SUPERMAN RETURNS **SPOILERS** review thread

[nightwing]

Just to whip this expired equine once again:

"Failure" is a relative term.  SR has taken in well over $400 million at this point and DVD sales don't start til tomorrow.  Sure it didn't do the business "Pirates" did, but coming in second at the box office isn't like coming in second in a football game, is it?  The latter is failure by definition, the former not so much. By any sane reasoning, a take of nearly a half BILLION dollars is nothing to cry about.

[Permanus]

Just to whip this expired equine once again:

"Failure" is a relative term.  SR has taken in well over $400 million at this point and DVD sales don't start til tomorrow.  Sure it didn't do the business "Pirates" did, but coming in second at the box office isn't like coming in second in a football game, is it?  The latter is failure by definition, the former not so much. By any sane reasoning, a take of nearly a half BILLION dollars is nothing to cry about.

Yeah; they've certainly made their money back. In sheer financial terms, they'll probably make more money out of the sequel, since it is unlikely to be stuck in development hades* as long as SR was.

*Because development heck sounds really lame.

[nightwing]

Hey, hey, watch the language, buddy!

Keep it up and Rao will install that Greek filter he's been looking at.

[Aldous]

I saw "Superman Returns" yesterday, so I was finally able to join this reviews thread. I wonder if any of you have changed your opinions with repeated viewings of the film? I would like to see it again, and I don't think I can really consolidate my ideas about it until I let it all sink in a bit more.

Some very basic points & first impressions:

I thought Superman's physique was perfect and he looked fantastic in the costume. He was practically a Curt Swan drawing come to life.

Clark should be understated in his appearance and personality, yes, but not irrelevant, which he was in the film. Did someone forget Clark Kent is one of the major characters of "Superman".

The super-feats were amazing. I really enjoyed watching them. Everything is a surprise to me in films because I never watch trailers or advance clips or anything like that. Superman in action impressed me.

I just don't get the spiky-crystal look for things Kryptonian. It was a bad idea decades ago and I was disappointed to see it all again. Wouldn't the film crew have had a new designer this time around?

[nightwing]

I've had the DVD for a couple weeks now but still haven't got round to watching it, so I can't speak to your question about multiple viewings (only saw it once in the theater...too hard to line up a sitter!).

I agree on the super-feats...great stuff that with today's technology is quite believable, much more so than 25 years ago (even though there were moments in S:TM we believed a man could fly, a lot of the non-flying stuff was as shaky as anything the TV show did 20 years before *that*).

Also agree on the suit, and Routh.  As worked up as the fanboys got about the liberties taken with the traditional suit, it really did work on film.  In fact, the darker colors are a lot less jarring to me than the bright primary hues Routh's predecessors wore.  Some things can't be translated literally from comics without looking insane.

I actually liked the way Clark faded into the background.  It worked a lot better for me than the "stand aside, I'll beat this gangster up" toughness of George Reeves or the poor man's "Nutty Professor" Chris Reeve came up with.  I'm not sure it would work as well in another work environment, but Clark has surrounded himself with glamorous, driven type-A's at the Planet, which is the perfect place for a shrinking violet to hide.

And yes, the crystal bit didn't appeal to me when I was 14 and it's only lost ground every year since.  It struck me then and now as a "cheat" to get out of designing alien technology for Krypton and the Fortress.  "Sure, it looks like Carlsbad Caverns, but trust me all those rocks are really highly sophisticated devices."  Yeah, right.

As I said earlier in this thread (probably...I'm too lazy too look), my biggest gripe with this film -- which again I've only seen once but LOVED that time -- is that it hews too closely to the Donner/Lester films, which despite conventional wisdom I feel are not really great cinema, let alone "definitive" Superman.

[Klar Ken T5477]

I haven't seen it again nor bought the dvd.  Most of the great SFX are in the trailer so......

Like Nightwing, I was never to fond of Krypton's crystal technology in the first go-round.  I can forgive no head band or red sun on Jor-El but the whole crysla thing smacked of 70s art school hippie-iness.  And since I had worked on a crystal theme project (not my idea) for a combined class in production design, I ain't kidding.  I fought against it in class too. 

Where are the gleaming spires of comicdom's Krypton past I so long for?   

[Gangbuster]

Now that I've watched it AFTER the Donner cut of Superman II, I like it better.

The Donner cut is better than Superman Returns, though.

[Uncle Mxy]

I got the two DVD-version of Superman Returns as part of the 14-DVD Ultimate collection.   The transfer is grainy, dark, and full of artifacts, like they didn't get the compression right.  It doesn't have the "Return To Krypton" sequence.  It appears they want to do an even-more-special Superman Returns product at some later date and screw the people who got -only- the two-DVD one.  I'd be feeling jipped if I bought the Ultimate collection strictly for SR, that's for sure.