Superman Returns Trailer

It looks good. It's Bryan Singer, so it will probably hit the right tone.

Couple of problems:

Kevin Spacey seems to be trying to recapture the magic of Gene Hackman's funny Lex Luthor, and I think that's a mistake. You just can't touch Hackman's Luthor, so it's not wise to try. Go the other way. Just making him chilly and megalomaniacal and evil. Not funny.

Superman looks like he's 15. Maybe I'm just getting old, but most people in this movie look like they're 15 to me. Including Frank Langella.

Hm. I guess I am getting old.

But it looks pretty good. Not really sure what the plot is -- Luthor has stolen some very advanced Kryptonian technology from the crystaline databanks at the Fortress of Solitude, but damned if I know what the technology does. If the trailer's any clue, it's a superadvanced... machine-gun.

Nah. Can't be that. But they do keep showing automatic gunfire as if it's the Big MacGuffin Machine.

We are definitely in the golden age of superhero movies. Batman Begins, the Spiderman films, Superman Returns, the incredible X-Man movie and the good if not great sequel... they're finally getting them right.

At least the big ones. And even the lesser superhero movies, while low-budget and often badly conceived, are at least attempts to make real superhero movies, not spoofs of them. Daredevil and Punisher were awful, but at least they were bad for understandable reasons (i.e., bad script, indifferent direction, low budget, Ben Affleck). They weren't bad because they just decided to become outright spoofs like the Burton-Schumacher Batmans and the last two (shudder!) Supermans.

Batman Begins, Superman Returns. Warner Bros. is getting all cute on us, huh?

They were seriously considering rebooting both series with a team-up at one point; I guess they realized that financially, that was kind of a dumb idea. (Why put out just one movie when you can put out two?) But who knows. Maybe one day.

Thanks to Dave at Garfield-Ridge.

posted by Ace at 10:11 PM

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