Superman Returns - Bryan Singer

Back in the late 70s - early 80s, Christopher Reeve starred 4 Superman movies. The first two of them were OK, and the other ones are currently used as examples of everything a director must not do in a movie set.

In 2005, Warner decided to retake the Superman saga. One year later, amid a great promoting campaign, Superman Returns started being exhibited across the World. The movie starts five years after the second of the Reeve movies. That's probably the biggest problem of this movie: trying to emulate Reeve. Reeve was a great actor, but if you ask a random movie watcher, she will likely remember him as Superman, and that's it. And the reality is that nobody has been as good as Reeve in the role of Superman / Clark Kent. Brandon Routh could only aspire to be as good as Reeve, which he is far from accomplishing: he barely speaks, he's not dumb enough when he plays Clark Kent, and he's not handsome enough. If you watch the movie carefully, the hero of the movie is Lois Lane's boyfriend, who, funnily enough, is played by the actor who represents Cyclops in the X-Men movies...

The special effects are predictable, and the movie doesn't offer enough action to attract male teenagers full of testosterone or sci-fi nerds.

The other problem is that Superman is probably dated and has probably become a niche hero. He's one of the oldest superheros and has never been reinvented. What do I mean by reinvented¿  Think about Adam West's Batman. Now think about Chris Nolan's Batman. Got it¿ Since the late 1930's, Superman has been the same: a nerd journalist who is actually the most powerful living being in Earth. Probably Superman can't be reinvented for structural reasons: any fight against humans will be tilted in his favor. DC is trying to reinvent Superman (actually, it's trying to reinvent all its superheros); let's see if they are successful.

Finally, the original Superman movies were a metaphor of the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the US fighting two unpopular wars, Superman Returns is no metaphor and has no coherent message. Superman Returns is nothing else than a mirror image of a superpower that tries to recycle old ghosts while wasting the golden opportunity of creating a new World order.

Iron Man 2 - Jon Favreau

I’ve successfully privatized world peace

-Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.)

Iron Man 2 is even worse than its predecessor. The plot is not clear and there are less action scenes than in the average action movie. Hopefully Iron Man 3 will be better (not really).

The movie tries to make an argument against drones, which have become very unpopular as a result of their massive utilization in Afghanistan.

Drones are used because they are cheaper than human beings, both economically and morally. Moms want to see their children covered with glory after liberating barbarous peoples, not inside a coffin. An army made up of voluntaries enhances the false conception that wars are glorious enterprises rather than painful processes.

The alternative to drones is mercenaries (sorry, private security contractors), but, guess what, mercenaries also die, which makes them potential political liabilities. In fact, “contractor deaths surpass US military losses in both Iraq & Afghanistan”. And, also, relying on mercenaries is one of the first signs of weakness of an empire. 

Iron Man 2 is one more testimony of a society that is unable to discuss its defense policy seriously.

Iron Man - Jon Favreau

“Weapons that will help the world stir back on course, put the balance of power in our hands. The right hands.”

-Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges)

Released in 2008, Iron Man is a critique to the Bush 43 presidency. Obadiah Stane portrays Dubya, corporate America, and the neo-cons, who try to control the World through war and destruction. Tony Stark represents the enlightened elite that pledges for disarmament. The message of the movie is the following: voluntarily or not, the United States ends up providing its enemies with weapons.  Therefore, disarmament will be the only effective national security strategy.

Like all the critiques to war and the military in the United States, Iron Man simply reflects that Americans do not discuss the issue of warlike adults. Let’s face it: Americans really do not care that much about war. They talk about it and all that, especially in elections, but war is rarely a determinant issue.

Americans used to care about war when there was a draft and ordinary citizens were forced to think twice about going abroad with a gun. The reason why the resistance to Vietnam was such a big deal (in comparison to say, Iraq) is because middle classes were facing the real possibility to die horribly far away from home. Just look at who is fighting the US wars today: foreigners looking for a fast track green card, the poor looking for a career, and “private security contractors” (i.e., mercenaries).

Throughout History, there has been only one case of a Republic that turned itself into an Empire: Rome. The decay of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire was a long process, but some historians agree on when the transition started: when the army was open to foreigners looking to become Roman citizens, plebeians looking to live like the patricians, and mercenaries. Shortly, when the elites forgot about their responsibilities to the polis and decided to have all the benefits of going to war without bearing the costs…

And by the way, Iron Man is an OK movie. You can read the plot in Wikipedia.

For more on the need to reinstitute the draft in the US, you can read Tom Ricks’ blog, who posts on this regularly.

Batman & Robin - Joel Schumacher

 “Batman and Robin: militant arm of the warm-blooded oppressors, animal protectors of the status quo.”

-Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman)

Four movies about Batman were filmed during the 90s. The first two ones (Batman and Batman Returns) were directed by Tim Burton. As of today, the films are still considered good. The second pair of movies (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin) was directed by Joel Schumacher and has been considered a complete failure since its release. Particularly, Batman & Robin disappointed so many people (including Warner Bros) that it took ten years to bring the hero of Gotham City back to the screens.

Batman & Robin was more of a Disney movie than an adaptation of the Batman saga. The popular connotations given to words like “cool” or “chill” are overused, just like in The Ice Age. In a way, Batman & Robin was more of a tribute to the series of the 60s than an adaptation of the comics. The bad guys wear uniforms, just like in the TV series, and the fights look like dance choreographies.

But even if Batman & Robin is one of the worst movies ever, it still tells us a lot about how Americans perceived their country in the late 90s. Probably because it is hard to be frank, societies represent themselves through their heroes: the Greeks did it with Ulysses, and Americans do it with Superman, Batman, et al.

Through the architecture of Gotham City (a representation of New York), Batman & Robin tells us a lot about how Americans conceived social interactions back in the day. The message transmitted through the architecture of Gotham is interesting, especially when we compare it with the portrayals of Burton or, more recently, Christopher Nolan. In Batman & Robin, Gotham City is a bombastically ridiculous place: the idea of a dark city, as conceived by the original creators of Batman, is basically absent; optimism is rampant and only a couple of bad guys (who will obviously be stopped by the good guys) disrupt order. Contrastingly, the Burton and Nolan adaptations present a desolated city, where evil can actually win. Nolan also presents a city where infrastructure is falling apart and the social contrasts of a city where, on the one hand, you have the richest members of a society and, in the other hand, you have the poorest ones.

Batman & Robin deserves one last comment. The movie also shows how society’s views about ecology have changed. At one point, Poison Ivy presents Bruce Wayne a project to stop using diesel to warm houses and freeze food. Wayne retorts saying that this is nonsense, because many people would freeze and starve. He closes by adding that “the most important is the people.” Thirteen years later, the idea to stop using fossil fuels to warm houses and freeze food is back, but now people have started to take it seriously. I am not sure that this is a good thing. In order to solve the environmental issues we face, it is necessary to find a compromise between nature and the needs of humankind, instead of adopting the simplistic vision of a villain of a bad movie.