Video Review: The Awfulness That Is Superman Returns

Now normally, I don’t bother with video reviews. However, after seeing Superman Returns, which at 300 million dollars, could fairly be called the world’s most expensive pile of crap, I felt that I had a duty as a blogger to write a spoiler ridden review that describes, in nauseating detail, how gut rippingly awful this movie turned out to be.

Now, at the start of the movie, we find out that Superman has built a spaceship and gone searching for Krypton. This has taken 5 long years and of course, while Superman was gone, Clark Kent was gone as well.

Then, after all this time, Superman shows back up and Clark Kent heads back to the Daily Planet to work. Now, as we all know, Superman has never exactly had the best disguise in the super hero game. He just takes off a pair of glasses and suddenly people don’t recognize him anymore. Have you ever tried that? Maybe worn a pair of sunglasses to the beach with some friends, walked around the corner, taken off the sunglasses, and then tried to pretend like you were a stranger? No, you haven’t tried that because it wouldn’t ever work on anyone. But, that’s what Superman does day in and day out, all day long, every day. That of course, in and of itself, is asking a little too much when it comes to suspending disbelief. But then, when both Clark Kent and Superman are gone all this time, how can it be that nobody says, “Gee, you and Superman gone for exactly 5 years. You know, without the glasses you kind of look like him. Wait, you are him, aren’t you!”

But, as bad as that is, it’s a forgivable mistake. However, what is not forgivable is that the movie actually centered around Lois Lane, not Superman. Lois Lane had a kid while Superman was gone, her feelings were hurt because he didn’t say goodbye, and throughout the whole movie it’s like, how does Lois feel about Superman, how does Superman feel about Lois? What stories does Lois want to cover today? Who’s the father of Lois’s nerdy, sickly little kid? Superman or the guy she started banging like a tramp about 5 minutes after he took off for Krypton? The whole film is like an episode of The View where Superman occasionally shows up and does things in an effort to distract you from how boring and feminized the movie has become. They should have called it Lois Lane the movie, co-starring Superman.

Anyway, Lex Luthor is the bad guy and he figures out how to create a whole new continent out of these alien crystals that he steals from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. So, he decides to create the new continent in the Atlantic Ocean and sets it up so that it will overrun and destroy the entire Eastern half of the US. Of course, Luthor could have just as easily created the continent somewhere else and not killed anybody, but then there would have been nothing for Superman to do.

Well, one of Lex Luthor’s flunkies is like, “Well Lex, but won’t they come after you if you kill all these people,” and he’s like, “Yes, but I will have alien technology that will make me so powerful I will be able to fend off the entire world combined.” Now, of course, if he has that technology, why not just use it to take over the Eastern half of the US. Ya know, land that has businesses, housing, resources, and farm land on it as opposed to land made out of an alien crystal? So, at this point in the movie, we’re neck deep in stupid and it’s about to get worse.

Lois Lane and her kid manage to discover Lex is behind the plot, but he captures them and gets the continent going. Of course, Lex knows Superman is coming and so he manages to infuse the entire new continent with Kryptonite.

But, before Superman can show up, Lois is menaced by one of Luthor’s henchman and her son kills him by throwing a piano at him, which means he’s not her boyfriend’s kid after all, he’s actually Superman’s kid. Now, this makes no sense because if the kid is that strong, they would have figured it out by now. Ya know, he would have been out in the yard playing catch with his “dad” and little Supes would have thrown the ball back to him, which would have broken his wrist, sheared off half of his head, and then the ball would smashed through the wall and embedded deep inside the freezer. Or maybe he would have been playing tag and accidentally flown up to some kid and stuck his finger through his spinal cord. Something would have had to have happened that would have clued them in before he splattered a goon with a piano.

Still, despite the heroics of lil’ Supes, Lois, the kid, and her boyfriend who attempts to rescue them and fails are about to die when Superman shows up and saves the day. Then comes the confrontation between Lex Luthor, his goons, and Superman — and of course, Superman has yet to figure out that he’s now standing on Kryptonite. This leads to Luthor’s 4 thugs just beating the living crap out of Superman who is nothing but a mortal man when he’s exposed to Kryptonite (Pay close attention to that little detail because it will come up again soon). The beating finishes with Lex Luthor shanking Superman with a Kryptonite blade and watching happily as he falls into the ocean and sinks beneath the waves.

But then, just as Superman is almost gone, guess who shows up to save him? Why, Lois Lane and her boyfriend, of course! Didn’t I tell you this should be called, Lois Lane the movie, co-starring Superman?

Then, after Lois pulls the Kryptonite shank out of him, Superman recovers and flies down and picks up the whole crystal continent from below and flies it into space. Now, here’s the kicker — just as Superman gets the continent far enough into space where it just floats off, some Kryptonite juts into him, making him a normal man again — a normal man IN SPACE! Furthermore, instead of just floating off, like the continent, which is like 5 ft. from him, Superman, who again is a normal man, drops back to earth — FROM SPACE. Superman then survives the fall, has the Kryptonite taken out of him by the doctors, and the movie basically ends soon thereafter, sparing us another 20 or 30 minutes of time which would have probably been spent focusing on what Lois was planning to fix for dinner and watch on TV.

Oh — and on the positive side, the movie had great special effects.

What really amazes me about this insipid turd sandwich of a movie is that it has gotten very good reviews despite being a really, really, bad film. I mean if this film were a person, I would advocate sending it to the old Abu Ghraib where it would be put on a leash by Lyndie England and forced to get in a naked pile of Iraqis. That’s how bad of a movie this turned out to be.

All in all, I give this movie an F -, -, -. In fact, it’s my 2nd most disappointing movie of all-time, behind Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, which was such a terrible movie that if it were a President of the United States, it would be Jimmy Carter with Bill Clinton’s morals.

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