I zipped out to catch the opening of this film tonight and I’m glad that I did because now I don’t have to ignore any of the press about the movie. Unfortunately, I don’t expect there to be a lot of press for this film because it really wasn’t all that good. Or bad. Well no, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was rather well made and lovingly handled- it just wasn’t great; it didn’t have a lot of topography.
In the film’s defense, while the highs and the lows of the overt action plot were never pronounced, on a character level there was a great range of story being revealed through clever dialogue – sly references to the character’s history. Kevin Spacey makes for a great Lex Luthor and the special effects were understandably top shelf. Other than that, it came across as a pretty workmanlike effort and I never felt like there was any real peril for the man of steel.
But the audience didn’t care about my complaints.
They (we) clapped for Superman, every one of us wishing he were real.
In connection with your reference to the media remarks about this movie, I heard the “Entertainment Reporter” on the country station while driving in to work this morning. He said that the media was reporting Superman had a disappointing opening run because it only brought in $21M, and that this analysis omitted the fact that the movie was only shown at midnight or at least late at night. His conclusion was that, under these conditions, the receipts were quite respectable — more evidence that it is always important to accept media pronouncements with skepticism.
As far as the media coverage goes, they may be right in one way, wrong in another. The fact that it opened in the middle of the week (a Tuesday!) indicates to me that they don’t expect for it to have a “super” opening week and that they’d like to make their “opening weekend” stretch from the Tuesday sneak-peek until Monday. The word “weekend” seems to be highly malleable to H’wood spinners. I took a look over at rottentomatoes.com to see the opening weekend receipts for ‘X-Men 3’, the movie that Brian Singer opted to skip so that he could direct Superman. That movie (which was really tepid) made $122,861,157 in its first week. Let’s wait and see what the ‘adjusted’ totals are for Superman!
Oh yeah… Like a bag of Cheese-Its, I always experience a little “settling of my content” after seeing a film… I should have waited a day or so before posting any sort of review. I say this because I’ve changed my opinion of Kevin Spacey’s portrayal of Lex Luthor and the script’s handling of that character altogether.