User:Wildroot/Superman Returns

March 2008: "If you look at Usual Suspects or my last film, Valkyrie, I feel especially comfortable with ensemble juggling. In the space between all the characters you can disguise a central thought that's hidden in all the discourse. I missed that with the singular relationship story of Superman."

Themes
his is where the movie displays its impressive ambition and cunning. Earlier versions of Superman stressed the hero's humanity: his attachment to his Earth parents, his country-boy clumsiness around Lois. The Singer version emphasizes his divinity. He is not a super man; he is a god (named Kal-El), sent by his heavenly father (Jor-El) to protect Earth. That is a mission that takes more than muscles; it requires sacrifice, perhaps of his own life. So he is no simple comic-book hunk. He is Earth's savior: Jesus Christ Superman. Using snippets of Marlon Brando's performance as Jor-El from the 1978 Super-man movie, in which Brando passes on the wisdom "The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son," Singer establishes his own film's central relationship. It is not romantic, between Lois and Clark. It's familial--the bond of two sets of fathers and sons: Jor-El and Superman, then Superman and Jason. Each parent tells his child that he must surpass the old man's feats, improve on Dad's legend. Poignantly, this strength, this divinity, isolates Superman from Earth's humans. He can save them but not be one of them. Lois can love him but never understand him. Singer's adoption, and Clarks adoption by Mary. Stressing his protagonist's suffering and resurrection, Singer flirts with the idea of a post-Passion superhero. Why not? Invented in the 1930s by a pair of Jewish kids from Cleveland, Superman shares a common heritage with Jesus Christ and is no less universal. "Three things sell papers," Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella) informs Lois, "tragedy, sex, and Superman." Metonym for the movies, Superman goes everywhere—the Planet newsroom monitors his exploits as simultaneously reported around the world—especially Germany. Singer's pulp fictions regularly reference the Holocaust, and here Superman's return to Krypton suggests a heritage tour to Poland: "That place was a graveyard," he tells his adoptive mother. "I'm all that's left." Prominently placed in the "Metropolis"-establishing shot, just south of the absent WTC, is that monument to exile, the Museum of Jewish Heritage.



http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117931927.html?categoryid=13&cs=1


 * Plot
 * Superman "saves Kitty" while foiling the bank heist. How does she get back with Luthor ("Luthor and Kitty escape in their helicopter; ...")?
 * "Superman discovers the landmass is filled with Kryptonite" - how did Luthor get so much Kryptonite?
 * "Superman is stabbed by Luthor with a shard of Kryptonite and falls into the ocean. Lois makes Richard turn back to rescue Superman, whereupon she removes the Kryptonite from his back." Did Lois prudently bring SCUBA gear with her?


 * Cast
 * http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117915886.html?categoryid=1236&cs=1 says Bosworth had worked with Spacey, but not that Spacey recommended Bosworth.