First of all, I understand that it’s fiction. And I’m willing to accept the notion of a space alien with the power to fly, see through stuff, and wear primary colors without looking stupid. But there were still some things in this movie that just can’t be reckoned with.
The plot goes like this: Marlon Brando and his wife have discovered that their home planet of Krypton (which is, apparently, an English-speaking planet) is going to blow up. Why? Who knows, but the fact that all the office buildings are made out of crystals might have something to do with it.
Brando attempts to convince a bunch of guys in foil jumpsuits to evacuate, but they threaten to squish him in a windowpane and launch him into space.
So… he makes a giant Christmas ornament for his son to escape Krypton in. Then he and his wife have a painfully expository conversation about the powers he will have on earth. Then they launch him into space, wrapped in a blanket of primary colors (although the only colors we’ve seen on Krypton so far have been silver, black, and clear - and clear’s not even a color), where he floats around for about three years.
His spaceship crash-lands on Earth. The big burnt ball nearly hits two old people in a truck, and a three-year-old climbs out. So naturally the old people adopt him, and use him as a human jack.
Skip 15 years or so. Pa Kent dies of a heart attack, after the Man of Steel challenges him to a race (Nice, Clark. What's next? Arm-wrestle grandma?), and Clark gives us the first hint of his obsessive Messiah complex ("…. all my powers, all the things I can do, and I couldn’t even save him…") and finds a green crystal in the storm cellar. So what does he do? Well, he does what any red-blooded 18-year-old would do with a green crystal: he walks to Antarctica with it.
Clark throws the green crystal in the water, and we find out how contractors work on Krypton; the green crystal becomes a big building, in which Marlon Brando’s floating head teaches Clark everything he needs to know about being a relocated Kryptonian. The instruction takes, apparently, 12 years; during this time, Clark’s weird blanket (which was shiny and metallic) becomes his super suit (which is now matte and elastic), and he wears the seal of his father (”S” for “Jor-El”).
So Clark pretends to be a geek and moves to Metropolis, where he gets a job as a guy who sits around in front of a typewriter and harrasses the reporters. He meets a homely, skinny reporter named Lois Lane and immediately falls in love with her. This is probably due to the fact that he is from a rural farming town and she looks like she could be related to him.
Eventually, she gets herself into some mortal danger, as people do around Clark. He’s kind of like Jessica from Murder She Wrote: everywhere she went, people died. Why did nobody ever investigate her? But I digress.
Clark immediately rips off his shirt, revealing that he has been wearing his ridiculous supersuit this entire time, as if it were some sort of thermal underwear. I get that part, but the cape - where has he been keeping the cape?
Then there’s a lot of him going around saving stuff. He stops a cat burgler and some bank robbers, saves the president’s plane, and returns a cat to its neglectful owner. Yay Superman.
Now we meet Lex Luthor, a nefarious real estate agent who lives in an abandoned train station with a retard and a blonde. Not very intimidating. Lex has a plan to launch nuclear missles, but we don’t know why yet (duh-nuhnuhnuh!).
We cut back and forth for a while: Superman, Lex, Superman, Lex, ad tedium. The only remarkable moment in this exchange is a scene in which Superman takes Lois flying - and she repays him by assaulting us with terrible mental poetry: "I don't know who you are... just a friend from another star." No, really. I couldn't make this stuff up. Apparently, it takes a multi-million dollar production team to do that.
Lex gets the retard and the blonde to sneak onto the nuclear missles - while they're in transit - and change coordinates. Apparently, the U.S. military transports nuclear missles on clearly marked trucks with the missles sticking up for everyone to see. They also transport said missles with a convoy of 5 or 6 guys, all of which are really easily distracted.
Oh yeah, and Lex figures out the kryptonite angle, by a stretch of logic that escapes me. The yellow sun makes him strong, so rocks must make him weak. No, wait, the gravitational pull makes him strong, so kittens must make him... fuck, I give up.
This having been done, Lex calls Superman to his abandoned train station using an ultra-high frequency. Why he assumes that Superman can hear this, I don't know, but he's right. He tries to shoot him, burn him, freeze him, and eventually talk him to death, but to no avail. So instead, in the tradition of all the best Bond movies, he explains his plan to him before attempting to kill him.
Luthor goes to great length to explain why he has decided to nuke California: he's bought a lot of shit land in Nevada that will become very valuable beachfront property when everthing west of the San Andreas Fault Line sinks into the ocean. He has visual aids and everything. It really is an A+ report.
Then he drops another bomb (pun intended): there's another nuke on its way to New Jersey. Why? I don't know. Maybe because the retard screwed it up earlier, and maybe it's plan B. Whatever.
Meanwhile the U.S. military has launched the nukes, and are freaking out about where they're going. Apparently, when launching nuclear missles over American airspace, they neglect to double-check the coordinates.
Back at the batcave, Lex has slipped Supes a kryptonite necklace, and Supes is trying to break the chain, but can't. Of course, the chain is perfectly large enough to pull over his head, but he tries to break it instead. Well, you can't blame him for being weak-minded: he's a farmboy. Luthor's blonde lets him out, so that he can save her mother in New Jersey.
So Supes goes after the NJ nuke. Can't quite catch it, can't quite catch it.... got it. He can't, however, get to California in time to stop that nuke. All hell breaks loose, and Superman goes about the task of trying to single-handedly keep western California attached to the continent. Nobody seems to be worried about fallout, as long as the busfull of school children are okay.
Meanwhile, Lois gets buried alive in the fault line. Superman finds her skinny wrist sticking up out of the dirt, and lets out a superyell. He then preceeds to turn the earth - and thus time(?) - backwards by flying around the earth at a speed of two to three revolutions per second! He can circle the entire earth in half a second, but he couldn't catch two missles only 2000 miles apart in several minutes?
Well, whatever. He saved the day and made room for a sequel, and that's all that really mattered.
I'm going to take a nap now.
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