Cinema Spotlight: "I hear everything" in Superman Returns

 
This is a new series I’ll do from time to time, highlighting certain great moments in cinema. Maybe it’s a great piece in a great movie, maybe it’s the one highlight from a bad movie, maybe it’s something else. Here, I start with one of my favorite subjects: superheroes. Let’s get into it!

The moment: “I hear everything” in Superman Returns

Superman Returns is not a particularly good movie. It has a lot of issues, but there’s also some great stuff there (including Superman being shot in the eye and we watch as the bullet crumples, another great throwaway moment). The real issue with Superman has always been a problem of conflict. How can there be conflict with this character? Who provides a real conflict for this God of a being? And from a narrative perspective, what is Superman’s motivation? What keeps him from his desires?

Superman is the most overpowered of all widely known superheroes (flight, super strength, super speed, laser vision, X-ray vision, cold breath, seeming indestructibility, etc.) and his only weakness being kryptonite has always felt stupid to me. Not because he shouldn’t have a weakness, but because he should, and a stupid piece of green rock that always ends up in the hands of the bad guys to help immobilize Superman just long enough for the plot to continue has always felt like a lame contrivance for such a character. Superman Returns fixed that issue, even if I’m not sure it realized it did.

In the scene I want to talk about, Superman (Brandon Routh, who was a decent Superman and deserved more than he was given for his work) takes Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth, a little bland, feels too young and maybe miscast) up into the stratosphere, looking down on Earth, and they have this short exchange:

Superman: “What do you hear?”
Lois: “Nothing.”
Superman: “I hear everything." (pause) "You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one.”

And this was revelatory to me because it finally gave Superman internal conflict. He wants to save everyone, but can’t because even though he’s got a godlike amount of powers, he’s not a true omnipresent god. He literally can’t save everyone. He must worry about even being able to save those he cares about. What about the people he can’t save? Those people are still on his conscience. He still hears their cries for help, even as he can’t help them. How do you live a life with that kind of stuff taking up your headspace? How is he supposed to have a nice quiet dinner with Lois while he can hear people all over the world crying for help, being hurt, killed, raped, etc.? Obviously he has to develop selective hearing, which must also lay heavy on his conscience knowing that he’s tuning out people who could use his help.

Now, Superman Returns doesn’t do anything with this newfound depth. The plot is still concerned with bullshit about Lex Luther creating new real estate or something, but this moment completely upended my feelings about Superman as a character. He wasn’t boring anymore and it’s something I still think about even when reading comics or watching subsequent Superman movies. Even though those movies don’t earn it, this depth is still there for me. And that's all thanks to this moment.