Superman Review
Let me warn you there are LOTS of spoilers ahead, so dont read this if you havent seen the movie and dont want to know anything about it ahead of time.
The movie starts off kinda slow with the feel of some 1980-90s alien abduction movie. Going into the movie, I was a tiny bit lost considering all I had ever really seen in reference to superman was some random Christopher Reeves superman episodes so long ago that all I really remember is the very basics and more recently, a random assortment of out-of-order Smallville reruns.
Basically the new movie begins with Clark Kent returning home from a 5-year voyage to visit the ruins of Krypton (his home planet). During the 5 years that "superman" is away, Lex Luther, the bad guy who was supposed to go to prison for 2 life sentenses, got let out because superman was not there to testify at his trial. Lex has learned of a temple from Krypton hidden on Earth and steals crystal "seeds" from it which he plans to use to create a new continent on Earth (which will flood the US and he will have tons of people begging to buy this new top realestate from him at the highest prices).
At the newspaper office, the big story is the return of superman (not the city-wide power outage that was caused by Lex testing the abilities of the "seeds". Lois Lane is assigned to the superman story, but doesnt want anything to do with him or his story since he left without saying goodbye to her. Lois also now has a son and pseudo-husband (a man named Richard who she has been engaged to for 5 years...since superman left). Lois would rather do the news story on the power outage than the superman story and continues researching the outage, even though she was not assigned that story.
I was really surprised how the writers handled the issue of Lois's "husband" and superman. Superman obviously still loved Lois and Lois still loved superman, but she had moved on and had a child with Richard. It would go against the whole image of superman if he ended up breaking up Lois and Richard to get her as his own, so the writers couldn't do that. The next likely thing was to kill off either superman or Richard, and though there are many instances when either could have died, they both survive. I also really liked how they didnt make Richard into a bad guy that you would want to get killed off and didnt make him get angry and leave on his own. Richard truly loved Lois and was very understanding about her feelings for superman and compassionate towards her throughout the movie. As a viewer, this problem kept me eager to see more thoughout the movie while I was trying to predict who they would kill off to resolve it.
It would have been really easy to kill off Richard and have the superman/Louis Lane love go back to the way it always was. It would also have been easy to kill off superman himself (since the woman he loves and was meant to be with is already taken by another and Lois's child turns out to be his son- who turns out to have inherited the superpowers. His son could have grown up to be "the new superman" which would give the story an option to continue; a source of hope at the end if superman had died. But the writers didn't do either of those. Instead, both superman and Richard survived. That really surprised me because I was almost sure one of them would die and for a good long time it looks like it will be superman who dies.
I really liked the scene where Richard goes back to save superman after they rescued Lois. Letting superman die would have solved a lot of Richard's problems but he went back to help save superman anyway. It just goes to show that Richard really isn't a bad guy. It also shows that normal humans can accomplish extraordinary things on their own (without superpowers) if they have the courage to try. The scene in where Richard is trying to get his plane to take off is really good for that reason. No one with super powers was there to help them, but Richard was able to help his family make it out alive.
I also really liked the scene where the kid saves Lois with the piano and reveals to everyone that he actually must be superman's son (even though Lois thinks he is Richard's son since the kid is the sickliest little kid ever). I was rooting for him to be superman's son the whole time though and I think most movie viewers do as well.
There was a scene that would look great on an I-MAX theater screen where Superman takes Lois up into the air to show her the city and explains to her that he can hear thousands of people out there calling for a savior even though she believes the world does not need a savior.
I wasn't happy with the CG in the movie though. At several points when superman is flying, they do a close-up on his face and either he is wearing way way too much makeup or it is poorly inserted CG. And I'm normally not the type of person who notices stuff like this, so it was must have been really bad that I actually noticed it.
But I really liked the movie. I was sad at the end that superman had to walk away from the woman he loved more than anyone else in the whole world, but overall the movie was well-written and turned out really well. I definitely "felt" the characters and I would recommend the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it. :-)