I love Superman, the franchise, the character. I was very excited for the latest attempt to bring the ultimate superhero to the big screen. I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t super thrilled. It underperformed at the box office, which is too bad because Henry Cavill was amazing. With these slight improvements, the film would’ve been better overall:
#5: Re-cast Lois Lane. I love Amy Adams but not here. She’s too doe-eyed to play a hardscrabble reporter — and (ahem) brunettes anyone? We’re talking Lois Lane, not Lucille Ball! Adams and Cavill lacked chemistry. And the “measuring dicks" line was totally misplaced. We need a feisty — but likable (and believable) — tomboy Lois Lane character. One we root for.
#4: Lose the struggle over his powers. Does he use them, does he not use them? We paid 40 bucks to sit here not so Superman could watch his Earth dad die! Hello, save the poor farmer already! What is he Jesus? Samantha on “Bewitched”? Let the hero be the superhero!
#3: Bring back the family-comedy. That’s what was great about Christopher Reeve’s versions. There was cheeseball comedy. There is nothing wrong with classic humor, like Superman trying to find a phone booth to change and finding a half-phone booth and making do. Why not poke fun at the fact there are no phone booths anymore? Make it a family film. Double your B.O. You cannot bring little kids to this. Can we just not have Superman Christopher Nolan-ized? There. I said it. He’s not Batman. He’s Superman.
#2: Forget flashbacks. We had no emotional connection to the story other than the flashbacks. They were OK, but it left the present lacking. Give us a real story to sink our teeth into. What is Superman like? What does he do during the day?
#1: Downplay the villain. We’ve seen them all before. I get tired of going to superhero movies where the director falls in love with his villain and the superhero gets short shrift. That might be fine for Spider-Man, but not Superman. Nobody cares about Lex. Or Zod. Zod was boring, and he had too many cliché bad-guy monologues. My favorite roll-the-eyes line moment was when he said, “This is going to end with one of us dying." Really, I thought it was going to end with both of you becoming Facebook friends!
They got close. There were some magical moments. Superman is not just your run of the mill superhero, he’s Superman. He deserves a super movie.
