well that is the difference, because superman hasn't been in the big screen fora while he doesn't have the general fan base that pirates has.
and from reviews pirates is a star lower than superman returns, so it generally is for a fact that superman is considered overall from everyones opinions put together is better than pirates, its just the new fan base, but now superman is reintroduced, the sequel is the defining moment for superman and contemporary cinema!
Th fanbase from the comics alone would guarantee a decent return... you have parents who watched the originals and liked em bringing their kids to returns too...
POTC wasn't great at all to be honest though, i agree...
word up, i boycotted potc II...not that it matters like all of america saw the retarded film...i watched the first potc at my friends house on video and it was difficult to sit through the whole thing, why people love it so much is beyond me....anyway i'm glad you've seen superman 5 times and are planning on seeing it again, i've seen it 4 times (once in 3rd) and plan on seeing it at least once more, and each time i go i make sure to bring someone with me who hasn't seen it yet and hopefully they pass on the message that it's an amazing movie to their friends who haven't seen it, so far everyone i've seen it with has loved it as well, just not as much as i do
Superman returns is a horrible, horrible movie. Only people that want to put their noses in Singer's ass would like this movie.
It was totally un-original in plot as it was the SAME plot from the 1978 movie.
Plot=suck
Spiderman plot from the comic=1 billion $$
Superman rehashed from 1978= not even 200 million$$
go figure
The villan was a joke, nothing menacing at all, no one was threatened on a massive scale, yet billions were going to die? Maybe die laughing.
Villain=suck
A child? This Superman was supposed to be a continuance of the Donner films even down to the sappy line after he saved the plane. "Fly is still the safest form of transportation, yada, yada". Yet here we have Lois a single parent? Totally stupid, made no sense at all. If she had a child with supes why doesnt she remember he was clark? Giantic plot hole that destroys the entire film an the whole reason to have Superman Return ironically. For the whole reason to have superman "return" was to insert a 5 year old child, remove the child an there is very little that makes you recall he returned from space.
I'll also point to a comparsion with the HULK movie when the Hulk was falling from space, there was a magnificent cut scene. Now in Superman Returns, when supes falls from spaces all we see is supes falling as nearly a tiny dot from a 1/2 mile away. Horribly conceptualized shots and action in every concievable way. The Smallville show puts you closer and sometimes INSIDE the action of explosions, ect.
In short the director is a moron when it comes to action, this was a love story for a Jerry Springer episode. X-men sucked, if you like X-men no wonder you like this movie.
And if you think Potc 2 was a bad movie then there is no hope for you. That movie totally delivered.
I agree on POTC. It sucked...big time. I think, overall, this is the worst summer for movies that I can ever remember. I am now only looking forward to the fall and the following offerings:
1. The Prestige (The new Chris Nolan film with alot of Batman Begins cast. Check out the trailer online. Awsome!)
2. Casino Royale (The new, apparently gritty, Bond flick explaining the origin of 007.)
3. Night Listener (The new Robin Williams flick. A psychological thriller.)
__________________ And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
actually is was fairly plausible considering that we can't compare it to anything we've actually done, and they kept a high amount of realism for a superhero flick, like the plane having vibration running through it when superman held it from the front and the city have mass vibration or earthquake type movement from the crack in the earth forming from the new island pushing apart the land masses, it wasnt too bad at all compared to the originals
why does everybody think that the child is a plothole? isn't it obvious that lois met richard right after boning superman? and that they concieved? and had not gotten married since lois is still hoping for the return of superman? highly plausible...
the plothole is in the end when lois told him he is the father of the child. how can she not know he's clark by then? did superman only erase the part where lois knows that he and clark are one and the same?
I'm not a fan of the old films either. I liked them when I was young, but now they just seem lame. I do think the time thing was asinine, but picking up and island made of green K just seems stupid to me. That's like Captain Planet picking up an island made of trash & toxic waste.
Lets face it. S.R. tanked finacially. WHat are studio execs to do. Are they going to make another Superman movie, and isn't that suicide? Fire the diretor and get Speilberg to do it...
Fcking Singer ruined Superman, man. Hard.
__________________ "The darkside, Sidious, is an illness no true Sith wishes to be cured of, my young apprentice .."
Re: Unfortunately, Superman Returns Is Just Super-Bad. Here's Why.
I agree that they lacked serious emotional chemistry, but the kid wasn't put into the story because the writers thought they lacked it in the movie making process.. I don't know if you're BSing, or if you seriously believe that point.
I agree completely with point 4. Lex talks about having advanced alien technology.. but once the rock grows in the ocean, they just sit there and play cards... WTF?! That technology turned out to be as advanced as the "magic rocks" i used to grow in water when i was a kid...
I'm hoping that a lot of this will work out to be a great setup for the next movie - which i think it seriously could be. I mean hell, there's a new krypton now, and supes has a son! ... but, if singer brings back Zod and company for the next one, i'll shoot him myself..
Last edited by Gangularis on Oct 12th, 2006 at 12:59 AM
This is the funniest review i've read of this movie
Credit goes to Question of SHC.
Its long, so beware......................
Okay I just saw the film yesterday with my friends since it only came out here on Friday.
Now we thought it would be okay. That the trailer made it look like it could be good. The fact that the film has been more or less getting rave reviews, made us think this could even be good.
But there were some niggling doubts. There were tales of horrid box office returns. And threads with names like "Is the Superman franchise dead again?"
But despite all that, we went to see it, with an opening enough mind.
Due to the fact that two of our party are ALWAYS late getting out, we didn't get into the cinema until the Lex Luthor seducing the lady for her money scene. I'd like to know what scenes I missed, though I imagine it was some nice John Williams type musical score.
But we sat and watched the movie, occasionally whispering comments to each other. And what did we think of the movie?
OH MY GOOD GOD, WHAT....THE....****?
It was terrible, it was seriously bad. I read all these big newspapers at home like the Irish Independent and Irish Times giving it rave reviews and I think "maybe the film would be good enough to make the casual people look past the kid-nature of superheroes and recognise the deep layers that Superhero films have to offer." Yet a small newspaper from Thurles offered a more accurate review of that film then any of the national newspaper.
Let's list some of the big problems with the film.
Brandon Routh was terrible. Everyone was harping about how wonderful his performance was, it wasn't. It was as if he was doing a weak impersonation of Christopher Reeve. His Clark Kent looked like Reeve's Kent. But his Superman? Nothing, he lacked the real charm that Reeve had. He didn't do the little things that Reeve would do like Wink at the audience at the end or rescue a cat from a tree. (The only thing he did do that was right was in the scene where he puts out the house fire, when the camera looks at him he gives this kind of awkward shrug and smile. That was nice.)
Kate Bosworth was awful. Now traditionally every female lead in a superhero movie has been awful. About the only one who I thought held her own was Michelle Pfeiffer in Catwoman, and that's probably because she is a fantastic actress. But Bosworth was extra bag, exceeded only by Katie Holmes in Batman Begins.
Her Lois Lane lacked moxy. What's more she seemed just pushy, whiney and selfish. She was a plane bad human being; her husband seemed like a far nicer guy and better person. So props to James Mardsen.
Kevin Spacey was good. Even if I disagreed with the whacky Luthor, who did things that were just dumb, he was still a Super-actor in a world of wooden planks. He pulled the film up to 1 star (which alas got cut in half by the scene with the piano. But more on that later.)
Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) was a guy I just wanted to punch. If this guy was my pal, I would drag him and Aquaman to a desert and make them compete for a glass of water. The SCENE where he showed up, after literally 3 seconds worth of acting my friend next to me said (quite correctly) that this was the worst Jimmy Olsen ever. (Amazing considering we haven't seen too many Jimmy Olsen stuff.) The Jimmy from Lois and Clark with Dean Caine was billions of times better.
Frank Langella as Perry White, I miss Lane Smith. This Perry White just came across as senile. Though him saying to Lois that "she can't write about sex" was so hilarious that we made a running joke out of it. No where near as good as J.K Simmons (J.Johna Jameson in Spidey.)
Parker Posey as Lex's whore. Yes, that is her name; I was shocked to learn too. And man she was shrill and annoying. Just like the one from the first Superman I guess.
Lex's thugs. Wow, now these guys epitomised so many problems with this movie AND with the Superman franchise as a whole.
First off, they were supposed to be Lex's muscle, yet none of them are given characters. How were you supposed to tell them apart. Well one of them was Brutus (the guy who was killed by the piano in a really badly done manner.) I mean the whole 15 minute sequence involving him was painful. From the kid going off to play the piano to him showing a disturbing tattoo on the back of his head, to him playing the piano along side the kid, to him appearing to be the most incompetent goon ever by leaving Lois unattended beside a FAX MACHINE, to the really nasty and ugly scenes where he's beating on Lois.
And that's it. The rest of the thugs? No character. None whatso ever. I mean one of the guys was made carry a camera around with him all the time (for NO plot purpose) just so the audience would recognise that he's not the same as the other 2 guys. The camera served no other role. All it meant was that Lex was just creating evidence that he committed all these crimes.
My brother said it best, there wasn't even "Lex's trusted lieutenant." They had no screen presence. And in a noticeable way, they were what's wrong with Superman Returns. No charisma. No reason to be there. Do they do anything? Well there was the great scene where stole the gun for the ship...
No wait, they didn't show that scene at all, just implied it. Because that's what this film needed, less action.
And in another way, they were what's wrong with Superman as a franchise. THESE guys are the villains? These are the guys that Superman has to fight? They spent 300 million dollars on this movie, and these are the villains Superman is going up against? No Brainiac, no Metalo, no Doomsday, no Parasite, no Bizaro, no General Zod, not even the other shitty Superman villains like Bloodsport or the Toyman or the Prankster. These nameless thugs. I say once again. What....the....****!
Then there was the kid. At times he was bearable, at times a burden. But it was the piano scene, which was far too long and ugly and killed any ambiguity that Singer was going for in the “is he Superman JR” plot. What’s odd is even after that scene, they go back to it being ambiguous by having the dad open the door to save them.
Now I’ve been tearing into this movie for 3 pages now, and I’ve only just stopped talking about the characters. Now we move onto the story itself.
The biggest problem with this story was, it didn’t know if it was an original movie of a sequel. It’s the problem with trying to follow a film from years later.
Batman Begins made the decision early on. The Burton and Schumacher movies didn’t happen. This was a new story. And then it went on to tell the Batman story. Grand it worked. It showed his origin, setup everything about Batman and moved on to tell a Batman story. (not a great Batman tale, but still, a great movie.) Ditto for the Punisher for Marvel.
Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk, Blade. These movies didn’t have this problem, since they were the first crack at telling these heroes tales. They went and made their movies and set out origin, setup and story.
Now let’s look at the other direction. You have sequels like Blade 2, Spider-Man 2, X2, they all decide to follow on with what happened in their first film. They don’t bother trying to do the origin and motivation since the audience remembers it from the first movie. They just get down to telling the story.
Superman Returns does both and neither. It decides that the Donner films happened, yet doesn’t start telling us a story. They weirdly spend time trying to establish this as being a fresh start to the story without ever actually going into origins or what motivates Clark to do what he does. I mean, it’s like they want us to believe that this is a setup/first film to justify the lack of action and scenes of Superman doing what he does best (save the world.) But at the same time they want use to believe it’s a follow up so they don’t have to explain to the audience ANYTHING about the characters and why they do what they do. In short it’s the worst of both worlds.
The film is basically a shameless rip-off of the original films (and as my friend put it, all it was missing was them taping Richard Pryor’s corpse to skis and pushing it down a skyscraper.) It’s the original films done again, with better FX, no charm, no levity, more bizarre scenes and no intelligent enhancements made to the original. It doesn’t go for a schmaltz factor with Superman flying about the city in full, you can see everything that’s happening lighten. Spider-Man had that. It had scenes with him swinging around town where you could clearly see what was happening. Even in the night time web swinging scenes, it made sense.
With Superman, none of the flying scenes it’s clear what’s happening. Either it’s all gloomy and downcast in weather/lighting (which I suppose is to play into the Christ parallels, and man did that cross pose near the end grate.) so you can’t enjoy what’s happening. Or it’s happening in some big fast paced action scene where you don’t have the time to focus on it. It just doesn’t have scenes that make you feel good. The closest it comes is the Shuttle Rescue, but even that feels botched because it feels like the pacing of it is all wrong, makes Superman look bumbling to add tension and has him just crib lines from the original. (which plays against the idea that it’s a follow up.) I mean, it’s possible I missed it, but is the first full on shot of Superman we get in this movie, the kind of quick pan of him flying up to catch the plane/shuttle? I mean in a movie like this, the first unquestioned shot of the hero in action should be just a focus on him, flying full on with the dramatic music going full blare. It should just focus on him so the audience can get the shot we want in all Superhero films. The shot that mirrors a comic books panel nature where you can stop and just stare at the one perfect pose of the hero dramatically flying into action. That is the thing we get in every Superhero movie. And in Superman’s big return scene we don’t even get that.
Instead it’s got scenes like Superman being in a hospital, or Lois being “shocked” that Lex Luthor wears wigs.
And let’s not get into how stupid the story is. Let’s not. Okay I will. (because really, this post is all about me trying to explain all my thoughts on the film and maybe try to come to terms with why this film almost gave me mind cancer.)
Like how Lex Luthor has to seduce grannies just to get her money. Well not even that. He just seems to do it to get her Yacht and Helicopter. This is the big villain? A male version of Anna Nichole Smith?
Like how distracting Superman’s cape was. I don’t know what material it was made of, but it looked like the same stuff used in Daredevil’s costume. I kept thinking “did Superman murder Ben Affleck and make his costume into a cape?”
Like the scene where Lois Lane breaks unto Lex’s yacht and is shocked (complete with shocking music) that Lex has wigs. I mean it’s not even like she goes “oh my God. These wigs are made out of human hair!” And then Lex just walks in on them in his pyjama’s while brushing his teeth in full on “umm…what the Hell are you doing in my house?” mode.
Like how Clark returns to his old job…and does seemingly nothing. I mean is Perry so blinded by Superman’s return that he doesn’t notice how Clark Kent just seems to sit around and play solitaire on his computer? Since he’s given the blackout story, clearly does nothing with it, so Lois does.
Like how Superman is weakened after about ten seconds of being on the Kryptonite island for ten seconds makes him weak enough so that he can be beaten in THAT scene. But then later on he can fly the damn thing into orbit, with a sliver of Kryptonite still inside him, and have the island grow large jagged chunks of green Kryptonite almost into his face and still he can fly with it.
Ah yes, the Passion of the Superman scene. Where he’s getting beaten by the thugs. I didn’t mind the religious overtones to this scene. Or that Superman gets beaten on because he has no powers, since well he hasn’t been in fights without his powers and won in the films.
What does get me is how much of an absolutely pussy Brendon Routh sounds like when he’s getting beaten up. I swear I heard him cry, sob, and even plead “not in the face” while he’s being pounded on.
Like how after they dump Superman’s body, it’s made to look like he’s pushed into the sea. Only for them to decide later, that really he’s on a lake. It just makes the rescue scene more implausible.
Like all the other small, stupid scenes in the film that at the time I went “what the hell was that about?” that became so numerous that I’ve almost completely forgotten all of them. (like why all the models in Lex’s town screamed when they burst into flames.)
And the big one, Lex’s grand scheme. So he learns about all this advanced technology. He decides he wants to create his own continent that he’s master of. How Lex? Seriously. You’ve just raised this hunk of land, and you think that makes you master of it? At least when COBRA tried that trick, they had lawyers in every major nearby city move in immediately to legally claim it. Oh and defences. What defences.
You went into a big speech about how you’d have technology thousands of years ahead of anything else to defend yourself with. I saw none of it. There wasn’t a single gun on that island Lex. You didn’t even hire the mini gun guy from that bank hiest.
I saw no cool laser turrets to protect you from the inevitable Daisy Cutters that will be dropped on your head.
Oh and you said that the nations of the world will pay you. Which nations Lex? From your map you flooded out American and Europe. Who is going to want to move to your barren and radioactive rock? (and correct me if I’m wrong. But is it really a good idea to be on a continent that is still forming and shaping and growing.)
By the way, when it comes to making money, wouldn’t you have been able to make more by just selling the crystals to the military? I know there are quite a few Middle Eastern armies that would gladly pay for a speck of a crystal that when put into water, creates a massive EMP, even for a few seconds.
Lastly the action. Dear Lord did we get hardly any action in that film. I would have loved to be at the daily shooting of that film where someone suggested “we need to slow down this film. We need less action beats people, less action!”
And all though out that film, our minds kept turning to that hilarious Kevin Smith story about John Peters. Truly the spirit of Smith was with to keep that movie somewhat entertaining. We said to each other in the Jor-El explains stuff scene “Whoa! Who the **** is Kal-El?”
When Lex just plain walked into the Fortress of Solitude we asked “Wait. Where are Superman’s guards, his soldiers?”
Because as crazy as Peter’s sounds, he was right that scripts need an action beat every few pages. By the end of that movie, I wanted to see fights with Polar Bears. I was willing for Ty-Zor or for Lex Luthor to declare that the pod was his. I was even pleading for Superman to fight a giant Spider in the third act. I wanted Rathner to have worked on this and Bryan Singer on X3. That way we would have gotten one bad Superman film (maybe not as bad as this one) and the possibility of a better X film. What…the…****!
Superman Returns was an awful movie. The only person who benefited from this movie was Nicolas Cage. Because he got paid 25 million dollars and didn’t have to even go near this turkey.
KMC Community Forums
Aug 4th, 2006 01:04 PM
agreed
That's what I was thinking
