Superman Returns. Then he has a bagel. Then he mopes. Then he...

...debates whether the film has serious pacing issues. And it does. My God. I thought he was never going to save anybody. In fact, I didn't even think we'd get through the impossibly boring opening credits. It would have been better if they just gave us a dark screen to look at. Much better. It wouldn't have faked me out three times before we actually get to Earth.

And on Earth, does he move islands to form the words "I'm Back, Bitches!" in the sea? Does he fly backwards around the world, reversing its rotation so he never needed to miss those five years? Does he find Lois Lane for some super "Welcome Back" sex? No. He looks for an apartment, he gets his job back.

Superman has always battled with irrelevance. He's so powerful it almost doesn't matter what you throw against him he's going to shrug it off and then sit you down for a lesson about farmland morality. So I'll at least say that when Luthor comes up with his diabolical plot for the movie I was impressed that it had me thinking "what the hell is he going to do about this one?!" Unfortunately the way he solves the problem is to ignore all the rules about kryptonite (which apparently works for him the way gravity works for Wile E. Coyote; only taking effect when noticed).

If only this was the extent of their blatant disreguard for established Superman lore I could forgive them. After all, Smallville is just as guilty. But it's not. So I'm going to nerd out a bit and list things the movie got horribly, horribly wrong.

1. The wing ripping off the plane he was saving. Worst. Blunder. Ever. Not only would he have known that it was a horribly poor place to try to stop the tail spin (push near the cockpit Superdouche!) his tactile teleknesis would have held the structural integrity of the plane intact. This is a well known, if seldom directly addressed, power of Superman's. As seen in the below image from World's Finest # 86, National Comics, Jan.-Feb. 1957.
   
   
   

   Clearly such a power must exist, otherwise the buildings he's holding on two hands like he's carting two boxes of pizzas would crumble from the ridiculous strain being placed on them from an angle they weren't designed to be supported. Super-strength alone wouldn't have allowed him to do this. So, the plane should have stayed in tact. Strike one, Bryan Singer.
   
   
2. Super... asthma? SPOILER ALERT. Well it's a fairly obvious spoiler anyway. I have a hard time accepting the alleged super-love-child of Superman and Lois Lane would have asthma. I realize that his powers will develop over time, just as his father's did, and that as a half Kryptonian he will be of slightly different physiology. However, I refused to believe that he would be so fragile in his youth that, while kryptonite has little discernable effect on him, pollen smacks him down. (Maybe it just hasn't been explained yet that when you finally see the kryptonite you're supposed to be stricken). Strike two, Singer.
   
   
3. Several instances of failed super-hypnosis. Another of Superman's lesser known powers, Super-hypnosis, allows him to live as Clark Kent without anyone suspecting him of being Superman. In fact, people don't believe that Superman has any other identity. This is because, in part, Superman subliminally sends out powerful hypnotic suggestions to maintain this illusion. In fact, it's so effective that when the Lex of the comics finally found out that Clark was Superman, he refused to believe it.
   
   Despite this, several times in the movie it was implied that people suspected Clark. First it was Lois with her new boyfriend Cyclops. Though they played it off as a joke. This is completely possible; it would seem ridiculous. However when his super-bastard looks from the TV, showing Superman, to Clark it's pretty obvious the four-year-old just made the connection that must not be made. You could chalk it up to his parentage, but his other powers haven't developed, why should super hypno-resistance? And I call this one, strike three.
   
   

My nerdery aside, I did enjoy the movie. A possible DVD purchase? No. Probably not. As much as I'd like to fast forward through the boring bits, I still don't feel the need to own it. Even his super-heroics were kind of blah. As Joe, of Joe Loves Crappy Movies, said:

The problems Superman faces are on an epic level but his solutions aren’t exciting, they’re functional. He catches the globe. He carries the plane. He lifts up the boat. This is Superman for Christ’s sake. I’m not saying he should punch the plane to make it stop its fall to earth, but it’s pathetic that our hero is given little to do beyond fly, lift, and hold.

And that sums it up nicely. However I will laud the supporting cast. Kevin Spacey finally manages to do what Gene Hackman could never do which was to make Lex Luthor seem evil, rather than somebody's old coot uncle. And Sam Huntington has come a long way from the little rainforest brat in Jungle-2-Jungle. He was hilariously perfect as Jimmy Olsen, and I give him alot of credit for that.

And... that's what I thought.

- Scott

P.S. I had to listen to the Firewater song "So long, Superman" about five times after seeing the movie and actually hearing Lex Luthor say those words. I reccomend it to everyone.