In the latest film incarnation, scribes Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris sought to downplay Superman’s long-standing patriot act. With one brief line uttered by actor Frank Langella, the caped superhero’s mission transformed from “truth, justice and the American way” to “truth, justice and all that stuff.”

“The world has changed. The world is a different place,” Pennsylvania native Harris says. “The truth is he’s an alien. He was sent from another planet. He has landed on the planet Earth, and he is here for everybody. He’s an international superhero.”

In fact, Dougherty and Harris never even considered including “the American way” in their screenplay. After the wunderkind writing duo (”X2: X-Men United“) conceived “Superman’s” story with director Bryan Singer during a Hawaiian vacation, they penned their first draft together and intentionally omitted what they considered to be a loaded and antiquated expression. That decision stood throughout the 140-day shoot in Australia, where the pair remained on-set to provide revisions and tweaks.

“We were always hesitant to include the term ‘American way’ because the meaning of that today is somewhat uncertain,” Ohio native Dougherty explains. “The ideal hasn’t changed. I think when people say ‘American way,’ they’re actually talking about what the ‘American way’ meant back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, which was something more noble and idealistic.”

UPDATE: Don't be put off of seeing this movie, by any means: it's great. It's got some plot weaknesses and timing issues here and there, but if you have the slightest appreciation for the visually storytelling art, you will not be disappointed—this is one of the most beautiful, visually rewarding movies I've seen in a long, long time. Every scene, every composition, heck—every frame seemed to have been carefully sculpted with the perfect lighting and balance and color depth such that you could take any random freeze-frame from any point in the movie and make it into a comic book cover or a poster. It's just a stunning treat for the eyes. And that's not even to mention all the little gags and injokes, like the photo of Superman hefting that car over his head à la the old Action Comics debut cover.

The design sense that pervades the movie does the concept perfect justice: you can never quite tell when it's taking place, as there are vintage cars on the streets and Art Deco murals in the Daily Planet building, while at the same time flat-panel TVs hang from every interior column and Lois Lane drives an Audi A3 (great, now everyone's gonna want one). The upshot is that it seems the movie takes place Whenever. Which is perfect.

Kevin Spacey does a better Luthor than Gene Hackman ever did—he's far creepier in his dark humor, even to the point where I'd say he's displaced Nicholson's Joker as the gold standard. His slapsticky henchmen don't quite fit the matter-of-fact, true-to-life texture of this film as they did in the campier earlier ones, but they make it work by laying on just enough of the "We're a little crazy and we know it". I could have done without the dog-eating-the-other-dog bit, though. Bleaugh.

Brandon Routh has a pretty laid-back performance, but he's such a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve—right down to the facial structure, the Everymannish voice, and the shape of his smile—that we can well believe he was consumed more with imitating Reeve's mannerisms than with establishing his own acting language. Perhaps next time he'll put more of himself into it. But for now we can enjoy the performance for what it is, which is to say a return to the form that worked so well back in the day.

And above all, there's no politics to worry about. It's not like Superman is battling against global warming or theocracy, or even nuclear weapons (this movie will wash away all painful memories of the latter). The omission of the "American Way" bit doesn't bug me in the context of the movie—the line is dashed off as a casual aside by a minor character, and it would have sounded out of place and pompous if he'd said the whole thing, whether the filmmakers were Michael Moore fans or Rush Limbaugh listeners. I think it's lame that they had to go on record explaining that they explicitly avoided the line because they found it embarrassing, but let me be clear: it doesn't stand in the way of the enjoyment of a perfectly good, apolitical summer blockbuster.