One Thing I Really Liked About Superman Returns (Besides the Opening Credits)

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I haven’t seen Superman Returns returns in probably over a couple of years, so my reason for writing this article is somewhat tangential.  I know that the consensus with regard to Bryan Singer’s Superman film is that it sucked, but I didn’t think it was half bad.  Singer managed to create a similar atmosphere as seen in the first two Superman movies, and despite the lack of action, I thought the story was pretty decent, too.  The opening credits – an obvious homage to Richard Donner’s original – were a nice bonus.  But after watching this week’s episode of Californication (I told you this was tangential), I realized that there was one aspect to Superman Returns that I found very refreshing.

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You left what in the toilet?

I like Californication, but it’s not the show it used to be.  Season 1 was well-written, clever, sharp, and Hank Moody was the coolest guy in the world.  And it was believable.  Season 2 was a bit of a let down, but still worth watching.  Season 3’s been good, too, but I’ve accepted the fact that the show has become more of a sitcom than edgy cable television.  In this week’s episode, most of the humor was found in Marcy leaving a bloody tampon in the toilet, only to have it discovered by a couple who were interested in buying her house.  Pretty low-brow, but funny nevertheless.  So where am I going with all of this?  There was a blatant case of a writing cliche, and it pained me to see it in Californication.  I’ll explain.

Hank, now a college professor, has been flirting quite a bit with the dean’s hot wife, Felicia.  Last week, they kissed, and even though Hank’s messed around with married chicks before, there was something unsettling about it.  Aside from his offensive eyebrows and a penchant for bright, biking spandex, Dean Koons (played by Peter Gallagher) seems like a pretty decent guy.  And Hank has already banged his TA, and he’s undoubtedly going to bang his hot stripper student; the guy bangs just about every attractive chick that crosses his path.  So does he really need to bang a married chick?  Hank’s very likable, but that’s kind of messed up.

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Egregious sense of style, but enough to warrant adultery?

But oh, enter the lazy writing cliche.  Through dialogue, we learn that in the past, Dean Koons has cheated on Felicia.  So now, when Hank eventually bangs her, we won’t feel bad for Dean Koons, and even better, we won’t dislike the protagonist.  Weak.  It’s either this scenario we always see, or the boyfriend is such an intolerable douche that treats his girl like crap that we can’t feel an iota of sympathy for him.  The fact that the girl at issue is usually sweet, understanding, and hot, makes it all the more absurd that she’d be with someone like him in the first place.

Look, it’s nothing that will ruin a show or movie for me, but it’s a tired old cliche and a pretty lazy device that’s used to make things dumbed down as black and white.  It happens in a lot of silly movies – like The Wedding Singer or Just One of the Guys – but that’s fine.  Movies like that are supposed to be simple and the primary goal of creators of movies like that is simply to make people laugh.  But when I see the cliche in shows like Californication – which I used to consider pretty sharp – it’s kind of disappointing.  But that brings me back to Superman Returns.

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Of course he’s not paying attention to her.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Superman returns to Earth after something like a five year absence.  He was searching for Krypton in space and back on Earth, everyone moved on with their lives.  Lois Lane, once in love with Superman, is married to a great dude, and together they have a child.  Superman returns (hence the movie’s title), and old feelings resurface in him and Lois.  But here’s the thing – it’d be real easy for Lois’ husband to be a douchebag or a lousy father, clearing the way for Superman to snatch up his woman.  But he’s not.  He’s a great guy and seems like all a girl could ask for.  He’s a good dad and although as a mere human he can’t compare to Superman, he takes care of and loves Lois.  Aside from Superman being, well, Superman, there’s no real reason for Lois to leave her husband, and so there is a roadblock to any potential Superman-Lois romance.

Superman is hurt emotionally, pretty much the only way he can feel pain.  Instead of writing in a lazy cliche to get Superman and Lois together, we have a movie in which the protagonist doesn’t get the girl.  Say what you want about Superman Returns as a movie, but I found it refreshing to see that “the hot girl’s” boyfriend was actually a likable, cool dude for once.

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15 Comments

  1. californication script os going on a boring loop the anti-sexy guy somehow bangs a girl by episode, always on black, difunctional kid always boring, ex-wife not that hot, cmon looks like bukowski went pop….

  2. I agree. Although having never seen “Californication” I can’t really comment on that aspect. All I know it is, it was refreshing to see that in “Superman Returns” however, it just supports what I’ve been saying since “X-Men”…James Marsden will ALWAYS play a loser.

  3. nice rant.
    “Superman is hurt emotionally, pretty much the only way he can feel pain.”, makes me wanna drop a lame kryptonite comment.
    @ne0: I think both are not not hot

  4. @ Ugo Strange

    Marsden is such a bland, boring actor…which made him perfect for Cyclops.

    @ Lagrange

    Kryptonite was obvious, didn’t think it needed to be said.

    @ Korinthian

    I’m sorry. In what way? And I’m not sure I understand the irony…unless I was using lazy cliches myself?

  5. Good point but Superman Returns was still a horrible film in that Lex Luthor’s entire plan is to grow a giant crystalline continent which he think ‘everyone’ will want to build cities and homes on. The entire continent is made of giant rocky crystals! There’s no water or dirt anywhere. Plus, he’s a supervillian who knows the continent will kill ‘millions’ of people because it will displace oceans. The world would collectively move to the middle of the desert before moving to Lex Luthor’s giant crytalline continent, if even just out of principle. But mainly because you can’t build a city on a giant crystalline rock with no resources on it. Superman could have gone on vacation to Barbados and the movie would have wound up with the same negative outcome for Lex.

  6. I’m with you on Superman Returns. It certainly wasn’t great, and not worth its 200 mil price tag, but it wasn’t terrible. It was pretty obvious that Singer cared for the character to develop him rather than make him fight the whole time, but he didn’t properly think out a worthwhile physical challenge for Superman. The Luthor plot was lame, and Kevin Spacey actually did a poor job with the character (which I never would have expected, prior to seeing it.)

  7. Hope it doesn’t burst your bubble and maybe you can disprove this theory, but what if the fact that Superman didn’t get Lois was simply because they were saving that for the sequels that they had envisioned before this was released? I’m sure that if there are sequels, Lois’ husband will be rendered irrelevant due to some kind of deus ex machina, or worse, through the cliche writing that you so clearly condemn……..because you know that Superman and Lois are going to end up together.

  8. @ E, SF

    No, it doesn’t burst my bubble. Any new Superman movies will not be sequels to this one. They’ll be either reboots or just a totally different story. Superman Returns will stand alone, for better or for worse.

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