Superman Returns

We took the kids to the theater on Friday to see Superman Returns. Everyone else went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Anyway, the kids were all excited about the movie, and were bouncing up and down and saying "Superman!" before it started. Since the theater is in the flight path of the Reno airport, all the planes taking off fly over the theater, so the kids pointed out all of those too.

Hey Superman, nice boots!

Anyway, when the movie came on and the Superman music started up, it was great. Andi and Dylan were really pumped up about it. Then the movie started. It took like 30 minutes or so for Superman to even show up. He did do some pretty cool stuff like save a passenger airplane from crashing, and stopping bullets with his chest and one with his eye (which was pretty darn cool).
But the cool stuff seemed to be overshadowed by my disappointment of the movie. I guess X-Men and Spider-man, who fight against supervillains in huge battles, left me expecting more from Superman than just keeping a bald guy from creating a new continent.

Plus, they made Superman seem like a pansy. I asked Andi about the movie, and she couldn't stop talking about Superman being beat up by the bad guys and being thrown in the water. Is this the Superman that my kids are going to grow up knowing? A pansy who falls in the water after getting his rear kicked, and then later ends up in the hospital? What the heck? He's SUPERman, not Pretty-Slick-Man or Can-Beat-Up-Your-Daddy-Man. And who's bright idea was it for Superman to father an illegitimate child with Lois Lane? Sure it'll make for a Superboy movie 15 years down the road, but who wants that?

So, overall I was disappointed in the movie. It's probably because I was expecting too much from it. I wanted it to be better than X-Men and Spider-Man, but it wasn't. When they make the sequel (because of course they're going to do that), they need to have a Supervillain, and they need to make Superman super again.