I know it seems a bit belated to still talk about Superman Returns — after all, it slipped out of the top 10 and was out-grossed by The Devil Wears Prada
last weekend, despite playing in 200-plus more theaters — but I had
another friend catch the movie (and be disappointed by it) this past
weekend, which got me thinking about it again.

The subject of the sexuality of this reborn iteration of the character of Superman and his status in the gay community has been covered to death — and quite well, too — in a variety of major media pieces, from The Advocate’s cover feature, which got the ball rolling, to stories and interviews in Newsweek and Los Angeles Times. But one un-discussed angle to me — and this is a spoiler alert — lies in the shaping of the film’s narrative by director Bryan Singer, himself openly if quietly gay.

With only a bit of an intellectual leap, the story can be read on
one level as an extended rhetorical response to the ongoing debate
about gay marriage. After all, Superman Returns is a movie about an “alien” trying to find rootedness in mainstream
society, and doing so largely by pursuing placement within traditional
familial structures. In the real world, many homosexuals have lobbied
to be part of the institution of marriage, which should delight
cultural conservatives who purportedly value above all else the
sanctity of a settled family unit. Of course, then the debate becomes
about parsing the definition of marriage, and homosexuals find out that
for some who oppose gay marriage — not all, but a decent percentage — it’s more about artfully
politically manipulated prejudice than “lifestyle choice.”

In Superman Returns, after years of having given mightily of himself, Superman tries to
reconnect with his kind, only to find he really can’t go home again. He
then returns to Earth, reengages the hegemonic culture and realizes —
despite the binding revelation that Lois’ son is his as well — that he
can never truly be one of them. Though, in his parting words, he’ll
“always be around,” Superman will always exist apart — celebrated by
many, but still vilified by some — from the mainstream. This isn’t the
dominant storyline by any stretch of the imagination, but it plays in
several of Brandon Routh’s more ruminative scenes, including the
finale.

On another tangent, while coming from an additional friend who really, really didn’t like Superman Returns (“Elektra was better because at least its badness was only 90 minutes,” he said —
ouch!), I think he did have an excellent point in that the filmmakers
blew a chance to tie together the rationalizations of Lex Luthor and
Lois Lane on the issue of why the world don’t need Superman — that
relying on Superman makes it all too easy, and thus strips us of human
struggle and identity. Luthor always suspects Superman of ulterior
motives, and that paranoia and suspicion feeds part of his own desire
for conquest. If would have been interesting to see Luthor try, however
foolhardily, to recruit Lois to his point-of-view, and then have that
legitimately feed her burgeoning awareness that maybe Superman isn’t
such a bad guy to have around. Heck, it might’ve even given Kate Bosworth something to do except be awful…