SUPERMAN RETURNS 

You know about ‘grups’, I presume? You may have read about them in the Cyprus Mail last week – those people in their 30s and 40s (named after a Star Trek episode) who still behave as if they were 20-something. ‘Grups’ go clubbing, wear battered jeans, keep up with music and movies, snowboard and body-surf like they did 20 years ago. “In this generation,” claims a 36-year-old UK grup, “the last thing you want to be is what your dad used to be.”

The people behind Superman Returns – notably 40-year-old director Bryan Singer, who also helmed the first two X-Men films – may or may not be grups, but the film is decidedly grup-ish. It’s well-known that kids treat their comic-book heroes with reverence (recall the boys sitting round the campfire in Stand by Me trying to decide, with the utmost seriousness, what kind of animal Goofy is), using them to practise adult skills like compassion and empathy. Later, they mostly grow out of it – but a new generation of comic-book movies is bringing that reverence back, refusing to move on just like grups refuse to give up the pleasures of youth. Fittingly, most of these films are also obsessed with father-figures, the horror of being (or not being) “what your dad used to be”.

Last year’s Batman Begins turned the Caped Crusader into Hamlet, seeking revenge for the murder of his father; there was even a surrogate Dad (played by Liam Neeson) who ‘killed’ the real one by defiling his memory – and of course had to be destroyed, like Hamlet destroyed Claudius. Superman Returns isn’t so complex, but there’s still a lot of gratuitous daddy-chatter. Supe (Brandon Routh) hears the voice of Jor-El, his Krypton father, proclaiming his destiny, and later gives advice to his own son (“You will be different. Sometimes you will feel like an outcast…”). “The son becomes the father,” declares the film in closing, “and the father becomes the son”. Even Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has daddy issues. “What was it my father always said?” he asks rhetorically, only for a kooky assistant to scupper his rhetoric: “‘You’re losing your hair’.”

There’s a well-known historical figure who also had ‘daddy issues’, especially at the end when he felt his Father had forsaken him. Here’s another clue: he sacrificed himself (just like Superman does) for the good of mankind. And another: he was both god and man – or perhaps somewhere in between, like the Man of Steel. Oh, and he also appeared (covertly) in another of the summer’s big movies, The Da Vinci Code. It may seem bizarre to equate Superman with Jesus Christ, but not to the folks behind Superman Returns, who make the comparison explicitly: “The world doesn’t need a Saviour,” claims Lois, and of course the capital ‘S’ is entirely up to you. That's the kind of reverence we're talking about.

Superman Returns is a kind of homage – both in its exalted view of its (super)hero and its many references to the Superman mythos. There’s the comic, of course, and the 1950s TV show with that “It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” tag-line (faithfully repeated here); there’s also Superman the movie, made in 1978 when Bryan Singer was 13 years old – and the opening credits copy the credits of that film, with actors’ names emerging from deep space to the strains of John Williams’ stirring ‘Superman Theme’. Even non-grups (like me) may feel a stubborn lump in their throat.

Trouble is, the film adds nothing new except reverence and pangs of nostalgia for Superman fans. Not only are the opening credits identical to the old Superman, the plot is very similar. We begin with a short prologue on Krypton, followed by a short interlude on the Kents’ farm (though in this case only Ma Kent is present); then it’s on to Metropolis and the Daily Planet, with the usual cast of characters – cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, splenetic editor Perry White – and a reluctant romance with Lois, then Lex Luthor’s nefarious plan for world domination which Supe somehow has to foil.

The only twist is that Superman Returns – having been away for six years, during which time Lois has got engaged and had a child – but even that isn’t really an issue. Clearly (though she briefly denies it), she’s never stopped being in love with him, and the city of Metropolis seems unequivocally happy to have him back; we hear about an article Lois wrote called “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman”, but it might as well not exist for all the ambivalence with which he’s greeted (Batman and Spider-Man had a much pricklier relationship with their own cities). Very early on – even at the half-hour mark, a mere fifth of the way through a very long movie – I was tapping my foot impatiently, wondering at the warped priorities of a world where familiarity breeds surefire hits while the different and original is stigmatised as ‘difficult’. Was I the only one in that whole benighted audience who felt he’d seen it all before?

Well, no; obviously not. In fact, that’s the point. Superman Returns doesn't work unless the audience has seen it all before; it’s myth-burnishing, tapping into a collective subconscious, shaped by Lois & Clark and Smallville as well as the older Supermans. As the Man of Steel, newcomer Routh is basically asked to impersonate Christopher Reeve (which he does quite well, especially in Clark Kent mode). Despite a couple of bizarre horror-movie moments – one involving Luthor’s array of wigs, the other a missing Pomeranian – the prevailing tone is stately, majestic. The action scenes are almost superfluous. Lois and her family are trapped underwater, barely alive in a bubble of air – but Superman flies in and saves them from certain death. Did we ever doubt he would? 

“I hear everything,” says our hero tormentedly, carrying the world’s suffering on his broad shoulders. He is a god – all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing. Yet he only wants to belong, to fit in, to love and be loved. The new generation of comic-book movies, ushered in by the success of Spider-Man, turns men in tights into tragic heroes; as Spider-Man learned, “With great power comes great responsibility” – and Superman too must fulfil his destiny, even if it means a near-fatal self-sacrifice.

Superman Returns is a film that didn’t need to be made; we’ve been here, done this, bought the action figures. In the age of DVD, the ‘Superman for a new generation’ argument holds little water (even if the film re-invented him, which it doesn’t). Since it’s here, we might as well admit that it’s watchable; some of the details – like a bullet bouncing off Superman’s eyeball – are great fun. But the real point is why it got made in the first place: to burnish the myth, elevate childhood idol into tragic hero, and keep the grups happy in their worship of youthful pleasures.