Review: Superman Returns (2006)
The opening titles stretch and fly at the screen as the camera soars past planets in space, while we begin to hear the famous notes of John Williams’ “Superman March,” as adapted by composer John Ottman. If the title, Superman Returns, wasn’t enough, the opening credits of Brian Singer’s 2006 reboot clearly signal the film’s connections backward to 1978’s Superman: The Movie, directed by Richard Donner. Singer’s desire to imitate Donner’s original film (and, to some extent, 1980’s Superman II, which Donner worked on and Richard Lester finished) was always obvious and self-conscious. Viewing Superman Returns in 2025, however, I also noticed the film’s connections to other contemporaneous incarnations of Superman, which make clear the aims of Singer’s version—aims never really achieved in my view.
I write this review just before seeing James Gunn’s reboot, and still in the shadow of Zack Snyder’s sombre approach in his unofficial trilogy about Superman’s origins, death, and resurrection (2013’s Man of Steel, 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and 2021’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League, all of which we liked and have written about at length). With the space of nearly two decades since I last saw Superman Returns (at the movie theatre in June 2006), Singer’s version looks like a relic from an earlier era—and it’s not the era you are expecting.
Sure, Superman Returns contains plenty of visual callbacks to Superman and Superman II as well as the Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1940s. But in addition to the suits with vests and the Art Deco sets and decor and the primacy of print media, Superman Returns is visually representative of the mid-2000s. It was the first Superman movie made after the CGI revolution in special effects and so it is the first film to show us the Man of Steel flying in a convincingly realistic manner. At the same time, the CGI has dated, with the animated stand-ins for real people in certain action scenes having a smooth, ethereal, yet plastic look (think the Burly Brawl in 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded).
Superman Returns feels of its era in other ways as well. In regards to the story, I was struck by how Superman Returns resembles the popular TV dramas about Superman from the 1990s and 2000s, particularly Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993–1997) and Smallville (2001–2011), which was in the midst of its run in 2006. Like these shows, Superman Returns is at heart a soap opera.
Superman Returns is primarily about Superman abandoning his adopted home and those he cares about only to return after an absence of five years. As if anticipating another franchise reboot a decade later—the opening crawl of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) tells us that “Luke Skywalker has vanished!”—titles after the opening credits tell us that Superman has left Earth to search for the remains of his homeworld, Krypton, after astronomers think they have detected the location. The film’s plot picks up with Superman (Brandon Routh) returning to Earth. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) now has a child and is in a serious relationship with another man (James Marsden playing “the other guy,” here named Richard White). The drama between Lois and Superman and the question of the parentage of Lois’s boy is the real story, with a Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) real estate/disaster scheme being the secondary plot.
This doesn’t mean that Luthor’s plan to grow a new continent using Kryptonian crystals stolen from the Fortress of Solitude doesn’t take up a good chunk of the running time. It does. And screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris are happy to take time to show Luther bickering with his minions (including Parker Posey and Kal Penn), a dynamic borrowed from Donner’s original that took up too much time in that film as well. That said, even the Lex Luthor plot starts like many a soap opera, with an old lady on her deathbed being defrauded. Overall, this secondary plot is much more entertaining than the main plot of the movie, but it is similarly played too slowly and too much of the action inhabits locations dominated by the lines of ugly black crystals. (This also raises the question of why anyone would want to buy a property on such an uninhabitable crystal continent. And why must every Lex scheme involve real estate?)
The main issue with the Lois and Superman drama, however, is that it redirects the film’s larger question of whether the world needs Superman. Sure, the question is raised, but it is never satisfactorily answered. While Superman is away, Lois pens a Pulitzer Prize winning essay called “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman,” but the film is really only interested in whether Lois does or doesn’t need Superman. We might also ask, however, why is a “Super” man so needy, and why did Superman need to leave and go to Krypton? At the same time, Singer never properly deals with many other unanswered storyworld questions; I was left with the impression that the filmmakers thought they would explain more things in a sequel. What is more, the issue of a godlike hero existing alongside the human populace of Earth is sidelined, apart from some quips and frustrations voiced by Luthor. That, in a nutshell, also makes clear the different concerns between Singer and Snyder.
Superman Returns even feels more like a soap opera given the episodic lack of resolution to all the romance, drama, and family threads. Issues are raised and they still linger when this episode of the Lois and Superman drama ends. For example, how and when Superman and Lois had a child—which is what the film strongly suggests—is never adequately explained. (And I’m not talking about the question of Human-Kryptonian reproduction, so stop snickering.) I’m talking about the fact that the film never makes it totally clear what happened between them. Were they a couple in a relationship? Were they one-time lovers? If the filmmakers are drawing on remembrances of Donner’s films and the comic books, it’s fair for an adult to wonder what relationship is being assumed between Lois and Superman—especially given Lois’s lack of recognition that Clark Kent is Superman. After all, different versions of their relationship exist in the source material. In regards to what child viewers might think about all this, my kids were left asking me when Superman married Lois, what happened to them, and why Superman is now trying to “cheat” with Lois, given she is now living with another man and their ostensible child. The plotline annoyed my sense of Superman’s boy scout mentality when I first saw it, and now I just dislike its tawdry soap opera vibes of infidelity and concealed parentage.
My guess is that the filmmakers were trying to just be operatic. Romance tinged with tragedy. High drama. Epic format.
In this sense, Singer is clearly indebted to more than just the Donner film’s suits and set design. I remarked in my piece, “Ranking the Christopher Reeve Superman Movies,” that Donner’s film is slow, epic, and self-serious, sometimes to a fault in terms of pacing, but other times “channeling the epics of David Lean.” Singer seems to be following that approach. With the incorporation of certain highly lyrical, slightly religious lines spoken by Marlon Brando’s Jor-El over top of certain epic scale visuals—such as Superman in space contemplating the Earth—Singer wants to be epic. I don’t think he achieves all those moments, because the religious dimension only superficially touches upon the narrative, unlike the serious concern for the hero myth in Snyder’s films. Furthermore, the emotional impact of such moments requires the viewer to be familiar with Brando’s Jor-El, or it doesn’t make much sense. When the film is viewed in 2025, they have even less effect than the similarly lofty lines of Russel Crowe’s Jor-El in Man of Steel, who we see in that movie sacrificing for his son. So this dimension remains just another interesting but not fully formed aspect of the movie.
I also don’t think the main casting can carry the level of drama Singer is aiming for. There isn’t much chemistry between Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth, and they aren’t particularly charismatic in their roles. Routh looks the part, but never feels it, especially in comparison to other Superman performances. Bosworth is pretty flat and largely forgettable. We never experience the deep feeling between them that might sustain the romance plot.
Lex Luthor, particularly Kevin Spacey’s hammy, delicious rendition of Gene Hackman’s Luthor, is unfortunately another problem, strangely in spite of Spacey nailing the role. Just as in Donner’s movie, Luthor, as realized here, just doesn’t fit well with the self-serious moments. There’s a wink to Spacey’s every line. I love the part where he asks Lois to say the lines, “You’re insane” followed by “Superman will stop you” just so he can scream over her. But his antics play like those of a TV baddie for most of the movie, and then it becomes just the wildest version of a real estate scam ever imagined.
For what it’s worth, Parker Posey’s Kitty is a better sidekick than the sidekicks in the original film, Otis and Eve. As well, with Frank Langella as Parry White and Sam Huntington as Jimmy Olson, those characters are just as good if not better here than in the original.
Superman Returns is noticeably restrained in terms of action. I do take my hat off to the scene of Superman rescuing Lois from the shuttle launch early in the film. The scene satisfies in terms of action-suspense as well as showing off the then-new special effects. It is especially effective, however, because it is the first time we see Superman on screen in the costume. I appreciate Singer’s efforts to delay the reveal in order to generate a greater impact.
Another scene that works but doesn’t quite fit, which was heavily marketed in the build up to the film’s release, is the machine gun scene, where Superman repels a robber’s giant Gatling gun and even takes a pistol shot to the eyeball. It’s all very slow-mo and cool but those elements are never visually repeated elsewhere, so it plays like a modern blip in an otherwise more old-fashioned movie.
In one way, I like that Singer, in Superman Returns, never goes over the top, as Snyder does with the exhausting ending of Man of Steel. (I wonder how much of that endless battle in Metropolis is an overcompensation for this film’s lack of action?). I’ve always liked how Donner’s Superman actually deals with small crimes and disasters, and it’s an absence I never liked about Snyder’s Superman. But if we set Singer alongside Snyder, the former is just not as in command of action sequences. There is no question that Snyder is a better director of action. Sadly, and even after the solid first airplane rescue scene, at no point does Singer outdo his opening to X2 (2003), when Nightcrawler tries to assassinate the president in a slick, visually arresting ballet of blue smoke and knives.
The last question the film raises for me is really only my concern, imposed on the film in retrospect. But it’s worth considering, I think, given the nature of Hollywood since 2006 and with the latest hard reboot of the franchise in theatres as I write: should we think of Superman Returns as a reboot the same way as Batman Begins, which came out one year prior? Or is it one of the first legacy sequels, given its connections to the earlier Donner films, nearly three decades before it? In 2025, to be honest, that distance from the originals is not really out of the ordinary. But while Superman Returns shares characteristics of what really came to the fore in 2015, with the anxious desire to link back to early versions of the narrative while reviving an intellectual property, Superman Returns never really resets the narrative world or brings in new concerns or the theme of old versus new. What keeps it mainly a reboot is the lack of new primary characters. But as major studios began to reset their superhero properties in various forms in the 2000s—first with DC, and then with Marvel Studios—we see the emergence of features that came to mark Hollywood’s Franchise World. In telling the story of Hollywood summer tentpoles and franchise filmmaking in the 21st century, Superman Returns is not insignificant.
Brian Singer’s Superman Returns is not without moments of interest, humour, or even wonder, but it lacks energy, is overly long, and remains ultimately mediocre. In a world with more and more Supermen, it doesn’t stand out and so remains inessential viewing.
5 out of 10
Superman Returns (2006)
Directed by Bryan Singer; written by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris; and starring Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey, Frank Langella, Sam Huntington, Kal Penn, Eva Marie Saint, and Marlon Brando.
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