Iona Firouzabadi
posted 2 August 2006

Why is Superman so now? He's 74 years old and he's been away from our cinema screens since the Regan administration. He lacks the complexity and angst of his fellow superhero superstars, Batman and Spiderman. Heck, you could even say he's a bit dull. But In Bryan Singer's Superman Returns he's the poster boy for a post 9/11 America. Less 2D cartoon, more Jesus Christ, Singer's Superman is shot through with messianic imagery, a curious fusion of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

We begin in Heaven - well, in space to be exact. Space is much as you would expect it to be - filled with the music of John Williams and the voice of Marlon Brando (daddy to Christopher Reeve's Superman in the 1978 original). Brando has sent us his only son, except of course Superman's been here before - making this more a resurrection than a virgin birth. Five years have passed since he last confused Metropolis' air traffic control: he's been away searching for life on his home planet of Krypton, but there was none to be found (a curious dead-end of a plot detail). The thing is Metropolis thinks it's all grown up and doesn't need Superman anymore. And Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on too - she's got a husband (James Marsden), a kid (Tristan Lake Leabu), and a Pulitzer Prize, so why would she want a man in a red cape? But what neither Lois nor the citizens of Metropolis have banked on is the return of Lex Luther (Kevin Spacey), Superman's Moriarty. Channelled through Spacey, Luther is a camp cat, sinister and suave, but with more than touch of Dr Evil.

Luther's first act of evil involves a passenger plane crashing towards Metropolis - an image currently emblazoned across UK billboards. The real life parallel doesn't need drawing. What makes it interesting is that this is happening in a Superman movie, not in a film featuring his superhero antithesis, Batman. Superman is pure good combating pure evil - a simplistic but powerfully archetypal narrative that America seems increasingly eager to indulge in. Whilst Superman is described as 'the light to show the way', Batman is The Dark Knight. Superman's Metropolis is a vision of New York Rudolph Giuliani would be proud of. It's not the urban underworld of New York's other graphic analogue, Batman's Gotham. Metropolis is a city that can ascend into the light, not merely be held back from the brink of darkness. This is New York's new image of itself, having got rid of crime and crack, it has been reborn out of the ashes of 9/11. As such Superman is its perfect hero, free from the self-doubt and ambivalence of Batman. What makes Superman a compelling figure is that he is a lesser character but a greater symbol than Batman. He is not one of us, metamorphosed, he is just visiting, an alien, better than us, physically and morally perfected - a messianic hero.

In Singer's film, Superman as Saviour is most powerfully visualised when he jettisons a continent of crystal into space and then falls slowly back to Earth, arms outstretched like Christ crucified. And his resurrection follows as his body vanishes from a hospital bed.

In the interests of creating a more serious Superman, all of the child-bright primary colours have been darkened down and Brandon Routh's torso has been pumped-up into something Michelangelo would salivate over. There's a strong sense that Singer is far more enamoured of his Superman Saviour than he is of Clark Kent, the undercover alien. Routh has a cheeky and charming gaucheness as Clark, but this alter ego isn't allowed enough screen time, and so his and Lois's relationship lacks the compelling comedy that it should have.

This is an epic summer blockbuster in the tradition of The-Lord-of-the-Rings-won-an-Oscar-so-we-can-take-fantasy-seriously genre. Singer's Superman Returns is an impressive, entertaining and at times intriguing reworking of the franchise. It could have done with a more tightly structured plot, a better Lois Lane and a bit more edge-of-the-seat tension, but overall it's still fun - and that's what comic books are all about, isn't it?