With the release of the second full trailer and an extensive article in this week’s Entertainment Weekly, I am quickly reaching the end of my fanboy-induced patience regarding the new film, Superman Returns. Wednesday can’t come soon enough it seems. Startlingly enough, this is the first time in a while where that fanboy sense, which has been steadily been disappearing over the past three or so years, has been allowed to make a quick return engagement.
Superman: The Movie was released in December or 1978, just in time for the Christmas holiday. Star Wars came out a full-year earlier, but to my second-grade mind, Star Wars’ appeal, not to mention its merchandising, which I was sure to strike big-time with a little help from Jolly St. Nick, was still growing strong. However, literally being weaned on comicbooks thanks to my Grandfather, Darth Vader, X-Wing fighters and the entire mystical Force couldn’t compete with the likes of Superman. After all, this movie had promised me that I would believe a man could fly.
On opening day, my parents pulled a totally unexpected move, and one that would endear me to them forever: the took me out of school early to catch the matinee premiere. My folks were rather hardened with me skipping school for fake illnesses, so deliberately pulling me out just past lunch to see a movie – and a superhero movie at that – was nearly inconceivable.
With the advent of the Eighties getting ready to warm up and replace Disco with New Wave, theater multiplexes were still in their pre-historical state. One of the nearby malls’ General Cinema boasted an incredible six screens (I would see Superman II at this theater in just two summers) while the Eric at another mall had the much-less mind-blowing four. There were still three one-screen houses in the area that presented first-run movies. The Harwan was in Mt. Ephraim and would end up lasting the longest and go on to show second- or third-run screenings right up to the new Millennium. The Westmont, located in, you guessed it, Westmont, sported a balcony. In later years the Westmont spilt its room into two screens and later became a village playhouse. It is now closed up and sitting on what I’m sure is pretty valuable land. Finally, The Century theater sat directly on the corner of the White Horse Pike and King’s Highway, about a mile-and-a-half East from the Harwan. The Century was abandoned, eventually torn down against a lot of public protest, became a drug store for a fortnight and is once again abandoned. In 1978, however, when the Century was still king, I saw that film and I believed.
Almost 30 years later, a new Superman movie, one to rival Dick Donner’s 1978 epic is about to be released. Responsibilities will not permit me to skip work for a matinee, nor do I have the patience to wait in a queue with teenagers and college students for a midnight showing. I will most assuredly being seeing the film in the 24-room strong corporate-sponsored and equally-soulless theater complex that’s in walking distance from my Cherry Hill house. But my wife will be there with me. We’ll hold hands during the exciting parts and she’ll smile as the youth returns to eyes that are quickly forgetting childhood dreams. And I can’t wait.
Much like that winter in 1978, I find that it’s not just the film of Superman Returns that is exciting my inner-child, but the build up for the event. Already-forgotten is X-3 and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel is sure to be a fun film, but when is that being released anyway? There is another film being released this July that should relate to and produce excitement from my college years with just as much fervor as Superman has to my primary school days, but sadly isn’t. The film: Clerks II.
No need for a discussion or breakdown here on Kevin Smith’s rebellious and nigh-vulgar look at the convenience store industry that debuted in 1994 and spawned a short-lived animated series and couple of comicbooks and, oh yes, four more features all based on his characters. But then Smith said goodbye and looked eager to continue his growth as a filmmaker, which I applauded. Jersey Girl was released ten years after his debut and although not his strongest film, took him out of the pool he was playing in, which definitely seemed to quickly be running out of water.
Clerks II just seems like a retread, a return to comfortable ground, a way to play it safe, which is definitely uncharacteristic of Smith and perhaps one of my wary reasons and the cause of lukewarm feelings. If he is giving in, no longer catering to the rebelliousness of youth and refusing to live by his dreams, then why should we as viewers or fans? Staying in comfortable environs means commuting to college instead of living on campus, giving into the past is like continuing to use the air popper when microwave popcorn is just so much quicker and comes pre-buttered.
And perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe this feeling is exactly what Smith is counting on and looking forward to disproving. Maybe his jokes will still be relevant, much like a man in blue tights and a red cape is still relevant, and still needed.
I will see Clerks II. Not on opening night, but with my friends. Maybe once the crowds have calmed down. I’ll sneak in my flask and divide the warm liquor into each of our cool cups of soda. I’ll laugh and permit my non-jaded youth to once again jump free in the twinkling of my eyes.
As Always,
theJOE
