Superman Spoiled

b/c of my constant desire to be like Jesus (that is, the jesus, the rusted jesus)...here is my own review of Superman.

I was talking to a friend and she asked if I thought Superman was worth seeing. I said, "well, i mean, you have to see it." She replied that she doesn't believe in that. And, for those who don't believe in that, (er...i think by "that" i mean seeing major blockbusters that everyone else is seeing), then maybe don't go see it.

I guess it depends on what type of movie you like. Because I don't think Superman is comparable to X-Men or Spiderman or Batman. Superman is plain ol' vanilla. That's why you either love him or hate him. It's his virtue and lack of imperfection. It's his naivete and his willingness to keep trying and pretending to be Clark Kent when he could just be fucking Superman.

[Cynics exit stage left].

So, if you're in the mood to see a movie with a non-engaging plot that has pretty visuals and big crashes, Superman is up your alley.

Thankfully, I was in the mood to see a movie like that. Anything "pretty to look at" keeps my attention during law school/bar exam studies. Hence the reason VH1 or E! pop-culture trash tv is always on at my house. I like being a zombie and seeing "pretty colors" and hearing clips and soundbytes that don't really make me think.

[Film critics exit stage right...trust me, you'll just want to rip the script out of the actor's hands and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite].

But all of this made me really appreciate Superman. Here is a storyline that begs for modern day interpretation. In the 1940s, Superman was on the All-Star Squadron. Where is Superman to fight "the War on Terror" (is that why Lex's BFF bad guy is a "brown person" - b/c while of Gujarati Indian descent all brown people really look the same to us (ps/ you know him from Harold & Kumar if you couldn't quite place it...b/c i couldn't quite place it...)) or the "War on Drugs" (minus his attempt to keep Lois from smoking) or even "the Inconvenient Truth" that is global warming (b/c making a whole new continent will definitely take global warming up to the next level?). And, where are all the non-white people "on the good side"? But Singer stays away from all of this. He leaves Superman as his old iconic self.

By doing so, for me at least, Singer makes the experience more about what Superman has meant over the years to each generation as opposed to what Superman means to us now. If Superman is Jesus or if Superman was gonna save the US from the Nazis and this is the perfect, idyllic world waiting for a savior, then I don't want a savior. I don't want that perfect little world. I don't want my Superhero to save a plane, after sending a ship to outerspace, in the middle of a baseball game with big-ass logos for Budweiser (America's favorite beer *wink wink*).

And neither does most of the US audience (at least from the consensus per the reviews of Superman). Which I think is a good thing. We need more. We don't want to blindly believe in comic book heroes to save the day. We question. We work hard and we don't wait.

Per my newest obsession, I listened to The Treatment podcast when Bryan Singer was the guest (as with all the other recent Treatment podcasts...). During the interview, Singer said that he was drawn to Superman because of his interest in duplicity - "how you can't judge a book by its cover." The whole Clark Kent thing. The whole not-human thing. The whole x-men thing and the usual suspects thing. People are not who they seem at first. Again, I guess I seem to miss the point b/c my appreciation for the movie came more with the duplicity, the growth, the fascination with the existential teachings of Superman. His journey and his existence within American culture.

So maybe it is for kids because the sarcasm or the storyline or the depth of the characters is never really explored as much as we are used to (c'mon, if you are addicted to 24 like me, you watch Jack Bauer go through way more than that in each hour "to save the United States" and for gosh sakes, despite popular belief, Jack Bauer is human...so, you'd expect Superman to do more, right?). Lois isn't her strong, determined, feminine self. As a strong-willed reporter, thin-as-a-pin Kate Bosworth just doesn't do it for me. (not to mention that I'm older than her!!).

The DC Comics Encyclopedia informs us that Lois Joanne Lane (5-feet-6, 136 pounds) is the daughter of a U.S. Army general who always wanted a son, which led the daughter to become "a model of self-sufficiency." But her background has shifted over the years—she was at one point a farm girl—and so has that self-sufficiency bit. While it's true that in a supplement to Superman No. 28 (May-June 1944) she was intrepid enough to follow a jumper onto a ledge and good enough to earn praise as "an elegant reporter," almost two decades later she was writing the Daily Planet's "Dr. Cupid" advice column while wearing a pillbox hat in the manner of the former Miss Bouvier. She didn't fully emerge as the broad we love until 1965, when she spent an issue of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane in charge of her newspaper: "You've seen Lois Lane in many roles, but never as a rough, tough newspaper editor, out to show the world that a member of the so-called 'weaker-sex' can be as hard-boiled as any man alive!"

But, again, I don't want to be Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. She's unrealistic - in her ability to get a man to think that it's his son (or is it?) within a few months after she starts showing, in her ability to be so freakin' thin, and in her inability to really show her skills as a reporter without banging the nephew of the Editor-in-Chief (or whatever Perry White's job title is...).

This probably comes off as super negative but for me it was pretty positive. And, yes, all of this is precisely the reason why I enjoyed Superman.