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Techtite's DVD Reviews! |
"It may not be Superman 1 or 2, but it acts as if Superman 3 and 4 never happened (if only!), and leaps over both with a single bound." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- "Ain't It Cool" To Nitpick? ...not really. But that's exactly what those comic lovin' kids over at Ain't It Cool News do every time a comic book inspired film comes around. Their biggest beef: how could Superman hide himself as Clark Kent, with only a pair of glasses? Egads... not this one again! Aside from the apparent Superman comic book which explains some voodoo-hoodoo sort of power of the glasses (or so I read via various AICN message board threads), the fact is that Superman is a guy in red tights who can fly. Oh yeah; he also can shoot lasers from his eyes. Then there's the X-Ray vision. These guys accept all that, but they insist that the glasses could not disguise him properly. Gee...really? Whoa! The fact of the matter is that Superman is a fictional character. How can Peter Pan fly "second star to the right" without a space suit? Fictional Character. How can a coyote chasing a road runner survive a fall of a cliff, and an anvil to the head? CARTOON character! How can Superman do what he does? Comic book character. Get it? The sooner you start demanding realism in a fictional story, the sooner they start explaining how Jedi "force" is because of little bits of bacteria. Yawn! ----------------- Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted! ------------------
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Superman Returns
Click picture to order this DVD (Two Disc Special Edition, Widescreen) A Review by TechtiteAs always, a review of The Film and the DVD extras. The Film: Imagine what it would take for cinema to see the return of Superman. Let's go through the checklist. Make the story take place after Superman: The Movie and Superman 2, so as not to tick off fans: check. Act like the crappy flops Superman 3 and Superman 4 never even happened: check. Have the story be about another zany Lex Luthor plot that could kill millions if Superman doesn't stop him in the nick of time: check. Lastly: make sure the story picks up immediately after the first two films. Well; three out of four isn't bad...and neither is this movie. So begins Superman Returns, which takes place (or so we are led to assume) five years after Superman 2. The Man of Steel has been on a sabbatical of sorts to the location of his home world, to make sure there wasn't at least one other survivor from Krypton out there. Now back on Earth, he seeks his old job as reporter Clark Kent...which he gets easily, thanks to a death of a lead reporter. Bad news for Clark (and Superman), though; Lois Lane has since gotten engaged and what's more, she has a young son. If only that were the biggest of Superman's many problems. The worse news is that Lex Luthor is a free man. We learn from scuttlebutt that his seedy (yet admittedly crafty) defense lawyers demanded Superman appear at his appeals trial as the one who "arrested" him. With no Superman around, Lex was a free man. The worst news: as we saw in the second movie, Lex knows all about Superman's secret "fortress" made of crystals, and wants to return there while superman isn't around, and steal the crystals, so he can make an even larger "fortress" of his own...say, the size of a whole continent, in the middle of the Atlantic. What difference does it make to Lex what this will do to the nearby United States, if not the entire planet? While this leads to a very imaginative story (to say the very least), let's back up for a second: Lois is a mom? How'd that happen...and more to the point, why? Mind you, there is a very cute subplot about this kid, which is pretty obvious if you bother to think about it for just five seconds. How long was Superman gone? Think about it...like, really hard. Yet one cannot help wondering if they should've added this kid to the story. Cynics say this tot is the worst part of the film. While I wouldn't go that far ---and one of the film's most heart-tugging moments is all thanks to him--- I just can't see Jason ever being put to good use in the context of Super-movies. At best he'll become the Macaulay Culkin of Superman movies...and did anybody want that? As you'd expect, the FX scenes are top notch, and better than anything possible in 1978. Superman's first giant feat upon his return is another daring rescue of (danger prone?) Lois, who was sent to report on the experimental flight of a remodeled Space Shuttle. From there, Superman foils a bank heist that shows once and for all how bulletproof the Man of Steel truly is, as a bullet is seen headed strait for his eye, only to crush in slow motion and fall to the ground, with Superman giving a boyish "told you so" grin to the crooks. This is exactly the sort of super-power action stuff we've been waiting for since...well, since Superman 2. At least half of the film is filled with such action scenes, which is to say, you'll be on the edge of your seat at least half of the time. The other half of the film is purely drama, which might divide fans' reactions. Herein is the sole (and perhaps, core) problem with this film: it attempts to please all fans, of all the many incantations of "Superman." Shouldn't fans of Superman from the films take precedence? Tell that to this movie, which at times looks less like "The New Superman 3" and more like "Lois & Clark: The Motion Picture" or "Smallville: The Movie." Yes those TV shows have fans, and yet they are as different from the movies ---and each other--- as night and day. I came anticipating 100% action. I left with 50% action and 50% teen friendly soap opera. While that last comment sounds like this will be an "on the fence" review, no way. In the end, it's the performances which pull the film squarely into thumbs-up territory. Kevin Spacey is perfect as Lex Luthor. His new sidekick is named Kitty yet is always holding a pet Pomeranian in her lap; who else could play such an enjoyably ironic villainess, but Parker Posey? As for Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane; Lois is not a gruff voiced tomboy anymore, and to me that's good enough. She'll "grow into" the role upon the sequel, I am sure. Yet all puns aside, Brandon Routh had some very big boots to fill, and he gave the role of Superman a very effective emotional appeal that was not a mere performance in Christopher Reeve's shadow. Reeve's Superman will never be forgotten but Routh's performance here was excellent. He did a very fine job. The good news for one and all is that Superman has returned and that's that. Now any inevitable sequel can dispense with all the "I'm back did I miss anything" subplots and get to some good, next-generation quality stories. With modern technology at hand, it's time the films brought in all of Superman's most imaginative adversaries; villains that the 1970's films could never have achieved successfully. Bring us Brainiac. Bring us Bizarro. Bring us Doomsday. But most importantly, above all, bring us much more superman...and much sooner next time!
The DVD: It's interesting how much attention this film is getting. There's a regular DVD edition, a special edition, a Blu-Ray Edition, and a HD-DVD edition. Which one should you buy? That's mostly a question of what you get as "extras" in the two-disc special edition, so let's cover that. Nearly every other edition is the film itself, so its just a matter of what disc player you have. Are the cool extras worth the two disc version's price? Let's review the special edition extras and see. The key sales pitch for DVD extras always seems to be the deleted scenes. It would be hard to review each of the nearly dozen or so deletions included here, but fortunately their titles on the DVD menu are pretty self-explanatory, if you remember the scenes from the movie that they most likely refer to: "The Date," "Family Photos," "Crash Landing and X-Ray Vision," "Old Newspapers," "Are You Two Dating?" "Martinis and Wigs," "I'm Always Right," "Jimmy the Lush," "Language Barrier," "Crystal Feet," and "New Krypton." Search for the disc's sole Easter Egg hidden feature, and get an additional outtake involving Lex Luthor losing his tempter and shouting, "Wrong!!!" Then there are the featurettes. "Requiem for Krypton: The Making of Superman Returns" is a featurette that is said to total around three hours, though I didn't clock it myself. The feature is divided into parts: "Secret Origins and First Issues: Crystallizing Superman," "The Crystal Method: Designing Superman," "An Affinity for Beachfront Property: Shooting Superman," The Joy of Lex: Menacing Superman," and "He's Always Around: Wrapping Superman." An additional feature discusses the "resurrection" of Jor-El, or more specifically, the reintegration of old stock footage starring the late Marlon Brando as Jor-El, for the Fortress of Solitude scene. Round out the extras with a preservation of both the theatrical trailers as well as a teaser for the video game, and that's the whole disc set. Is it enough? That depends on how much you loved the movie. If you loved (or even liked) the film, then by all means get the special edition. Yet if you really liked the film that much, you obviously need to get it in one of its two high definition TV versions, right? It's pretty confusing, especially when there would appear to have been more than enough room for these bonus features on one of the high definition DVDs. It's an old sales trick, however, so we won't reduce the rating of this movie/DVD on principle. We just hope they include most (if not all) extras on the HD disc next time. If not; the rating will suffer. Not now, though...
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