I Will Believe A Man Can Fly

The new trailer for Superman Returns is now online. Before I get into that, first a little background.

I'm an unrepentant Superman geek. There, I said it. BOM has nothing on me. The Richard Donner movies (yes, he directed most of Superman II) hold a special place in my pop culture tabernacle.

If you've followed the development of this current entry in the Superman franchise, this may be old news. This movie had a real potential to suck. It might have sucked the balls of a dead Tijuana donkey. Even worse, it might have sucked like Batman & Robin.

Jon Peters, who more than anyone in Hollywood has proved the aphorism of "failing upwards", has been attempting since the early nineties to bring Superman back to the big screen, despite having virtually no understanding of the character. At one point, he hired Kevin Smith to write a script based on the Death of Superman story. In it, according to Smith, Peters demanded that Superman was not to appear in his iconic costume, nor fly. He also instructed Silent Bob to include a gay robot sidekick to Brainiac, a fight scene involving Brainiac and a pair of polar bears, and insisted that the final act of the film must consist of Superman fighting a giant spider. The script is available online. It blows chunks. Kevin, you can do better.

JJ Abrams turned in a script that was even worse. It was like a bad episode of Alias. Not that I have ever seen a good episode of Alias, but you get the idea. Luthor was a CIA agent, who also happened to be from Krypton, which wasn't really destroyed, and all sorts of other head scratchers.

Who knows what kind of lame-o crap was stewing in the Tim Burton version? Probably Superman as a misunderstood goth-kid with scissors for hands.

By the time Bryan Singer started production on this film, Warners had already spent north of a $100 million in pre-production costs. Ouch. The pressure was on for it not to suck. The ingredients are there for it to suck. Brandon Routh looks too much like Max Fischer, the costume is kinda gay looking, Kate Bosworth is horribly miscast as Lois Lane (Angie Harmon should have got that part, you know I'm right), and a host of other problems that indicated that this was going to turn out to be a turd blossom.

After watching this new trailer, I'm wrong about everything. Except maybe Kate Bosworth. This picture is going to kick serious ass. It looks great. The performances, except you know who, are pitch perfect. Routh will own the role.

What really makes this work more than any special effects or quality performances is the music. The classic Superman theme plays throughout the trailer. Johnny Fucking Williams brings this whole thing full circle and makes me believe that a man will fly.