Big Blue Boy Scout

Just saw Superman Returns - it's after 1:00, and I can't even begin to think about sleeping. I'm too disappointed. I can't help but think that the movie, while visually stunning, was hollow at its core.

Since Superman is a comic book character, it stands to reason that we would expect a "comic book movie." It just didn't feel like one. Clocking in at over two and a half hours, I was waiting for something really really cool to happen - and it never did. Most of the time, all Superman did was lift really heavy stuff and fly really fast. That's about it. He used his "freeze" breath a few times, and his heat vision, but all passively - in reaction to the events played out around him. He looked amazing doing the things he did, and the airplane scene was awesome, but where was the Superman I was hoping for? Where was the action in the movie about the character that was introduced in Action Comics?

The plot stumbled and somewhere, someone forgot to tell the writers to imagine something new. Instead, they seemed perfectly content to use borrowed plotlines from the first two movies, and the only real surprise of the movie seemed almost like a late add-on. Like they were sitting around thinking... "OK... Superman is dead, or almost dead, and Louis Lane comes and whispers something in his ear, something that makes him stop being almost dead... what would that be?"

And Lex? At times he was good, but I didn't totally buy Stacey's version. He was humorous, but he wasn't diabolical, and he certainly wasn't a criminal genius. His "master plan" was more randomly stupid than I could have imagined, and his use of "superior alien technology" consisted entirely of throwing a crystal into water... and hoping for the best! This is a comic book movie - where was the imagination? Why couldn't Lex have used the technology for something cooler? Maybe something Superman could actually PUNCH?

At least Brandon Routh made an awesome Superman. He gives me hope that the next movie will be spectacular. He had the humanity, the physique, and the loneliness that makes Superman such a cool character... I just wish that the movie, if it was truly supposed to be a character movie, was more about the Superman character. What new did we learn about the man of steel? That he loves Louis? That he wants to be one of us, but never can? That he can lift really heavy things and fly really fast? We learned nothing really new and a good 45 minutes could have been edited out, at least, which would have at least streamlined the action and stopped me from being bored.

I'd even go so far to say that we learn much more about Louis Lane than we do about Superman. I mean - Superman goes searching for Krypton, galaxies away, and we never truly learn why, or what he learned from the experience... it's almost used as a gimmick to get Superman away for a long enough to let Louis have her baby and relationship with some other guy... and Superman's lines in the movie are so short, so shallow, I'm trying to think of one cool thing he said through the whole thing - something that defines him as a character - and I can't think of anything.

Maybe I'm too much of a kid at heart, or maybe I'm too old to be inspired, but I wanted Superman Returns to make me want to go out and change the world. I wanted to be inspired, but I wasn't... and without the ability to inspire, what else should a great Superman movie do?