. In the original lore Pa Kent’s heart attack was a poignant lesson to Clark about the limitations of his powers and how he cannot save everyone. But, in Man of Steel his death is something easily preventable, but occurs anyway due to over-caution.

The film opens, like in the original, on Krypton. The planet is about to explode thanks to over-mining that has destabilized the planet’s core. Superman’s father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), is fed up with Krypton’s stagnant culture which is portrayed as being built on eugenics. The Kryptonians are grown in labs with preset destinies and roles to play. Jor-El would rather see his race breed freely without governmental controls. He steals a codex of DNA that he implants in his son in the hopes of reseeding the Kryptonian people somewhere else.
When General Zod (Michael Shannon) stages a rebellion he seeks to acquire the codex for himself so he can rebuild Krypton’s civilization under his rule. With Superman now safely flying in an escape pod for Earth, Zod is too late and his rebellion is quelled swiftly. As we have seen before Zod and his cohorts are sent into the Phantom Zone.

Back on Earth the adult Clark Kent makes his first acquaintance with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) when she stumbles upon an old Kryptonian scout ship that Clark was exploring. The movie dodges entirely the whole notion that Lane doesn’t know Clark Kent is Superman by having her uncover his identity early on. At the end of the film when he starts his first day at the Daily Planet she already knows who he is.
Man of Steel handles their love story even worse than the Reeve films did. Their first kiss comes out of nowhere, following only a small handful of meetings, all of which are professional and unflirtatious. The kiss is, in fact, the first indication that Lois was attracted to Superman at all.
Adams’ performance as Lois is markedly different than Margot Kidder’s. She is more like a journalist who stubbornly puts herself in dangerous situations for her paper. Kidder’s Lois Lane was more like a gossip columnist. Amy Adams plays the sort of stubborn journalist who sniffs out cover-ups and pesters the powers that be to find the truth. What is unfortunate is that that is all there is to her personality. Kidder was full of personality while Adams has virtually none.

During the final act, after Zod comes to Earth to take back the codex and terraform the planet for a new Krypton, the action scenes have the same problems that I have had with Superman Returns. The CGI, instead of being put to any artful use, is used to show things moving so fast that they are hard to make out. Superman zips about at high speeds, burning objects are hurled around in hundreds of shots per second, and explosions dominate much of the foreground. A lot of the action shots are also done in close-up which only furthers obscures a clear view. Computer generated special effects are at their best when they are used to show the audience things they haven’t seen before and couldn’t have seen otherwise. Too often they are utilized, like in this movie, to create highly kinetic action that is impossible to process and appreciate.

At the end of the day Superman is not an action movie star. Who he is as a character is just as important as what he does. Probably even more so. What the makers of Man of Steel don’t seem to understand is that when reinventing a character certain core traits need to be preserved if he is to be that character at all. What I saw was a very depressed and beleaguered man wearing a Superman costume. But I didn’t see Superman.
Back in 2013 I heard a few yea-sayers claim that “this is not your father’s Superman!” Perhaps we should consider that our fathers were right.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan
Producers: Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Emma Thomas, Jon Peters, Lloyd Phillips, Thomas Tull, Wesley Coller, Curt Kanemoto
Cast: Henry Cavill (Superman/Clark Kent), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Michael Shannon (Zod), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Russell Crowe (Jor-El), Antje Traue (Faora-Ul), Harry Lennix (General Swanwick), Richard Schiff (Dr. Emil Hamilton), Christopher Meloni (Colonel Nathan Hardy), Kevin Costner (Jonathan Kent), Ayelet Zurer (Lara Lora-Van), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White)
Composer: Hans Zimmer
Cinematographer: Amir Mokri
Editor: David Brenner

Superman Returns (2006)

3/4 stars

Superman Returns makes a solid effort to recapture the spirit of the original Superman movies. This is most clear in the film’s casting, where the performances are largely imitative of the original actors. It all makes for a conscious and deliberate attempt at producing a theoretical reconstruction of what a Superman 5 could have been had it been made back when Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, and Gene Hackman were in their prime. And it mostly succeeds.

Kevin Spacey, in particular, fills in Hackman’s shoes as Lex Luthor remarkably well. Spacey doesn’t stoop to parody, but makes the role his own while keeping Hackman’s mannerisms and tone largely intact. What he does best is recapturing the narcissism of the character. He portrays arrogance and indifference to humanity a bit more convincing than Hackman did, but he is not as charming or funny. Their respective performances complement each other, broadening Luthor as a character, while each puts their own spin on him.
Among the more minor characters like Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, the recasts involve performances so spot on in imitation that there isn’t much to say about them if you had seen the previous movies. Sam Huntington is the spitting image of Marc McClure as Olsen, aside from being slightly more animated than McClure was. Frank Langella meanwhile plays White exactly as I remembered him when Jackie Cooper played him.
Brandon Routh as Superman, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. He has the right build for Superman, square jaw and everything. But, Routh’s performance as Superman is a trifle dull. He has the physicality of the character down, but not quite the personality. As Clark Kent, he is a bit better, although his imitation of Reeve’s winsome mannerisms boil down to mere mimicry. Reeve’s behavior as Kent was more charming and believable than Routh’s which is flat at times and doesn’t command as much attention.
Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane is the most transformative of all the performances in Superman Returns. Margot Kidder was more charismatic and more fun than Bosworth, but Bosworth adds a level of maturity and emotion to the role that Kidder didn’t quite capture. Of all the recasts Kate Bosworth is the least convincing as a continuation of the character in the originals, but she is better written.

The film opens with a bit of expository text saying that Superman had left Earth some time ago – later revealed to have been five years – after learning that scientists had discovered Krypton, his homeworld. He had flown off to go find it, but the movie never quite makes it clear what he intended to do when he got there. When he returns he says the planet was completely barren of life and that he truly is the last of his race. Would he have stayed if he found living Kryptonians there? Superman never says.
What makes for a point of contention with his friends and family is that he never said goodbye to anyone when he left. Lois is still angry with him and we discover that in his absence she had written an article for the Daily Planet called Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman which earned her a Pulitzer for journalism. The contents of the article are not specified other than that Lois began to feel that the Earth’s reliance on a godlike savior was not in the people of Earth’s best interest. She later expresses some regret for writing it, although she obviously keeps the Pulitzer. I know I would have.
Clark Kent, speaking for Superman, tells Lois that perhaps the reason he had not said goodbye is because it was too painful for him. I find this flimsy at best. It’s not a strong and emotionally detailed explanation and I couldn’t but wonder about his poor mother, Martha. The old woman spent five years wondering if Clark was dead and I don’t think avoiding a painful goodbye justifies putting one’s widowed mother through that.
When he comes home he finds a lot of things have happened since he was gone. Lois is with a new partner (James Marsden) and she now has a son. The revelations of what Clark had missed while he was gone suggests that Superman was mistaken in thinking that his kinship with Krypton was more important than the relationships he had on Earth. The theme is not dealt with explicitly, but these events say something about what family really means. Family is not always blood.

Luthor, meanwhile, is involved in a plot to raise a new continent from the sea where he would be its absolute ruler. That’s good old Lex for ya. After acquiring several of the same Kryptonian crystals used to build the Fortress of Solitude – Superman’s base in the North Pole – Lex wants to use them in a similar way to create a new landmass in the Atlantic. The only problem is such an event would eliminate much of the American east coast and even destroy parts of northern Africa. Naturally, Luthor doesn’t care. But the return of Superman won’t make this easy.

Superman Returns is a breath of fresh air. It’s story is solid and ends the series on a poignant note. Director Bryan Singer, who had given new life to X-Men a few years prior, salvages the Superman series from the dimwitted dreck that characterized the earlier sequels. It is certainly the second best film in the series after the first one.
It’s only weak points are the occasional pale imitations made by some of the cast and I have some reservations about its visual treatment of Superman. In the original movies when Superman was flying and saving the world he was the central focus of the camera. He soared gloriously with each shot good enough to hang on a wall. But, by 2006 Superman in flight is achieved through CGI which was still a bit primitive at the time. To avoid these problems Superman is often shot from a distance or in shadow, obscuring a clear view of him. When he flies he zips past the screen quickly instead of letting the camera remain fixed on him like in the original movies. My favorite parts of the older films were when Superman would fly toward the screen, his fist thrust forward heroically as John Williams’ classic score heightened the excitement. That is sadly lacking here most of the time and I missed it. This movie was made in a time when CGI objects would move at high speeds to disguise the fakeness of the special effects. The older filmmakers, however, didn’t balk at the matte lines and obvious super-imposures the flying scenes entailed and they were better for it.

As throwbacks go, Superman Returns is satisfying and a joy to watch. The series at the time was in sore need of revitalization and Singer delivers. Binge-watching the series has altered the experience a bit, but in 2006 this movie was like revisiting an old friend and it was a happy reunion.

Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, Bryan Singer
Producers: Jon Peters, Bryan Singer, Gilbert Adler, Loren Orleans (IMAX version), William Fay, Chris Lee, Scott Mednick, Thomas Tull, Stephen Jones
Cast: Brandon Routh (Superman/Clark Kent), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor), James Marsden (Richard White), Parker Posey (Kitty Kowalski), Frank Langella (Perry White), Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen), Eva Marie Saint (Martha Kent), Marlon Brando (Jor-El [archival footage])
Composer: John Ottman
Cinematographer: Newton Thomas Sigel
Editors: Elliot Graham, John Ottman

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

1.5/4 stars

Superman IV is one of the most egregious cases of mismanagement of a film’s production in history. Producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, who bought the Superman rights from the Salkinds, made one bad creative decision after another. Their company, the Cannon Group, held onto the rights for only a year before Warner came and bailed them out, purchasing much of their library. In a few words, the Cannon Group blew it.
I suspect that Superman IV’s producers had no faith in the series’ viability after the disgrace that was Supergirl and Superman III. Perhaps they should have watched the first one.

But, without even knowing the production history, a viewer only needs to watch Superman IV to realize that serious budgetary restraints was holding the film back. At a mere 89 minutes in length, the film charges ahead with the pace of a TV movie. One would think that a movie with such a short runtime would not attempt to juggle several subplots, but, alas, there are a total of three. Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) and his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer) create an anti-Superman named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) whose sole purpose is to destroy Superman. I suppose this is intended to be the film’s main plot, but the screentime and attention it receives is about the same as the others. We also have The Daily Planet taken over by a sleazy tabloid journalist (Sam Wanamaker) whose only slightly less sleazy daughter (Mariel Hemingway) has an infatuation with Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve). She starts off cynical and manipulative, but Clark’s winsome mannerisms triggers a protective streak in her and her fondness for him grows into something more. And to top everything off Superman declares to the United Nations that he is going to single-handedly rid the world of nuclear weapons. How do the delegates respond? Anger? Threats? Saber-rattling? Not a bit. They give the Man of Steel thunderous applause. We are not that far off from the days of Goldwater – especially in 1987 – and this is all brainlessly naive. I am not against the idea of a superhero coming to earth and tossing all the world’s nuclear arsenal into the sun. Personally, I think that would be fantastic. But, it’s not going to happen and no meaningful commentary can be made resolving them this way in a story. And the warmongering, genocidal, child-killing sociopaths currently residing in the world theater certainly wouldn’t cheer him on. World peace has always been a buzzword for them, primed for lip service and little else. If you don’t agree, watch the news.
It bears mentioning that society would also just rebuild them again. What is Superman going to do? Throw the scientists and piles of textbook research into the sun too?

None of these disparate plots connect with each other, and each is resolved in the same rapid fire succession in which they are introduced. The anti-nuclear message meets no significant conflict or resistance in the narrative, even when there ought to be. And the tabloid journalist nonsense gets tidied up in a bit of dialogue. The only plot thread that gets resolved with any discernible effort from the heroes is Nuclear Man, who is defeated in an uninspired fight sequence shot in small cheaply constructed sets. The whole film looks and feels like one of those edited compilations of episodes from a TV show cobbled together into a movie.

Apparently, Superman IV was supposed to be longer, if not necessarily better. Originally Nuclear Man was to be the second anti-Superman Luthor creates after the first one is shown to be defective and easily defeated. But those scenes ended up on the cutting room floor and Nuclear Man’s entrance is re-edited to suggest a one and only appearance. This would account for the poor pacing of his introduction and the quick manner in which he is later dispatched.

Confidence is key to any creative endeavor, even when the ideas are good, which they are not in this case. Why a production team would actively seek the IP of a franchise they saw no box office potential in is beyond me. The company had dozens of projects all being made at once, putting on a budgetary strain when doling out financing.
But, Superman is not Smokey and the Bandit or Ma and Pa Kettle. The franchise deserved better. The first film on its own demonstrated that Superman thrived and was profitable when given respectful attention.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace – and the series as a whole – only further proves something that I have believed for a long time. Producers are nothing but a necessary evil that often contributes to the death of art.

Director: Sidney J. Furie
Writers: Christopher Reeve, Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal
Producers: Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan, Michael J. Kagan, Graham Easton
Cast: Christopher Reeve (Superman/Clark Kent), Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Jon Cryer (Lenny), Sam Wanamaker (David Warfield), Mark Pillow (Nuclear Man), Mariel Hemingway (Lacy Warfield), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane)
Composers: Alexander Courage, John Williams
Cinematographer: Ernest Day
Editor: John Shirley

Supergirl (1984)

1.5/4 stars

Some days I swear Hollywood thinks that women have nothing better to do. They don’t seem to be aware that the calling to fight for truth and justice or the vices of powerlust and ambition are the provinces of women as well as men. But, too often we see that attempts at creating female equivalents to male figures are not equivalent at all. Their priorities are portrayed as smaller and pettier than those of the opposite sex. The male Hollywood writers render feminism to condescension and being patronizing. And the women are not elevated to the same abilities and concerns of characters that are men.
The writer of Supergirl (David Odell) is, as his name suggests, a man. So is the film’s director (Jeannot Szwarc). In fact, looking through the credits on IMDB I have found that aside from casting and the performances there is not a bit of female input that was applied to the film’s making. Strange for a movie called Supergirl.
Had a woman contributed to the film’s writing I feel that the plot’s main villain would have proven a much more serious and existential threat as were men like Lex Luthor (Superman, Superman II) and Ross Webster (Superman III). Instead, in Faye Dunaway – whose talents are wasted here – we get a villain more akin to a Powerpuff Girls baddie than any foe that would have been worthy of Superman.

Both Lex and Ross were hellbent on world domination and had both the intelligence and apparatus to make it happen as long as Superman wasn’t there to stop them. And Superman himself was a man driven by a strong sense of justice and a moral desire to see the world become a safer place for everyone.
But, Selena (Dunaway) – a literal witch in this movie – has a plot that boils down to this: Selena sees a hunk doing yard work with his shirt off and wants him. But, Supergirl likes him too. And there we have the crux of Supergirl’s main conflict.

This is such a slap in the face to all the women and girls who have found inspiration in Superman. And to the boys, too, who surely must have known what Superman’s values are. Selena is presented as a woman obsessed with black magic which she largely uses for just common mischief until she sets her sights on Ethan (Hart Bochner). As a love interest for Supergirl (Helen Slater) he is more of a macguffin than a character. He’s a live action Ken doll, too oblivious of the situation to say or do anything interesting. Lois Lane and Lana Lang in the previous Superman movies were sincere personalities that Clark Kent was able to have meaningful conversations with and relate to. Ethan is just 200 pounds of meat. Besides seducing Ethan, Selena’s motivations in the movie never extend very far. When she gets her hands on a crucial Kryptonian power source she uses it mostly to enhance her powers and achieve the same aims she had before. Instead of ruling the world or obtaining great wealth, the power source – a swirling orb – is used to manipulate people into saying they like her very much.
To entice Ethan, Selena concocts a magical love potion (AKA a date rape drug, let’s be honest) and feeds it to him. The potion follows the rules of Cupid and Narcissus where the first person he sees he will fall madly in love with. Unfortunately for Selena, Ethan wanders off and, giving no quarter to logical consistency, he sees several people all at once with nary a reaction until setting eyes on Supergirl. Predictably he falls in love with Supergirl and alarmingly she goes for it. Remember, he is the one under the influence. Supergirl is not, but takes advantage of his affections even when it is obvious he is having some sort of mental break. This is arguably the first superhero movie with a female lead and also a woman serving as the main villain, and they are both rapists. But, apparently it is okay since when the spell is broken later in the movie his affection for Linda (Supergirl’s alter ego) remains intact. I guess this is to suggest that Supergirl is good enough to not need a love potion to fall in love with.
And this scene gives us one of the most idiotic moments in the history of cinema. Ethan doesn’t recognize Linda when she is wearing the Supergirl costume. I had always thought it silly that a pair of glasses was enough to disguise Clark Kent, but that pales in comparison to this kind of stupidity. Linda wears no glasses and her face is not altered in any way. Am I to believe that when this guy gets married he will become confused when he sees his bride in her wedding dress and ask who the hell she is? I can just picture his future wife walking home wearing a new sweater and this moron calls the police over a stranger entering his house.

Supergirl, herself, is given a much less noble backstory than Superman. He was sent to Earth when his homeworld of Krypton blew up and he was tasked with learning to use his powers for the good of the weaker earthlings. Supergirl – or Kara, which is her Kryptonian name – is said to be Superman’s cousin and prior to coming to Earth she was living in a sixth-dimensional alternate reality called Inner Space. This realm was created by a Krypton survivor named Zaltar who used the same power source that Selena had stolen to keep it running. He stupidly lets Kara play with it and she in turn stupidly drops it and it floats away from Inner Space into our world. Zaltar, like Selena, represents another wasted talent in the movie. He is played by the very talented Peter O’Toole who deserves better. He would have made a good Jor-El, I think.

Kara, as Supergirl, goes after the power source and in the climactic battle to wrest it from Selena we are treated to some of the most woeful special effects featured in this series to date. Much of it is poor use of super-imposures that are grainier than your grandpa’s old TV with matte lines thicker than the Washington Monument. About as bad as the effects are the performances which have not an ounce of sincerity or conviction to them. Slater smiles and frowns as the script dictates and she speaks in a constant carefree lilt. Dunaway and O’Toole phone every line in and I found myself wondering what sort of paycheck the producers enticed them with. Bochner plays his role well enough, assuming that sitting around looking dumbfounded all the time is all that was required of him.
Positively I can say the movie was at least well photographed. The camera work is quite good, actually. The cinematography is much better than Superman III; a shot of Supergirl soaring behind a thick foliage of trees, being just one favorite of mine. But well-photographed garbage is still garbage. And it stinks just as much.

Director: Jeannot Szwarc
Writer: David Odell
Producers: Timothy Burrill, Ilya Salkind
Cast: Faye Dunaway (Selena), Helen Slater (Supergirl/Linda Lee), Peter O’Toole (Zaltar), Mia Farrow (Alura), Branda Vaccaro (Bianca), Peter Cook (Nigel), Simon Ward (Zor-El), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Hart Bochner (Ethan), Maureen Teefy (Lucy Lane)
Composer: Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematographer: Alan Hume
Editor: Malcolm Cooke

Superman III (1983)

2.5/4 stars

Director Richard Lester (Superman II, Superman III) is a talented filmmaker, but he wasn’t right for Superman. There is no denying that he liked the character. But, Richard Donner – the director of the first film – respected him. Superman II, while still a decent movie, was an early sign that something was going wrong with the series’ original vision. Superman III confirms it.
Donner was fired from the production of Superman II with a little under half of its footage, then, complete. Lester, who took over, managed the salvage well enough; and all considering Superman II could have been much worse.
But, Superman III is all Richard Lester and it is clear from its start that he didn’t share Donner’s vision. He has, in fact, practically boasted of this in the past. Lester compared Donner’s style unfavorably with the epics of David Lean. Speaking for himself, he cited his own more lightweight style as his preference. To me, what this boils down to is that Richard Lester apparently thought Donner was making the series too good.
What a strange time the 80’s must have been for cinema! Producers are notoriously out of touch when it comes to understanding what audiences want, but Superman III is just insulting. The producing team, Ilya and Alexander Salkind as well as Pierre Spengler, handled the Superman movies terribly. Superman (1978) was a huge success and a critical darling still heralded as the greatest superhero movie of all time even to this day. It was the most expensive movie made at the time, largely due to director Richard Donner allowing its budget to balloon out of proportion. Obviously, the producers made their money back, but that didn’t stop them from having an acrimonious split with Donner and replacing him with Lester on Superman II.

But enough history. What about the movie itself? Taking 100% of the directing duties this time around, it is amazing how little Richard Lester accomplishes with it. Superman III waters down everything in the first two movies that made them significant. Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) is given nothing more than a few small cameos and Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor is missing from the movie entirely. He is replaced with another criminal mastermind named Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn) who is nothing but a discount stand-in for Luthor. Webster has an over-convoluted scheme involving a computer hacker named Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) he uses to take control of weather satellites and the world’s oil reserves. Unlike Luthor, Webster merely plots and provides exposition when necessary. But, he has no personality of any kind. Gus, a henchman, is the central focus whenever the villains are on screen. He is introduced as an out of work welfare recipient who is forced to find a real job when the unemployment office declares him ineligible for any more handouts. He gets an entry-level position as a computer programmer for Webster’s corporation (which is implausible bull) and discovers that he has an innate talent as a computer genius (also bull). Computer programming doesn’t work this way. It’s not like discovering you are a fast runner or even that you are good at math. It’s a trained position that requires clear understanding of what one is doing. Gus impresses his boss by accomplishing some programming feat and then sheepishly says he doesn’t know how he did it. Utter nonsense!
After Gus is caught hacking the company’s payroll to increase his wages, Webster recruits him to manage all the necessary computer programming needed to hatch his scheme.
Pryor known for his comedy work is not much fun in this movie. He bumbles about playing at being in over his head, but there is no enthusiasm to his performance. Superman was not an appropriate vehicle for his career and he seems to have discovered that too late once shooting began.

Elsewhere, Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) is given a much flimsier story than previously seen. In the first two movies Lois Lane was at the center of his balancing act between being Superman and Clark. With Lois now largely out of the picture the writers clearly struggled to make anything out of Clark’s relationship with Superman and a number of odd choices are made for both.
Clark attends his high school reunion where he becomes reacquainted with his high school crush, Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole). Never having left Smallville and now a single mother, Lana wonders at her past life choices and thinks about moving to Metropolis. In Clark she sees something that she didn’t see in high school and they begin dating. As strange as this subplot is, it is actually the strongest part of the movie. I am of the controversial opinion that the budding romance between him and Lana is much better written and is more convincing than what we saw between him and Lois. Their outings to the bowling alley and on picnics is genuinely charming and pleasant to watch. We see several scenes where Clark is able to bond with Lana’s son, who just happens to be a big fan of Superman. I would have been happier had they shown more of this. The moments, while good, are sporadically paced, giving space way too often to Pryor’s soulless goof-balling and Vaughn’s complete lack of charisma or interesting traits. The villains are simply not strong enough to hold the amount of scenes with them that the movie forces upon us. The scenes with Clark and Lana are well-executed, but poorly balanced.

Later in the second act, Gus gives Superman some tainted Kryptonite that makes him evil. And by evil, I just mean annoying. He leaks oil tankers, blows out the Olympic torch, and straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We also see him get drunk, misbehave around women, and claim that he isn’t in the helping people business anymore. The whole thing is absurd, but to the movie’s credit its resolution is quite well done. His emotions take a jolt when he sees Lana’s son disappointed in him and his spiritual struggle culminates in a literal battle between himself and his alter ego, Clark Kent.
Superman III pushes terrible, braindead premises, but manages to execute them better than I initially would expect. But none of the good moments last long enough before the movie’s idiotic plot commits further outrages. The final fight involves a super-computer that Gus built to kill Superman. It becomes self-aware, creates an evil robot out of Webster’s sister, and uses an interface resembling an Atari arcade game complete with scoreboard and a point counter. The movie feels like a bad Doctor Who episode.

Superman III is a horrendous, dumb movie that constantly teases us with something interesting before pulling the rug from under it to focus on its much less intelligent story. A key example is Webster’s mistress Lorelei (Pamela Stephenson). Like Lex Luthor’s Ms. Teschmacher she is played as a dimwitted floozy, but the film drops hints of something deeper beneath the surface that is never explained. She reads Immanuel Kant when no one is looking and displays a surprising understanding of computers, all of which she hides behind her exterior as a bimbo. It’s suggested that Lorelei may very well be the smartest person in the room, but it’s not developed beyond being a gag.

The movie has a number of good ideas in its brain, but they rattle about like loose marbles and nothing is properly placed. There was a good movie in here somewhere, but the filmmakers did not have the confidence to find it.

Director: Richard Lester
Writers: David Newman, Leslie Newman
Producers: Pierre Spengler, Alexander Salkind, Ilya Salkind, Robert Simmonds
Cast: Christopher Reeve (Superman/Clark Kent), Richard Pryor (Gus Gorman), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Annette O’Toole (Lana Lang), Annie Ross (Vera), Pamela Stephenson (Lorelei), Robert Vaughn (Ross Webster), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Gavan O’Herlihy (Brad)
Composer: Ken Thorne
Cinematographer: Robert Paynter
Editor: John Victor Smith

Superman II (1980)

3/4 stars

Superman II has all the excitement and visual spectacle of the original Superman film, but lacks its wit and plausibility. As a superhero movie it’s about as good as Tim Burton’s Batman or the first Avengers. But there isn’t much here of what made the 1978 Superman movie special.

In the first film it opened with three Kryptonian criminals being charged with sedition. General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O’Halloran) are condemned to dwell inside a floating disc called the Phantom Zone which floats off into space just as baby Superman’s escape pod leaves the planet. Now, in Superman II we find out what happened to them.
The sequel opens with Superman (Christopher Reeve) rushing to Paris after a group of terrorists with a hydrogen bomb take control of the Eiffel Tower. Superman saves the day by rescuing hostages and flying the bomb up into outer space where it explodes harmlessly. Unfortunately, the Phantom Zone just happened to be flying by and the shock waves shatter it, releasing Zod and gang. Ursa murders a couple of astronauts on the moon, and then the trio land in Houston, Texas. Zod wants to rule the planet and be worshiped by its denizens, but upon hearing stories of Superman he realizes that there is one threat to him and his ambitions that must be removed if he is to succeed.
The three villains have only a low kind of cunning and rely mostly on brute strength and their powers to get what they want. As movie bad guys go they have none of Lex Luthor’s (Gene Hackman) charisma and act more like playground bullies than anything else. Much of their scenes consist of wrecking havoc, causing property damage, and making comments about puny earthlings. Lex is regrettably given less to do. He joins forces with the Zod gang in the hopes of getting revenge against Superman, but he is forcibly sidelined by the new villains; his scenes little more than standing in a corner uttering some witticism.

Superman II’s subplot involving Clark Kent’s growing romance with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) is slightly more interesting. Lois, who has been growing increasingly suspicious of Kent’s true identity, finally uncovers the truth. Superman is in love with Lois, but he discovers that for the two of them to be together he must sacrifice his powers and immortality. We are not told why and Superman accepts it without question. The time they spend together as a human couple is sweet and hopeful, but is sadly short-lived. Zod and his friends threaten Metropolis and it becomes clear to Clark that the world needs Superman. Clark and Lois’s breakup, however, represents one of several different failings that Superman II has in its writing. The movie does not convincingly establish that Clark Kent and Lois Lane are in love at all. Their interactions throughout the majority of the film is not much different than the simple infatuation they had in the first one. That they are deeply in love is something we are told more than we are shown. Break-ups can take a serious emotional toll on a person, and for a moment in the movie’s final scenes it appears that something poignant will be made of it. Lois tells Clark that he is “a tough act to follow” after he tries to suggest that someday she may meet someone else. I think a lot of people following a break-up feel as Lois does, even when their boyfriend isn’t the Man of Steel. But, the film cops out of any further dramatic tension by Superman implausibly wiping her memories clean with a kiss.
This kiss is just one of several stupid moments in the movie. I cannot abide arbitrary powers being lazily introduced to get the main characters out of a bind, and Superman II is full of moments like this. In the original film, Superman’s powers, while impossible, are at least explicable to the audience. We understand that he has super strength, laser vision, and can fly. We also know why he has these powers, being an alien living on a planet with a different sun and atmosphere. But, in the sequel his powers expand beyond any plausibility. Instead of changing into his costume with super speed he now makes his civie clothes magically vanish as the Superman garb materializes out of thin air. When Non charges at him Superman pulls an S off his chest and throws it at him. The material expands into a sort of plastic wrap that temporarily takes Non out of the fight. These moments are pure dei ex machina, lacking any sort of explanation and occurring from a standpoint of quick convenience.

In the final act, Superman and the Zod gang do battle in the streets of Metropolis and later in the Fortress of Solitude. The Metropolis scenes as action set pieces are not very exciting. There is little energy to them, with most of the fight just smashing things one by one at a slow rate and some petty taunts from Zod. There is a sense of city-wide chaos one would expect that is lacking here. The fight feels more like an elaborate street brawl while the rest of the city remains asleep or dully watches on.
The real purpose of the Metropolis battle seems to be product placement. There is an annoying scene in the first Superman involving Cheerios, but it is brief enough to not detract from that movie’s greatness. In Superman II, though, we are fed a whole marching gallery of products obnoxiously shot to hold the viewer’s attention. In the span of a single minute I counted about four or five products strutting their stuff while Metropolis is under attack. These include, but are not limited to, KFC, Coca-Cola, and even Marlboro cigarettes. I doubt Superman would have approved.

When all is said and done I find Superman II to be a sufficiently entertaining movie. I was not bored by it by any means. And I can get behind its plot and adventure, if not so much its execution. But, as Lois said of Superman himself, the first movie is a tough act to follow.

Directors: Richard Lester, Richard Donner
Writers: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Tom Mankiewicz
Producers: Pierre Spengler, Ilya Salkind, Alexander Salkind
Cast: Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Christopher Reeve (Superman/Clark Kent), Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Sarah Douglas (Ursa), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Jack O’Halloran (Non), Valerie Perrine (Eve Teschmacher), Susannah York (Lara), E. G. Marshall (The President), Terence Stamp (General Zod)
Composers: Ken Thorne, John Williams (Superman Theme)
Cinematographers: Robert Paynter, Geoffrey Unsworth
Editor: John Victor Smith

Superman: The Movie (1978)

4/4 stars

Superhero movies tend to have a distinct formula these days. They often open in the middle of the action where the heroes, already familiar to the audience, are on some unrelated mission that goes south. They take a brief break for some funny dialogue before the movie’s main conflict is introduced and they are then whisked away on some adventure. What follows for the next two to three hours is constant action, displays of special effects, and witty banter. The fans are familiar with the characters, and it is that familiarity that carries the movie rather than the plot. It’s akin to seeing a circus performance. You’re there for the clowns and the elephants. No one cares what the ringleader and lion trainers have to say.

But, Superman: The Movie, the film that jump-started the genre, defies that formula. It takes its time establishing its characters and their motivations. It’s also well-performed, artfully photographed, and cleverly written. It is, in fact, what a lot of superhero flicks are not. It’s a movie.

Superman was made in the old Hollywood tradition, playing much like the rousing screen epics that preceded it. Clark Kent’s path to becoming Superman occupies much of the film’s first hour and when he finally does we understand his character completely. Christopher Reeve’s Superman is more than a costume fighting bad guys. He is a personality we get to know and root for. Superman is the classic story of a man born to become something greater. As his adopted father Johnathan Kent (Glenn Ford) puts it, he was put on this Earth for a reason. Clark Kent follows in the tradition of screen epics like Ben-Hur or Gone with the Wind where the situation and conflict serve the characters rather than the other way around. The movie is not a spectacle of human action figures playing out a scenario, but the story of a man growing into his potential.

The film opens on the planet Krypton, a place millions of light years from Earth where crystalline architecture is all the rave and the people wear glowing costumes that anticipate the special effects of Tron. The planet is about to be fatally engulfed in a solar flare, and Superman’s father, Jor-El (Marlon Brando), tries to warn Krypton’s elder council that they need to evacuate. They don’t believe him, so he builds a small spacecraft in secret to send his infant son to Earth where he will be safe.
When he gets there he is found by a childless couple in Kansas, the Kents, who adopt him. It is Johnathan Kent’s values that make Clark Kent the man he becomes. During those years as a teenager on the Kent family farm, Clark learns that his powers are a gift to help others weaker than himself and that selflessness and restraint are the highest obligation of the strong.
Clark Kent’s rearing in Smallville, Kansas make for the strongest scenes in the movie. Everything that Superman believes in and is sent to protect are established there in rural Americana – a setting of open wheat fields and country roads, gorgeously shot in wide-angles.
After Pa Kent dies of a heart attack, Clark learns more about his history and where he comes from. He decides to move to the big city of Metropolis and gets a job as a writer for the Daily Planet. It is here that his persona as Clark Kent fully takes off. Christopher Reeve is a great Superman, but he is an even better Clark Kent. He presents himself as bumbling and clumsy as well as a trifle naive. Clark Kent largely represents the people that Superman is there to protect. Like them, Clark is played as easily taken advantage of, but has something in him that kinder souls want to shelter and keep out of trouble. In a way, the alter ego of Clark Kent is closer to who Superman truly is. He abhors violence and has a love of justice and peace. He is the sort of man who just wants everyone to get along. By contrast Bruce Wayne is more of a mask that hides his true identity as Batman. In Superman the reverse is true, with Clark Kent being the true core of his being, while Superman is his mask.

At the Daily Planet he meets a reporter named Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) who finds Clark affable enough, but cannot abide his apparent lack of spine. When they are mugged in an alleyway, Clark insists in non-resistance, but Lois scoffs and tries to struggle with their assailant. The mugger’s gun goes off which Clark surreptitiously catches with his hand, but then pretends to faint. Lois not seeing the trick and assuming the mugger only missed, is disgusted.
Clark is infatuated with Lois, but she has her eyes on Superman after he rescues her from a near accident in a helicopter. On top of this Superman has already begun to make a reputation for himself stopping heists, apprehending criminals, and rescuing cats stuck in trees. She gets an opportunity to interview Superman for the paper and their sexual chemistry is clear from the start. The interaction is flirtatious and Lois finds herself stumbling into innuendos when she tries to speak. She and everyone else doesn’t see what the audience sees, which is that Superman is just Clark Kent with his glasses off. It’s the sort of logical discrepancy that I would call an elephant in the room if it wasn’t for all of the jokes that have been made of it over the years. It’s more of a dead horse than an elephant really.

But, no good superhero movie is lacking in a good villain. In Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) we get a character who is everything that Superman is not. Luthor is greedy, selfish, indifferent to the suffering of others, and always ready with an insult. His first bit of dialogue is “It’s a wonder that brain can generate enough power to keep those legs moving,” referring to his henchman, Otis (Ned Beatty). Otis follows the old tradition of super-villain henchman. He’s comically dimwitted and so incompetent that Luthor’s continual employment of him raises a lot of questions. I wouldn’t trust this guy to lay down and sleep without screwing it up somehow. Perhaps Otis is a relative or something.
Hackman’s performance as Luthor makes for the greatest super-hero villain of all time. His narcissism and constant sarcasm make him infinitely quotable. Luthor lives in awe of himself while holding everyone else around him in disdain. He is the sort of man who has no idols and heroes more impressive to him than himself. His personality is more of perpetual bemusement than anything threatening. He doesn’t wax philosophical or justify his wickedness with dark monologues. Nor is he governed by hate or revenge. He is more like Jabba the Hutt or Ooogie-Boogie. He is aware of what he is and he doesn’t care.
Lex Luthor has a wild scheme to use navy missiles to target the San Andreas fault line. By destroying much of the West coast he hopes to corner the real estate market in what remains. The only thing standing in his way is Superman who is naturally outraged by the sheer loss of life Luthor’s plan entails. Superman asks, “Is that how you get your kicks? Planning for the death of millions of people?” Luthor responds, “No. Causing the deaths of millions of people.” What a guy!

The climax is satisfying and exciting with an ending that sets the stage for more adventures to come fighting Luthor and worse. Superman’s father, Jor-El, left him with instructions to not interfere with human history. During the final act Superman is faced with the consequences of this command and the decision he makes at the end is decidedly un-Kryptonian, but it is certainly a human one.

Superman is the best of the superhero movies and it is the best-looking. It was the most expensive movie made up to that point, and it was done when CGI was in its infancy. Instead of relying on its special effects (still impressive for the time) it is shot in the classic Hollywood tradition of wide-angle lenses and beautiful natural cinematography sadly missed in blockbuster movies of today. It’s paced like a real movie, focusing on the growth of its main character and performed with convincing dramatic effect.
Superhero movies nowadays are often made with their scripts being the last thing on the filmmakers’ minds. They go into production with little more than a planned set of story beats that get hammered out in the course of their making. When a film of this genre starts life with a tight script, it results in something special. Something not typically seen in superhero movies. It results in an actual movie.

Director: Richard Donner
Writers: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, Tom Mankiewicz
Cast: Marlon Brando (Jor-El), Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Christopher Reeve (Clark Kent/Superman), Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Glenn Ford (Pa Kent), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Valerie Perrine (Eve Teschmacher) Phyllis Thaxter (Ma Kent), Susannah York (Lara), Jeff East (Young Clark Kent), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen)
Producers: Charles Greenlaw, Ilya Salkind, Pierre Spengler, Richard Lester, Alexander Salkind
Composer: John Williams
Cinematographer: Geoffrey Unsworth
Editors: Stuart Baird, Michael Ellis