Pretty good. Pretty pretty good.
I don’t know what I was expecting really but.. sitting in front of the Imax screen (so big as to exert gravity), hearing the staff member welcome us to this presentation of Superman and then hearing that classic theme tune… well… it just sent shivers up my spine.
But I’m a sucker for things like that.
Which is why I liked this movie. With the slew of superhero films recently released and more on the horizon, this have its own distinct style and muth and it succeeded admirably. This was not a confused teenager coping with great power, a group of young outsiders pleged to save a world that fears them, nor a beaten blind man using just his fists to stem the flow of crime in his neighbourhood; this was an alien with enough power to seize authority over the earth but paralysed by his own morality. This was Superman.
Okay, so Katie Holmes is waaaaay to young to have a pullitzer and the son thing is a bit hokey and unnessecary and Lex Luthors weird plan to sell real estate on a remarkably undesirable plot of land is … well… it’s just odd… but the audience is granted glimpses into the world of a man who can never stop hearing cries for help and muttered prayers stretching across the planet, who can see every child starving and who has the raw power to stop it. To force everything to be good, but who choose to show the world an example of goodness instead. That’s just great.
This is perhaps not the movie it could have been. A sterner editing would have improved it greatly. The familial ties and Superman’s intrusion into a content and secure family was distracting and belaboured the theme of isolation that was already well formed. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a pretty good one and well worth a view.
