Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I Just rewatched Superman 2 ( which I have on DVD so I DO like it) after seeing Superman Returns last night and I really like Routh bettter than Reeve. Reeve does a great job but frankly Routh's Performance is deeper and more nuanced. Reeve does look beeter just standing there. IN fact Superman 2 stands up very badly to Returns for me. The phantom zone villans are great but the general level of writing is much better in Superman returns.  Any plot holes in Returns and microscopic compared to the sloppinesss in Superman 2. Almost actor by actor I prefer the new version. My wife thinks I've been replaced by an Alien. I NEVER like the new version of anything better.

I'm not gonna shoot you; I agree with you!

Reeve was ill-served by bad plots throughout his tenure, but to me he comes off as physically weak and that's a no-no for Superman. (I don't mean he wasn't built, because he was.  But he was too...well, girly for my taste).  I grew up on George Reeve's version with that jutting jaw and no-nonsense attitude, and Chris' "sensitive new age guy" was a drag for me even when I was a kid.  I guess they made Superman all cute and cuddly for the girls in the audience, I don't know.  Even the flying was wrecked for me because they replaced George's leap and hurricane woosh effect in favor of floating around like Peter Pan.  Not that Routh doesn't float, too, but some of the flying effects in SR are powerful and almost violent in terms of speed and movements, and I dig it.

I think it's possible Reeve could've done some great acting in his films, had the scripts demanded it.  But in retrospect they're much more "comic booky" (in a bad sense) than any superhero fare that came after them.

Routh's last scene with the kid was more moving than anything Reeve ever did, I believe.  (Sometimes Reeve's acting is just awkward, like in that cut scene with Jor-El on the S:TM DVD) But most of all, for my money, Routh just comes off as tougher, which wins my vote.  And I've gotta tell you for all the controversy the suit didn't bother me a bit.  In fact on screen it looks better than the older version, even if (or more likely because) it was more faithful to the comics.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I wonder if the stories had been better if Reeve would have enjoyed the character more  and thus put more into it after the first film.

I agree about Reeves' Superman, but I've always thought that his Clark Kent was perfect. On the other hand, George Reeves had Superman down, but his Clark Kent was a bit obvious.

It's really hard for me to come to a definite opinion of Brendan Routh because, honestly, the movie didn't use him very much - I'm struggling to find a scene at least equivalent to the Clark Kent/Lois "Not unless you can fly!" moment. The critics were right when they said that one problem with the film was that Superman just didn't get much dialogue.

At the same time, I agree with others that said that Brendan Routh's awkward, quiet and invisible Clark Kent did much better than the stuttering nebbish Chris Reeves envoked.

The reason I personally always liked Christopher Reeves was because he had so much chemistry with the rest of the cast. Obviously there was Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeves (who no doubt had so much chemistry on set because OFF-set, they didn't get along) but also there was Chris Reeves being the straight man to Gene Hackman's comedy bits. Only one line in the film hints at the previous Hackman/Reeves chemistry: "I see an old man's sick joke."



Really? I thought Christopher Reeves flying was one of the better parts of his performance. The guy knew something about how airplanes work (he was a glider pilot), so when he wanted to slow down, he brought his arms out wide to create drag. His back and cape moved a certain way when he wanted to go up, and so forth. It reminded me of the weightlessness that Gil Kane gave his Green Lantern when he floated like a soap bubble.

Routh's speech at the end was as good as any of Reeve's best moments in the cape, but Routh had a huge advantage of using Reeve's best work as a model.

I still prefer Chris Reeve myself.  His performance had a charm that I felt was missing from Routh's.  
I did like Brandon Routh.  I just wish they had given him more lines.

Now the concept of flying is making me think...to me, in the original feature cartoons, and even the live action serials, Superman flew in a direction, like an airplane (and he landed with a "whoop" sound in the Alwyn series), and that was even more true of George Reeve's jump and whirl of air effect...the Superman floating or levitating seemed odd to me at the time, even if he was doing that high in the sky all the time in the Silver Age comics...

I want to back up and answer Julian on the flying thing.

I didn't mean to imply Chris wasn't great at flying, in fact after all these years it's the one thing that's still unfailingly fun to watch in the first film (well, after that astonishing cinematography in the Kansas scenes...WOW!).  I agree a big reason we did believe a man could fly was because Chris "sold" it with his body language, maybe indeed because he understood the physics of real flying.  Let's face it we've all seen tons of wirework since 1978, most of technically superior to what was in that film, yet about 89% looks totally fake...cool sometimes, but fake nonetheless.  Reeve made it look like he really was flying even with that 30-year-old technology.

My problem as a kid...and it's never totally left me...was the way he sort of floated up off the ground and all you heard was the flutter of his cape.  I felt that where George's takeoffs and flights seemed generated by POWER (super-leg muscles), Chris' seemed the product of some kind of magic.  This implication of magic, rather than science (however fanciful) dogged the Reeve films throughout.  In the second film, he has his powers removed by some sort of tanning booth in a manner that's never really explained, then he gets them back without even an attempt at explanation.  Jor-El's messages at first seem to be recordings, but then he answers questions and has give-and-take discussions with Superman like he's a ghost, not a hologram.  In Donner's version of S:II, Jor even "sacrifices himself" to get the super back in Superman.  How can you sacrifice yourself if you're already dead?  Again, there's something supernatural and magical at work here.  And how else do you explain super-Great-Wall-Of-China-rebuilding-vision if not magic?

Anyway, I always felt the Salkind movies, on some fundamental level, never really understood what Superman was about (super-cellophaning, anyone?) and for me it all started with that Peter Pan takeoff.  That's probably just my hang-up, I don't know.

Where was that filmed? I think I heard part of it was in Newfoundland or somewhere. Either way, it looked beautiful. If I wasn't mistaken, didn't the cinematographer die on making it?

Plus, those scenes had the Best Supporting Performance by a Cereal Box.



Well, if you like power, SUPERMAN RETURNS certainly delivers. I especially like when Superman landed on Luthor's island, and there was an angry, purposeful CRACK with his landing!



Interesting points. On reflection, some of the elements of Superman did feel "mystical" in nature - and everybody can safely agree that the powers lost/regained is pretty goofy.

One specific incident of mysticism creeping up: before the Donner/Reeves film, any similarities to Jesus were incidental; afterward, they were explicit.

And like you said, the Singer film, for all of its many strengths, does choose to take some of the earlier film's missteps, and among them is the idea of Superman as a holy or Christlike figure - for instance, Brendan Routh falling to earth in a sort of "stained glass window" posture. This always made me squirm just a little bit in my seat for two reasons:

1) the pretention of it always bugged me.  As I said earlier when people were comparing Superman to mythological characters: Superman doesn't NEED to be compared explicitly to holy men and mythological heroes. Just have Superman be who he is, and if the stories are good, the comparisons suggest themselves.

2) Previously, before the Donner films, Superman was a Jewish figure created by two Jewish guys, who, not because of any conscious choice on their part, had Superman have incidental similarities and comparisons to Jewish folk heroes, and gave Superman Jewish "themes" like exile and special identity. None of these things were the creator's deliberate intention, but they were there just the same: the evil Amalak, Len Wein writing a story called "Let my People Grow" and so on.

On the other hand, watching non-Jews turn around and make Superman EXPLICITLY Christian gives me the same feeling I'm sure black people must feel when they see white people doing hip-hop.



Actually, I was thinking that Superman levitating slightly over the ground one be one of the things that really would be neat to see in a movie. This is something that couldn't be done with wireworks unless you had a convincing actor, because then their legs would just "dangle."

Like Nightwing said, though, it would be interesting if they came up something to make the power look like it's got "power." Perhaps when Superman levitates, there's little gusts of air beneath him, like being beneath a helicopter.

Well, in the recent film, he does "hover" inches from the ground for a long time when he falls through the barn...

I tend to think that a high speed take off mimics air planes, everyone's most familiar take on flight in the 40s-60s...its kind of funny that even Swan's Superman often stopped in mid flight, but I can't remember him ever levitating when he jumped out of the Daily Planet windows before he shot off to his mission...

WAYNE BORING'S sUPERMAN APPEARED TO BE RUNNING ON AIR.

Well, sure, there were many styles of flying...one thing that comics don't portray that well or even really deal with is the take off... 8)

Julian Perez writes:



Well it was definitely Canada, although Newfoundland doesn't sound right.  I'll have to see if I can unearth my copy of the "Making Of" book and look it up.

Yes, the cinematographer did pass away before the film was released, though I think his work on it was done.  If memory serves, his name was Geoffrey Unsworth, and the film was dedicated to his memory.



You're right about that.  Mario Puzo (or whomever) laid it on with a trowel in those Jor-El speeches ("I have sent them you, my only son...").  A lot's been made about the Christian symbols in the new film, but it was a lot more jarring and out of left field in the first one.  It was also a bit unsettling for me as the son of a Methodist minister...I remember having an aversion even to "Thor" comics because it seemed to endorse polytheism! :shock:

Anyway I agree it's more fun when the viewer/reader is left to connect the dots himself.  Making it overt is a lot clumsier and not nearly so clever as the storytellers seem to think.



I've seen Superman compared to the Golem by commentators a lot better qualified to know than I, but (as admittedly a Christian with little insight into Jewish lore) I always thought Superman was a Jewish kid's (or maybe adult's) view of what a savior SHOULD be.  One of the reasons Christ had his work cut out for him getting followers was because he arrived...the messiah foretold for centuries...as a poor carpenter preaching peace and riding into town on a donkey.  I'm sure anyone who stayed up at night all those centuries telling or listening to tales of the coming messiah would have much preferred a savior who could toss the oppressor across the room, who kicked butt and took names, and just to make things even more iron-clad, wore an "S" for Savior on his tunic.

I always assumed Jerry and Joe were creating for themselves the savior history never gave them.

I wouldn't read too much into it. They created the ultimate power fantasy, a strong man who could stand up to crooks and hoodlums and fight for the working class of America. A super nerd who could get any woman he liked, if he really wanted to, just by taking off his shirt.

Sure there was the whole Moses/Samson angle for his origin and powers but he wasn't suppose represent them. He was suppose represent Jerry and Joe!

I know you can't stand it, but Lois & Clark had a number of decent scenes of Superman/Clark hovering in various contexts, mostly because it was a cheap  effect.  Dean Cain looked better doing it than, say, the Phantom Zone villains on the lake in Superman II.

In the DVD Commentary and extras for SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, they talk about him - Margot Kidder said he was a beautiful Englishman who said things like, "prepare the camera to shoot the lady, please."  

The director commentary for this film is pretty spectacular in one respect: it's the first time Dick Donner had seen this movie in years, so he'd forgotten a lot of it! It was fun to watch him go "Oh YEAH, Margot Kidder's in this, isn't she?"



I'm not saying that Superman doesn't have similarities to mythological figures and holy men, but these similarities are incidental. That's my problem also with Morrison writing "Superman as Hercules" in ALL-STAR SUPERMAN: it's unfair to the uniqueness of one to write him as the other. Like Busiek said, if just focus on telling good stories with Superman being who he is, mythic themes suggest themselves.



Heh! Really? If THOR wasn't your bag, I wonder what you'd think of Jim Starlin's "Adam Warlock: Space Christ."

Ohhhh, boy, what is it about Marvel "cosmic" comics that makes everybody involved think their farts smell like lilacs?

(And am I the only one that noticed that the chick from Epic Comics' DREADSTAR looks EXACTLY like Scarlet from G.I. JOE?)



The novel KAVALIER & CLAY gives a very interesting look at how the ethnicity of comics creators during the Golden Age was a significant factor that influenced their work without them noticing it.

I think you're right, though. These similarities were incidental instead of explicit, and more or less based on Jewish "themes" like exile and special identity - I doubt they were intentional, just another way people are affected by the world that produces them. But they are there, and much more invisible than the tack-hammer to the skull overtness in SUPERMAN RETURNS, where he falls in a "stained glass window" posture.



One Jewish song compares the Moshiach to an eagle, who saves a bird that cannot sing (Yisrael) from a bush (exile) where they are beset by vultures (anti-semites and other nasties).

HOWEVER, just like the idea of G-d being a "person" or "personlike" being is something of a simplification, so too, is the concept of the Messiah or Moshiach, and the End of Jewish History, which is a little more complicated than just a man (or a woman) that shows up to kick ass.

The End of History, according to the Jews, is more of a process, when the G-dliness in all things is made manifest,apparent, and visible. Think of it like this: when a cow is killed to use its hide to make a Torah, the G-dliness in the cow is made visible and apparent.

Hardly.  I was wondering if Dreadstar was a GI Joe comic because of Willow.

And Marvel has been known to infringe on other properties besides cosmic(Royal Roy/Richie Rich for example)

I do like the fact that a small company called Hero Games smacked Marvel down once for infringing on their label of Champions.

As to flight.  I think Helen Slater was the best actor/actress on that paticular power.

Nightwing wrote:




When attempts to have George Reeves do wirework went awry, they opted for the trampoline take-off and landing approach combined with the "flying shots", complete with powerful music and thunderous whooshing sfx, to give the illusion of power...but in my mind there was also no mistaking the fact that that same power existed within Reeve's flights.
The flying shown in the Reeve Superman movies (the first one especially) reflected the mood and emotional state of the Man of Steel. The gentle "cape-flutter" flights were in times of relative calm, such as after saving the cat from a tree or arriving/leaving Lois's apartment. The more driven, purposeful "speeding bullet" flights took place when Superman's speeding off in a race against the missiles or frantically getting to Lois in her car, moments from death.
There are moments where the question of "How Fast Can Superman Fly?", is posed and it seems as if Superman himself is unsure of the limits of his flying power, that is until he's pushed into a state of such anguish, frustration and rage after Lois dies that he pushes his speeds to unheard of measurements as it defies the laws of physics, time and space. To me, that is POWER.
It's funny, especially after watching Superman Returns, how much my thoughts of Superman's abilities reflect that of when I was a child. It's neither magic or science....they are simply the things only a Superman could do.





The way I viewed the aspect of Jor-El, when it came to the crystal technology, is that part of it contained original recordings....holograms, made by Jor-El...the other part served more as an interactive program that took on the likeness of Jor-El, used a pre-recorded vocablulary base, of his own words, to speak and made suppositions/opinions based on Jor-El's pre-existing memory files and how he dealt with similar matters in the past. This "father crystal" was meant to represent Jor-El in every conceivable way so that Kal-El would "never be alone", but only in the best way that Kryptonian technology could replicate.

Clark is told that once he uses the machine that would permanently take away his powers, it could not be reversed. And that was probably true. The machine's programming was designed for a single purpose. However, when a beaten, humbled and desperate Clark returns to the Fortress, begging for his father's help....in my mind, as I filled in the blanks....the father crystal lit up, answering his call. It explained to him that the only way the situation could be reversed is if the crystal downloads into the main circuit board of the machine and overwrites it's original programming and reconfigures the crystalline technology to alter his molecules to once again harness the sun's energy. But by doing so, would burn out the green father crystal, rendering it forever inert (which is why is not seen in Superman Returns), effectively "sacrificing" itself for the love of a son.

Course, much like the we-ran-out-of-money-so-it-would-look-cool-to-beam-something-out-of-Superman's-eyes-to-fix-the-Great-Wall-vision, it doesn't explain how that crystal returns in Superman IV to fix his ailing health after his run-in with the Nuclear Man and the movie script.[/quote][/b]

I'm speaking now as somebody who first saw Batman Begins and came out not know if I liked it or not!

It's a new film which came out after years, with new actors, plot, style ect... And Christian Bale, a bit... Can't get the word out...

But after a while the movie grew on me, and my second time to see the picture i really enjoyed it.

I think it's the same here with SR. It's been so long since the big screen welcomed him and the last time with awful "The Quest For Peace Of Piss", so we're introduced to new actors playing our fave characters and it's a bit strange to watch first time round.

Both excitment and what-not, and I came away feeling "Okay... That was... ... ...".

But on my second time to watch it it became more comfortable and refreshing, and it grew on me.

I could then say "It was a good movie".

As for Routh. A bit strange seeing him in the suit and all that, and my first time seeing him was "IS he Superman or what? Can he pull it off?"

But my second time I was watching Branden Routh as Superman and I could believe it!

He grew on me... time is all you need. When the DVD comes out and you buy it, it won't be weird watching it. And it won't be weird watching Routh.

That's my final thought!  :)

[cK]

After Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney, I was used to the idea of a "different" Batman.  I had confidence in Bale based on his past work (Equilibrium in particular).  I enjoyed Batman Begins once it was clear that "Bat-nipples" weren't part of the equation.  I don't even begrudge Batman not being much of a science guy when you have Morgan Freeman in the mix.  

But...  none of them defined Batman on film the way Reeve had defined Superman, even in the lousy movies.  If I were asked "Who played Batman on film...  pick the first person who comes in your head", I'd say Adam West without hesitation.  For Superman, most people's answer is Reeve (or sounds like Reeve :) ).  Most people can't even say Routh's last name right, by comparison.

I think he did a decent job.  I wish he talked more, but I loved his speech to the kid at the end.

Well - I also preferred Routh's Superman over Reeves.  It wasn't easy to finally decide this by the way.  I actually had to go back to what I thought when I 1st saw Reeves.

1) George was my 1st taste of a live action Superman,
2) Jimmy, Lois and Perry live actions from the TV show grooved me into Superman's universe.

I recall thinking Chris was way too skinny, and his hair was way too long.
Flying was nice except how often the poor guys legs would hang just a little down when he was flying with Lois or solo shots.  Glutes weren't built for that.
I didn't like Otis, and didn't like Luthor when he was being a little campy.  Too "Batman" for me on that one.  And Margot Kidder was just a little too plain.

Jimmy and Perry were perfect.

Clark's portrayal was a little too nerdy for me.

This time around...

Routh was built more like a hero,
Lois was very pretty,
Jimmy was the best I've ever seen him,
Clark was more a nothing and white-bread than an absolute nerd,
Luthor was scarier,
Superman actually flew and hovered,
I loved the whole "world at large" and Superman the world hero thing running in the movie (missed the American Way part, but that's more the patriot in me I guess).

In some ways, so much a better presentation of Superman - the best yet.

But, there is a lot of charm missing that Chris' movie had.  There was a bit of a personable quality that Chris had - particularly in little items like looking into the camera at the end when flying over the Earth.  It would have been nice to get Routh to do some of that.  Something along those lines.  Somehow, the 1st movie involved you into it.  This one, you tended to feel a little alien in it.  Dunno how to put it.  Anyway, maybe after some sleep...[/quote]

Skinny?  I never saw Reeve as being skinny.  By the time Darth Vader was done with him, he had a much more heroic build than anything I've seen out of Routh thus far.

Routh is thicker than Chris was.  I'm not saying he was a tooth pick - especially compared to the audition tape when he tried for the role.  I'm saying he was thinner than what I was expecting of a Superman.  Chris added more weight in 3 and 4 and I thought looked better in the suit.  I think Routh has more muscle mass than Reeve did in the 1st 2 movies is all.

Routh (and Superman in III and IV) were wearing more padding, IIRC.