Over the years, the Superman movie franchise has faced many difficulties. After the poorly received Superman 4 in 1987, there were several attempts to make a new Superman movie which all amounted to nothing. Fans didn't see Superman on film until almost 20 years later with the release of Superman Returns. While it was not a flop, Superman Returns fell short of expectations and was not the Man of Steel's triumphant return to film that fans had been waiting for. Four years passed and the studio still wasn't exactly sure how they were going to handle their next Superman movie. Some thought that they should allow Bryan Singer to make a sequel to Superman Returns. Others felt that the only way to make a proper Superman movie was to discard everything Superman Returns did and make a complete reboot. After his success with the Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan was brought in to be the producer of the new movie. Now, it has recently been announced that Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch) will direct the new movie. How should things go from here? Well, people of the world listen up because I present to you BIGBMH's Take on Superman!
What not to do
A lot of people feel pretty strongly about their ideas on how this movie should be done. Of course, this whole series is just my opinion, but there are some ideas that I think are the wrong way to go about this. Before I go into how I think the movie should be done, I'm going to talk about a few directions that I think are wrong for the movie and why I think they're wrong.
Superman Returns Sequel:
It has already been confirmed that the next Superman movie will not be a sequel to Superman Returns. However, I'd still like to talk about why that movie wouldn't work because in doing so, I will be able to highlight some of the main mistakes of Superman Returns and show some of the lessons the people making the next movies should learn from. For a while, I was one of the biggest supporters of making a sequel to Superman Returns. I actually enjoyed it for what it was and didn't think it was as bad as most people claimed. Bryan Singer had me curious to see what he had in mind for the next part of the story. I also hoped that Brandon Routh would get a chance to prove himself because I felt that he really wasn't given that much to work with in Returns. However, I've realized that a few key mistakes of Returns made it impossible for its sequel to be the Superman movie we've all been waiting for.
First, giving Superman a kid was a bad idea. Giving Superman a kid who thinks his father is Perry White's nephew (who is now practically married to Lois) was a worse idea. There just really wasn't a good way to resolve this. You could kill Richard, make him go bad, or have Lois leave him, but none of those really feel like they'd be a good enough conclusion to justify bringing him in.
Anyway, you'd eventually have to explain to Jason that Superman is his dad, which would be great if this was an episode of The Maury Show, but not for a Superman movie. I don't want to sound like I'm looking down on any types of families, but to me, the concept of Superman and Lois having a child out of wedlock just doesn't feel right for the character. This whole thing might have worked in a What if? or an animated movie, but not for the Superman movie franchise. I think the reason that so many of us fans are opposed to the concept of Jason is that, as fans, we grow accustomed to a certain status quo for characters like Superman. Superman's supporting cast has remained pretty much the same for most of his existence. It's not a big deal to make little changes, (adding Richard was fine), but throwing a kid into the mix dramatically changes things. We really don't want a movie that's dramatically different from how we envision Superman's world.
Another major problem with Superman Returns was the choice to make the movie a loose continuation of the Donner/ Reeve Superman movies. Those movies were great for the time. They were brilliantly directed and most fans still hail Christopher Reeve as the definitive Superman. While I fully agree with any director's choice to pay tribute to these films and look to them for inspiration, it is necessary to move forward. Bryan Singer didn't really bring very much of anything new or creative to the film because he pretty much tried to make a modern Richard Donner Superman movie. (Think of it this way: If Richard Donner did what Bryan Singer did, Superman The Movie would pretty much have been a movie version of the George Reeves Superman TV show) The opening and closing of the film were direct imitations of the Donner films. The interpretations of the characters were also basically the same. This actually put Brandon Routh at a disadvantage. In the past, every version of Superman was pretty distinctive. For example, Dean Cain's Superman was a completely different take than Christopher Reeve's because the makers of Lois and Clark had a different idea on how they wanted to present the character. Routh really wasn't creating his own Superman. He was pretty much doing his version of Christopher Reeve's Superman. While it wasn't exactly a copy, I believe that if he was given the chance to do a very different version of the character, he would have stood a better chance of making a lasting impression.
I've always thought that Superman Returns was a much better Superman 3 than Superman 3 was. However, it really doesn't make sense to re-introduce a character to moviegoers by making a continuation of a 26 year-old movie that general audiences really don't know very well. People are familiar with the Christopher Reeve Superman movies to an extent, but for the most part, the young people of today have never watched them. Most of the people who went to see Superman Returns did not understand the references to the older movies. I'm not saying that little Easter eggs aren't cool for us fans, but when you're making a movie that you want to appeal to general audiences, you should make something that people can easily appreciate without any background information. It's important to strike a balance between what's rewarding to long-time fans and what's accessible and entertaining to just about anyone.
The last major issue Superman Returns created was its interpretation of Lex Luthor. I actually enjoyed Kevin Spacey's performance as Lex. However, the portrayal of Lex Luthor as an elusive, high-profile criminal is outdated. It worked for Gene Hackman, but in the years since his performance, the character of Lex has evolved. Lex is much more powerful as a rich businessman with unlimited resources. He can still do anything the old Lex could do, but now he's much harder to catch because he can cover it up. Superman Returns pretty much used the same crappy land plot as the first Superman movie. In the trailer, Lex boasts "I'll have advanced technology, thousands of years beyond what anyone could throw at me!" When I saw that I was thinking that he had some kind of powerful Kryptonian weapon.
It was a rock. A rock that grew and got really big. His big plan was to grow this rock, destroy most of North America, and sell the land. What exactly was there stopping anyone from sending some planes to bomb this land mass and kill him? Nothing really. It was really one of the most poorly conceived movie villain plans I've ever seen. Maybe even worse than Lex's own plot of nuking the San Andreas fault in Superman: The Movie. The major problem with this Lex is that, even ignoring the stupidity of this first plan, he lacks the potential to become a greater threat. In the comics, Lex was the president of the Unites States for a while. That's a lot of power! If Lex is a known criminal on the run, he could never rise to anything like that. I'll have more on how I'd like to see Lex later.
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