10:09 I am way early. There is no one else in the theater and I wonder if that will change. Should have brought the DS. Walking down the hallway, I seriously considered jumping screens and seeing Clerks 2 or Pirates 2 instead.

10:15 Bring it On 3? Nice to see Kairi is still getting work. Sounds like my office's voice guy did the VO, which might explain why we have trouble getting scripts from him sometimes. He be mad krumpin' the skillz! Is the subtitle "all or nothing" or "straight to DVD"?

10:21 Great Sydney Pollack/Cingular "Turn Off Your Phones" ad.

10:23 Open Season. More soulless CG! Although it occurs to me that the new breed of CG animated films gets far more marketing and press than their hand drawn counterparts ever did. I mean, let's face it, this Open Season movie is the modern equivalent of that Don Bluth film with the singing cats, and I don't recall much advertising on that sorry POS.

10:29 LEGO Star Wars 2! Nice. But look, it only shows Xbox logos. What a bunch of fucking cockholes. That game is coming out for every system known to man, but this ad makes it look like a 360 exclusive.

10:33 New Fanta girls! Why wasn't I informed? This is bigger news than a third Bring It On movie.

10:35 That was the single greatest Coke spot I've ever seen. I'll never understand why companies do awesome commercials just for movie theaters.

10:40 TRAILER GET!

Invincible: Great trailer, makes me wish I knew more/cared about football.

The Ant Bully: Who cares. I'm really sick of CG just being used to animate massive group scenes of identical characters... which is why we keep getting CG movies about bugs and fish and parameciums.

The Nativity Story: I kept waiting for this one to do the old Trailer Switcheroo and become the next Austin Powers flick.

Spider-Man 3: More big zoomscapes over some element of the hero. Why do all super-hero movies have to do this. I'm looking forward to seeing Venom done like Venom.

Lady in the Water: Didn't this already bomb?

10:47 I like the new DC logo clip.

By the way, we're topping out with an audience of six. Me, another lone guy, an old husband/wife, and a teen son/his mom.

10:50 The same opening titles as the 1978 movie! Ugh. I'm already weary of this film and we haven't even gotten to "Kevin Spacey."

10:54 That's the Luthor setup? He faked a relationship with a rich old bag? This movie already sucks.

11:00 This is why the Silver Age Superman had a giant key to open up his Fortress of Solitude... so you didn't have dogsled teams just walking in and watching his home movies.

11:02 I do not get this Brando thing at all. It's not like he gave such a bravura performance that America just HAD to see it again, twenty five years later. The boring super-intelligent monologuist Krypton of the 1978 movie was awful, and here we are being forced to revisit it.

11:05 Great cast on Young Clark Kent. That kid looks like he stepped right out of a Silver Age Superboy story.

11:11 The space plane stuff is great, and a nice nod to post-Crisis continuity, where the whole "Lois trapped on the space plane" bit is a big deal. I like how Lois right away asks a stupid question and gets shot down by the marketroid.

11:14 I was so repulsed by the puppy-eating-puppy thing that I totally missed Lex's plan.

11:17 The NASA madhouse scene. If this was a Marvel movie, this would be the Stan Lee cameo.

11:28 I like humble Supes. Unfortunately, this movie seems to confuse that with just making him stupid and boring. Is he ever going to act like a human being in this movie?

11:30 "How many Fs in 'catastophe'?" Boy, they sure aren't giving us any reason to think Lois might actually be an intelligent woman. How'd she get that Pulitzer anyway? Tokenism?

11:38 Dude is back on Earth for a day and all he can do is moon over his old girlfriend. That's just sad, and it's a lame hook to hang on. "Superman has been away and he misses Lois!" Please. To make matters worse, his deep blue funk about not getting laid seems to make him not want to be Superman, which is pathetic.

I like that he interrupted the filming of Die-Hard 4.

11:51 Superman missed a court date and that's why Luthor was freed. That is balls-out stupid. This movie has no idea who Superman truly is, allowing him to play the moron just to get us from thin plot point to thinner plot point. The Superman that I have been reading for decades would easily have postponed his Hunt for Krypton long enough to see Lex behind bars. Without a second thought. Shit, even if sticking around for the trial would have cost Superman his one shot at finding Merrie Olde Krypton, he would have done it... because Superman always sacrifices his good for the sake of others.

This movie could have had Lex escape from prison, or he could have lawyered his way out of prison... instead we have Superman being an idiot and not showing up as a witness. Awful.

11:56 Come on, scan her for lung cancer, you boy scout.

What is so obviously absent from the big Lois + Clark = Angst scene is that nobody bothers to understand why Superman had to go see Krypton. Lois is completely selfish about it and doesn't even attempt to understand why it was necessary... and Superman, being an idiot, doesn't try to explain it. This could have been another beat in the "lonely Superman" arc, and instead it's Superman half-assedly apologizing for leaving Lois as if his soul-searching wasn't important at all.

And holy crap, look at Lois-n-Cyclops's house. The newspaper business must pay extremely well.

12:14 Nice big Lex scene, the only time so far that Kevin Spacey has had something to do. And what is up with his henchmen blatantly acting silent? It's creepy. And probably very inexpensive.

12:19 I'm having trouble with the kid being Superman's son. It proves that this movie has no intention of being anything other than surface. After all the hand-wringing about Superman being all alone, now we're expected to believe that Kryptonian semen can safely impregnate a human egg? Then, instead of Kal-El being the sole survivor of a doomed alien civilization, he's really just the sole survivor of the Roanoke colony... because he can mate and live with people from South Carolina as easily as he could have with his native Virginians.

"I Spent the Night with Superman" was another terrible invention of the old movies and once again we're stuck to live it out today. This is a good movie made on a bad foundation.

12:23 Whee! Young Superkid's first murder!

The worst part about the presence of the sad-eyed Supertoddler is that any sequel will be forced to include Justin Timberlake as the teenaged son trying to come to terms with his powers, leading us to yet another transparent superhero puberty metaphor.

12:31 Fun chaos in the Metropolis earthquake scene. This is what Superman action is all about: amazingly unbelievable things go wrong, and he pulls off amazingly unbelievable stunts to fix it.

12:34 All right. How much longer until Cyclops dies and/or former indie It girl Parker Posey betrays Lex?

12:39 Lex's crystal island looks an awful lot like HeroScape. Without the dragons.

12:43 Oh fuck! Kumar is going to beat up Superman! Without saying a word!

12:48 You know, this new landmass seems rather easily wrecked. First, a depowered Superman rolls down a hill breaking off pieces as he goes, and now an entire spire gets clipped off by the wing of Cyclops's seaplane. Admittedly, his plane seems pretty resilent, having flown into and parked safely in the middle of Luthor's disaster zone.

12:54 I love the bongos in the Escape from HeroScape Mountain sequence.

Somebody better pick up those crystals before they get wet.

1:00 At least Metropolis can rally around their fallen hero without resorting to the cloying "Nobuddy messes wit' New York!" crap that we endured in Spider-Man 1 and 2.

Although doing a Death of Superman riff is pretty cheap at this point, and is just stretching out an already too-long film. We know he's not going to die - Warners can't sell toys of a dead guy - so why torture us with a faux question?

And if Superman can fly above the clouds and become rejuvented by the sun, why does he turn into Fainting Jesus after he tosses the island into deep space? Maybe Movie Supes needs Earth's atmosphere to filter the yellow Sun into an energy form his body can absorb. ...I should not have to manufacture fanboy answers for this movie.

Supes visits the Lane-White Estate. Now that he knows that Jason has powers, he no longer feels so alone. So he flies off into the night, presumably preparing to contact his lawyer to arrange his visitation rights. Seriously, this is really creepy. So now he knows he has a child, who has been raised by Cyclops since birth, and he suspects Lois's feelings are still conflicted... and he just flies off, somehow satisfied? At the beginning of the movie, he was so desparate to talk to Lois that he spies on her at every opportunity. Now he is okay? How does any of this make any sense? Superman, how has your life suddenly been made better?

Bryan Singer took the worst parts of the old movies (fuck, why not bring back Otis?), used the most off-putting means of modernizing the characters (absentee father), and calls himself a fan? I think I'd almost rather see the giant spider script that Kevin Smith is always talking about.

Credits. OK.

I think the big problem is that the film expects everybody to care about the canon established from the Chris Reeve Superman and Superman II. That was twenty-five goddamn years ago. Nobody wants to see a direct sequel to a twenty-five year old movie. Half the movie-going audience today hasn't even seen those films. And the other half also saw Superman III and thought it sucked. That vision - the Richard Donner vision - is dead and buried.

In the meantime, the comics versions of Superman and Lex and Lois have developed into something far different from the DC Comics world of 1970s. Post-Crisis, turning Lex Luthor into a megalomaniacal Donald Trump has become the definitive iteration of the character... surviving through clones and cancer and weight loss and even the US presidency. That is the Lex that modern comics fans have grown up with.

And it's a damn good version of the character. More complicated and sympathetic and interesting than Gene Hackman's motiveless cipher, regardless of how well Kevin Spacey plays out the homage.

Had you not seen the 1978 original, you would have no idea why Lex hates Superman. Hell, I have seen it, and even I was cringing during the "kick the shit out of Supes" scene, wondering what exactly happened between these two guys. I guess it doesn't matter why Lex hates Superman; he just does, and Bryan Singer knows that you have seen enough episodes of "Super Friends" to know that, so he doesn't have to do anything about it. At one point, Lex seems irritated that Superman won't "share [his] powers," which, on the face of it, is ridiculous. Since A) he does share his powers every day by selflessly helping people and B) how exactly does Lex expect Supes to give them to him? Some kind of DNA transfer?

In the gay-bashing scene, Lex mentions that he lost five years of his life (because of Superman), which is the only clue as to why he is so angry. Which five? Because the movie seems to indicate that he never actually went to prison anyway (since Superman missed the trial). Was it five years he spent with the old lady? Is he talking about five years from the previous movies?

By the way, naming your rich old woman character "Gertrude Vanderworth" is about the least creative thing I've seen since Bring It On 3.

I just really hate Lex Luthor being a worthless con artist with an irrational hatred of Superman, who swindled his way into money. And for a guy who constantly talks about being smarter than everybody else, all he does is steal Superman's Magic Brando Crystals and dump them in water. Jesus, Metallo could have done that. And when Lois rightly points out that other countries will come after him, he talks about having "alien technology" that will stop them. What alien technology are you referring to, Lex? More crystal dust? All I saw that do was knock the Daily Planet globe off of the roof.

The sad thing is, the movie's basic evil plot could have handily been adapted to the modern Lex... Imagine: he's a super-rich media-hungry business tycoon who decides that he can regain his lost status (since Superman blew into town and took all his press) by building his own massive island. Plus he'll make a ton of money. And Lex being Lex, he doesn't care about the damage to the city proper or the slums that will soon be underwater. Furthermore, he'll have a secret weapon up his sleeve in case Superman or the US come after him, which he is certain will not fail him, and which is why he is willing to take the risk of ruining his "good" name. And since we're already borrowing from the John Byrne years, why not have the secret weapon be Bizarro, cloned in LexCorp's hidden underground labs. In one story, you see Lex the businessman, Lex the genius, and Lex the scientist.

There would have been a lot done with Lex's natural arrogance, particularly towards the poor (who have never done anything for him anyway). Lex's plan would begin under the innocent facade of creating a man-made resort island with affordable housing, so Metropolis would initially be behind the project. Cue shot of citizens standing in front a dozen televisions in a store window, watching Lex shake hands with Mayor Sonny Bono. But of course, Lex gets greedy, his true plan is exposed, and Superman stops him.

In five minutes, I just outlined a more believable, more modern, more nuanced version of Lex's plan. In contrast, Movie Lex's plan is ineffable to the point of cartoonish, outlandish after even the merest examination (who is going to do all the construction work?), and is never even revealed to Metropolis at large. All they see is an earthquake, which amounts to nothing more than the dust getting shaken off the buildings. The people of Metropolis are nothing more than panicky set dressing.

Although I believe Lex to be the most abused character in the film, let's look at Lois and Clark. Both are gut-churningly stupid throughout. Lois is the intrepid reporter who can't spell, asks terrible questions at press conferences, might pass for being 16 years old in pumps, and has yet to figure out that Clark = Superman. At least Margot Kidder looked and acted like she might actually be employed as a beat reporter.

Clark is a bumbling office prop who does nothing but stutter in the face of his secret crush and mug at people from across the room. Once again, we are hamstrung by the 1978 version. People, there is nothing wrong with Clark Kent being a confident and capable figure. It may have once been funny to know that powerful Superman disguises himself as a nebbishy dork, but now it is just annoying. This is why, in the comics, Clark revealed his secret to Lois years ago (and married her!) Because to keep doing stories otherwise means Lois is actually a retard, and Clark has to keep acting like one.

And what was the point of having Lois's boyfriend be Perry's nephew and also a Daily Planet employee? Why either, and why both? Just so we have an easy excuse to keep the kid nearby, because the folks continually take advantage of the Planet's liberal in-office daycare policy? Cyclops dies in the sequel, I'm calling that now.

Look, I'm spoiled. I get better Superman stories every week at my local comics shop. And I always become irritated when something like this shows up and proves to the general movie-going public that comics are nothing more than simplistic, predictable action stories. Superman Returns is not going to convince any adult to check out a Superman comic in the way that seeing The DaVinci Code might inspire someone to read the original novel.

But here's where I go psycho on you, because I liked it, sort of. I'm being intensely nitpicky about it, because I hold the character to a higher standard than I do, say, the Fantastic Four or the X-Men (although I think I liked FF better, for just that reason... the cheesiness made it fun, while Superman's cheesiness made it disappointing). But there are some worthwhile scenes that make up for all the dreck. And by the end, I found myself okay with whisper-thin Brandon Routh's imitation of Christopher Reeve, at least in a pure acting sense. Even if he is awfully young and nowhere near big enough to match the comics' vision. It just should have been much better. There's some great, appropriately staggering action... I'll even allow the punctured romance... but the kid, the stupidity, and the cliche Luthor have got to go.

ADDENDUM: The best Superman Returns fan-ponderings I've found come from the weblog Dave's Long Box, from the comments page found here. This is my favorite quote from the discussion:

So... Since Supes kissed Lois in Superman 2, making her forget everything that transpired between them in the film... once the heritage of her son became obvious in Superman Returns, wouldn't she have wondered when Superman boned her?

Did she whisper "I know you raped me in my sleep" during the hospital scene?

LOgoddamnL to that.