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Superman III
Superman III 1983
If you’ve read either of my earlier posts, you’d know I’m cranking through the Christopher Reeve Superman movies before they’re due back at the rental store tomorrow. That means I’m watching Superman III today and Superman IV tomorrow even though I’m posting both quite a bit later. As they say, it’s all downhill from here. And of course my daughter Jena, not knowing any better, is still more or less excited about seeing more Superman. As a side note, I’m kind of conflicted for when I get around to the Batman movies. I know several of them get pretty dark, especially the Nolan ones, but at the same time Batman is above all else her favorite superhero next to Wonder Woman. But that’s a decision for another time. Feel free to share your comments on the topic though, I’d love to hear them.
Anyway enough stalling, it’s time to talk about Superman III and boy is there a lot to talk about. I won’t go into too much detail about Jena’s reactions to the movie this time. If you read about what she thought of Superman I and II, it’s pretty much the same here. Her favorite scenes were Superman rescuing the kid and his dog, Superman fighting himself, and Superman fighting the giant computer.
Now for my thoughts, I could tell right away that this movie was going to take a turn for the worse when it started off with a Rube Goldberg-esque comedy of errors over the opening credits complete with a blind guy and several pratfalls. It then had Lois Lane going away for no reason (other than Margot Kidder didn’t agree with the producers for firing Richard Donner) to Bermuda and another random couple from the Daily Planet won a free trip to South America for no reason other than a cheap gag later in the movie, while Clark went back to Smallville for his High School reunion and a claim that it would make a great story. While there he ran into Lana Lang, the prettiest girl in High School and his new love interest in this movie. Since Lois was a no-show, this gave Clark another chance at love and the chance to be a father figure to Lana’s son. Personally, I could never get over the fact that he was kind of dating his own mother as Annette O’Toole went on to play Martha Kent in Smallville and that’s what I know her best as.
Then there’s Richard Pryor, more or less the “man” in “Superman III”, in other words he’s almost as much if not more of a main character than Superman himself. So much so that when he sets off a tornado in Columbia, instead of showing Superman foiling the disaster, they showed Richard Pryor re-enacting the scene with a pink tablecloth before he skied off the side of a skyscraper. Yet he still managed to survive the fall without being caught by Superman. Even though he spent half the movie trying to kill Superman, he had a sudden change of heart when he and his employers were on the verge of succeeding in that plan. In the movie he played a genius that acts like an idiot, at one point he even admitted that he had no idea what he was doing. It was basically just an excuse to let Richard Pryor do a bunch of comedy bits which for me were very hit and miss.
The big setpiece in this movie, at least the one that’s not just being described by Richard Pryor, was when Superman came into contact with some homebrew low tar Kryptonite which turned him into drunk-dad Superman. You could tell he’s evil because he always has a grimace on his unshaven face and dirty tights. But luckily Lana and her son came into town and he gets through to Superman with the oh so powerful words “You’re just in a slump!” Because I know when I get drunk and start doing evil and destructive things for the fun of it, some kid telling me that I’m in a slump will perk me right up. He then inexplicably splits into two and has a fight with himself, the good side being represented by Clark Kent. This fight was laughable in the fact that after throwing huge objects at Clark, the thing that knocked him out was an incredibly weak kick to the face. And Clark finally defeated evil Supes by violently choking him to death.
Aside from the non-villain that is Richard Pryor, there’s the rich billionaire that wanted to get richer and his blonde bimbo girlfriend. Of course she’s just pretending to be an idiot so she can… um… show that she’s smart at the end of the movie by saying a couple so-called smart things before being pinned to the wall and… um… that’s it. They hint early on that she’s pretending to be smart and it seems like a set up for something, yet they never really pay it off aside from the other villainess saying “how’d you know that?” before glossing over it. And then the final villain in the movie is a giant computer made from blueprints that Richard Pryor drew on a bunch of random wrappers that the homely villainess suddenly revealed that she knew perfectly well how to use, and became self-sentient and self preservation kicked in, causing it to attack and/or assimilate anything that threatened it including its creators.
Yet somehow through all the ridiculous stuff going on, I somehow enjoyed watching it. I believe I mentioned it somewhere on this site but I’m not here to completely bash these movies even though it may seem like it in this review. Maybe it was all the ridiculousness that won me over. I thought drunk-dad Superman was hilarious, as well as the fake-dumb blonde bimbo sidekick. I thought it was really over the top in the scene where she was seducing drunk-dad Superman and her necklace was a snake and an apple. And even though the comedy was over the top and out of place most of the time, it was genuinely funny some of the time. At least this movie didn’t give Superman some completely random superpower that he’s never had before or since. Check out my thoughts on Superman IV this Thursday to finish this series off. Next week will be Supergirl because I couldn’t easily find the Richard Donner cut in my area, and Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Leave a comment to let me know what I should check out next. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Superman II
Superman II 1980
It was Monday night after I had gotten home from work, I still had the stack of Superman DVDs 1-4 sitting on top of the computer, and we had just finished watching the latest Simpsons Christmas episode on Hulu. I thought it was so funny, yet so wrong that Jena laughed the hardest at the part where all the Ralph clones fall out of the back of the truck on fire. Anyway I thought it was a great time to pop in the Superman II DVD, the Richard Lester cut rather than the Richard Donner cut as it was the only version available at the rental store. I am very curious to see how many differences there are in the Richard Donner cut considering that a large portion is basically the same, only with a more serious tone. Though I must admit I did enjoy a lot of the humorous bits in this version.
The thing I noticed throughout the movie was how much more attention Jena paid to the movie than she did with the original Superman movie. There was a lot more action in this movie and much less drawn out exposition. There were a few short spots where she lost attention but quickly got back into it. She was cheering for Superman through a lot of the early action sequences, and she kept asking “Is Superman dead?” during the first battle with the Kryptonians. She didn’t ask in a serious way, but more of a curious way. She seems to be old enough to realize that Superman is just a pretend character on TV and not real. I also thought it was interesting that at first she thought the Kryptonians were superheroes instead of the villains.
As I said earlier, I enjoyed the movie although I spent more time enjoying it for the camp value than the actual value as an entertaining movie. I especially recognized the scene pointed out by Family Guy where Superman peeled the S off of his chest and it wrapped around the guy for just a few seconds. Through the whole movie I thought the brute was the same actor who played Jaws until I just now looked it up. He may not have been the same actor, but he totally felt like the same character. Of course with some added comic relief moments, which I imagined were necessary since they left Otis behind in jail. And after being exposed to quotes of “Kneel before Zod” in other movies such as Mallrats it only became funnier and funnier every time Zod himself uttered that phrase. Of the three, Ursa struck me as the most interesting of the Kryptonian villains, and not just because she was the only woman. It was partly because I hadn’t seen her character referenced in a more recent comedy like the other two, but I also liked one of the little character traits where Ursa collected the badges from the various people they encounter and wear them on herself as a kind of trophy. It was a very minor thing, but it just struck me as interesting for whatever reason.
Aside from the cellophane S, there were a ton of extra powers the Kryptonians had that weren’t in any of the various Superman incarnations that I’d ever seen. Like the telekinesis or whatever it was that the villains used which reminded me a lot of the Zero Point energy that Syndrome used in The Incredibles. And of course there’s the amnesia kiss that Clark gave Lois at the end of the movie so the moviemakers didn’t have to deal with her knowing Clark’s secret in the next movie which they even advertised at the head of the end credits. Why not just go over the top and take a cue from Wayne’s World, a movie that came out years later, and doodly doo the ending away as just a dream. Besides, this version of Lois was smart enough to figure out Clark’s secret after a little more than one movie. Most Loises took several seasons of a television series to get it through their thick heads.
Another thing I found interesting was the solution that I’ve seen in other versions of Superman, well at least Smallville, where they avoided the question of a superpowered manhood and a mortal woman by removing his superpowers before they got into bed together. And again I’m reminded of conversations just like this from movies like Mallrats. Which led to the first connection that I noticed between this movie specifically and Superman Returns as the likely moment where Lois got pregnant with Superman’s child, but that’s something I’ll leave until I actually watch that movie again for this blog.
While the effects were the same caliber as the first Superman movie, they felt a lot more dated in this version. The big fight scene had most of the big hits feeling limp. Lazily being swung around to barely connect with a flying kick or punch that sent the other guy flying off at a similarly lazy pace until they crashed into something spectacularly. I understand that it’s from the limitations of the time, but they had the same limits in the first movie and I just don’t remember having as much disbelief as I did with this movie. My best guess was because the first movie realized a lot of their limitations and didn’t try to accomplish something beyond their means. I understand the need to make the fights bigger, but I felt like they made them too big for the special effects to handle.
As I said near the beginning, I did enjoy watching this movie. It made me laugh a lot, sometimes in the right places, and sometimes in the wrong places. But regardless of where it came from, a laugh is a laugh in my book. While I am looking forward to trying to find the Richard Donner version of this movie, I’ve still got Superman III and IV due back at the rental store so I’ll be watching those next. I’m vaguely familiar with the other two movies and I’m not sure if I should be looking forward to or dreading the fact that the quality of the movies goes sharply downhill from here. Look for those reviews coming up next week on Sunday and Thursday. Until next time, this is Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie nights. Don’t forget to leave a comment, if you’ve seen both, let me know which version you think is better. This version, or the Richard Donner version. And as always, I’d love to hear what movie you think I should watch next.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 