"Superman Returns"

June 28, 2006 | Comic-book enthusiasts are so protective of their heroes that they sometimes border on thuggishness: If you're not already schooled in every nuance of Batman, Spider-Man or X-Men mythology, don't even bother showing an interest -- it's far too late for you to catch up.

But Superman -- who made his first appearance in a 1930s comic strip before becoming an icon of '50s television and the nexus of an uneven movie franchise in the '70s and '80s -- may be the ultimate comic-book hero, too big and too strong to be confined by geek snobbery. You don't need special credentials to reckon with Superman's strengths, or his vulnerabilities: Everyone in the world has the capacity to understand Kryptonite, and almost everyone can connect with the idea of a "man" forced to leave his home planet, unable to ever return. He's not just a construct but a part of our mythology as modern citizens of the world. Of all comic-book heroes, Superman belongs to everyone.

The title of Bryan Singer's sturdily poetic "Superman Returns" may be something of a misnomer: Can a hero as universal as Superman ever really go away? But the title makes perfect sense on other levels: This is a picture that, spiritually speaking, at least, picks up where "Superman" (1978) and "Superman II" (1980) left off, altering our brain waves so that the disappointment of the third and fourth movies of the series has been erased.

This is a beautifully made picture, a modern-day fable marked by a strong sense of continuity with the past, and not just the recent past: The art-deco-influenced production design, the lighting, and some of the camera work carry echoes of German Expressionism. The costumes (they're by Louise Mingenbach) are '40s movie-star garb filtered through a '70s sensibility -- a way of honoring the sartorial vibe of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder in the earlier movies, and also of tracing the Superman story to its just-pre-World War II roots. When Kate Bosworth, as Lois Lane, changes out of her Rosalind Russell tweed suit to attend the dinner at which she'll be awarded a Pulitzer Prize (her winning essay bears the title, transparently redolent of heartbreak, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman"), her dress is a full-length ripple of dark silk worthy of Barbara Stanwyck circa "The Lady Eve." Unlike so many contemporary Hollywood movies, which strut into our theaters as if they believe they've sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus (or maybe even just Scott Rudin), "Superman Returns" knows where it comes from.

But to know where you've come from, you first have to realize where you are. Singer -- who also made the first two X-Men movies -- places "Superman Returns" squarely in the modern world, a world in which 12-year-olds can snap photojournalist-quality pictures with their camera phones and real estate (as opposed to water or clean air) is considered a precious, exhaustible resource. In "Superman Returns" -- which was written by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, also the writers of "X2: X-Men United" -- the Man of Steel (Brandon Routh) returns to Earth after a mysterious absence of five years: He has tried, unsuccessfully, to find what was left of his own people, but has come to realize that Earth -- a place in which he has never felt fully at home -- is home.

His adoptive mother, Martha Kent (played, wonderfully, by the incomparably beautiful Eva Marie Saint), is thrilled to see him. But when he returns to his old job at the Daily Planet, in his Clark Kent guise, he realizes that his true love, Lois, has given up on him after his disappearance. She's raising a son, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu), with another man, Richard White (James Marsden, in a small but nicely shaded performance) -- the nephew of the Daily Planet's editor, Perry White (Frank Langella, showing off his knack for comic gruffness). And there are other problems for Superman to tangle with: Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey -- who's funny and sharp in a way he hasn't been, in the movies, for a long time -- has a new plot that involves creating a continent where none existed before: It will eventually usurp and destroy the United States, and he'll be the most powerful man on the planet. (His bad-gal moll, Kitty Kowalski, is played wonderfully by Parker Posey, wearing a succession of terrific faux-'40s outfits that play up her resemblance to Katharine Hepburn -- or, maybe more accurately, to a Hirschfeld caricature of Hepburn.)

And so this Superman has to get busy, fast. But Routh's Superman is a very different one from the wonderfully wry one Reeve gave us. This Superman is hardly more handsome than Reeve's -- I'm not sure that would even be possible. But Singer and Routh have stressed Superman's vulnerability, and his sense of isolation, rather than his invincibility. As Clark Kent, Routh is suitably absent-minded and boyish; but as Superman, he's a man out of time -- a soul who's uncertain about where he belongs, although he's unwaveringly certain about what he must do. We see the face and hear the voice of his father, Jor-El (courtesy of archival Marlon Brando footage from the earlier movies, as if Brando himself were speaking to us across the waves of the afterworld), explaining to his young son that while he'll never be like humans, he must make it his duty to help them.

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