Superman Returns spent 20 years being the sequel nobody asked for — and the loneliness was the point

Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns asks a question no Superman film had asked before: what happens when the hero comes home and nobody needs him anymore? The 2006 film plays less like a reboot than a love letter to Richard Donner’s 1978 original. It is a strange, melancholy blockbuster, and it mostly works.

Trailer, via YouTube Movies.

A Five-Year Absence and a Pulitzer Prize

The setup is simple. Superman left Earth to search for the remains of Krypton, where astronomers believed they had found them. He found nothing. Five years later he comes back to Metropolis, resumes his job at the Daily Planet as Clark Kent, and learns that Lois Lane has moved on. She is engaged to Richard White, Perry White’s nephew, and they have a 5-year-old son, Jason. She has also won the Pulitzer Prize for an article titled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.”

That last detail is the whole movie in one sentence. The writers understand that the emotional stakes here are not a planet-sized threat but a man realizing he has been replaced.

Brandon Routh Steps Into the Cape

Routh was chosen from thousands of candidates across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. He had already lost the Clark Kent role on Smallville to Tom Welling. Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve, called his resemblance to her late husband striking.

She was right. Routh does the impossible thing: he plays Superman without doing a Christopher Reeve impression. He is quieter, sadder, and the film is built around that sadness. Kate Bosworth’s Lois is sharper than the script sometimes lets her be, and the Pulitzer subplot gives her an actual interior life rather than just a love interest’s grief.

Kevin Spacey Plays Lex Luthor Darker

Spacey said Singer told him to play Luthor “darker and more bitter” than Gene Hackman’s version, and not to use the earlier portrayal as inspiration. What survives from Hackman is the real estate obsession. What is new is the menace. This Luthor married a wealthy widow to inherit her fortune, stole Kryptonian crystals from the Fortress of Solitude, and uses them for an experiment that causes a power outage on the East Coast.

“Look up in the sky!”

That tagline is doing a lot of work. It is a callback to the 1978 film’s marketing, and it signals exactly what Superman Returns is: an homage sequel that ignores Superman III, Supergirl, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace entirely.

The Shuttle Rescue Still Holds Up

The centerpiece set piece remains the best sequence in the film. A Space Shuttle is mounted piggy-back on an airliner for a flight test. Lois is on board covering the story. Luthor’s blackout interferes with the launch. Clark flies into action as Superman, pushes the shuttle into the sky, and stops the plane from crashing into a baseball field.

The visual effects were handled by Sony Pictures Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, Framestore CFC, Rising Sun Pictures and The Orphanage. Principal photography took place mostly at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, running from March 2005 to November. It was the first film produced by Legendary Pictures. You can feel the money on screen, and the shuttle rescue is the one moment where the film’s scale matches its ambition.

Jason White and the Unanswered Question

The film’s boldest choice is Jason. Lois’s son has asthma and other ailments, but some scenes tease that he feels discomfort around Kryptonite. Whether Superman or Richard is his father is never explicitly resolved.

That ambiguity is either the smartest thing in Superman Returns or the most frustrating, depending on your patience. It is a sequel hook that never got paid off. James Marsden’s Richard is the film’s secret weapon: a genuinely decent man, not a villain, which makes Superman’s loss feel earned rather than contrived.

A Running Order of What Works

The third act is where Superman Returns loses its nerve. Luthor’s plan to reshape North America with stolen Kryptonian crystals should be terrifying. Instead it plays as a retread of the 1978 film’s land-grab scheme, and Spacey’s Luthor never gets a moment as chilling as his introduction.

What Superman Returns Gets Right

This is a film about abandonment, and it knows it. Superman returns to find that those he was closest to have moved on. Eva Marie Saint’s Martha Kent and Frank Langella’s Perry White fill out a world that feels lived-in. Sam Huntington’s Jimmy Olsen and Parker Posey’s Kitty Kowalski, a henchwoman based on Eve Teschmacher from the 1978 film, keep the lighter tone alive.

The film runs 154 minutes, and it is too reverent toward its source. But it is also the only Superman movie that treats his loneliness as the actual subject. That is worth something.

Brandon Routh · Bryan Singer · Kevin Spacey · movie review · Superman movies · Superman Returns