OK, I admit it. I am a comic book geek. For much of my life I collected comic books (and in fact still have a big collection) and am a big fan of super hero comic books and any movies made about them.
In fact, Superman is my favorite. I love the notion of a truly noble spirit always trying to do the right thing no matter the personal cost. This farm raised Kansas boy may be naive socially but has a truly huge heart for the average person and their well being. That always struck me as a wonderful story. Often, in the comics they even portrayed him this way (sometimes not but many times they did).
Now the movies, often get naiveté right to some degree but not all but always through other characteristics in that would just be wrong. He would be naive socially but not with regards to his skills and his abilities. He grew up with his abilities. His vision powers; his hearing; his speed; his strength and all the rest. He is going to know how to use these abilities better than anyone else.
In the second movie, Zod and crew seemed immediately capable with their abilities. I just don’t buy it. Superman would just outclass them in every way. Also in all the movies, they make Luthor a little too comical. I’ve always enjoyed the comics where they portray his as off the charts genius and calculating. He would have to be to stay ahead of someone like Superman or even be a threat to Superman.
Now to this movie, I thought all the performances were pretty good though I thought many elements had similar weaknesses to those mentioned above.
Spacey probably portrayed the closest Luthor to some of the Comics that I’ve seen and was not as campy. In fact there was one scene with the K-knife that he was pure evil. On the other hand, his plans were just outlandish and just crazy – no way they would be considered brilliant. They were weak tie in’s to the first 2 movies and that is about it.
Lois was done pretty well. I didn’t like the way Lois was done in the first 2 movies. I thought she was more competent in this movie though I suspect a mother wouldn’t take a child to an unknown interview.
Clark/Superman was done well though not much dialog. Again, they characterize him as not knowing his own abilities even though he would have grown up with them. This was shown during the initial (and very spectacular) plane rescue – ripping of a wing and also during his conflict with Luthor at the end (not using any hearing or vision powers before approaching). On the other hand, they showed that he thought differently about using his vision powers in looking in on Lois and her family since he’s always had the ability and why would that be odd though normal humans would think this is just creepy.
The child could have been so much more. He was just utterly misused in every part of the story as far as I could see.
I enjoyed watching the movie even with the issues though the movie was at least 20 minutes too long. I’m not a director so I doubt I could even make a list of what to cut but it got slow too many times and that should not happen.
It looks like it will make some money with the box office combined with DVD sales so maybe they will do another. I would love to see them get more interesting and leave Luthor out of it. Bring something else into it like Braniac or explore a adolescent son which would be truly new territory.