Superman: Doomsday

So, one day later, I got to watch Superman: Doomsday. I have to say that I agree on all of Jon's points. It certainly was much better than Superman Returns which shall henceforth be known as Superman: Teh S uck.

Superman: Doomsday surprised me, though. I knew it was not a Saturday morning cartoon from its PG-13 rating, but I didn't expect the amount of carnage and senseless violence that Doomsday wrought on his way to Metropolis. There was a lot of killing. Stacy pointed out that every scene illustrated part of his power, his invulnerability to fire or bullets, his strength, what have you. I thought it was a very insightful comment from someone that is prone to react with disgust at animated violence and not that interested in things of a comic book nature. I was very impressed.

I was thinking about Jon's reaction to Anne Heche as Lois Lane as I watched. I think I know why it was so bothersome. In her first scene, Lois is overwhelmingly - er - Hechey. Her lines were delivered with such Hechiness that it was impossible not to find it jarring. It seemed after that initial burst, that Lois toned down the Hechiness and got about the business of being Lois, though. Perhaps that's why over the course of the movie she becomes much more tolerable and even likable.

The voice acting was good. It was startling to see how they had made Lex into a little bit of a skeevy perv, but nothing compared with Toyman's delivery. Well done on both Marster's and Dimaggio's parts. Adam Baldwin did an excellent job with Supes. His lines as Dark Superman were chilling in their normalcy. It was all just so matter-of-fact. I knew I recognized Jimmy's voice, but when I saw who it was, I couldn't figure out why. Then I looked up Adam Wylie's IMDB entry and found that he's been doing voice over work for quite some time, as well as many television appearances. I think I knew him best as the little kid on Picket Fences back in the mid-nineties.

For those of you that saw Superman: Teh S uck and came away feeling vaguely disappointed, or outright outraged, I recommend you pick up Superman: Doomsday and see how a Superman story should really be told.

I give Superman: Doomsday five out of five Unstoppable Killing Machines on a scale I just made up that doesn't mean anything.

Secondary Thoughts on Superman Returns

Well, Superman Returns has been out for a couple of weeks. As promised, here are more of my thoughts on the movie. Be warned, spoilers abound below.

Superman Returns had good, bad, and elements that were both good and bad (further known as “gad.”) It’s been a couple of weeks, so I figure anyone who reads this and intends to see the movie already has. For those of you that haven’t, spoilers follow.

The Good:

• Flashback to young Clark discovering his powers as he runs and jumps through the Kansas cornfields, ultimately falling out of control to the barn floor, but not landing


• Homage to the cover Action #1 when Supes lowers a runaway Ford Mustang to the ground


• Homage to Man of Steel when Supes rescues an out-of-control space shuttle and airplane with Lois Lane aboard


• Supes outracing said plane after it lost its wings, catching it on the nose cone, stopping it with the power of his flight just inches from the ground in a full sports stadium, then gently lowering it to rest


• Various scenes portraying Supes flying through Metropolis as its citizens look up in awe. This is reminiscent of the citizens in the comics that are safe and secure in the knowledge that Supes is watching over them and are used to seeing him flying through the streets


• Television footage of Supes fighting everyday crime in convenience stores, banks, etc


• Supes floating above the Earth and just listening until he hears a crime. Not only does this showcase his devotion to fighting crime, but it gives a little bit of insight to what it would be like to be able to hear everything all of the time. Plus, the visual with the cape billowing in zero-G was cool


• Supes walking up to a full-sized chain-gun on full auto until it runs out of ammo, after which, gunman closes the distance and shoots Supes point blank in the eye. Does Supes flinch or even blink? No, he takes the bullet straight to the eye, it deforms from the impact and falls to the ground, harmless. Both the thug and Supes take a moment to watch the bullet fall


• Supes takes Lois up above the city for an object lesson on why the world needs Superman. “What do you hear?” “I don’t hear anything.” “I hear everything. You say the world doesn’t need a savior but everyday I hear them crying out for one.”


• Lex gets out of jail because Supes doesn’t show up for Lex’s parole hearing


• Supes flies on his back and lays down a broad beam of heat vision to take out falling debris and save the people on the ground


• The Daily Planet globe’s slow fall and ultimate catch by Supes, who then lays it to rest gently on a Volvo

The Bad:

• Oh, where to start? Crystals, that’s where. Everything to do with Krypton crystals should not have been there. What a horrible plot device. By extension, most of the movie was bad


• Crystal-based Krypton sucks, as does the sterile environment of the crystal-based Fortress of Solitude


• Lex Luthor was the old land-grabbing kook from the original Donner films. Why? Why not the xenophobic business tycoon that carried on a personal vendetta against Supes through many years of the comics? Why not the man that was so charismatic, he became the US President before his treachery was revealed?


• Cyclops as Lois Lane’s love interest. Not nearly as annoying as he was in the X-Men movies, but lame nonetheless.


• The homage to the first Donner film with Supes outracing a natural disaster to save thousands while Lois, this time with bastard son and annoying fiancé, sinks to her death. Still an earthquake, but this time it hit Metropolis, and this time Lois is drowning in water instead of earth. At least Supes didn’t have to travel back in time to save her this time.


• The Boy. I can’t express the amount of my dismay at The Boy. First, they make Supes and Lois parents of a bastard child. This is the most morally-straight man on the planet. His scruples have scruples, he’s so righteous. Yet they portray him as someone that has not only had premarital sex, but has fathered an illegitimate child. Second, they foreshadow that The Boy is really Supes’ son by laying on the health maladies so thick that The Boy shouldn’t even be walking. Third, when The Boy does exhibit his super-strength, he uses it to kill a man. The Boy is already a killer at five years of age. Fourth, when given not only the opportunity, but the motive to use his powers again, The Boy sits on the floor playing with olives. Gah! The Boy!


• Superman becomes Superstalker. Would the man who holds principles as dear as Supes use his X-Ray vision and Super Hearing to spy on Lois and her family? I think not


• Superman drinks beer. COME ON


• Supes leaves the planet for five years without telling anyone why. Weak


• Constant focus on Luthor’s thug’s “eyes on the back of his head” tattoo. It was a dumb joke and repeated display only makes it worse


• Supes gay costume. The “S” shield was too small, his hotpants were too small, there shouldn’t be an “S” on his belt buckle, there shouldn’t be “S”s on the backs of his heels, there should be a yellow “S” shield on the back of his cape, the blue and red in his costume should have been brighter. In other words, his costume should have looked like this:

The Gad:

• In the context of the bad, some of the elements of the movie were good. Lex using a crystal encased in kryptonite to create a continent laced with the only thing Supes is vulnerable to is one of those things. The crystals are bad, but the concept was cool


• Lois uttering the Freudian slip, “I did Superman!” in response to being assigned Supes as an article subject. Said joke reinforced by the snickering of Olsen


• Lex causing massive EMPs everytime he uses a crystal in water


• Supes using his heat vision to punch a hole underground and lifting the entire Krypton continent into space, regardless of the kryptonite that is growing out of the bottom


• Supes pulling half a yacht out of the water to save Lois and her family, then dropping the yacht as they hang on to him. Powerful image


• Luthor’s thug playing the piano with The Boy. The Boy shouldn’t have existed, but since he did, it was kinda cool


• Lois doing what Lois would have done, brazenly entering Luthor’s yacht to track down a story even with The Boy in tow

There is more, much more, but now I am down to minutiae and I’m running out of items. My conclusion? Go see the movie if you haven’t already and make your own decision on the merits of the movie. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, but obviously, I still have some issues with quite a few of the concepts. Still, nothing compares with seeing Superman in action on the big screen.

Initial Thoughts on Superman Returns

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I'm going to avoid spoilers and try to keep it brief. The acting was pretty good. The action was spectacular. The individual sequences were directed and filmed well. The story sucked. A lot of the characters should not have been who they were, even though the actors portraying them did a good job. As Jon was so kind to point out here, the film seemed to be a morally debasing homage to Richard Donner, director of the first Superman film starring Christopher Reeve. That aside, Routh wasn't half bad; neither was Bosworth. Jon also pointed out something funny about them. Both of them are younger than their counterparts on Smallville, Tom Welling and Erica Durance. I could tell that Kevin Spacey had a great time aping Gene Hackman. James Marsden wasn't nearly as annoying as he is when playing Cyclops, but he still shouldn't have been in the movie. Frank Langella did a fair Perry White. The rest of the cast? Meh. I may post my thoughts on particular story elements in a few weeks after more people have had a chance to watch the movie.

On that note, I am off to bed. Surgery tomorrow, wish me luck.

Oh yeah, his costume was supergay.

Once More Around the Bend

That’s two floods and counting. Last night I went downstairs to check on our impromptu drain cover (a sink drain cover flipped upside down) only to find, to my dismay, that the even more water was leaking through the back door. I had gone down in time enough to stop it from spreading as far this time. Stacy ran down stairs to the sound of my shouted exclamation, “Crap!” Yeah, I’m pretty boring when it comes to curses. Even though it had not spread as far, it seemed like there was more water this time. I was about to open the door to unclog the drain when Stacy serendipitously stopped me. She went outside via the deck door to unclog the drain in case we let more water in by opening the basement door. Lucky she did, because the water was backed up about six inches from the ground, a good four inches above the bottom of the door.


My hotels and diner were ruined! And how did all these people get into my basement?
Stacy unclogged the drain and opened the door. Crisis averted, right? Wrong. After the water got about an inch below the bottom of the door, it stopped draining. The drain wasn’t clogged, though. While I was busily siphoning water out of the carpet, Stacy went into the laundry room across the basement. “Water!” was the next thing I heard. It turns out our sump pump had stopped pumping sump. The three foot well it was in had filled to the brim and just started leaking out onto the floor. My heart sank. It looked like we were in for a nasty flood no matter what we did. The carpet cleaner could only siphon about a gallon of water in five minutes. With the drain and the sump backing up, there was no way we could keep up.


Artist’s depiction of Scott’s broken sump pump
Stacy used the hose attachment to start draining the sump well while I put in an emergency call to her dad. We were sure he would have some good advice. Unfortunately, he could suggest little else beyond getting a new pump and a shop vac as soon as possible. I figured that I’d have to take the pump out to figure out what to buy anyway, so I reached into the water and pulled on the handle. Just as I jostled it, it kicked on. Water began draining out of the sump well faster than you could say, “It works!” which is what I said. As soon as the sump well started draining, so did the back drain. Apparently, it routed straight to the sump well. I also discovered where the sump pump drains, which has me slightly concerned. The steps down to our basement are dug into the earth and reinforced with concrete. This leaves a space of about four feet between the rest of the ground and the deck above. That space is filled with white landscaping rocks and our air conditioner. There is also a pvc pipe jutting from the wall that drains directly into the rocks. As I was working on the carpet after the sump pump crisis, I heard that pipe draining. It turns out the water from the sump well dumps out right there into the rocks.


If you look reeeaaaly closely, you can see the little white rocks
The best I can figure, the builders installed some sort of drainage tiles and the water runs off into the storm drains. Either that, or it contributes to the swamp that is our backyard. If that is the case, then once we reach total saturation, then there is no where for all of the water in our backyard to go but down the stairs, into the drain, back into the sump pump, rinse, repeat, flood. Here’s hoping I won’t be writing a third flood entry.

Unrelated Note Dept.

Stacy called Jon this morning and strong-armed him into seeing Superman Returns with me at a 10:00 PM showing tonight. Apparently the theaters figure that as long as the movie ends after midnight, it is still technically opening on the next day. I wasn’t planning on seeing the movie anytime soon because I have my surgery for the pilonidal cyst tomorrow. I’ll be effectively laid out for the next 7 to 10 days. Jon wasn’t going to see the movie because it stands against everything he knows and loves. Well, everything he knows and loves about Superman, at least. Not one to be deterred, Stacy convinced him to accompany me tonight. She figures I need a night out before I am bed-ridden. I am not going to argue. I’ll leave my thoughts on the movie in my next post.


So gay