Superman Returns

There were many reasons why I didn't wanted to miss out on 'Superman Returns', the most important of them all was to find out what Bryan Singer had come up with and if it was worth leaving X3 stranded and all alone. The second point why I needed to see it was the obvious Batman Begins analogy - Batman rocked, so why shouldn't Superman?

I've never been a huge fan of Superman and I didn't really know how important it is to be aware of the differences between the most popular Superheroes. To understand the natures of them, let me quote this fabulous monologue from Bill of Kill Bill Vol.2:

An essential characteristic of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero, and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When he wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic that Superman stands alone. Superman did not become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.

Understanding these sentences is very important as it significantly differenciates Superman from most of the other popular Superheroes. I personally felt that the sheer unbeatable capabilities of Superman spoiled the movie a bit - but as that's the nature of Superman himself, I won't count that as any sort of disadvantage for the movie.

Nevertheless I have to say that 'Superman Returns' was not able to convince me in any way. Neither in questions of storyline, nor in acting or even in action and excitement. The storyline was simple and even the smallest surprises were absolutely forseeable. Additionally the leading characters lacked charisma, which is a tough thing to admit as I always have rooted for Kate Bosworth. Who the heck is Brandon Routh anyways? Why would you want to give him such an 'important' leading role? Someone definitely seems to have made a not so appropriate choice there.

Of course 'Superman Returns' did look good, it also inherited a lot of special effects and a monstrous running time of nearly 160 minutes, but as it turns out all of this didn't help too much. The good news is that it didn't feel like the 160 minutes of running time were way out of line, eventhough it easily could have been cut down 30 to 40 minutes without further notice.

All in all I didn't entirely dislike 'Superman Returns', but I was pretty disappointed about it. I had expected much more of it and I will never understand how Singer could have left the X-Men for this stronger but yet much weaker Superhero.