Superman the movie(The best superhero movie ever made and that is not nostalgia talking, i didn’t see the movie until I was 18 and then it was when i was trapped at work after the end of my shift for the whole night and I was watching it on a portable DvD player with a tiny seven inch screen, so that was the worst way to watch any film for the first time and I went in expect to hate it but instead i found it had a special magic that few films of any kind match. It didn’t treat the character as a joke but it still wasn’t afraid to just be a comic book film for kids, it didn’t try to pretend to be anything else and it wasn’t ashamed of what it was, a colourful, rapid fire, epic adventure film. In tone it reminds me of another film on my top ten list, The Adventures of Robin Hood.)
Man of steel(The best birthday present I ever got. I think the point that a lot of people fumble over is that this movie is completely different from the other Superman films and like a lot of project Goyer and Nolan have had involvement with it tries to show that a hero can be a hero even when there are not any easy answers and I have noticed that when it comes to hard issues like the true cost of war, Nolan and Goyer do something rare in the history of Hollywood films, they will bring up the questions these issues raise for the viewers to think about but will then not be afraid to admit that they don’t have an answer that will solve all these problems in every case.
Also in tone it is pretty close to the old Superman radio show where Superman would sometimes go up against the same brutal gangsters repeatedly and he would get mad and threaten, beat up, or even kill people to either get information, make a point, or just because he was mad after watching them try to get away with something.
It was a less perfect take on Superman that most people have not seen and so it didn’t sit well with them, but it wasn’t made up by this film and in it’s own way it is upbeat in that Superman does inspire all of the characters in this film who are not villains to be better people, even the wormy guy from the Daily Planet who I expected to be on the receiving end of a “Didn’t you get the memo?” type scene or to run off like a coward and get killed.
All and all i think this movie is far more upbeat and true to the character then most people give it credit for, i can’t say I feel the same way about it’s sequel based on the trailers I have seen so far.)
Superman 3(This movie is only this high because it contains one of my all time favorite movie lines. “I ask you to kill Superman and you can’t even do this one simple thing.” I also happen to think that the Lana Lang/ Clark Kent romance works better then the Louis Lane/ Superman romance in the other movies, it seems to be based on them both liking each other and not some form of hero worship. I have always seen Clark Kent as being as much a real part of Superman as any other part of his personality, yeah there are some things he does as Clark to throw people off, but over all I think Clark Kent is where the moral center comes from, so the fact that Louis always seems to reject Clark until she finds out he is Superman always bothered me and made it feel like that relationship was based more in Louis being in awe of Superman and it wouldn’t last, this movie isn’t bogged down by that.
Don’t get me wrong most of this movie is garbage but it does have a few scenes that still have some charm to them that help hold it up.)
Superman 2(This movie would be higher on the list but neither of the cuts out there feel like a complete movie, they each feel like a jumble of parts that never really come together to form a whole, and I had no idea there were two different cuts when i first saw it.
Also the music sounds like it was recorded in a shed somewhere and preformed by a high school marching band and that always distracts me from what is going on in the movie. Oh and then there is the fact that the movie revolves around the love story that makes no sense. I mean Superman wants to be with Louis, but Louis is in love with Superman and not Clark Kent, so Superman stops being Superman and becomes Clark Kent?! Even without Zod showing up, how was that relationship supposed to work for more then a day? when you ad to that the memory wiping kiss because Louis is too much of a weak emotional woman to handle ever seeing an ex boyfriend again you have a movie that just doesn’t work very well for me.
Reeves and Stamp have to pretty much hold up this movie on their own and it’s note enough IMO.)
Superman IV(I think i can see what they were going for with this movie, trying to show why Superman can’t solve all the world’s problems because they are too complex and he would have to take away free will, but over the top villains and it getting stuck on it’s preachy anti-nukes message,that really should have just been a story telling tool to get to the over all point of the film, sadly doomed this one before the budget was cut to less then half of what it was supposed to be.)
Superman Returns(Brandon Routh should have worked as Superman and it has nothing to do with him looking like Reeves. There is a scene in an episode of Chuck where he is warning a terrorist thug not to go after “His people” and he comes off as a really good Superman in this scene, and you can tell he is trying in this film and he does work in a few scenes. It’s too bad he was stuck with a soap opera script that didn’t give him much of a chance to do anything heroic and spent most of it’s time casting Superman as a creepy stalker, date rapist, deadbeat dad. Lex comes off as much less creepy then Superman in this movie and he tries a repeat of his plan from the first movie that nearly killed millions. I wouldn’t even call this a Superman film, because in no universe can I see the character that is written in this movie as Superman. he is just a creep with super powers and nothing happens for most of the screen time.
I really do feel sorry for Routh because he could have worked, but the horrid script doomed him before one frame of this movie was shot.)