If you would have asked me my opinion on Superman like two months ago, I would have said that I hate him and he’s lame, but if you ask me now, I would say that I love him, but he’s still lame in a good way. So, where did the switch come from? Well, it may have started on a very late night almost like 3 am when I watched Superman Returns. I did not like the movie at first, but all of a sudden, I started seeing art of Superman and I consumed it because of course I did, so the more media I consumed the more I begun to understand him. So where am I going with this? Well, let’s talk about Superman Returns (2006). Now most of this is gonna be explained through memory and a little research because I can’t watch it for some reason. It’s probably on a streaming service but I have the DVD, and it won’t work… anyways.
So, Superman is missing! He’s been gone for five years to look at Krypton, the planet he came from, to find any survivors. He finds nothing, of course. Lex Luthor is out of jail, and we see him in the fortress of solitude, Superman’s home in the Arctic or whatever. So, Superman comes back and continues to work at the Daily Planet. I’m not sure if I’m skipping much because I did NOT see the beginning of this movie. I just remember Clark Kent going into the Daily Planet. He finds out that Lois Lane is married to this guy named Richard and they have a five-year old son named Jason (she moved on quick omg). He sees a picture of her and her new family. He also sees that she won a Pulitzer Prize for a paper called, “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” So, he’s like really salty at this point. Also, Lois Lane doesn’t know that Clark is Superman.
But he goes out with his friend, Jimmy, to a bar, and they’re watching tv. Theres this space shuttle that’s piggy backing off of an airplane, and Lois and a couple other journalists are in the plan which is honestly really unsafe now that I’m writing it. But the Shuttle was meant to detach from the plane and go into space while the plane continues its trip. This goes wrong because remember Lex Luther? Yeah, he stole a crystal from the fortress of solitude because the material that it’s made of generates more crystals, or idk how it works, but the little crystal can make bigger crystal. So, why is he doing that? We’ll get back to that, but when the crystal is dropped into water, it makes all the power in Metropolis go out, and this messes with the plane, so the shuttle doesn’t detach. So, Superman has to go save everyone, and he takes a really long time guiding the shuttle into space because he flies it all the way out of the atmosphere like really slowly, like there isn’t a plane hurdling to the ground as we speak. Of course, he catches it and sits in a baseball field where a game is going on because there’s a crowd of people there, but this is how everyone finds out that Superman has returned!! (omg like the title). Lois Lane sees him because he goes into the plane and he’s all like, “Is everyone okay”, but he’s staring right at her like a loser. And they just kind of stare at each other until everyone processes that Superman is back and he leaves.
So, everyone is happy because he’s back! You know who’s not happy? Lex freaking Luthor. So, he works with this girl named Kitty who he uses as a distraction. He puts her in a car, cuts the breaks, and she makes a bunch of commotion to get Superman’s attention, and distract him from the fact that Lex Luthor and his goons are stealing Kryptonite from the museum. Superman is really lame for letting that slide, like he doesn’t even find out about it until the next day because he gets assigned to figure out why the blackout happened while Lois Lane has to interview Superman, which she doesn’t want to do because she’s still in love with him but she’s married or whatever, and she brings up the museum, and Clark is like omg what are you talking about?? But yeah, there’s like a scene where she goes out to smoke and Clark bumps into her, so he dresses up as Superman and goes onto the roof to like to fly her around town, and they get back and almost kiss, and as I was watching it, I realized that if I ever met a girl who was with Superman, then I would never even try because how do you even compare to that?? But she’s really upset with him because he left without saying goodbye or whatever.
Anyways! A day passes or something, and she is supposed to be going to a dinner party but instead she goes to investigate the blackout which isn’t what she’s supposed to be doing, but she has Jason with her because Richard didn’t pick him up from school so she had to, and for some reason she brings him with her onto the boat. And Jason is like a chronically ill child, like he has a bunch of things going on with him like all of the time. She goes onto the boat and sees Lex freaking Luthor. So, he gets his goons to keep an eye on her and the boy while he tells her his master plan which is to use the Kryptonite Crystal, infuse it with Kryptonite, and then make his own super continent where he’s like King, and Superman can’t live there because it’s made of Kryptonite. And so around this time in the movie, Kitty is starting to get nervous because she didn’t know that a bunch of people were gonna get hurt. But get this. When Lex Luthor is telling Lois Lane, he’s holding Kryptonite and little Jason has a weird reaction to it. So, Lex Luthor is like, who is that baby’s father, and Lois Lane is like Richard obviously! Yeah whatever… So, he leaves, and she like tries to send a fax message to someone for help?? But the goon that’s in the room goes to attack her and all of a sudden, a freaking piano flies at him, and Jason, or as I like to call him baby superman, threw that freaking piano. And like you don’t see it happen, but you see it fly towards the man, and it pans back to Jason, and it’s really funny. And like of course it’s Superman’s baby. He’s five years old!!! Superman left five years ago!!! If I was Richard, I wouldn’t even have tried with Lois Lane. Like I know they’re together, but Superman was her ex, bro.
Anyways, Lex Luthor goes and drops the crystal into the ocean, and it starts expanding. I think around this time the boat gets split in half and Lois Lane and Jason are stuck, and she’s trying to get him to use his powers to get them out but for some reason he’s too scared to do it, so they’re stuck and that’s like all I remember from that part. Idk who saves them. I assume Superman does, but it might’ve been Ricard. Whatever. Superman goes to Lex Luthor on the island, and he’s weak because it’s made of Kryptonite. Lex Luthor impales him with a piece of Kryptonite and then pushes him in the ocean. And Richard is piloting a sea plane because he went out the help Lois Lane, and she sees Superman in the water because she’s like, “We have to go save him!” And man, if I was Richard, I would not have turned back because Superman can really just take your girl at any minute. But he goes back and she jumps into the water to haul him on the plane, and she gives him mouth to mouth, and Richard is just sitting there!
Okay, I’m gonna drop the fact that Richard should absolutely be on his toes with Superman around. Actually, no I won’t, but you’ll see why. Anyway, she saves him and he goes underwater to pick up the landmass that is forming and take it into space. So, Lex Luthor’s goons die because this big rock falls on them, and it’s just him and Kitty who get on this helicopter to escape but she throws the crystals out because she doesn’t want anyone else getting hurt. They get stranded on an island after running out of fuel. Superman throws the landmass into space and immediately falls back onto Earth, weakened. So, people try to save him. They take him to the hospital but obviously can’t do much because he’s an alien and his skin is too hard for them to use needles because like the man of steel duh. Lois Lane pulls up with Jason, and she’s like talking to Superman while he’s in the coma, and then she kisses him on the lips!!! before she leaves. When they doctors go to check on him later, he’s gone. Where is he? He’s in baby superman’s bedroom, giving him a speech that his father gave him when he was a child. Baby Superman is asleep, and Superman knows that it’s his baby. But he leaves, and we see that Lois Lane is writing a new paper called, “Why the World Needs Superman.” and if I was Richard, that would be my breaking point… At the end of the movie, he like flies up into space, and it’s really cinematic.
Anyways, I really loved this movie. And now I love Superman! The movie is kind of dumb, but it was really intriguing for actual first introduction to Superman… I may have not described it in the best way, but I’d honestly recommend this movie. Now, I may not be the person to take recommendations from, but I just like to be entertained, and I love Superman and how evil Lex Luthor is, and I love Lois Lane even if she made some interesting choices in this movie…. But yes! That is Superman Returns.
