More powerful than a Locomotive... Train wreck!

Superman Returns review

Gargantuan Plot Spoilers!!

Well, it probably isn't as bad as all that, but it has some glaring faults. To start with, the movie's plot is schizophrenic. To put it simply, the film makers are unsure of their final product. How much of the first two movies should we acknowledge? Any time a thought a plot device would be used to come to an obvious conclusion, the story would derail and try to take on a whole new theme. I'm not insinuating that it's full of plot twists. It isn't, it is full of plot potholes. Visually it is stunning. Superman sonic booms are cool, and he flies with a purpose, even if at one point he seems to be trying real hard to reach and airplane in freefall, and at another time, a news reporter can be heard on a background television as saying "He seems to be able to move at the speed of light." The problems I thought I would have with Brandon Routh, I did not. It was the whole supporting cast around him that couldn't carry their weight. Surfer girl Kate Bosworth in brown hair color is out of her league playing Lois Lane, in more ways than one. In addition to treating Superman's hiatus like a pouty little prom queen who didn't get a mustang for graduation, she is also to young for the role. In an obvious attempt to appeal to the Smallville crowd (you should all be ashamed there is a reason to identify such a demographic), Lois, Martha Kent, and Jimmy Olsen are all younger than when Superman finished off his business with ZOD and fled earth to visit the grave of his home world. This reverse aging must have been some strange carry over from Sups reversing time in order to save Lois, and all of California, from obliteration.

The few attempts to make Superman's reach larger than Metropolis, are dwarfed by the jilted lover routine which both gets tiresome and reduces the movies scope to an almost a Lois and Clark style soap opera. One would think that having witnessed what Lois Lane had witnessed while in Superman's presence, she would have outgrown childish infatuations, and been able to accept the bigger picture. The film does depict her as having moved on, if not begrudgingly, with her five year old son (Coincidence, I think not) and her long time fiancé. Singer obviously borrows from Raimi's Mary Jane, the difference being that Lois was suppose to be a street-wise, battle hardened journalist, not a struggling actress just out of school.

Lex Luthor's plot is laughable, but handled very seriously. The movie is pretty devoid of camp, but it is not devoid of a bad plot. Kevin Spacey is a brilliant actor, but I feel his talents are slightly wasted on this role. His mega scheme is to use crystals stolen from the Fortress of Solitude (more selective memory on the part of the script writers as the Fortress crystals were destroyed when Kal-El embraced mortality) to create a Krypton like crystal continent a couple hundred miles from the eastern seaboard. Cobra Island? To make sure his new fortress is safe, he combines one of the seed crystals with a tube fashioned from a stolen asteroid chunk. Anyone want to take a guess as to the origin of this meteorite? That's right children, it's from Krypton. The entire island is laced with kryptonite veins. Oddly enough, only when Luthor plunges a make-shift kryptonite shiv into Superman does it actually do any damage. Just being near it removes his invulnerability, making him susceptible to an ass-whopping by Luthor's thugs. Oh would I have loved to see a scene in which Bruce Wayne, also reacting to this geological phenomenon in the Atlantic, shows up on Luthor's new crystal formation as Clark is taking his beating, stands atop some high point and says to the thugs "What we got here is... failure to communicate." Unfortunately Batman doesn't make an appearence, and Superman, broken and beaten, falls off a ledge and plummets hundreds of feet into the ocean below with a kryptonite shard lodged into a couple of ribs.

At this point the film itself takes a huge plunge into surreal. The closing scenes are retarded, disconnected, and I just sat there with puzzled look on my face as they played out. I think the most damning complaint of this film is that Singer tries to hard to laud the story's mystical elements. My mother use to tell me the old cliché that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and while I believe that to be mostly true, what Singer does more resembles mimicry. He steals too many scenes from the movies who's story he purports to be advancing, all the while dropping small (infinitesimal) hints of these same past events. Out of fiver stars, I would give it three. Cinematography is 5/5. Plot is 2/5 and Direction is 2/5.

Clark Lars? What if Kal-El had crash landed on a different farm...

Using Vargr's example of the Yuuzhan Vong's invulnerability to force powers, we might conclude that metaphysical governors are not applied universally, but galacticly. This might be why Superman is so much more powerful in our Galaxy. We will deal with this more in depth when I watch the movie Superman Returns, but this might also explain why kryptonite is so lethal to him, additionally it would also suggest that a quick holiday to the void in space formerly known as Krypton might result in his immediate demise. The aura of invulnerability he enjoys in our Galaxy may not extend to his own, there he would just be another mortal, killed the second he emerged from the forth dimension into the void of Krypton space.

So how different would Kal-El be having been raised on Tatooine as opposed to Earth? Firstly we must deal with the obvious difficulties of any planet orbiting in a binary star system. Tatooine would have to be much further away from Tatoo I and II than our own planet is from its sun. Even as inhospitable as Tatooine may appear, it would probably resemble Venus if it's perigee to center of mass mimicked that of Earth. So Superman's solar sustenance would possibly be reduced by distance alone. However, being that most visible binary stars in our own galaxy are made of two stars hotter and more dense than our own, we still have a couple of options to consider. Krypton's sun was a Red Dwarf, the coolest of all stars, with a surface temperature of 2000-3500 Kelvin. Kal-El came to earth where, by Earthly classifications, we orbit a Type G star, with a Kelvin surface temperature of 6000 (although an atmospheric temperature of 1,000,000 K). This "Yellow" sun is what gives Superman his incredible powers. But like most things, there is almost always a too much variable.

If our Yellow Sun is a just right sun, then as pointed out by Vargr, would the combined energy of a blue class A star and a white class F (the most commonly observed binary configuration) be lethal to little Kal, or provide him with demigod abilities? I submit the former. It could be that the distance Tatooine is from its suns would negate any solar overload. In any case his powers would be different from his powers on earth simply because the stellar nucleosynthesis of the binary stars is different from our own. And, it's a different galaxy than either Earth or Krypton, so the afore mentioned metaphysical unknown is in play. Be that as it may, when Jor-El went searching for a planet, reminiscent of a parent selecting a good pre-school, I believe he would have definitely avoided Tatooine.

MORE SUPERMAN VS JEDI

I was just watching a bit of ROTS and I noticed something during the Dooku vs Anakin and Obi-Wan fight. Dooku lifts Obi-Wan up and then smashes him against the wall. But as he is lifting Obi-Wan into the air, Obi-Wan appears to also be in pain. Perhaps choking? Hard to say. Now as I watch I am listening to the commentary track. Wow, it's like listening to hermits discuss current events. But I digress, we don't fully understand the mechanics of the Force. What we do understand is a hodge podge of gamespeak using info gleaned from RGPs, MMORPGS, and PC games, combined with a dose of what we've all gained from novels and comics, and a dash of our own personal philosophies.
Thus, while we can say that Dooku used some form of TK on Obi-Wan to lift and move him, this is simply a way of labeling something that we actually don't understand. I feel that labeling something as Telekinetic is a bit of a cop out. Yes, it is movement over space without physically touching the object. But, if I secret a magnet of sufficent power in a glove and then wave my hand near a ferrous object, and the object comes into my hand, would you say I was telekinetic? If you were gullible you might. But the point is that movement over space without physical manipulation is not TK. When we say TK we are referring to a power that is generated by and controlled by the mind. Psionics, if you will.
But the Jedi philosophies that Yoda droned on and on about when he was training Luke (easily the Special Ed, short bus of the Jedi) tell us that the Force is created by life. It surrounds everything. Yoda seemed to be asking Luke to feel the Flowing around the rocks, not within them. But the land, it is full of life, and the Force is there. Thus was Luke manipulating the waves of Force around and under the rock?
Now to apply this to Superman. In the EU of SW we have the Yuhzun Vong, who come from beyond the Galactic Empire. The Force does not exist in their galaxy and somehow this means that when they enter the galaxy of our heroes they are immune to the Force. The Force is blind to their presence. They cannot be Force choked or any of that nonsense. By this token, and noting that neither Earth nor Krypton is in the SW galaxy, it could very well be that Superman would simply be immune to the effects of the Force. Further, despite Lucas's original idea of lightsabres as being these immensely powerful laser swords, the EU and later films and novels have stressed that the lightsabre is not just a piece of technology. To the Jedi it is a part of the Force. It is used like a Tai Chi sword as part of attuning with the Force. Quite possibly the sabres would not even work were it not for the Force, and therefore when not being used by a Jedi they would be far less effective.
Thus, until someone can decisively convince me otherwise, I believe that the evidence both canon, EU and anectdotal suggests that Superman could decisively beat a Jedi or a Sith with or without the help of Hostess (tm) products.
Now I put this question to you: On Tatooine, being a binary star system, would Kal be MORE powerful having the presence of two suns?
Or is it possible that his body would find itself unable to contain the nuclear forces occuring in his cells in the presence of such an environment?