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BOOK
Superman Returns
The Complete Shooting Script

Screenplay: Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris
Story: Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris
Titan Books
RRP: £9.99, US $14.95, Cdn $19.95
ISBN 1 84576 332 7
Available 03 July 2006


Following a mysterious absence of several years, the Man of Steel comes back to Earth
. While an old enemy plots to render him powerless once and for all, Superman faces the heartbreaking realisation that the woman he loves, Lois Lane, has moved on with her life. In a attempt to protect the world he loves from cataclysmic destruction, Superman embarks on an epic journey of redemption that takes him from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of outer space...

I'm going to assume that anyone who is willing to part with £10 for a script book with no colour photography has already seen the film. Therefore they know what to expect and won't feel cheated when they realise that the story is incredibly shallow. Therefore this review will not be scrutinising the lack of any real plot or interesting story - you'll have already seen the film - it's the presentation that is being put under the microscope.

Titan, bless them, have a long history of providing quality books, but they have seriously dropped the ball on this one. You can't get much drier than reproducing a script, and so you'd have thought something to spice it up would have been on the cards. How about some colour pages, how about some stills from the film? Nah! How about page after page of script? You got it! Followed by a selection of storyboards (incidentally the illustrations here actually look a lot better than the recently launched Superman Returns graphic novel) covering various scenes from the movie.

What we end up with is a very dry book that I personally can't fathom why anyone would want to buy. Okay there are a few interviews at the start with Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, which are interesting, but on the whole the general presentation is thoughtlessly dull.

For £10 fans will be expecting more. As I said before, a picture every now and then would have helped. How about a centre section with several promo stills? If I had to comment on the content of the script then it would get a much, much, lower final score. But, I'm going to be kind and say this is just average.

Darren Rea

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