A quick preface summarizes the familiar legend of the adopted, alien, farm boy who grew up to be the world's greatest protector, and the fresh premise that he departed five years ago for the ruins of Krypton, his home planet. A lot has happened in five years. His beloved Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) got engaged, had a son, and won a Pulitzer. And though the movie never says so, the span allows that 9/11 happened, too. Where were you, Superman? The nostalgia for a time before is palpable. The world to which this Superman (Brandon Routh) returns is not quite the real world, but it is nevertheless more ambiguous, more complicated and more compromising than the one he left.

Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), naturally, launches a villainous scheme, a mix of economics, politics and environmental catastrophe, conveniently primed for our returning hero. But it is not the man of steel alone who does the thwarting. Though Lois won her Pulitzer for an editorial proclaiming that the world does not need Superman, the movie sings a different tune: the world needs saving, and we must all save each other. Superman's rescues are flashier, but Lois's son Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) saves her, and Lois's fiancé Richard (James Marsden) saves both Lois and Jason, before Superman saves all three, who then save him. And it is Kitty (Parker Posey), Luthor's moll, who truly saves the world. From a plummeting jet to Lois's cigarette addiction, rescues of all sizes recur throughout the story in a refrain of mutual need and shared salvation.

Surprisingly, Lois's fiancé proves more than a dummy set up to be knocked down. Richard White is a brave man, loving father, supportive partner and likely as good a match as Lois could ever find -- besides Superman, who left. The movie even tucks Richard smoothly into quintessential Lois tropes: her classic "galactically stupid" (as ABC's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman dubbed it) inability to recognize that Clark Kent is Superman, and her danger-prone incapacity to spot a trap until she's sprung it. With no villains, the love triangle can offer no simple, satisfying resolution.

But except for a few nitpicks (including the mountain ridge on the Kent farm, which reveals it's not in Kansas, and the government spokesperson's insistence that the answer to Lois's question is in her press packet, which makes the sharp Lois look pretty stupid), there's nothing overtly wrong with Superman Returns. Certainly, there is no error to account for the intangible sense of incompletion that trailed me out of the theater.

Unlike most retellings, a new Superman tale addresses not a dichotomy of core fans and an oblivious public, but a spectrum of sure exposure: we all think we know the big blue boy scout. Superman Returns strives mightily to present the icon so that we will not only recognize his uncomplicated heroics, but believe in his more familiar personal struggles. For me, the most enduring image of Superman has always come from a 1980s "Crisis on Infinite Earths" comic book cover, with Supergirl dead in her grieving cousin's arms. As that image still speaks powerfully to me, I find it unlikely that my amorphous discontent with Superman Returns derives from the movie's inclusion of real-life heartaches, harder to resolve than a smash-and-bash battle with Luthor's hench-goons.

But while I know better, and respect that the movie does, too, perhaps I wanted, just for a moment, to pretend that simply defeating the bad guy could make the whole world safe, and satisfy a hungry heart.