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Flashback Review: Superman III
Mark Nelson
23 October 2007
So in an effort to actually return something that I borrowed from Matt, I sat down the other night with the super-duper Superman DVD set, the one with all the films and an assortment of extras of probably equal duration. I'd hoped to sit down and go through the whole thing during my vacation, completely submerging myself in the Superman saga, but, uh, didn't.
Having seen Superman a few times in the last few years, as well as Superman II and the Donner Cut of said film, I figured I'd start off with the much-maligned Superman III, a film I really haven't seen since it first hit HBO in 83 or 84. I saw this in the theater, very much wrapped up in Supermania at the time, and loved it. This was back in the day/age when all a kid asked of his heroes was that they appear in a film every couple of years that continued the adventures. Bond, Indy, Superman....at a young age we generally weren't as critical as we'd later become, and ate up whatever we got. Later on we'd look back and say yeah, some of the series entries were definitely lesser works, but for me at least, I was thrilled at the prospect of a new Superman adventure on the big screen.
Well, looking at this again, nearly 25 (!) years later, with a decade or more of harsh words directed at the film from fans and fairly low expectations going in, I thought it was a lot of fun. Perhaps knowing the horrors that the next chapter would bring I held onto this one a little bit tighter, knowing it was the last gasp of the Reeve Superman series before the Powers That Be took a Cannon to it.
The Richard Pryor bits didn't bother me all that much, as there was certainly comic relief in the earlier films as well. What I found interesting/amusing was that, to me, it felt like RP was doing Jerry most of the time in his performance, so much so that I kept imagining what the Gus Grissom character would have been like if played by an in-his-prime JL, and it worked quite well (in my mind, at least). I'm not sure that I completely got Superman's fast forgiving of him at the end, acting like he was an innocent dupe in the whole "evil plot", though. Robert Vaughn was fun as the Evil Businessman, and the characters of his sister and playing-dumb "psychic masseuse" were more amusing than I remembered.
Odd to see the Lois Lane character appearing in more or less a cameo, but I suppose focusing on Clark's return to Smallville and re-connecting with Lana Lang necessitated reducing her role. Something that modern superhero films could take a page from, with their insistence on jamming as many characters into each film as they can. Annette O'Toole was great as Lana, and the Smallville scenes were a nice change of pace from the Metropolis-filled first two installments. In keeping with this slightly more personal tone, I liked that most of the Superman heroics weren't saving a city or busloads of people, but taking care of smaller-scale crisises here and there.
The Clark vs. Superman fight in the junkyard was still very cool.
I thought it was funny that when Superman turned bad, he developed a NYC accent.
Interesting that the "Bad Superman" costume's dulled-back tones are very similar to the look of the costume used in Superman Returns.
The opening credits sequence, an extended Metropolis sequence of Rube Goldbergian slapstick, was fun. Some have said it's too out-of-place for a Superman film, and they're probably right. I do wonder how well this played on TV and video, as it's an extremely wide film and most of the frame was utilized in selling the gags here. Strange choice to have the credits play over the lower (blurred) half of the frame while the hijinks were going on, sometimes obscuring and taking away from the visual punchlines.
Knowing that this was shot mostly at Pinewood, it was fun spotting recognizable UK faces of the era in the office and street scenes. I was especially tickled to see Bob Todd (a Benny Hill regular) in a prominent non-speaking role during the opening gagfest.
It was interesting to see a film about the all-American icon that is Superman where apparently not a frame was shot in the US, stock footage aside. A harbinger of things to come, I guess.
Anyway, I had a good time with Superman III, much to my surprise. I'm looking forward (and not in a good way) to checking out Superman IV later in the week, a film I had little interest in seeing when first released, and really didn't think much of when I saw it on video. I'm sure the letterboxed image will make it a slightly better experience this time, but knowing its Cannon connection and preachy tone, I'm not
getting my hopes up.
Up up an away,
MN
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