"Welcome to the planet" (Some spoilers)

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2014)

During the build up to Superman Returns, I decided to delve into the character's history beyond the first two Christopher Reeve movies and was stunned by the number of cool comic book story lines, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s.
I also saw the 1996 animated TV series and was again pleasantly surprised as to how much more there was to Superman than just a theme song and the memories of a terrific performance as the 'king daddy of superheroes' (as director of this movie, Zack Snyder, describes Superman).
So naturally I was bummed out that Superman Returns didn't really go anywhere new except for a very soap opera-ish 'who's my daddy?' storyline with Lex continuing to be a real estate fanatic.
I loved hearing the old theme song and lines from the old movie but nostalgia was not enough to carry that movie and I was afraid that Superman would just die out in popular culture. Superman Returns had been the only movie about Supes between the period of 1988 and 2012, while Batman alone had seven in that time period and other superheroes were running all over the place.
So it was a real treat for me to see Superman not only portrayed as a tougher character than he was in both SR and the first two Reeve movies, but a lot closer to his assertive self from the golden age comics.
However, there was still the 'boy scout' softness at appropriate times from him, especially when he was being grounded through the interactions he had with the Kents and even Lois Lane.
You could tell that this movie started out as the story of a farm-raised man who first gets freaked out by his abilities, before grudgingly accepting them, then having a blast with them (when he discovers to fly) and then finally accept them as part of his identity, when he finally becomes Superman, instead of just "the alien" as he was referred to a couple of times in the movie.
Firmly establishing Superman's alien heritage was important for the sci- fi heavy plot, which was a welcome development as it was great to see that part of his mythos embraced rather than avoided.
The depiction of Krypton hearkened to the time before it was a very lifeless looking ice planet (same production designer on the Donner movie as there was on Star Wars), Russell Crowe's turn as Jor-El was the most fleshed out depiction of him that we saw, and both biological parents as well as Zod and his cohorts all were well portrayed too.
The major fault I found in the movie was that because so much of origins of the modern age Superman was stuffed in this movie (more than one comic book story arc was referenced) it did make things a little abrupt when switching to and fro from the present to the childhood flashbacks that served as useful footnotes for character development.
And while Superman's character is taking shape, we are made very much aware of the fact that he is an extraordinary being living in an ordinary world.
Lois Lane - who is finally shown to be smart enough to put two and two together - starts out a supremely confident reporter before getting bamboozled by Clark, the military is freaking out after Zod gets in contact with the world and when Superman voluntarily turns himself in.
It lays the seed for a lot of mayhem where it takes time for Superman and the authorities to figure out that they're on the same side.
As far as the mayhem goes, it was on an enormous scale and not something that Superman could tackle by flying around the earth a few hundred times or by another quick fix method. The Superman shown here is clearly not as god-like as Christopher Reeve's and that is a good thing.
He struggles to keep everything in control and has his hands full with equally powered Kryptonians who have found the planet with the perfect amount of water and distance from a sun to repopulate after ridding it of the native inhabitants.
I won't spoil too much about the movie, but keep an open mind when you see it is all I can say. Plus some people have compared the codex plot point to that in The Matrix, to which all I can say is that its genesis was in Superman comics of 1986, 13 years BEFORE The Martix was released.
There's a lot about Superman that has existed for a long time that people don't know about and it was a kick for me to see it displayed in grand style in this movie.
As far as the action and destruction goes, it was represented in a more realistic manner than say, The Avengers or Thor 2. Superman is finally allowed to cut loose in a manner that he should have been in Superman Returns, but there is one action sequence that takes away the impact of a final confrontation.
But to sum things up, the best part of the movie after all this craziness was when it was grounded yet again; showing off Superman's stance towards the military who still don't trust him, the rock in his life (Martha Kent) and a brief explanation of why he chooses a civilian guise that we are most used to seeing him in.
All that leads up to Hans Zimmer's title tune triumphantly sounding out and bringing a curtain on an almost perfect modern day revival for the character who puts the 'super' in 'superhero'.
9/10