Superman Returns

Superman comes back to Earth after a five year absence, just in time for the heyday of comic-book movies and Lex Luthor's newest nefarious plot. He learns his old flame, Lois Lane, now completely frigid, wrote an article "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman," which won a pulitzer prize. All this despite the fact she has a mental debilitation preventing her from predicting what a guy looks like without glasses on (though, it seems, everyone else suffers from this disease in this parallel universe filled with blithering idiots). She also has a kid who happens to be five years old, and a boyfriend who thinks it's totally natural for babies to be born in seven months by punching out their mother's vagina.

Luthor thinks it would great, while saying every line he ever said in the older movies, to come up another scheme involving real estate. He has, once again, a cartoonish female sidekick who I can only assume he keeps around for sexual reasons, because it's clear to the audience that nobody, especially Lex, would mind if she were dropped into a giant bin of rat poison and had to eat her way out.

Lex sails ship up to the North Pole, steals some of Superman's uber crystals, and demonstrate that water, evidently, makes Kryptonian materiel go berserk. A little speck of crystal in water grows to a gigantic size, sending out en enormous electromagnetic pulse, and gives Kal Penn his only line in the movie.

Lex takes this crystal, fashions himself a neat little cylindrical tube made of Kryptonite, and decides to launch it into the Atlantic Ocean, growing himself a new continent that will destroy the United States and kill billions of people, in a scheme that was clearly as thought out as John McCain's choice of running mate.

Superman naturally saves the day, but only after getting his ass kicked and rolling around the gigantic Kryptonite continent like it was made of down feathers. For those of you who just escaped from your commune that made you believe it was 1880, Kryptonite is Superman's greatest weakness. It literally makes his blood boil, and exposure to its radiation can kill him. But we'll be damned if that's going to stop him from frolicking all over it or lifting a gigantic mass of it into outer space.

There's then a bit that might be mistaken for Grey's Anatomy.

THE END.

Nothing.

You can enjoy this movie quite a bit. But that doesn't mean you can't find some of the glaring problems within it. But it's like your wife, whom you love despite her flaws. And also, you only have to watch her once a year, and not think about her too much for it to be enjoyable.

1. Lex Luthor's Idea Is Retarded

There's been some bad ideas in the history of Hollywood villains. Kidnapping Harrison Ford's family and messing with a building that has John McClain in it, to name a few. But this has got to be the most harebrained scheme from a bald villain ever.

He's going to... grow a continent. That's the big idea. So he can own the land and... sell it? Fuck, we don't know. As if this could ever possibly get away with this without being nuked or assassinated. As he says, "I'll have alien technology, bring it on!" Good call, except the only technology you've unlocked from these little gems is 'sprinkle water on it and it'll grow.' Essentially you can make yourself a nice little rock garden from the equivalent of alien Sea Monkeys. Awesome, we'll see how great that works when the sniper's bullet gives you a third nostril.

Not only that, but the land he creates looks about as hospitable as Rosie O'Donald's vagina, with only a few less jagged edges. He says he can see a new beach house there; all we can see is a lifeless crag covered in seaweed. It looks like just the place for farmland too; apparently wheat really thrives in radioactive solid rock.

Okay, Lex's arrogance is always part of the character. He always thinks he's smarter than everybody else, and at least twelve steps ahead. But that brings me to the next point:

2. This Movie Was Stuck In The Past

This movie is more a modern remake than a direct sequel. Countless lines were reused, but even the evil plot is a rip off. In the first Superman, Lex Luthor's big scheme was to buy all the land just east of the San Andreas fault, than nuke the fault to start an earthquake causing western California to sink into the sea and creating new, valuable beach front property.

Yeah, it's a little wacky, but that plan still sounds like String Theory compared to his new idea. If these were military strategies, this new one is Hitler invading Russia (Or the Iraq war, if you want to be more topical and make a political statement).

So the movie recycles old lines, puts the old plot through the "Redo it, only make it a little dumber" process, all in the name of staying true in spirit to the originals.

Translation: Bryan Singer got off to Richard Donner's old work. Superman Returns was such a love-child it didn't add anything new to the table. In the modern stories, Lex Luthor is a mastermind who runs a large corporation. He is a beloved citizen who works in shadows to do his dastardly deeds. He is brilliant, and he is ruthless, but he is interesting. He often works for what he believes to be the greater good, and to reach the pinnacle of humanity. He's someone to fear.

In Superman Returns he is an evil real estate mogul who surrounds himself with incompetence, makes an occasional interesting speech about Greek mythology, and whose goal is simply to be known as a great criminal mastermind with some totally bad ass crystals. And how many of those stories have we already heard?

Like, BILLIONS!

3. Lois Lane

Who would be the woman to steal the heart of a god on earth? She needs to be smart, caring, bold, and smoking hot. Only one of those describes Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane, and 'smoking' is probably too strong an adjective. She is, in short, a completely frigid bitch. She treats Clark like the dog shit she walked in on the way to work, that then collected the tears of orphans and the blood of innocent before she made it to the Daily Planet. Even Margot Kidder's Lois acknowledged Clark as a friend.

And speaking about Margot Kidder, this is supposed to be five years after that last movie right? Well here's Lois Lane then.

And here's what she looks like now.

4. These People Are Not The Smartest

We have slowly come to accept that people don't recognize Clark when he has glasses on. Part of the explanation is that people don't know Superman has a secret identity, that he lives in blue tights and a cape.

What tries our logic in a universe where an alien that looks like a human flies due to yellow sunlight is that nobody connects the dots when Clark Kent and Superman both return after five years on the same day. It's bad enough they all do the "Do you think Superman can-- Clark? Where did that rascal go?" But this is, within three hours of each other, the sudden appearance of two people who look alike (they can at least acknowledge that), after precisely five years absence. Five year old autistic children figure it out in thirteen seconds. What is with these people?

5. They Gave Him A Kid...

This is a mistake on so many levels. First of all, let's look at this scientifically. Kryptonians and humans are, in fact, different species. So should this be possible? Wasn't it part of Superman lore that he couldn't have children unless exposed to gold kryptonite, stripping him of his powers and making him human? Not here, oh no, he has a kid. Sure, the chromosomes don't exactly line up, but hey, whatever. Is Jason like a mule? Is he sterile and slightly stupid? He's half human. If it helps, imagine a human screwing a chimp. Think of Jason as the offspring of Jane Goodall and Cocoa (I maim the first person to tell me Cocoa was a gorilla. And that they were both female). Yeah the DNA is, like, really similar... But not exact.

Okay, okay, science fiction has always been lax on humanoid/human relations. Spock was, in fact, have human half... elf, or something, so let's assume this is possible. Now let's think of the effects on the kid. He's half of two species. That just spells therapy later in life.

It's difficult for mulatto children growing up in the U.S., since they don't really know where they belong. Should they rob a convenience store, or cut holes in their linens and shout hate speech towards their darker half? (Or should they, possibly, act in manner that isn't the most negative stereotype of their two races?) They should strive to better the world around them. Hell, we might someday have a mulatto president.

Not at all relevant, but I thought it was fitting, especially for you asshats that didn't pick up the sarcasm about the mulatto president.

Ok, sure, he can grow up fine, it's fiction. Except what the hell were they planning to do with Superman's son? Were they going to run around as a father son duo? Were we going to Superman play Daddy? Bryan Singer promised to up the action in the second, but that would be hard when it's interrupted by Supes teaching his son how to play catch.

And now let's get into the really messed up part: Superman banged Lois.

Now, this gets graphic, but all of Superman's muscles are juiced up on Solar Steroids, right? Including that little penis muscle that aids in, ahem, reproductive situations, which is an involuntary and uncontrollable act. Which meant that what should have happened is Lois Lane should have had the top of her head blown apart by Super Semen that rocket through her body like JFK's magic bullet.

Just saying....

But okay, that's fine, that didn't happen. Except she has no idea who this dude is, and possibly doesn't even remember when they hooked up. She's remarkably indifferent to what she could very easily presume to be rape at bullet speed.

Superman is always someone to look up to for guidance and goodness. While Batman might work in moral ambiguities, Superman is a straight shooter. What did Superman Returns teach us?

1. It's completely okay to impregnate someone who has no idea what your real name is and doesn't remember the situation, as long as you leave for the kid's early developmental years.

2. It's totally okay to watch said girl in her house, with her family, so long as you do it with X-Ray vision and dress up in your nice bright costume.

3. Go ahead and make that five year relationship your ex-girlfriend is in unstable. You're a superhero, do whatever the fuck you want!

Oh, what the fuck, even Batman is looking at you in disgust now. The guy who drops mobsters from five stories up thinks you crossed the line.

This debate rages across the internet, did Superman Returns make any money? "It probably didn't, which is why they aren't making a sequel," you might say. You don't keep around a whore that takes your money for a boob job than makes none of it back, do you? Of course not.

The movie cost 200-250 million dollars to make, admittedly a lot of cash. To be fair, 50 million was already in the project before Bryan Singer even touched it. The project spent years in developmental hell where that cash was dumped into it, in various different forms, to no results (including one where Nicolas Cage starred as Superman, which we can only assume would have been Ghost Rider terrible, and another where Superman fights a giant mechanical spider, and another written by JJ Abrams where Lex is Kryptonian and his S shield actually has swords to fight with... Jesus, thank God we got this movie).

It brought in 400 million dollars total, from the states and abroad. So did it make money? Yes, of course it did.

The Joker laughs at what you call a profit.

But not that much...