Bryan Singer Cops To ‘Superman Returns’ Sucking. Sort Of.
I thought that ‘Superman Returns’ sucked. I thought it was bogged down with an insistence to paying homage instead of carving its own identity, typical existential ennui bullshit Singer loves, and the need to give (Jesus Christ,why?) Superman a kid.
All these years later, Bryan Singer sort of agrees.
Voices From Krypton snagged an interview. Here’s some excerpts.
On People Thinking The Movie Sucked:
BRYAN SINGER: It’s hard for me to assess it. My gut response is, “It didn’t do THAT bad.” You know, summer’s a tricky time — I know it’s hard to blame the time, but there’s a bit of an expectation for a summer movie. I think that Superman Returns was a bit nostalgic and romantic, and I don’t think that was what people were expecting, especially in the summer. What I had noticed is that there weren’t a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see The Devil Wears Prada, which may have been something I wanted to address. But when you’re making a movie, you’re not thinking about that stuff, you’re thinking, “Wow, I want to make a romantic movie that harkens back to the Richard Donner movie that I loved so much.” And that’s what I did…
On It Being A Nauseating Homage:
BRYAN SINGER: Oh, absolutely. What’s interesting is that people know I’m a big Trekkie, and they’re always saying, “Why don’t you do a Star Trek?” and I say, “You know, I think I’m TOO big a fan of Star Trek. You’d feel like you were watching Wrath of Khan again.” So with Superman, again, it was romantic and nostalgic and NOT a high octane summer movie like Transformers or something like that. I think people would’ve wanted that from me, knowing what I did with the X-Men, where I shed all the comic-ness and tried to make it real. Here, though, I embraced the comic-ness and made this alternate, bucolic Metropolis. Then there was the music and the whole thing. But I am very much in love with the Donner picture, and for me the journey was exciting because I got the chance to reprise those images and explore it. When you’re fascinated by something and you love it, part of making the movie is trying to please everyone and make a successful movie, but part of it is an experimental kind of thing.
Well there you go. Read the entire thing here. Find some minimal catharsis in finding the creator of that travesty quasi-tacitly acknowledging how ass the movie was.