It's super, man.

In deference to my favorite critic, Roger Ebert, Superman Returns is a thrilling film on an epic scale full of iconic moments.

The film takes up the story of our hero after the events of the first Superman sequel. He's been gone for five years in search of the remnants of his Krypton home, and he returns to Earth to find that many things have changed in his absence. For starters, Lois Lane has a child and a fiance and Lex Luthor is out of prison and plotting another insidious scheme.

While this film doesn't have quite the pop grandeur of Richard Donner's 1978 touchstone, Superman Returns director Bryan Singer pays homage to that film's legacy by casting a virtual unknown in the lead role and staging scenes that recall both Christopher Reeve's seminal performance and the character's DC Comics origins. Where Singer surpasses the original is with outright spectacle and an understated and unrequited love story on par with a Merchant-Ivory film.

Sure, maybe the running time is a little long, but since almost 20 years have passed since the last Superman adventure (the abysmal Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) and over 25 years have passed since Superman II, the last respectable portrayal of the Man of Steel on screen, this is forgivable.

Jamye and I went to the 10 o'clock screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema last night. We arrived at 9:00 to the following scene which I snapped a murky picture of with Jamye's phone.

They had four screenings from 10:00 to 10:15. They were all sold out. Luckily, I ordered our tickets three weeks ago for the privilege of standing in line and viewing the movie with comic book geeks of every shape and size, and judging by the audience reactions, most of them left the theater late last night just as satisfied as this recovering comic book geek.

As a postscript to the evening's events, here's a bit of hilarity that was shown before the film's trailers.