I want to talk about how stupid Superman Returns was

[FaceHugger]

Superman Returns. 2006.

It is a vague sequel to one of the Christopher Reeves Superman movies. Not clear which. It begins with a montage of what looks like HD Atari Asteroids video, and 20--or-so minutes later we finally see Superman.

One of the highlights in the middling part is seeing Superman stop some villains on a roof. For some reason they construct an elaborate minigun. They already had a helicopter, but I guess taking what must have been hours to secretly haul up hundreds of pounds of arsenal and secure it onto the roof without raising suspicion was something the writers thought was a reasonable scenario.

Later, or maybe before, I forget, our beloved Superman goes full-on creep lord and uses his powers to spy on his ex and the child he left behind. Watching their personal tribulations as he levitates nearby. How very Superman.

It finally ends when he throws a big planet into the sun or some shit and then revisits his son and tells him he his going to always be watching him. And his son, who should know him less than Adam, is like "cool".

Anyways, what a fucked up movie. You guys have an opinion?

 

[adj_noun]

I only really remember Kevin Spacey and Stalker Superman.

 

[jviggy43]

I remember being bored out my mind

 

[duckroll]

Wasn't this movie the reason why Bryan Singer abandoned X-men 3 to doom? Lol.

 

[Officer Big Mac]

I dont remember much of anything except the stalker Superman bit. The internet likes to go on about the plane scene but I never felt impressed by it. Pretty pedestrian for your opening action scene though.

 

[hordak]

- nothing happens.
- superman gets beat up by kumar
- lex luthor's plan was to create land in the of the ocean and then sell it? like how? there's like lava rock with green crystals everywhere. who the fuck is gonna a move onto a super dark island with sharp crystals with no water or food.
- also he doesn't kill Superman, just stabs him with a tiny sliver of kryptonite and throws him into the water. wtf.

 

[TAJ]

I remember being bored out my mind

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That's most of what I remember. I also remember Superman getting shanked by Kumar.
Man Of Steel, now that's dumb.

 

[Bundy]

Superman is awesome and I love Brandon Routh. Dude could have been a legit Superman (love him in Legends and I can't wait to see him as Superman there again), but man was Superman Returns boring. I was in the cinema with a friend and I was shocked how boring it was. I was so hyped to finally watch a Superman movie in the theaters and then...... this :(

 

[jviggy43]

That's most of what I remember. I also remember Superman getting shanked by Kumar.
Man Of Steel, now that's dumb.

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Oddly enough despite the ramp up in action in man of steel i was bored out of my mind with that movie as well haha.

 

[The Hobo]

I liked Brandon Routh as Superman. It's a shame he had to play someone else's Superman though.

The movie itself is boring. The plane rescue is the only highlight.

 

[kurahador]

It was a nothing movie. The stake felt hollow, the action was super low key and Lex coming back felt cartoon as hell. And how the hell Lois still can't figure out Supes is Clark after they both gone and came back at the same period of time? The fact that they had a child made it even worse.

Can't believe this is the movie we get for screwing over X-Men 3.

 

[skeezx]

I just can't believe it actually came out in the 2000s. I know it was loosely based off the Donnerverse and all but effects aside it felt like it cribbed directly from 1985. watching it was just really weird

 

[AlexBasch]

I can't stop imagining a random guy dressed as Superman and being punched over and over by random ass thugs.

Like some beat 'em up game from the 90's.

 

[egg]

I liked Brandon Routh as Superman. It's a shame he had to play someone else's Superman though.

The movie itself is boring. The plane rescue is the only highlight.

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Pretty much how i feel. OST is beautiful as well, love listening to it occasionally.

 

[FaceHugger]

It gets even dumber. There is a part where people suddenly become calm and are mystified as their phones float in low gravity. That would not happen. They'd be seizing their phones and furiously typing out last words.

This movie is so bad.

 

[Laserdisk]

For the shuttle save and the great casting of the lead alone it's awesome.

 

[Keldroc]

It's bad, but I'd still watch it twice before sitting through Man of Steel again.

 

[rusty chrome]

Creepy Bryan Singer never should have been allowed to work on this movie

 

[Frostinferno]

Really liked Routh in the role. Shame about everything else (aside from the plane rescue).

 

[voOsh]

Movie is bad but the plane rescue scene is my favorite scene from any Superman film.

 

[Zaied]

There's two scenes I really like from Returns: the bullet scene, and when the citizens on the street stop what they're doing to watch Superman fly past.

 

[The Hobo]

Luthor's plan was so stupid. The rest of the world would rain missiles down on his island, not buy it from him.

 

[Kain]

Still better than the pieces of shit movies Snyder shat

 

[Jegriva]

It's a weird untaken road of the superhero genre. It's a strange dead-end.

It doesn't have big fights, it tries to bank on nostalgia in a time when nostalgia for old superhero movie wasn't a thing, it's basically a movie based in a fantasy world where men wear hats and women only wear skirts.
It's long, it's boring, it's a love story more than an action flick.

And I think that's why it's an incredibly interesting movie. It raises more point of discussion about its odd choices than 90% of Marvel movies. It's a wonderful anomaly of a movie. Even more so if you think Batman Begins (a movie that makes all the opposite choices of Superman Returns) was released just an year prior.

I whish Hollywood returns (pun intended) to weird fantasy not-in-a-unified-universe superhero movies.

 

[Dakath]

I remember really liking this teaser back then.

 

[RestEerie]

i only remember the beginning where Luthor 'rise' from his previous 'defeat' by being a 'giggolo' and cheating an old rich lady's will...or something like that? I am not dreaming, am i?

 

[Praetorpwj]

Luthor's plan was so stupid. The rest of the world would rain missiles down on his island, not buy it from him.

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He doesn't own it and he can't control it. The 'advanced tech' is nowhere to be seen.

 

[Queen Calanthe]

WROOOOOONGEH

 

[Kuro]

Its a good movie if a bit boring at times and Lois was miscast. Still a better Superman film than Man of Steel.

 

[魑魅魍魎]

The best part the movie was the airplane rescue at the beginning of the movie.

 

[RockyBalboa_]

I was pumped for Superman Returns, I saw it at the cinema multiple times just for the Superman March intro :D (had never heard it with cinema quality audio before!!). But the home release (dvd/bluray) was ughhhhhh, it's a movie with very little exciting moments (most movies I'll sit through and enjoy, Superman Returns I'd stop it part way through for a toilet break... end up not coming back to it for hours).

I didn't watch it for almost 9 years....... when I did pull out the dvd again, I had a new appreciation for it. I certainly rate the movie as being better than current DC offerings (Man of Steel and Batman v Superman included!).

 

[Platy]

And still at the time was like the second less weird Superman movie

And probably the second best one even right now

 

[kurahador]

I remember really liking this teaser back then.

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Seems WB can only come up with good trailers for Superman movie.

 

[Ignis]

Lame duck of a film.

and yet still the second best superman film.

WB stays losing

 

[Kernel]

Besides they plane rescue the only other good part is the intro sequence:



It's good to hear the theme song again.

 

[Forkball]

Having this set in the middle of the original Superman film series is such a baffling and dumb decision. Like imagine if instead of Batman Begins they made a movie that took place between Batman Returns and Batman Forever. WHY DO THIS??? You end up with too many arbitrary connections to 30 year old films that many people probably haven't even seen. Having Spacey Lex still be a wig-wearing goof instead of a calm and cunning mastermind is another thing they needlessly thought they needed to keep from the old films. The animated series showed how you can translate Lex to the screen.

Amazing how they rebooted Superman twice and they were both bad.

 

[FaceHugger]

Amazing how they rebooted Superman twice and they were both bad.

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Yea it's weird to me. Probably the easiest superhero to get right, and they did it wrong twice in a row.

 

[blueredandgold]

Are people still making that banal assertion that 'MCU Captain America is our true Superman'?

Multiple cinematic revivals of the character since the 70s can't seem to please anybody, but I never want them to stop trying.

Even the TV appearances attract the concern trolls these days.

Nobody wants to talk about the strength of the source material in that we can continually draw upon multiple iterations or elements from the almost hundred years of stories, and still apparently not be satisfied?

You simply must not like Superman if you are that hard to please :p

 

[TeenageFBI]

Besides they plane rescue the only other good part is the intro sequence:



It's good to hear the theme song again.

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Everything was downhill after that intro. God, I love that theme.

 

[Praetorpwj]

The best part the movie was the airplane rescue at the beginning of the movie.

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Even that isn't great he tries to save the plane by grabbing the end of a wing?!

 

[Deleted member 32822]

I forgot I even saw this movie. I was confused as a kid because I never saw the Reeves movies.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

It's a mediocre movie, kind of forgettable, maybe a little underrated. But it's still better than Man of Steel, which was offensively bad. It didn't have Superman snapping necks or Pa Kent's idiotic death scene, for a few examples.

I remember really liking this teaser back then.

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Yeah, that was an amazing trailer regardless of how you feel about the film.

 

[Eidan]

I remember a guy shouting about how boring the movie was in the theater as people walked out, and saying he wants to see Doomsday.

 

[Garlador]

Superman Returns is the movie that tainted the well for both Fox AND DC movies. It's not the worst, but it set in motion so many bad chain of events.

Bryan Singer ditched X-men for this movie and took some of its cast and crew with him, resulting in the rushed and highly disappointing X-men 3: Last Stand, which damaged the X-men brand severely and led to a great deal of terrible spin-offs, reboots, and other issues. The crew that had to take over for X-men 3 were still doing damage with Dark Phoenix this very year...

Superman Returns was... not great. Worse, it was boring. Someone mentioned that it was the movie of "Superman lifts progressively heavier things" and never threw a single punch in two hours. He's a weird deadbeat dad who owes Lois a ton in child support payments. So WB put Superman on ice and when it was time to do him again, they addressed the "no action, no punching" Superman complaint with Man of Steel... which was so destructive and violent that it tainted many people's view of Superman, and THAT movie was the foundation of the entire DCEU. All the issues of the DCEU were because of overreactions to the issues in Superman Returns.

It's crazy to think about how Superman Returns, on its own, is kind of a "nothing" film, but it caused ripples in the comic movie landscape that are still felt to this day.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

I remember a guy shouting about how boring the movie was in the theater as people walked out, and saying he wants to see Doomsday.

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[Kinggroin]

Eh, I liked it. Maybe all the hate helped, but I wasn't bored once.

 

[The Vathlonian]

Bryan Singer is terrible. TERRIBLE. People go on and on about how they mess up Superman, but not one of these films has even gotten Lois or the crew at the Planet right. They are critically important to making his world breathable.

 

[Superman]

THANK YOU.

Everyone always says it's like the Donner films and is misunderstood but it was just bland.

 

[Deleted member 21339]

It wasn't great but it actually did make me feel something.

When Superman is in the hospital and the world is concerned about his well-being, it made me feel like the average citizen was connected to him. I really like when superhero movies do this. It's important to show scenes like that in these movies... something that was sorely lacking in Man of Steel, for example.

And when he sneaks into his son's room and repeats Jor-El's parting words to him as a baby leaving Krypton.... it actually moved me. Everyone gets hung up on the logic of Luthor's real estate scheme or Kumar beating up Supes but I felt like a lot of the emotional beats landed for me.

 

[Volimar]

The whole Superman love child plot was pretty messed up, but I thought Routh did a great Reeve Superman.