Director: David Yarovesky
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones
Have I Seen it Before: At the time of this writing, this is a brand new release. That being said, I feel like I’ve seen most of this movie many, many times.
Did I Like It: The movie absolutely delivers on its premise. It doesn’t really reach for anything else, however.
The “what if Superman’s origin had gone a little bit differently” conceit has gotten a fair amount of play in the last twenty years. Red Son envisioned what would happen if, instead of the Kansas countryside, Kal-El of Krypton instead landed in the middle of the Soviet Union. True Brit likewise puts the seminal moment of Superman’s origin in the UK and gives him all the inferiority complex endemic to the British identity. Even I once dabbled in the notion, sending the Kryptonian escape pod in the middle of a rally for the Reagan/Bush re-elect, is adopted by the Gipper, and thus solidifies the Man of Steel’s fate as the protector of Truth, Justice, and the Republican way.
It was probably for the best that I never got terribly far on that idea.
So, we are dropped in with a similar mentality into this movie. Here, the environment in which gthe visitor from another world is largely the same. Kyle and Tori Breyer (Denman and Banks) have the same inherent wholesomeness of Ma and Pa Kent, while at the same time making sure everyone knows that their hipness is not to be questioned. Banks dresses in Ramones t-shirts and sings Bob Marley and the Wailers songs like they were lullabies*.
They’re so boss.
And I think this is where I would have preferred for the film to reach a little bit more. If Brandon (Dunn) were dealing with an environment that either didn’t think he was special or was completely ill-equipped to deal with him at his best, the horror might have felt more tragic and less inevitable. I guess I just want to see the version of the story where Superman lands among people who are more emblematic of the worst the midwest has to offer.
Then he might have had some subversive reason to turn on humanity. As it stands, the film hums along on the promise of its premise, occasionally startling, and a few interesting moments of gore. It won’t be remembered much beyond this weekend, I think.
* Extreme digression alert, but I just now realized that the reason “Three Little Birds” gets so much play in I Am Legend (2007) is because it comes from the album Legend? Is it possible that film has layers? May need to re-watch it for this space.