Davinci and Superman…
Tuesday night, in the smoldering heat, I decided I needed out of my apartment for a few hours. Like, 6 hours. Long enough that it would cool off outside so I could go home and unstuff the apartment. Well, it turned out to be a night of paradoxes, as I saw one movie I loved, and another which I hated.
First off, at 6:30 I saw “The DaVinci Code”. I had a free pass to it when I purchased “The Mask of Zorro”, and I figured, “What the heck, it’s free, the book, aside from it’s glaring factual errors, was decently written, and I’m a small Tom Hanks fan, as well as an Ian McClellan fan. How bad can it be?”
It seems I underestimated Ron Howard.
The opening was fairly well done. It stuck quite well to the opening from the book. But the mystery began to crumble almost immediately, when they replaced Langdon being awakened by the French police at his hotel with him being interrupted at a book signing. For some reason, that one little change really bothered me, for no obvious reason. But it only got better from there.
Hank’s Langdon, I will admit, was decently played. I thought he did wonderfully, even if his character tended to be a little wordy. But from there, things got even worse when Leigh Teabing showed up on the scene, played by McClellan.
Now, please understand, as a thespian, I enjoy Sir Ian quite well. He’s the only man for the part of Magneto, he’ll always be Gandalf to me, and even if I don’t agree with his choice in lifestyles, the man is an incredible actor.
That being said, every time Teabing opened his mouth after the initial introduction at the intercom (probably the funniest scene in the movie), I started falling asleep, or wondering “Does this man EVER shut up?” Leigh Teabing, as intriguing as the character was in the books, was a snore-fest in this movie. The only really great acting I saw out of McClellan in this film was the scene where they’re hauling him away and he’s an enraged madman, frothing at the mouth over the secret of the grail.
They also managed to take out a lot of the key plot twists (for instance, when they searched Teabing’s estate and found the recording equipment). And they even changed around some things (In the books, Sophie finds her grandmother AND brother at Rosalin, where in the movie, it was only her grandmother, and a whole lot of Priory of Sion (which makes you wonder, where were these guardians all of this time during the story that they all just showed up at the end?). Cosmetically, the scenery in the movie was incredible, but the movie itself, I think, was a poorly directed crap-fest from Ron Howard.
That being said, I loved my second movie. The 10:00 premier of Superman Returns.
I hadn’t been following the production very closely, but I knew it was coming, and I knew Bryan Singer (of X-Men 1 & 2 fame) was at the helm, so I figured on eventually seeing it. As it started an hour after DaVinci ended, I figured “what the heck, go for it.”
Well, before the movie even started, my adrenaline was pumping because they were playing the trailer for Spider Man 3, which I’d seen earlier in the day online, but it’s so much more incredible on the big screen. Then, the movie finally started.
First of all, the man playing the Man of Steel, Brandon Routh, looks so much like Christopher Reeves, it’s eerie. It’s hard to believe they’re not related when you see Routh on screen, both in appearance and facial expressions, he makes you think he could be Reeves reborn.
Secondly, Kevin Spacey did a fantastic job as Lex Luthor. The man played the part to perfection, his cold, cunning, and slightly insane demeanor really did it for me (“Come on, let me hear you say it. One more time.” “You’re insane.” “No, not that, the other one.” “Superman will never…” “WRONG!!!”).
There’s not a huge amount of action right out the gates, but when it hits, it hits big. Like a meteor rock hitting the Kent’s field. Or like a Boeing 777 with no wings crashing into the ground, if Superman couldn’t save it. The classic Superman feel is there, when you first hear John William’s epic theme, you know that it’s going to be good. I walked away from that movie just moved on so many levels, because it was everything I loved about comic books as a kid. There’s action, there’s adventure, there’s heroes, there’s villains, and there’s even those plot twists you didn’t see coming. Overall, I applaud Bryan Singer’s rendition of the return of Superman, and I hope that he goes on to do more of them. If you haven’t seen it, see it. And a huge amount of respect for Brandon Routh, the virtual unknown coming to take on the cape that most of us wanted to wear at some point in our childhood, and making it feel like the good old days all over again. Thanks to both of them for bringing back fond memories of my childhood.