Douchebag Superman And Richard Pryor’s Quips Divide Superman III!

The Good: Good acting, Some decent effects, Interesting plot
The Bad: Some cheesy effects, Forced humor
The Basics: Superman is split into two personalities when an industrialist creates synthetic kryptonite in Superman III.


As I finish off a month of Superman-related reviews, I actually found myself fairly excited to return to the movie I had some good memories of from my childhood: Superman III. Superman III is, despite all of its faults, a memorable enough film that includes concepts referenced elsewhere (the half-penny aggregation trick is a cool one alluded to in other works like Office Space among others) and a supporting character who is actually clever in his own right (the speed with which Gus Gorman figures out how to get by the computer that requires two keys to be simultaneously inserted is good). Several of the aspects of Superman III logically progress the Superman character.

Following Superman 2 (reviewed here!), where the hero was rendered powerless, the natural place to push Superman is into a darker place. Unlike the new Man Of Steel (reviewed here!), which has Superman going in his first outing to a crisis point that truly challenges the character and what he believes, the classic Superman movies took a sensible approach and built the character with each movie. Superman III maintains the Clark Kent persona and puts Superman in a personality crisis thanks to the film’s Lex Luthor-like villain (who is not Lex Luthor in this outing).

Opening with Gus Gorman, who is getting kicked off his unemployment benefits in Metropolis, a series of coincident disasters in the streets of the city are undone by Superman. Gorman gets a job at Webscoe where he devises a way to make more money by using the company computer to create a paycheck consolidating the half-cents dropped from everyone else’s pay. This brings him to the attention of Ross Webster, the head of the company. Webster wants Gorman to use computers to reroute the Vulcan weather satellite system to destroy Colombia’s coffee crops (so he can get a worldwide monopoly on coffee). Meanwhile, Clark Kent returns to Smallville for his class reunion and he meets up with Lana Lang, upon whom he has a pretty serious crush. Lang is a single mother who tries looking out for the needs of her son Ricky, but spends an awful lot of time having a pity party and leading Clark on.

After Superman rescues Ricky from death at the hands of a wheat thresher and putting out a fire at a nearby chemical plant, he thwarts Webster’s plan to destroy Colombia’s coffee by turning the tornado Gorman creates upside down. Eager to stop Superman, Webster has Gorman use the Vulcan satellite to find kryptonite in space and evaluate its chemical composition. When Gorman does that, .57% of the meteor is unknown and when the synthetic kryptonite is delivered to Superman it does not kill him instantly. Instead, it makes him lethargic. He then turns angry – righting the Leaning Tower Of Pisa, blowing out the Olympic torch, etc. – and Webster quietly declares victory as he hijacks the world’s oil supply. When Webster builds Gorman’s super computer, both the world and Superman are put in real peril.

While the story and plot progression of Superman III are good enough, the effects are appropriately dated. Even so, it is worth noting that the film has some pretty awesome pyrotechnics in the chemical fire scene and up until the frozen lake element is introduced, the scene is actually amazing filmmaking (before or after CG effects!). On DVD, there are only a few points not cleaned up adequately to make Superman III look good.

What is impossible to clean up in Superman III is the role of women. The four main women in Superman III are the airhead (Webster’s woman Lorelei), the mother (Lana Lang), the bitch (Webster’s evil sister, Vera), and the nonentity (poor Lois Lane is given a vacation almost instantly and sits out virtually the whole movie). Unfortunately, only Lorelei has moments of illustrating greater character than her original characterization as she seems to be playing the dim bimbo, but is reading Kant. Women are not treated very well in Superman III and the way Lana Lang oscillates between whining and . . . gosh, I guess there’s not really an oscillation; she just whines her way through Superman III.

Fortunately, Superman is given a pretty decent arc. While the message of Superman III might be that just under the surface, Superman has an inner douchebag just aching to get out, the film adequately explores the repressed rage of Superman and the idea that Superman is not simply a monolithic good character. In the film’s pivotal scene, Superman and Clark Kent duel and given that Superman had given up on being decent before that, it works on metaphorical level very well. The scene also illustrates well that the effort to maintain a maniacal stance cannot stand up to the power of fighting for a higher principle. Or it shows just how dangerous a junkyard can be and that few people have problems with Superman killing himself.

Medically, it makes no real sense that Superman could overcome the synthetic kryptonite unless his body built up a tolerance to it, which is not contradicted in the film.

The performances in Superman III are actually more consistently decent than in many of the previous Superman films. Christopher Reeve is great as the evil version of Superman and he plays Clark Kent just as well as he did in the previous films. Robert Vaughn is a good successor to Gene Hackman as Vaughn plays the villainous Webster. Vaughn actually is more consistent and plays a more sensible corrupted businessman than Hackman’s Luthor.

Unfortunately, the humor in Superman III is incredibly forced. Richard Pryor, who plays Gus, seems forced into delivering some of the movie’s most stale jokes and director Richard Lester seems almost terrified of giving Pryor moments of real drama to carry. Instead, Pryor plays to his comedic strengths, slouching through most of his performance in the role of a guy who is supposed to be clever but amoral. Sadly, the type of humor Pryor is expected to deliver undermines the idea that Gus is credibly inventive and that undermines the film some.

Superman III is entertaining and it actually has its moments, but is dated and misses the opportunity to deeply explore another version of Superman.

For other third movies in a franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
The Dark Knight Rises
Goldfinger

6/10

Check out how this movie ranks against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where films are in order from best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Despite The Cheesiness, Superman II Is Still Fun.

The Good: Decent general plot, Moments of Lois Lane’s character.
The Bad: Entirely campy, Lex Luthor’s character/dialogue, Utterly cheesy special effects, Craptastic background acting.
The Basics: More fun than truly substantial on the character front, Superman II might hold up poorly over time, but it still entertains.


As audiences flock to Man Of Steel (reviewed here!) this weekend, I am enjoying a retro-Superman weekend. Taking in the films of Christopher Reeve and revisiting movies that I only vaguely recall from my childhood now on DVD. Today, it’s Superman II, a film I have not seen since I was about ten years old.

Superman II is a fun movie, but it is a great example of superhero camp as opposed to truly compelling cinematography. In fact, watching Superman II now, it is hard not to look at the hokey idealism of Superman in Superman II and feel like it was acting as a distraction from the political and social disillusionment that followed Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Superman appears as an absolute good who is an ideal that is virtually impossible not to idolize. That type of monolithic good hero lacks complexity and Superman II runs with it, as opposed to challenging the archetype.

Following a fast-forwarded version of Superman (reviewed here!), Clark Kent arrives at work at The Daily Planet where he learns that French terrorists have seized the Eifel Tower and are threatening to blow it up with an atomic bomb. When he learns that Lois Lane has gone to France to get the story, he transforms into Superman and rescues her. In disposing of the atomic bomb in space, he inadvertently releases the Kryptonian prisoners from the phantom zone, General Zod, Ursa, and Non. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor plans his escape from prison and he believes he has found Superman’s weakness based on how he flies north whenever one of the major powers tries to track him. When the Kryptonians destroy the American lunar lander on the moon and they head to Earth where General Zod plans to rule over all humanity.

When Lois and Clark are sent to Niagara Falls to investigate a honeymoon swindle, Lex Luthor makes his escape and arrives at Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude. Lois becomes convinced that Clark Kent is Superman and she throws herself into the river above the Falls to test that theory. By not turning into Superman to rescue her, she comes to doubt her theory. As Lois launches into a pity party for herself, the Kryptonians start to explore “Planet Houston” and Lois discovers the truth about Clark Kent. While Lois and Superman get to know one another better, Zod and his people take East Houston, Idaho and get their message out beyond the tiny town when the military tries to stop the Kryptonians. After Superman gives up his powers to be with Lois, Zod makes his move and takes the White House. With Earth surrendering before Zod, Clark Kent must get his powers back and thwart the three Kryptonians without losing his identity and integrity.

What works in Superman II is Lois Lane’s character. Lane starts out the film as the classic female damsel in distress character and she evolves into a woman hurt by how the man she idolizes ignores her and then develops into an actualized heroine who is willing to stand up for herself. After Superman gives up her powers, Lois actually kicks some ass (or tries) and that is a nice change for the supporting character who is usually relegated to screaming in the background. And the moments where Clark Kent actually is focused on as an actualized character, Superman II is actually compelling. Clark Kent wants to be able to stop fighting and fall in love, but the world needs Superman. Despite the shallowness of Lois Lane at some moments, she is mostly an interesting character in Superman II and the resolution of her character through a somewhat artificial Mcguffin is disappointing.

The redeeming quality of the villain in Superman II is that General Zod is smart enough to exploit Superman’s compassion for humanity as a weakness. Both Zod and Ursa have no problem with using Superman’s love of humans and Lois Lane against him. Otherwise, Zod is just a monolithic villain who wants to rule the world . . . for no particularly compelling reason other than the fact that he is the most powerful man on the planet at this point. Lex Luthor is predictably treacherous, but presented in Superman II as a ridiculous villain, just as he was in Superman. Criminals usually do not go around touting that they are criminals and Luthor in these movies is more silly than superior.

The real problem, more than the writing and the lack of realistic character development that goes deeper than the idealism of Superman is that the acting in both the foreground and the background. The extras cast in Superman II are among the worst in any film ever. The hammy deliveries and overacting is just gut-wrenchingly bad. Gene Hackman is also uncharacteristically bad as Lex Luthor. For a guy getting top billing, he seems not to care so much and in one of the climactic scenes opposite Terence Stamp’s Zod, Hackman slips into a ridiculous Irish accent that is utterly inconsistent with the rest of the movie. Why director Richard Lester did not demand another take is utterly baffling.

Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder have decent on-screen chemistry as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane. Reeve is good at playing the duality of the nervous Clark Kent and the strong and unyielding Superman. Margot Kidder displays decent emotional range as Lois and while the ending to the film might not be in any way superlative, Kidder sells the resolution in a way that a lesser performer might not be able to.

While not, perhaps, part of the pantheon of great superhero movies or even particularly wonderful films, Superman II has its moments of nostalgic charm, if nothing else.

For other Superman works, please visit my reviews of:
Superman Returns
Man Of Steel: The Prequel
The Death Of Superman
World Without Superman
Superman: Sacrifice
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Supergirl
Brainiac

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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