Dredd Vs. The Raid: A Mini-Review Series - The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Written In September 2014

Hey, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, I’ve got no beef with you guys most of the time, I like most of what you guys pick for your artsy fartsy awards, I especially liked these two in fact

But could I make a humble suggestion? Make a category for best choreography.

I mean seriously, as much crap as we give movies like Step Up or Man of Tai Chi, they still have darn impressive choreography. And stuff like that takes a LOT of time, skill, and technique to put together. That kind of stuff takes a combination of great cinematography, great editing, and intense practice. I mean just look at this sequence. Pretty awesome right? Now imagine how much time it took to practice that sequence, then how much time they spent filming it, and how much time they spent editing it together to make it look good. I think that’s the kind of stuff that deserves some recognition? You know what I mean academy? Wait! You, the person reading this, AREN’T a member of the Oscar committee? Well then what am I talking to you for?!?! Get out!

You wanna hear more? Hmm…

Eh, alright guys! You seem okay, get your butt over to the synopsis and we’ll chat more.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

The film opens with Indonesian SWAT officer Rama praying, practising silat and bidding goodbye to his wife, who is pregnant with his child.

Rama joins a 20-man elite police squad inclduing Officer Bowo, Sergeant Jaka, and Lieutenant Wahyu for a raid on an apartment block in Jakarta’s slums. The team intends to capture crime lord Tama Riyadi, who owns the block and lets criminals around the city rent rooms under his protection. Arriving undetected, the team sweeps the first floors and subdues various criminal tenants, they temporarily detain an innocent tenant delivering medicine to his sick wife. Continuing undetected to the sixth floor, the team is spotted by a young lookout, who raises the alarm before he is shot and killed by Wahyu.

Tama calls in reinforcements, who ambush the police force, killing and maiming a majority of them. Cutting the lights, Tama announces over the PA system that the police are trapped on the sixth floor stairwell, and he will grant free permanent residence to those who kill the intruders. In the darkness, the team is soon ambushed by shooters from above and behind, and Jaka learns from Wahyu that the mission is not officially sanctioned by the police command; nobody knows their location and no backup or reinforcements will arrive. Fleeing into an empty apartment, Officer Bowo is shot and injured. To save him, Rama constructs animprovised explosive device that kills the pursuing tenants. With more antagonists approaching, the team splits into two groups covertly: Jaka, Wahyu, and Dagu retreat to the fifth floor, while Rama and Bowo ascend to the seventh.

Fighting their way to the apartment of the tenant they earlier released, Rama and Bowo plead with him to help them; although his sick wife urges him to not get involved, he reluctantly agrees and hides the officers in a secret passage. A machete gang arrives and ransacks the man’s apartment, but when they fail to find Rama and Bowo, they eventually leave. After giving medical attention to Bowo, Rama leaves him with the couple to search for Jaka’s team, however, he crosses paths again with machete gang. He manages to dispatch one member and flee, but forced to fight them with his bare-hands. Rama defeats and kills most of the gang, including their leader who he uses as safety when he jumps out of a window and to an apartment below. He then continues his search, only to be captured by Andi, Tama’s right hand man. It is then revealed that Rama and Andi are estranged brothers, and that Rama signed up for the mission to search for Andi and convince him to return home, at the urging of their father.

Concurrently, Jaka and his group are found by Mad Dog, Tama’s ruthless henchman. Wahyu flees, and Jaka orders Dagu to follow Wahyu. Mad Dog captures Jaka, but, instead of shooting Jaka, Mad Dog challenges him to hand-to-hand combat. After Mad Dog defeats and kills Jaka, he drags the corpse to an elevator. Andi tells Rama to wait before leaving and meets up with Mad Dog. However, Tama has seen Andi talk to Rama on the numerous hidden cameras in the building. Realizing Andi’s betrayal when he didn’t return with a corpse, Tama stabs Andi in the hand and turns him over to Mad Dog.

Rama regroups with Wahyu and Dagu, who go on to fight through a narcotics lab, and they head for Tama on the 15th floor. Rama, finding Andi being beaten by Mad Dog, separates from Wahyu and Dagu to save him. Mad Dog allows him to free Andi and fights both brothers simultaneously. Initially Mad Dog has the upper hand, but after an intense and grueling battle, he is eventually overpowered and killed by the duo.

Meanwhile, Wahyu and Dagu confront Tama, only for Wahyu to betray and kill Dagu. Wahyu takes Tama hostage with the intention of using him to escape, but Tama taunts Wahyu by revealing that Tama has been waiting for the team before the events of the movie began and Wahyu was set up by his corrupt higher-ups; even if Wahyu escapes, he will be killed later. Wahyu kills Tama and attempts suicide, only to find that he has no bullets left.

Andi uses his influence over the tenants to allow Rama to leave with Bowo and a detained Wahyu. The tenant watches from a window and grins with delight. Andi also hands over numerous blackmail recordings Tama made of corrupt officers taking bribes, hoping that Rama can use them to his benefit. Rama asks Andi to come home, but Andi refuses, due to his acclimation to his criminal lifestyle. Before Rama leaves, Andi asserts he can protect Rama in his role as a criminal boss, but that Rama could not do the same for him.

Andi turns around and walks back to the apartment block with a grin that breaks into a wide-smile, whilst Rama, with Wahyu and an injured Bowo, exits to an uncertain future.

So here’s my question for you all dear readers, is the fact that The Raid is getting an American remake really such a bad thing?

Just hear me out. I mean you have good talent on board already with Frank Grillo, who has stated he’s a big fan of the original film, and Taylor Kitsch being cast and Red Hill director, Patrick Hughes, filling in for Gareth Evans. And if you’re gonna comment on how Expendables 3 sucked, let me just say, that the first two movies were just an ego trip, the third one was destined to suck no matter who was behind the camera. As for the martial arts, well the studio is trying hard to get the original film’s choreographers, Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, to actually come back to train the actors for the film.

And if you’re going to pull the “IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE REMADE!” Card, well then you’re an idiot. Batman didn’t need to be rebooted after Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, but it got one anyway, and guess what, we got one of the best trilogies ever made out of the deal. Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World didn’t need to be remade, but guess what, it did get remade and we got one of the best science fiction films ever made out of that deal.

No movie ever NEEDS to exist, but guess what, studios like money and artists like to experiment by making their version of a pre-existing movie. Did you know Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was a remake of a Chinese film called Internal Affairs? Did you also know that said remake is what finally scored Scorsese an Oscar? Remakes are not destined to suck. The only movies I believe that are destined to suck are these ones

So let’s just consider the fact that this movie won’t tossed out by Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay, they’ll be put out by Sony (a studio based in the far east) and a little known indie director with only two credits under his belt. What’s that mean? It means this guy isn’t some studio lackey, like the guy who made this

Or some disenchanted dandy who’s literally only making movies because it puts bread on the table, like the guy who made this

He’s an actual creative personality who’s making movies because he loves making movies. AND, here’s the kicker.

An American Remake will attract attention to the original. Which means, even if it sucks more people will go and check out the ORIGINAL movie. Let’s talk money here, The Raid: Redemption, and it’s sequel, The Raid: Berandal, have a combined gross of $20.6 million. If this remake is even remotely worth a damn (or if Sony markets it well), based on Sony’s past releases so far this year, it’ll make somewhere around $250 million. Now let’s say just half of that comes from the United States. So around here, the average movie ticket costs about $8.15 (ridiculous, i know), by this logic, basic math would dictate that if the movie makes $125 million in the US then 15.4 million Americans would’ve paid to see this movie, that doesn’t seem like much but let’s consider something else. According to DVD and Blu-Ray sales, around $7.1 million worth of people bought a copy of The Raid: Redemption in the US, and according to this site, about $2.7 million was made off people buying copies of The Raid on DVD, and $4.4 million was brought off the Blu-Ray copies. Now most DVDs are worth about $8.15, so that’s 331288 people who bought the thing on that format, and since most Blu-Rays cost about $18.55, that means that format grabbed 237197 customers. That’s a total of 568485 people who bought The Raid. So that means 14.9 million more people are aware of the original Raid’s existence and now have incentive to seek out a copy of the original movie. And you know what people do when they LIKE a movie? They tell their immediate circle of friends about it, they tell their coworkers about it, they tell their family about it, they spread the knowledge of this movie’s existence. If those 14.9 million people tell just one more person about this awesome Indonesian martial arts flick and then they see it, we now have 29.8 million people who think that The Raid: Redemption is the sickest martial arts flick they’ve ever seen.

So can you take that gun off my temple now, so I can talk about the actual movie now?

PROS:

• Iko Uwais as Rama. What I like about this character is he's ultimately just a good guy in a building full of very not good people. His most immediate desire is to save his friends, get the job done, and go home to his wife and baby. I also really like his sense of loyalty, his brother may be a con but he’s still his blasted brother. His boss maybe a crooked two-bit jerk, but he’s still a cop through and through. Bowo may’ve been a complete jerk to him on the bus, but he’s still one of his teammates and he’s still a fellow officer, so he’ll see to it he gets somewhere safe and lives to see proper medical attention.
• Ray Sahetapy’s Tama Riyadi is probably one of my favorite characters in the movie. He’s got the laid back slick presence that makes watching him do bad things a lot of fun. I especially love his opening scene where he’s got a line of guys on the floor in front of his desk and he just shoots them in the head one by one with a revolver, but once he’s out of bullets he just rests the gun on the last guy’s shoulder and asks him to hold this for him, he then grabs a hammer instead of another bullet and smashes his head with it. I also love the moment where Lieutenant Wayhu is trying to get away with him, and Tama tells him that their boss sent him here to die. When Wayhu turns his head to look at him, Tama gets one big Cheshire cat smile on his face like he just saw the old guy wet himself. I really love this guy, I hope he pops up in something stateside in the near future because he really made me smile.
• Tegar Satrya’s Bowo is pretty much a hothead in all senses of the word. We’re first introduced to him giving Rama crap for asking about Sergeant Jaka’s plan, and then we later see him killing a dude with the ax and screaming angrily while doing so, this is before we saw him get shot by Tama’s thugs, and after being shot, we later saw him repeatedly stabbing a separate thug. In an exchange taking place between the two scenes, Rama tells Bowo he’s gonna take him to the guy they met outside, Bowo then threatens to haunt Rama for the rest of his life if that dude cuts him. At the same time, you can definitely infer that he cares about the guy because when he sees a machete cut through Rama’s cheek while they’re hiding in the tenant’s wall, his face is filled with horror. And it’s not the kind of horror you have when you think you’re about to get busted, it’s the kind of horror you have when you see your friend is in danger.
• Joe Taslim’s Sergeant Jaka is pretty much a paint by numbers hard top cop who cares. He doesn’t want any civilian dead, he just wants to get the bad guys. He gives his boys a hard time, but at the end of the time he wants them all back on the bus by the time they get done here because he doesn’t want to be walking up to any doorsteps telling tearful spouses that their husband didn’t make it. He’s got a decent sense of humor, such as the moment where he asks if Bowo was done yelling at Rama so he could finish going over the plan. He’s a good presence and I liked seeing him around.
• Donny Alamsyah’s Andi serves as basically a thief with a heart of gold, he feels more at home among criminals but at the end of the day he doesn’t want to see good men die. He also clearly cares about his brother considering that he put his head on the line for the guy. He knows full well what Tama and Mad Dog are capable of doing to him if he gets caught, but he helps his brother anyway. I guess loyalty is a family trait.
• I really liked the apartment tenant, Gofar, the guy who Rama and the team meat outside the complex before they storm in. He comes off like an honest guy who normally would advise against trusting the police, but has a genuine change of heart after being treated so fairly by Rama. And I really like how it’s shown that this guy is genuinely putting the life of himself AND his wife trying to protect this guy and his loudmouthed friend.
• I really like the comedy in this movie, there’s not a whole lot of it, but there’s just enough peppered throughout to make you crack a smile between holding your breath during the intense beat downs. I already mentioned the execution from near the beginning of the movie, but another bit I liked was the scene where Rama and another guy fall a couple floors through a window while fighting and eventually landing on a fire escape, Rama finally beats the guy he fell with then slips in through another tenant’s window walking past a man and his wife/girlfriend, the latter of whom asks “Where’d he come from?” I especially love the scene where the machete gang has left Gofar’s apartment and Rama sets Bowo on his couch, then asks Gofar to grab a knife to help get the bullet out of Bowo’s leg, and all Gofar can find is one of these
  
  Bowo then looks at the knife in horror, grabs Gofar by the collar, and tells him to look again, before groaning in pain and telling Rama to just go ahead and get it over with. If you’re one of those people who firmly believes that the best source of all comedy is misery, then you will love this scene!
• For some reason I really dug this scene when things first hits the fan, there’s this one guy who’s got his hands cuffed behind his back, and while the two cops looking after him are distracted, he slips his arms over his legs putting his hands in front of his chest instead of behind his back, then slides a machete out he’d had hidden under the table, and then cuts the two officers who were holding him captive. I’m not sure why I liked it, I thought it was just really clever.
• I really liked some of the minor details here. There’s this quick scene in an elevator where Andi cuts one dude’s throat, and then stabs another guy through the neck, the guy struggles for a second before dying and Andi has to actually push the knife against his neck until he actually dies, causing the tip of the blade to actually scrape against the wall of the elevator. Another bit I liked was the scene was Bowo actually gets shot in the ear, and suddenly the sound becomes just this annoying ring, implying that Bowo just lost his hearing for a few minutes.
• If there’s one trope I’m an absolute sucker for, it’s when a character says something near the end or in the middle of a movie, and another character or the same character references it. And this movie was no exception. There’s a quick scene where Andi offers to give Rama a change of clothes so he can get out of the building undetected. Rama sighs and says “No, this fits me just fine.” The scene was basically Rama saying “I can’t leave without the rest of my crew or completing my mission.” Andi sighs in resignation and then let’s his brother leave. At the end of the film, when Rama and Bowo are leaving with Wayhu in toe, Rama asks his brother why he chose a life of crime, Andi smirks and replies “The same reason you stay in that uniform, it just fits.” I really like the exchange, and how it shows that while neither brother doesn't particularly care for the other’s choice, they still love and respect each other, and do ultimately understand each other.
• I really like the scene where Lieutenant Wayhu attempts suicide, it’s pretty clear he’s given up on accomplishing anything on either side of the law given that at this point, both sides want him dead. And I love his reaction when the revolver he’s using is out of bullets.
• Mike Shinoda’s score is terrific! There’s a lot of Linkin Park there, but it’s really great, and I especially love the final track they played at the end. Although I did honestly expect to start hearing Chester’s voice.

CONS

• Pierre Gruno’s Lieutenant Wayhu has a very really unclear motivation. It’s never really made clear why he’s working with Tama, who they’re both working for, or what was so important that it had to involve putting the lives of 20 honest cops in jeopardy
• I really don’t get Yayan Ruhian’s Mad Dog. I get that he prefers to just beat the crap out of people, but honestly, I don’t care what you’re if you have a fetish for another dude putting his hands on you, you’re paid to kill so just shoot the guys before he can get you.
• At the start of the movie there’s two major cut aways that just really pissed me off. One was during Tama’s introduction, where he gets the hammer out and is about to connect with the guy’s head when it just cuts back to the buss. And the other was when the cuffed crook grabs his machete strikes at the two officers holding him captive. This was a pretty violent movie overall, so it really just annoyed me that they cut away from that specific instance of gore.

Overall, I’m inclined to say that this movie is A.
An absolute great time! And B. Not as good as everyone claims it is. I enjoy a good brainless action picture, but what bugs me about this movie is it also tries to be a genuine crime thriller/police procedural, and it only gets about halfway there. It’s sort of like that track star who’s about when he starts chatting up some random broad, you know they beat the competition by a mile, but it’s really annoying that just sort drop the ball briefly. All in all, I’m gonna give The Raid: Redemption, a 7.8 out of 10.

I’ll also say, having watching The Raid 2, or The Raid: Berandal, I actually think it’s a lot better on the grounds of more interesting characters, more inventive and exciting fights, and a generally better character arc and plot line. This movie is now slouch, but I’ve seen better and I’m not gonna pretend this is top of the line just because the action is so amazing. In any case, I really do like this movie, and I really do look forward to comparing and contrasting it with Dredd. So with that being said

It’s time gentlemen.

Dredd Vs. The Raid: A Mini-Review Series - Dredd (2012)

Written In September 2014

In 2011 a little Indonesian action picture called The Raid: Redemption was shown off at the Toronto International Film Festival, a year later it got shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and audiences and critics agreed

This movie

Made these movies look like absolute dogcrap!

Speaking of which, you remember this crappy movie?

Well, in 2012, after Americans got to see The Raid, a reboot of that crappile came to the market starring none other than this blasted loon…

As the titular Judge.

The initial trailers were…

Underwhelming to say the least. BUT then the movie actually came out and people sat down to see it and went

In fact the movie currently sits at a 78% on the Tomato-meter, and seeing as how it was an adaptation of this series of funny books

Fanboys agreed it was a great adaptation and a lovely way of washing the foul taste of Stallone’s ego out of their mouths. But several fanboys noticed a number of similarities between this movie and another film, can you guess what it is?

Yep! Fanboys then did what fanboys always do and went into a whining fest about how “DREDD IS TOTALLY RIPPING OFF THE RAID! I MEAN IT’S NOT LIKE IT WENT INTO FILMING A FULL THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE RAID! OR THAT BEING FROM AN ENGLISH FILMMAKER IN SOUTH AFRICA AND A WELSH FILMMAKER IN INDONESIA THEY LIKELY HAD NO IDEA OF THE OTHER’S EXISTENCE UNTIL THE FILMS WERE RELEASED TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC! OR THAT SEVERAL ACTION MOVIES SINCE DIE HARD HAVE USED THE PLOT OF A LONE HERO IN TALL BUILDING THAT HAS TO WARD OF CRIMINALS IN ORDER TO GET TO THE BIG BAD BOSS! NO THEY’RE TOTALLY RIPPING OFF THE RAID JUST BECAUSE I SAW IT SOONER THAN I DID DREDD!”

But, the madness of these whiny entitled morons does open the door to a fun conversation. Which of these admittedly similar films is better? And seeing as how I’m still going to be unemployed for the next 72-120 hours, I figured I’d review and compare these two. So I’d say it’s time to wiggle on over to the synopsis and we’ll get started.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

The future United States is a dystopic irradiated wasteland known as the Cursed Earth. On the east coast lies Mega-City One, a violent metropolis with 800 million residents and 17,000 crimes reported daily. There, an addictive new drug called “Slo-Mo” has been introduced, which slows the user’s perception of time to 1% of normal. The only force for order are the Judges, who act as judge, jury and executioner. Judge Dredd is tasked by the Chief Judge with evaluating new recruit Cassandra Anderson, a powerful psychic who failed the aptitude tests to be a Judge.

In Peach Trees, a 200-storey slum tower block, drug lord Madeline Madrigal, also known as “Ma-Ma”, executes three rogue drug dealers by having them skinned, infused with Slo-Mo and thrown down the atrium from the top floor. Dredd and Anderson are sent in to investigate and learn of a drug den, which they raid. They arrest a thug named Kay, whom Anderson’s mind probe reveals to be the one who carried out the drug dealers’ executions. Dredd decides to take him in for questioning. In response, Ma-Ma’s forces seize the tower’s security control room and seal the building, using its blast shields under the pretence of a security test, preventing the Judges from leaving or summoning help.

Ma-Ma orders Dredd and Anderson killed, forcing the Judges to fight their way through dozens of armed thugs. Arriving at the 76th floor, the Judges are assaulted by Ma-Ma and her men with Vulcan cannons that rip through the walls, killing numerous residents. The Judges breach an outer wall and are able to call for backup. Meanwhile, Ma-Ma sends her henchman Caleb to confirm the Judges’ deaths. When they meet, Dredd throws Caleb off the tower in full view of Ma-Ma.

Dredd suspects Ma-Ma is desperate to keep Kay quiet and beats him for information. Anderson intervenes and uses her psychic abilities to read Kay’s mind, learning that Peach Trees is the centre of Slo-Mo production and distribution. Anderson suggests they hide while awaiting assistance but Dredd insists they move up the tower and pursue Ma-Ma. Judges Volt and Guthrie respond to Dredd’s call, but Ma-Ma’s computer expert denies them entry by persuading them the security system is malfunctioning. A pair of armed teens confront Dredd and Anderson, allowing Kay to disarm and overpower Anderson. Kay then escapes with her as hostage, and takes her to Ma-Ma’s base on the top floor.

While Dredd works his way towards Ma-Ma, she calls in the corrupt Judges Lex, Kaplan, Chan and Alvarez. The four relieve Volt and Guthrie from duty and are allowed into the building. Dredd encounters Chan and is suspicious that he does not ask about Anderson’s status. Seeing his cover blown, Chan attacks Dredd, only to be killed. Meanwhile, Kay tries to execute Anderson with her own weapon, but the pistol’s DNA scanner does not recognise him and explodes, taking his arm off. She escapes and later encounters Kaplan, whom she promptly kills after reading her mind. Elsewhere, Dredd kills Alvarez but runs out of ammunition, and is shot by Lex in the abdomen. Lex moves in to execute Dredd, but Dredd stalls him long enough for Anderson to arrive and kill Lex.

Anderson and Dredd obtain the code to Ma-Ma’s apartment from her computer expert and confront her. Ma-Ma tells Dredd that in the case of her death, a device on her wrist will detonate explosives on the top floors, destroying the building. Dredd reasons that the detonator’s signal will not reach the explosives from the ground floor, so he forces Ma-Ma to inhale Slo-Mo and throws her down the atrium to her death.

In the aftermath, Anderson accepts that she has failed her evaluation by getting disarmed, and leaves. The Chief Judge asks Dredd about Anderson’s performance; he responds that she has passed.

So if I were to describe this film in a nutshell, I would say it’s if you put Die Hard in a post apocalyptic hellhole of a city and replaced John McClane with an only slightly cleaner Dirty Harry and added a character akin to Robin as his sidekick, and replaced Hans Gruber with Cersei from Game of Thrones, then completely axed McClane’s family from the proceedings, and possibly made one of Cersei’s thugs Dirty Harry and Robin’s prisoner. That is basically what this movie is, but is it awesome?

Karl Urban is pretty much the perfect man for this job, but then again, it’s not like the guy wasn’t already a badass? After all this is the same guy who got fought Bruce Willis in RED

Was on Dwayne Johnson’s crew in Doom

And coplotted an assassination with Vin Diesel

It actually went better than it looks like it did, but Karl didn’t exactly get what he wanted in the end.

Anywho, the point is, Karl Urban did an excellent job, and I shall explain why… Now.

PROS:

• Karl Urban’s Judge Dredd comes off perfectly! With the wrong script, director, or actor, the character could’ve easily come off as a heartless fascist who follows the law to the very t, but the guy’s done in just the right way, so that he comes off like a dude who holds his job in high esteem but isn’t against going easy on some guys (sometimes that word is used very loosely) and actually gives a crap about people. When he sees a van of three thugs kill a dude at the start of the movie, he’s just like “Okay, you know what, you just died today.” When Ma-Ma decides to shoot up an entire floor of Peach Trees, killing hundreds of men, women, and children, he goes off on Kay, the punk he and Anderson caught earlier that day. When two kids try to corner him with a gun, he puts on a tough guy act, but when he has to act he chooses to immobilize them as a threat to him and his rookie by stunning them, not just killing them. I also like how he kind of has a sense of humor, when Anderson realizes Kay’s one of the guys they’re in Peach Trees for, he tries to ask him to just confess so he won’t have to get stuck with any pencil pushing for turning in a guy they don’t know for certain is guilty of what they’re accusing him of. I also love his sense of irony, this whole mess got started because these jerks in the Ma-Ma clan threw a couple of guys off the highest floor and hit them with some slow-mo, so when he disposes Ma-Ma and he best guy, he throws them off the rails and hits Ma-Ma herself with some slow-mo for good measure. I guess he has a taste for poetic justice. I also like he’s not just a dumb brute with a gun, he’s smart, when he meets with one of the corrupt judges he quickly comes onto the fact that he is in fact a corrupt judge. When another judge is about to kill him, he asks him to wait, prompting him to go on about how Dredd is a coward and weak, allowing for the jerk to waste enough time for Anderson to get up behind and blow him to hell with a rifle. And you gotta give props to Karl Urban for emoting with just his jaw and his voice. If we’re gonna compare guys from 2012 comic book movies who spoke in bizarre affects and had over half their faces covered, I think Karl did a lot better as Judge Dredd here than Tom Hardy did as Bane in Dark Knight Rises, but that’s comparing apples and oranges honestly because
  
  Yeah.
• Lena Heady as Ma-Ma. Do I need to say more? Is it not enough to just say this character was played by freaking Lena Heady? No?
  
  
  Fine, ugh, I guess I can go into some detail. So for starters, what I like about this character, purely from the standpoint of writing a female character, she doesn’t spend her time, A. Seducing men. Or B. Hating men. She’s basically Heisenberg or Tony Montana with a vagina when you get right down to it. She’s a gangster, and she doesn’t mess around
  
  … At all. Also while she’s infamous for having done bodily harm to a man and known for starting out as a prostitute, her character isn’t about subjugating or intimidating men, she employs them and informs them that she is the one in charge. When she’s beating the crap out of one of her thugs, she isn’t doing it because he’s a stupid man, she’s doing it because he’s a stupid punk who has now endangered their entire operation. And she even cares about some men, when she sees Dredd toss her best guy, Caleb, over the railing directly across from her, she gets pissed, she really liked that dude. And she also doesn’t treat women moderately better than men, when Kay (the aforementioned stupid punk) comes back with Anderson, she doesn’t tell him to just shoot her up because she’s sensitive to the plight of being a woman in peril, she tells him to do that because it’s in the best interest of her and the gang that the two judges appear to have just been injured in a drug bust gone wrong instead of having been caught, tortured, raped, and THEN murdered. As for the character herself, I like how she’s a realist. When Dredd comes gunning for her, she doesn’t freak out because “Oh God! How did he find me!” She knows the balance of things; people commit crimes, crimes get noticed, other people report the crimes, police get notified, police come a-snooping, police find bad guys, bad guys die or go to jail; simple as that. She doesn’t give Dredd this grandiose villain speech about she will destroy him or how everything he believes in is based on a lie, no she just tells him that she’s got a device that’ll blow the top of the building causing several tons of rubble to fall on the civilians. She basically tells him that if you kill me you kill everyone in this damn block. I also like the way she handles the situation when she calls up the corrupt judges, she already has two judges inside the building, two outside of it hoping to get inside, and now she’s calling up four more judges who she assumes are open to her interests, she’s playing with fire right here. And she treats it as such, she talks when spoken to and she stands in a manner that offers attention but shows trepidation. Lena Heady just does a terrific job and I loved every second of her.
• Olivia Thirbly’s Judge Anderson is pretty much the perfect female sidekick in that, she’s not really treated as the FEMALE sidekick. Take a look at this uniform for starters
  
  Actual combat boots, long sleeves, long pants, no skirt or boob cups. Now take a look at this
  
  Exposed arms, heels, skirts, and boobs cups. Granted these characters are both warriors and are parts of very stylized films while Anderson in police officer in a pretty grounded movie, but at the same time, take a look at Sif and Anderson’s male counterparts
  
  Thor’s arms are covered in armor unlike Sif, Thor is wearing actual boots instead of platform shoes, while Dredd’s uniform is pretty much identical to Anderson’s minus the fact that he’s actually wearing his helmet (and of course has a different name on his badge). Now I’m not criticizing the Thor movies or Batman V Superman, the former are both movies I very much enjoy and the latter is a movie I cannot wait to see. I’m just calling out facts here. But as for the character herself? She’s a rookie, she’s optimistic, she’s not there to bust skulls, she’s there to make a difference in the world and hopefully make people sleep a little more soundly at night, and by the end of the movie that urge to do good is still present but it’s tempered by the fact that some people kinda deserve a skull-busting or two. I also like how her psychic powers don’t make her somehow omniscient like Professor Xavier, it’s just a helpful device that allows her to extract information without having to use violence. Plus, a moment I really appreciate is how she hands Dredd her badge at the end because she assumes she failed her field exam. She doesn’t slowly and tearfully hand it to him, she doesn’t plead for another chance, but at the same time she doesn’t act like she doesn’t care. She snatches it from her vest and shoves it into Dredd’s hand, then walks off. She doesn’t storm off but it’s far from just a gentle stroll. There’s a frustration there, but she’s resigned to the fact that she won’t be a judge. She obviously respects Dredd but she’s just angry that all her hardwork is all for not. Nice work Olivia, I hope to see more from you.
• Of the quartet of characters, I’d say Wood Harris’s Kay is by far the weakest, but it’s not at all a bad character, only a simple one. If you looked up the word thug in the dictionary, you’d like see a picture of him. He’s not terribly smart, but what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in sadism. When Ma-Ma tells him and Caleb to skin the three pricks who were stepping on their territory he suggests that they give them slow-mo before they drop ‘em of the balcony so it’ll slow the process down even more. I like how whenever Dredd isn’t present he’s always trying to mess with Anderson, noting at one point that he ought to save her last bullet for herself so the clan won’t do anything to her while she’s still alive, and trying to freak her out by asking her to see what he’s thinking. I also appreciate how he’s not a complete idiot, while Dredd and Anderson are distracted by two kids threatening to shoot them, he uses this moment to get loose of his restraints, grab Anderson, and run back to Ma-Ma. He’s also responsible for my favorite moment of the movie when he, Ma-Ma, and the rest of the crew are watching Dredd take down a bunch of their guys after having snuck up on them trying to sneak up on him, leading for Kay to proclaim, “How the f*** are we gonna stop this guy?” If I were to describe his character I’d say he’s what you’d get if you made Jesse, from Breaking Bad, black and then surgically removed his heart. Then again, that show pretty much did surgically remove that poor man’s heart.
• I really enjoy some of the aesthetic choices of the film, the slow-mo sequences are GORGEOUS, in fact I actually saw an interview on the blu-ray where the production team explained they actually built a new camera that actually filmed footage at TWO-THOUSAND FRAMES per second. To contextualize that, most cameras capture footage at 24 FPS. If you don’t understand what that means, just click here it’ll explain the whole thing. I also for some reason really enjoyed the scene where the three junkies who were trespassing on Ma-Ma’s territory was initally done from a first person perspective, that was kind of cool.
• I really love some of the humor here, it’s not laughing non-stop like most Marvel films, but it’s all this sort of dry and occasionally crass humor, like this quick scene where Dredd and Anderson are taking an elevator down to the lobby with Kay in tow, after just doing a drug bust, and Anderson suddenly says “Sir he’s thinking about making a run for your gun.” Dredd replies with “Yeah?” Anderson then uses her psychic abilities on Kay and informs her senior that “He changed his mind.” To which Dredd replies “Yup.” It’s not laugh out loud hilarious, it’s just something worthy of a nice chuckle.
• A superficial detail I really liked were the look of the helmets. They aren't pure metal or fiberglass, there’s a felt like fabric inside them like a motorcycle helmet
  
  You see? It’s practical, it’s not just some fiberglass toy you can grab at Target, it’s a real helmet that will actually protect your noggin. Another detail I liked was how the guns were smart enough to know the difference between saying a word in conversation and actually giving a command, like during the beginning of the movie when a crook was threatening to kill a civilian and Dredd calls him a hotshot, the crook asks “What did you just call me?” And Dredd replies “I said… Hotshot.” His gun then recognizes that as a command and switches from normal rounds to hotshot rounds, and then Dredd launches a blast of plasma or something into the prick’s mouth and melts’s his freaking face off… God I love this movie! Another small detail I liked in the movie were the extras, now usually extras are just there to fill up the world, but these characters actually serve a point; they cement this place as a real world. America at the time this movie takes place in may be a desolate hellhole where no really WANTS to live, but the people are still people. The teenagers are still interested in things teens are normally interested in, when people see gorey in person, most of them cringe, but a couple say “Oh, that’s awesome! I gotta get a picture of that!” When a man in uniform points a gun at you, you don’t mouth off about how cops are such jerks, you put your freaking hands up and let them know “Woah, hey, I’m good! Don’t shoot!” And unlike, some very recent tragedies, these officers of course listen, but I really don’t want to get into that.
• I really enjoy the callbacks to earlier in the film. At three points in the film Dredd asks Anderson “You ready, rookie?” To which she consistently replies “Yes.” The first time Dredd looks at her skeptically but moves on to their assessment. The second time, when their about to start their drug bust, he tells her that she doesn’t look ready, as if to tell her that she needs to get her game face on. And on the third time, when they’re about to take the fight to Ma-Ma, Dredd gives her a look and says “You look ready.” And what I really love, is the moment near the beginning of the film where Dredd tells the chief justice that even if Anderson barely failed her exam she still failed it, then at the end of the film the chief asks him if she passed or failed her assessment, Dredd replies that she did in fact pass despite the fact that he had told her early on in the film that losing your weapon is considered an automatic failure and Anderson lost her weapon when she was captured by Kay.

CONS:

• I don’t really need for there to be satire, but knowing that the funny books this film is based on are often satirical in nature I would’ve definitely enjoyed some elements of that. Maybe they could’ve tackled that in a sequel. Oh well.
• The exchange between Dredd and Ma-Ma has always bothered me, I get what’s going on there, but it always bugged me how Dredd tosses Ma-Ma out of a window after she tells that if he does a bomb above her room will explode killing everyone in the building. I really wish they’d explained it better to be honest.

I believe I first saw this movie when I rented it on RedBox the week I graduated from High School and my GOD did I love it! I loved the ultra-violence of it! I loved the gorgeous slow-mo visuals! I loved Karl Urban growling his way through the proceedings! I loved Lena Headey scarred up mug every second it was on screen! And I absolutely loved the score. I’m gonna give Dredd a 9.8 out of 10!

This movie unfortunately only made $41 million against $45 million budget, so we’ll likely never see a true cinematic sequel thanks to LionsGate’s lousy marketing campaign. But Karl Urban and the film’s writer/producer, Alex Garland, having been working hard with fans of the film to a proper sequel made. So I urge you all, if you have Netflix stream this movie, if you have On Demand stream this movie, if you have a RedBox kiosk near you or still have a video store, rent this movie! Please, do everything in your power to help this movie get the second installment in so richly deserves! But, let us not dwell any longer on that crime, and instead dwell on the blessing that is

Which I shall be tackling next, so stay tuned people!

The Modern Day Superman In Film Review Series - The Inevitable Comparison

Written In April 2014

Now let’s get into the basic criteria, I’ll be grading these movies by:

1. General Plot Development And Overall Simplicity In Story Telling
2. Quality Of The Action
3. Best Superman
4. Best Lois Lane
5. Best Villain
6. Best Supporting Cast
7. Who Told The Story Best

So, Khan, my dear friend, if you would please.

Plot Development And Story Telling Simplicity

This part’s easy. I can pretty much tell you what Man of Steel is about in one sentence without actually mentioning anything about Superman; “Two members of a dying alien race are forced into conflict over the future of Earth with one ultimately being forced to kill the other to protect this planet." Can I do the same with Superman Returns? Not really. "An alien traveler returns to earth after having left five years earlier in order to see if his home planet was truly gone. Meanwhile, his human partner has moved on from him and his old enemy has come out of hiding in order to seek a new way to cause chaos. The traveler hopes to rekindle his old love affair but finds that he can’t do to her being committed to another man. However, when the traveler’s former lover and her new family are placed in jeopardy, the traveler must sacrifice himself to save them. But the traveler is inexplicably saved by his old flame and finds that his former partner’s child is his own, and so then promises to never abandon his new home.” It may seem like I’m making Returns more complicated than it is, but that’s really the best I could actually some it up. That’s not to say that complicated stories are a bad thing, but a simple story to tell usually works best in Superhero, Scifi, Action, and Fantasy based movies. Now this again doesn’t apply to all movies of that genre, The Lord of the Rings films have multiple subplots and side storylines going at the same time as the main plot which is to get this one object back to the place it was created at so it can be destroyed. But the thing there is, those films, while they work fine on their own, they work best as three parts of one whole movie. There’s a film like Star Trek II: The Wrath of KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!

I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that. There’s a film like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, that is a fairly complicated film. It’s a movie about hate, revenge, life and death, youth, age, hope, gay aliens, etc. All of these themes are present in one movie alone, but the movie primarily focuses on two characters only. William Shatner’s Admiral James T. Kirk and Ricardo Montabalhan’s Khan Noonien Singh. This movie tries to focus on four characters. Lex Luthor, Superman-The Superhero, Superman-The Creepy Ex-Boyfriend, and Clark Kent. And then it tries to give a smaller amount of attention to Lois’s current beau and their kid. Singer, there are two things people hate when it comes to fiction. Kids and Love Triangles. You’ve unknowingly given everyone who was interested in seeing this movie the bird by giving us this.

Man of Steel however, while an origin story, only ever shows things that are integral to the plot or the development of the characters. We see Clark before he becomes Superman working at a Canadian bar. Why? Because it’s here we see A. This Clark Kent cares a great deal about people. When a female coworker is being harassed by some douche, he tells him to knock it off or he’s going to have him leave. And B. It sets up the next scene where we meet Lois and Clark finds out who he really is. Everything is shown with deliberate intentions.

While with Superman Returns, you can tell that Bryan Singer and the writers thought that certain ideas could be really cool, but had no idea how to correctly execute them. “Let’s give Superman an illegitimate son! A lot more people these days are having children out of wedlock than they were in the late 70s and early 80s, maybe this will make Superman more relatable to modern audiences!” Except you’re forgetting that Lois has no idea she ever slept with Superman, you idiots! You’ve basically made Superman not only a stalker ex-boyfriend AND a deadbeat dad, you’ve made it so that he’s an implied rapist!

So yeah, like I said. Easy answer, MOS told it’s story much better.

Quality Of The Action

Well again, that’s an easy question. Man of Steel was done by an action director! I mean Singer’s done great action before, like I said in my Superman Returns review, X2: X-Men United has some of the best action I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie. It’s intense, it’s kinetic, it’s well choreographed, it’s well acted, the stakes are high

And this is 2006, we are not before the time when CG can create intense and exciting action sequences. We are three years after the Return of the King, two years after Spider-Man 2, one year after Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and a year after this we’ll be given Transformers, Zack Snyder’s 300, Spider-Man 3, and Die Hard 4! You can make great action sequences with CGI!

And yet, pretty much all this Superman was relegated to was stopping bullets and catching or lifting heavy things. And in one scene, he outright takes a beating from Lex when exposed to massive amounts of Kryptonite. Singer, I understand that you wanted to make Lex the villain and so you don’t have a lot of opportunities for big set pieces, but give me something here man! I know you can do action, show me something cool!

Besides the eyeshot thing, oh my God!

Meanwhile, Zack Snyder not only did 300 (and produced it’s recent sequel) he also directed 2009’s Watchmen! Which was not short on action! Take a look at this sequence with Rorschach. Screw cops, right? So you know what I’m saying when I say that in Man of Steel, Snyder stepped up his game big time! Take a look at this thing of beauty. C'mon Singer, give me something here! What about that scene where Lex’s thugs beat Superman up, what do you got there?

Okay, something I find noteworthy in both scenes is Superman is seen trying to get away from his foes. You know what the difference is? In the former scene, Clark is trying to get away quick enough to get back on his feat so he can keep fighting, while at the same time trying to get the bad guys just a little bit further away from the civilians. While in the latter scene, it comes off like Clark is trying to run away. He doesn’t try to fight back, except for when he grabs Lex’s foot, It comes off like he’s given up and he just wants to the pain to stop. This is something I take genuine issue with. Superman is the kind of guy who would fight back even if he were powerless. If he came to stop Lex Luthor and found out that he was weak here, he’d still give it his everything.

So yeah, once again, I’m giving this to Man of Steel.

And now for the big question, Best Superman

This one, is not as a question to answer because these two actors were going for different things.

Brandon Routh was basically directed to give his best Christopher Reeve impersonation, which I think he pulls of nicely. While Henry Cavill, the first and only British actor to play Superman, is the first big screen actor to go for a separate take from Christopher Reeve. His Superman has to convey authority to the point that you feel the need to listen to him, but not to the point that you’re genuinely intimidated by him. And also, his Superman is the first one to be a badass! This guy gets into some serious fights throughout this film, and he even wins a couple of ‘em! I know Reeve’s Superman fought Zod and his cronies back in Superman II, but do you really consider this to be an acceptable action piece? Personally, I don’t think so.

Now I think there are two moments in these movies that are unequivocally Superman to me. One is this scene where Superman tells everyone not worry about flying, it’s still a very safe way to travel. The other is when Supes is being interrogated by Lois and the General.

Ultimately, I wanna call it a tie, but I’m gonna go ahead and say Henry. He just reminds me a lot of the Superman I loved to watch as a kid when I turned on Cartoon Network to watch Justice League. Always authoritative, but never intimidating. Always polite, but never a pushover. Perfection!

And that’s no slight towards Brandon, he does the best with what he has!

Best Lois Lane

Which of these ladies would you say looks like a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist? Which of these ladies would you say looks like someone who has worked in journalism for over a decade? Which of these ladies looks like a woman who could single handedly piss off people like the Pentagon? If you’re confused, I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the girl in purple.

No, but seriously, it takes several years to get a degree in journalism and then a good while to get an actual job writing something and then even longer to actually come up with something worth winning a Pulitzer Prize over. They don’t just hand those things over to anyone. So based on that, Kate Bosworth was unqualified to begin with. She was 23 at the time of this movie’s release! Amy Adams however turned 39 two months later.

But even looking at the actual performances, Amy comes off like she IS Lois freaking Lane! Kate comes off more like a really smart girl on the school paper. I could easily see her one day becoming Lois Lane, but as is, I cannot see her as Lois Lane now. Point for Man of Steel!

Best Villain

Now THIS is the tough part. Not only do you have two amazing actors in these roles, but their both playing two of the most iconic Superman villains ever brought to life.

In Superman Returns’s corner, we have the great Kevin Spacey as Lex flippin’ Luthor! In Man of Steel’s we have the one and only Michael Shannon as the mighty General Zod! These two gentlemen turned excellent performances, in fact, while I am extremely excited to see Jesse Eisenberg as Lex, I would have loved to see Man of Steel 2 pull a Casino Royale and bring back Kevin. After seeing him as Frank Underwood on Netflix’s House of Cards, he could’ve owned it as this new DC Cinematic Universe’s Lex! But hey, we’ll see what Jesse brings to the table, I’m sure it'l be great!

But speaking of Man of Steel, we’ve got a certain General to talk about. Now, after seeing this movie in theaters, I decided to do a review series on Michael Bay’s directorial efforts, and what I gathered from it is that Michael Bay really knows how to waste talented actors! Especially Michael Shannon, and what’s worse is he wasted the guy in two separate movies!

Here he is playing a fool in Pearl Harbor

And here he is playing a racist fool in Bad Boys II, which is a God awful movie! It’s far worse than anything you could possibly hate about these movies.

Anywho, let’s talk about the villains themselves. Zod is the definition of Lawful Evil. He outright spells it out, I will do anything and everything to ensure the survival of my race, even it means destroying a whole other race. You can tell at times, he doesn’t want to be doing these things, but he feels like it was the only way to ensure what he needed to ensure.

Lex on the other hand has ZERO moral qualms with anything he’s doing. When his henchwoman, Kitty, asks him if billions of people will really die because of what he’s doing, he simply says yes. He doesn’t even given the tiniest indication that the idea of killing the majority of the world population is anything he genuinely has any thoughts about, in fact, if you’ll recall the confrontation he had with Lois earlier, he even seemed kind of excited by it. I think his best moment in the movie isn’t actually the scene where he stabs Supes with the Kryptonite shank, but just a couple minutes before it where he outright calls Superman an alien.

If I were to compare the two with other villains, I would say Lex is the Davros to Superman’s Doctor, while Zod is his Master. The former is a character who believes that his own will is supreme and that his intelligence makes that so. While the latter is the only other member of Superman’s race and would sooner kill them both than surrender to him.

I again, want to say it’s a tie, but Michael Shannon’s Zod really leaves more of an impact, it’s partly for the same reason why I think Henry was better than Brandon. This guy got to do his own thing, he had no one else to live up to, while Kevin and Brandon were both doing a version of the same thing someone else did. Terrence Stamp’s Zod was just a megalomaniac even more so akin to the Master than Shannon’s, while Michael’s Zod is a military man who wants desperately to do what he thinks is right even if it goes against the very nature of being a decent person.

Kevin, you’re fantastic, but point goes to Michael!

And now for the final two, starting with Best Supporting Cast

Returns pretty much only had Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and Lois’s beau, Richard. I mean, you could maybe count the little kid and Lex’s crew, but Jason doesn’t do anything, and the only one actually says anything is Parker Posey’s character.

On the other hand, Man of Steel had Perry, Jor-El, Ma and Pa Kent, Steve Lombard, two military guys who have something resembling a character arc, Zod’s own henchwoman (Faora), and Emil Hamilton! And what’s great about them is they serve a purpose within the movie! To be honest, there’s really not much point to Superman Returns’s cast. So yeah, another point for Man of Steel.

And finally, Who Told The Story Best

Look, I did genuinely like Superman Returns! I don’t think it’s a crappy movie, I just don’t think it’s an especially great movie! I can honestly say I’d rather sit through this than something horrible like Sharknado! But, I have to say, I don’t think this really works for what it was going for. It’s some sort of weird limbo between the full reboot we got with Man of Steel and the original Christopher Reeve films. I understand that Bryan Singer wanted to make his own little tribute song to those first two Superman movies, and I can understand why. I mean I grew up loving the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, and I’d love to make my own little homage sequel to those movies, but even then you have to move the story forward. While Man of Steel takes Superman in new and exciting story directions, Superman Returns just leaves the series off slightly better than it was after Superman III came out.

What I like about Man of Steel over Superman Returns could really be summed up pretty well in a Frozen quote, “I’m never going back, the past is in the past!” In other words, you needed to let it go Singer. The Christopher Reeve films were done with. I think what you did was an interesting experiment that could pay off with other stories, but not yours I’m afraid to say.

As for you Snyder, you told the best story you could and you told it brilliantly! And once again to quote Frozen, I don’t care what they’re going to say. This movie was perfect, and I’ll have no arguments otherwise. This movie said, screw the old stories, this is our story and we’ll tell it how we want to! If it flops, it flops. If it’s critically panned, it’s critically panned. And what’s life without a gamble every now and again? Unless you’re a recovering gambling addict in which case, hang in there buddy!

So when it comes right down to it, I’m going to give the prize to Man of Steel.

Thank you for reading this and have a wonderful day!

The Modern Day Superman In Film Review Series - Superman Returns (2006)

Written In April 2014

Superman Returns is NOT a crappy movie. It’s arguably overlong, a little bit slow, a little bit boring at times, and does lack any truly great action sequences for a Superhero movie, but it does not lack good action, good performances, or interesting story elements. When I saw this movie in the Winter 2006 (because I never saw it theaters) I thought it was alright. I thought the scenes of Superman lifting things and letting bullets bounce off him were cool, ESPECIALLY this scene here

You can hate this entire damn movie if you want to, but that scene was fucking awesome! But, if I’m honest with myself, and if I’m honest with you, I won’t say I’m this movie’s biggest fan. I never really got why Bryan Singer decided this movie should be set in the modern day. Actually, apperently it’s not even in the modern day, it’s set TEN YEARS from it’s release date. Why? If you’re going to be a sequel to Richard Donner’s Superman and Superman II, go all the way! Pay Gene Hackman through the nose to come back as Lex! Get a lady who looks as much like Margot Kidder as Brandon Routh did Christopher Reeve and then have that lady play Lois! If the movie takes place five years after Superman II, make it take place in 1985! Make it like X-Men: First Class, period backdrops and setting, modern clothing. Instead, we have a movie that looks like 2006 because it came in 2006. We have an actress who looks nothing like Margot Kidder and acts nothing like her Lois Lane did. And we have Kevin Spacey playing a Lex Luthor who… At times plays it as goofy as Hackman did, but even then he’s playing it more wry and smart alecky, and at other times is far more aggressive and violent than Hackman’s ever was. And finally, is having Superman having a bastard child REALLY needed? Good God man. Anyway, let’s get into the plot so I can actually go further into this matter.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

By 2016, Superman (Brandon Routh) has been missing for five years, since traveling to the location where astronomers believed they had discovered the remains of Krypton. During his absence, Superman’s nemesis, mad scientistLex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) was released from prison (due to Superman’s failure to appear at Lex’s trial) and married an old rich widow (Noel Neill) to obtain her fortune upon her death. Superman, having failed in his quest to find surviving Kryptonians, returns to Earth and, as Clark Kent, resumes his job at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. He subsequently learns that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has won the Pulitzer Prizefor her article “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” Meanwhile, Lex travels to the Fortress of Solitude and steals Kryptonian crystals, to use for an experiment that causes a mass power outage on the East Coast. The power loss interferes with the flight test of a space shuttle to be launched into space from its piggy-back mounting on an airliner, occupied by Lois Lane, who is covering the story. Clark flies into action as Superman and stops the plane from crashing onto a baseball stadium.

The world rejoices at Superman’s return, but he has difficulty coping with Lois’s fiancé, Richard White (James Marsden), nephew ofDaily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White (Frank Langella), and his 5-year-old son, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu). With Superman distracted by an out-of-control vehicle, a diversion involving Lex’s partner-in-crime, Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey), Lex stealskryptonite from the Metropolis Museum of Natural History. Perry then assigns Lois to interview Superman while Clark investigates the blackout. Lois and Jason inadvertently board Lex’s yacht and are captured after Lois decides to investigate the blackout story, which she connects to Luthor’s experiment. He reveals to them his latest scheme to grab land and power. By combining one of the stolen Kryptonian crystals with Kryptonite, Luthor can grow a new continental landmass in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, one that will cause sea levels to rise drastically and have Lex the opportunity to get revenge on Superman, as well as kill billions of people and afford him full control of the only available land for the survivors.

Noticing that Jason experiences a slight reaction to Kryptonite, Lex asks who Jason’s father really is; Lois asserts that the father is Richard. The crystal begins to create Lex’s new landmass, while Lois attempts to escape but is attacked by a henchman. Jason throws a piano at the henchman, killing him and proving that he is actually Superman’s son. Meanwhile, Superman is attempting to minimize the destruction in Metropolis caused by the growth of the new landmass when Richard arrives in a sea plane to rescue Lois and Jason from the sinking yacht. Superman soon arrives to help and then flies off to find Lex.

Meeting Lex, Superman discovers the landmass is filled with Kryptonite, which weakens him to the point that Lex and his henchmen are able to beat him. Lex stabs Superman with a shard of Kryptonite and pushes him into the ocean. Lois makes Richard turn back to rescue Superman, whereupon she removes the Kryptonite from his back. Superman, after regaining his strength from the sun, lifts the landmass after putting layers of earth between him and the Kryptonite. Lex and Kitty escape in their helicopter; Kitty, unwilling to let billions of people die, tosses away the crystals that Lex stole from the Fortress of Solitude. She and Luthor are stranded on a tiny desert island when their helicopter runs out of fuel. Superman pushes the landmass into space with the crystals trapped on the landmass, but is weakened by the Kryptonite and crashes back to Earth. At the hospital, doctors remove more Kryptonite from Superman’s wound, but their surgical tools and hospital machines are either damaged or destroyed when they try to revive him. While Superman remains in a coma, Lois and Jason visit him at the hospital where Lois whispers something into Superman’s ear and then kisses him. Superman later awakens and flies to visit Jason, reciting his father Jor-El’s (Marlon Brando) last speech to Jason as he sleeps. Lois starts writing another article, titled “Why the World Needs Superman”. Superman reassures her that he is now back to stay, and flies off to low orbit, where he gazes down at the world.

PROS:

• Brandon Routh as Superman. He does the best Christopher Reeve impersonation anybody ever could, I wish this movie had done better because he was terrific and is a terrific actor. His IMDb deserves to be longer.
• Kevin Spacey doesn’t play it the exact same way as Gene, and in my opinion, that’s an improvement! He’s terrific as Lex here! Especially, in the scene he stabs Supes in ribs and hisses “Now fly!” Very bitter, very evil, very awesome. Although I’ll admit, it was a little weird hearing him talking in his normal speaking voice after watching all 26 episodes of House of Cards, haha. Speaking of which, I won’t say they had a missed opportunity HERE, but I think he could’ve killed it in the Man of Steel sequel. But I, like Kevin, think Jesse is going to “f***ing own it!”
• I think between Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, and Margot, Kate is probably the weakest Lois we’ve had on the big screen, but she’s far from bad. I think she works as this sort of working mother/businesswoman type of gal. I wouldn’t have called her, but obviously I’m not Bryan Singer, she was pretty good.
• Frank Langela kills it as the classic Perry White! Absolute pure perfection!
• Sam Huntington is also terrific as Jimmy Olsen! I especially love his first scene where Clark arrives back at the Planet and accidentally knocks his camera off the desk and only barely catches it. Jimmy objects to this (because it’s expensive as hell Clark! You superjerk!), without knowing who it is. So he turns to confront the douche who almost broke his camera, then upon seeing it’s old friend from work screams out “MR. CLARK!” then tries to fix it, because it’s improper to refer to his superior by his first name. That nothing short of fantastic!
• I’m not the biggest fan of James Marsden, I can’t really say why, there’s just something about the guy that gets on my nerves. But I liked his character here, especially in the scene where he asks Lois if she was ever in love with Superman. You can see it in his expression, he’s got a mixed curiosity. He’s in awe that his girlfriend may have at one time been Superman’s flame, but at the same time he feels kind of territorial because what guy has a fucking chance against someone like fucking Superman!
• The few scenes where Superman actually gets to use his powers are amazing! Especially the aforementioned bullet to the eye scene!
• The scene where Superman is dying on the hospital bed is very effective, especially when the doctors are trying to stick him with a needle, and the needle just bends against his skin. It was really heartbreaking and really begged the question, how do you care for an invincible man when that man becomes ill?
• If you’re a fan of really, really, really old Superman stuff, there’s a couple of terrific cameos in the movie! There’s a bit where the actor who played Jimmy Olsen, in the George Reeves series, cameos as the bartender where Clark and Sam Huntington’s Jimmy are drinking. And the elderly woman that Lex apparently seduced and married after being released from prison is actually played by the actress who portrayed Lois in the 1940’s serials and again in the George Reeves show. How cool is that?
• Parker Posey makes for a pretty fun Lex Girl, as Smallville once called it. I really love the scene where she’s screaming at Lex because the son of a bitch actually cut the breaks on the runaway car she was driving to distract Superman.
• The wonderful Eva Marie Saint makes good use of her few scenes as Martha Kent, real nice work ma'am!
• John Ottman does a terrific rendition of John Williams’s score, and even has some dazzling pieces of his own in the mix.

CONS:

• I don’t understand the point of Superman having an illegitimate son. I don’t understand why this child actor was cast, he’s the biggest deer in the headlights I’ve ever seen a child actor to be.
• The first Transformers movie was one year away at this time, Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake came out the year before. You could show off a character like Superman kicking some serious ass. And Bryan Singer isn’t a complete slouch when it comes to action movies, he did do the first two X-Men films. In fact, X2: X-Men United, has some of the best action ever presented in a Superhero movie in my opinion. So why the fuck would you not show off the fact that “Hey, this is a guy who can shoot beams of heat that are than the freaking sun and could punch a whole in the earth if he felt the need to, let’s show that off a little!” And the movie kind of does, but you never really get to see Superman cut loose! He never gets to see red, as Pa Kent put it in J. Michael Straczynski’s Superman: Earth One. I don’t get this.
• I said it before, and I’ll say it again, why make a sequel to a movie that came out in 1980 that takes place only five years after that movie, if you aren’t going to set in what would be five years after that movie! It doesn’t make any Goddamn sense!
• This movie looks less real at times than the 1978 movie. The overall aesthetic of the movie makes it looks so fake, hell, even Brandon himself at times looks fake! He looks like a digital creation instead of a real person against a digital backdrop. Whoever did his makeup and hair in the movie really did a poor job. Also, if you’re going to cast an actor with a different eye color than your character, leave it be. Any Harry Potter fans or Percy Jackson fans who are pissed they didn’t cast a green eyed actor for the title role, or at least didn’t try to give the Daniel Radcliffe and Logan Lerman color contacts, don’t be. Look at this picture here and tell if it looks natural. 
  Yeah. I rest my case.
• It doesn’t make a large amount of sense to cast so young for Lois and Clark. Brandon was 27 at the time the film was released, Kate was only 23! Christopher was 26 at the time the first Superman film was released, but here’s the difference, his Superman was only just arriving in Metropolis, while Brandon’s is returning to the city after being gone for FIVE YEARS! That means Clark was 21 when he left, and I don’t know of very many professional reporters under the age of 25, let alone only just became of legal drinking age in the US. And also, if Superman was only 21, that means Lois was 18 when they did the nasty. Which, while still legal age of consent, is kind of cutting it close guys. And furthermore, how many reporters got a job at EIGHTEEN! How many women could manage to have a job as a reporter, be a mother, and meet someone within the period of conception to be close enough to believe they were the father, and then stay with that person for five years and eventually be ENGAGED to, all before turning 25? I know Lois is basically the Superwoman to Clark’s Superman, but even this is re-Goddamn-diculous!
• I hate that A. Lois and Clark are written to be an extramarital affair. And that B. This movie continues the tradition, started by the Christopher Reeve series, that Lois loves Superman not Clark Kent, instead of loving both.
• This has been talked about to death, but it’s still a sticking point for me. Clark slept with Lois in the Fortress of Solitude in Superman II, then at the end of the movie when becomes Superman again, he erases her memory so she won’t have to take the pain of knowing who that she and Superman cannot be together. He erases all memory of them being together from the point where she first suspects Clark is Superman to the moment before he kissed her. That means she has NO MEMORY that she fucked Superman. So why the hell isn’t she outraged when she realizes her kid is Superman’s? Why doesn’t she walk strait up to the so-called Boy Scout and demand to know when they slept together and why she doesn’t remember? Why doesn’t she ask if he raped her and then somehow made her forget it? Singer, you just threw grenade at your audience, but I don’t think you expected them to throw it back at you! Because this thing just blew the fuck up in your face!

Okay, now despite my quibbles, I do like this movie. It’s not one of my favorite superhero movies, and it’s not really even my favorite DC Superhero movie or really my favorite just plain Superman movie. It’s a movie that has a lot of issues, but I’d rather come down on the side of supporting than damning it. I’m going to give Superman Returns a 6.2 out of 10.

Join me tomorrow, when I sink my teeth into the delicious feast I call

Boo-Yah!