Superman.

[icebluenothing]

When I was little, I was kind of .... obsessive about Superman. I mean, sure, I loved Batman as much as the next proto-gothling, but it wasn't the same. The sense of alienated isolation and loss coupled with the sheer love of his adopted world; the absolute power tempered with compassion and responsibility; the frustration at wanting to tell the world, "Hey, look, I'm really somebody behind these glasses, behind this awkward shyness." The sheer epic grandeur and mythic weight of it all. I ate it up with a spoon.

Where some kids grew up with religion, I grew up with comic books. They helped shape my moral core. They taught me that the proper use of power, any power, is to help those who have none. No one taught me that better than Superman.

(And I learned a lot more besides. I could tell you what all the different colors of kryptonite were -- green, red, blue, white, gold, crystal -- and tell you what they did; I could tell you that a young Clark Kent fashioned his hornrim glasses from two circular fragments of the cockpit glass of his rocket, because regular glass would melt if he used his heat vision. You know, the important details. I had "non-fiction" books about Superman and I studied them the way I never studied anything at school.)

I don't remember, oddly enough, if I ever saw Superman: The Movie in a movie theatre. But I certainly watched it on video, a hundred times or more.

I've seen it since, in the cold morning after of adulthood. It's -- not great. The special effects are no longer convincing. Most of the acting (aside from the brilliant Christopher Reeve) is just not up to par. The script doesn't hold together. The jokes fall flat.

It's not the movie I remember. There's no way to go back and see something like that, from your childhood, and have it be the way you remember it.

Or so I thought until last night.

Watching Superman Returns at the Cinerama was, in so many ways, like having that experience, of seeing the original movie for the first time as a child, back again. It is every bit as good as I remember the original being, in every way that it really wasn't.

The casting is great. Okay, Lois Lane is kind of forgettable, but entirely competent. But Brandon Routh frickin' channels Christopher Reeve -- I kept forgetting it wasn't him, somehow given back to us -- and Kevin Spacey somehow manages to take Gene Hackman's version of Luthor and build on it, to make it something three-dimensional and dark and scary-crazy.

Superman Returns. Boy, does he ever. If you like awesome, go see it. At the Cinerama, if you can manage it.

Comments

[artvixn.livejournal.com]

Bryan Singer is a god. He jsut "gets it", and he puts it on the screen. Now do you get why I missed his touch in Xmen 3?

[leenerella]

Oh, thank you! This gives me total shivers, and I can't wait!

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

I have always wished that they'd let Gene Hackman be the Luthor he could have been--Luthor, in most of his incarnations, is a real challenge for Superman, not the comic relief we got from Richard Donner, and Hackman was and is fully capable of bringing the evil. I hope they _did_ let Kevin Spacey loose, as he's another one who can be downright scary.

This summer is going to be a challenge--too many good flicks coming out, too little babysitting.

[speedie316.livejournal.com]

That was truly an experience. I'm just sad last night was sold out before my brother could get a ticket, he was the Superman nut in my family. So much that even my oblivious Grandma figured it out and made him a Superman quilt.

[darkmane.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I'm glad to hear a fan review it. Even if the movie doesn't stand the test of time, I will enjoy it for the now.