Superman Returns

I should be in bed right now and I'm going to regret it tomorrow morning when S-Boogie wakes me at 7:30, but I couldn't go to bed without blogging about Superman Returns. Foxy and I saw it this afternoon, and I was blown away. And not just because the volume in the theater was turned up ridiculously high--the movie is amazing on a lot of levels. The action sequences and SFX are incredible. To quote the tagline to the 1978 version of Superman, you will believe a man can fly. Sure, Superman does lots of cool stuff, but nothing as cool as flying, and the flying scenes are... wow.

At any rate, my favorite part of the movie is not the flying or the action or Kevin Spacey's superb performance as Lex Luthor or even Brandon Routh in tights. My favorite part is the love story. I like fiction that represents love in a way I find realistic and responsible, and Superman Returns does just that. I won't give too much away, but there's a weird sort of love triangle that results from the fact that Superman has been gone for five years and has come back unexpectedly, and all three parties involved in the triangle act realistically, responsibly, and maturely--like adults, not teenagers, which is how adults in most romantic movies tend to act. In the real world, or at least in any part of the real world that involves any kind of lasting happiness, love is not some raging passionate force that takes complete control of you, but rather it is a raging passionate force that takes complete control of you, balanced by rational decisions of whom and how to love. All three parties in the love triangle in Superman Returns portray both sides of this equation: the passion and the ration (which would be more clever if "ration" meant what I want it to mean here). I've long been a fan of Superman, but now Bryan Singer has made me a fan of Lois Lane.