Kryptonite Bites

Emotional Kryptonite
Director Bryan Singer apparently doesn't view Superman Returns as an action flick, but a love story -- one told, at least partly, from Lois Lane's perspective.

"This is a movie about what happens when old boyfriends come back into your life," he told The New York Times:

Making Lois (as played by Kate Bosworth) the linchpin of the Superman franchise may sound radical, but the screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris say that it's a natural next step in the hero's saga. "In the original comic Superman was the hypermasculine guy, but slowly the romantic aspect of the character became more prominent," Mr. Dougherty said in an interview here. "First he was a fighter, and then the lover got introduced. It wasn't one or the other, it was this mixture of both."

Mr. Dougherty said it was in Richard Donner's Superman, released by Warner in 1978, that the character became "not just this alpha male, but he was sexualized, and romance really crystallized there." Later, the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which was broadcast on ABC in the mid-1990's, turned the romance into what Mr. Dougherty described as "full-on soap opera."

"And then they moved the soap opera to high school: Smallville is absolutely the same thing, but younger," added Mr. Harris, referring to the WB series, which followed "Lois & Clark." "It opens with Clark Kent shirtless in a cornfield. Immediately you know they're going for the sexuality of Superman."

Superman's indestructible values
Screenwriters Dougherty and Harris are the subjects on an extensive Q&A in the June issue of In Focus, a publication of the National Association of Theatre Owners.

There, too, they delve into the Man of Steel's emotional struggles. Here's Harris:

We have this problem, where the guy’s indestructible and stands for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”: very strong moral values that aren’t necessarily outdated, but we’ve seen them before. And you can’t change that about Superman — [those values] are as indestructible as he is.

So making a story about that kind of character didn’t seem totally relevant, or easy, or that interesting to us. But the world has evolved since Superman was last on the big screen — it’s more contemporary, edgier and scarier. It’s in dire need of a hero more than it was in the ’70s.

It was Bryan’s big idea to send him away for a number of years, then bring him back — and have the world kind of move on and change with him gone. Bringing Superman back into a world he doesn’t fit in was the heart of the drama.

Lois Lane has moved on. His mother has moved on in certain ways. He comes back to situations that aren’t cats in trees. So he has to become a hero by kind of riding the middle line and getting at his own “Truth” — and not stepping on people’s toes.

It's a lengthy, interesting interview that also touches on Superman's motivations, the right tone for Luthor, screenwriting, superheroes as "our current gods," and much more.

(Pictured: Harris, Singer and Dougherty on the Fortess of Solitude set)

Trading a phone booth for a closet?
Meanwhile, The Independent of London picks up on the "gay appeal" angle, but finds at least one fan who isn't so sure:

Batman and Wonder Woman are already well established gay icons, but not everyone is convinced Superman should join them. The comic books expert Liam Dineen admits he is surprised at the suggestion. "He doesn't really seem that type of guy," says the 33- year-old, who has been collecting comics since he was 12. "Superheroes in general don't seem to be gay icons to me."

But Neil Geraghty of Gay Times points to some signs that the Last Son of Krypton might not be so straight and narrow. Just look at those trunks: "The real giveaway. How can this man be straight?"