
There are several reasons why Superman Returns struggled to capture my imagination. Let me start off by saying that I remain a big fan of Bryan Singer's work. I remain grateful to to 20th Century Fox for braving a gamble on a then unknown Singer to helm their X-men franchise. Singer immediately established himself as someone who could realize character driven stories against a larger than life backdrop. His audacious opening sequence in X-men where he ties Magneto's gut wrenching childhood with the holocaust created an emotional backdrop that kick started that movie and franchise.

First off, you must understand that to watch this movie you need to be well educated in the Superman universe. You don't have to be a fanboy or girl but you need to know the basics. In this regard, Superman Returns in very much a sequel to any of the previous Superman movies starring Christopher Reeves. Only, of course, its many years late. I'm not sure how much this alienated audiences - the movie (estimated budget $270 mil) pulled in about $391 mil internationally not counting DVD sales and was largely considered somewhat of a disappointment.
Although Brandon Routh makes an impressive Superman, a thespian he is not. He laces the identities of Clark Kent and Superman nicely together but he is too milquetoast an actor to project the slow burn of Superman's romance-gone-cold and increasing alienation. Kate Bosworth works really hard to update Lois as a young working mother balancing her love, career and family but struggles a bit in key scenes which require her to show us how torn she is between the man she loves and the man she lives with.

Finally a word on the special effects. Time and again Hollywood filmmakers have been relying on CGI to show sequences that wouldn't look as entralling or real when done with green screen or any other non-digital trick. This is well and good but as each movie attempts to up the ante on the action and camera angles get funkier in these CGI sequences, the technology struggles to catch up. In a movie like Spider-man, where the main character in the CGI sequence is fully costumed, it's harder to spot the difference between real and animated. But in a movie like this,

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