sildarmillion

I wanted to watch this classic superhero movie to see how it compares with modern ones.

I was surprised by how much I liked Christopher Reeve's earnest portrayal of Clark Kent. Might be a little too cheesy for modern audiences, but I don't know, I liked it much better than the brooding portrayals of today.

I was surprised by how cartoonish the villains were. They were kind of funny, but their evil plot was so over-the-top, I could not get invested in the danger.

I was surprised by how bad Lois Lane seemed to be in her job. Perhaps it was supposed to be cute that she can't spell, but that just made it hard for me to take her seriously. (Although a modern journalist would have a spell checker so it doesn't matter if they can spell or not.) Her interview scenes didn't seem like she was particularly good at her job and overall, she seemed all bark and no bite. This is a stark contrast to the Lois Lanes in Superman: The Animated Series or even Zach Snyder's movies. This can't be a product of its times, because the first Star Wars movies came out around the same time, and despite limited screen time, Princess Leia never seemed incompetent.

Finally, I was surprised by the big save Superman made at the end. I had heard this happened in Richard Donner's movies. I always thought happened in the later movies. But seeing that it happened in the very first movie, I am left wondering where was there left to go in the sequels?

Roberts and Clooney are really great in this movie. This movie is about mistakes they made in their youth, their struggles to comes to term with them, bad decisions made along way as a consequence of the inability to come to terms with them, and how they finally learn to grow past it. Good stuff.

Where it falls apart is when it comes to the daughter (Dever). Dever is placed in contrast to her parents (Roberts and Clooney) and shown to have a much better idea of what it is she wants from life (which I guess is to live in Bali as a seaweed farmer). Except, up until now, Dever has been doing whatever her parents want her to (going to law school to become an attorney). If she has such a strong sense of self and she knows what she wants, why would she have spent so many years doing exactly the opposite of that?

Her decision to quit everything, get married to a man she just met, and presumably become a seaweed farmer, heavily implies she is going through a quarter-life crisis and making a rash decision.

Also, what was up with them saying she just finished four years of college? College in the US means undergrad. But also, in the US, you can't study law as an undergrad, you have to get 3 years of a JD after you complete undergrad. Did the filmmakers just not know this basic fact? This is an important detail because how old Dever is, how many years of schooling she has had, and how much money was poured into her education, absolutely plays a role. So, is she a 22-year old fresh out of college? Or is she a 25-27-year old out of law school?

I'm also curious exactly how rich these seaweed farmers in Bali actually are. The fiancé (Boutier) seemed super polished and gave off "educated-maybe-in-Europe" vibes. His house is amazing and the best of both worlds of a natural hut and modern technology. It seems like he and his family are rich enough that Lily (Dever) wouldn't have to worry about money ... but is that a good representation of seaweed farmers of Bali? If this misrepresents how luxurious their life is (as in, ignoring the actual hardships), then it's disrespectful to those communities.

This has strong Eat, Pray, Love vibes (even without Julia Roberts) of traveling to an "exotic" location to find yourself and portraying idealized versions of locals where they are something like a noble savage (who have the right idea about everything and have no flaws of their own) and not fully realized people.