I can’t say who saw Superman Returns recently, but somebody I know did, and he says that the first pedal-to-the-metal action sequence (involving an attack on a sports stadium) doesn’t happen for a good 45 minutes or so into the film, and when it finally happened he said to himself, “Jeez…took you guys long enough.”

In other words, director-writer Bryan Singer waits too long and does too much “set-up, set-up, set-up”…in this guy’s opinion. The analogy, obviously, is with King Kong, which waited a very long 70 minutes to kick into gear. (To be absolutely candid, my friend first said that the first action sequence happens an hour into it…and then he said, well, maybe you’d better say 45 to 50 minutes.) The other issue, as it were, is that he says Brandon Routh‘s Superman briefs and cape are not red-wine colored but are more of a traditional red. Maybe my good informer is color-blind, but all along I’ve been seeing stills that tell me that Routh’s outfit isn’t “red” the way Chris Reeve’s suit was red, but the color of Merlot or Pinot Noir.