Review Detail

Superman Returns always seemed like the DC universes crowning failure. It was intended to revitalize the universe stemming from the success of Batman Begins and to supposedly provide a proper endcap to the original Superman quadilogy. I never saw the original because I had heard it was slow and boring. But what Avid4D has done here is pretty remarkable. He managed to cut over an hour and 10 minutes from the movie and save it from being a complete piece of crap. Whereas Batman begins was riveting for the vast majority of the movie, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns was plodding and gave little weight to a character that is practically a God.

There's still plenty of things about this movie that bother me. I think it's really strange that Brandon Routh has to wear unnaturally blue color contacts while Lois's character is left with different colored eyes. It seemed truly lazy to make one actor wear contacts and not the other but this doesn't really have anything to do with this edit.

Overall the pacing was really quite good. The removal of the hour plus of depressing bullshit I thought really strengthened the story. I agree with judgementalpigeon that Lois and Clark's scenes were a bit lacking, but this is likely due to the fact that the kid was particularly invasive in most of their scenes and with his removal you realize that the relationship between Lois and Clark was being played out through their interactions with the kid rather than directly to one another. With the removal of the conduit we see just how much their relationship has been hollowed by Superman's departure.

I'm particularly happy with the way the action was placed in the movie. The two major true Superman stunts, the plane crash rescue, and the lifting of the island, were placed strategically to maintain the buildup and tension throughout the movie. Throughout the Superman movies before Man of Steel there have been practically just hints of what Superman is truly capable of, and by condensing these bits of action Avid4D has created a narrative that leads nicely into Man of Steel and a new type of Superman that is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done rather than one who is so weighed down by morality that he is often unable to act.

Overall I really enjoyed these first three edits, but Avid4D's true masterpiece is his edit of Man of Steel!