Superman III Review

Superman III Review

We’re in week #3 of my Superman review series, we have just a couple of weeks before Superman flies into theaters. We’re talking about the third film from Christopher Reeves, Superman III…and yikes. We have a lot to talk about here. 

What Happened to Superman III?: Back in 1978, Superman the Movie (1978) hit theaters and was a global box office hit. Based on the success of the film, Superman III was announced in 1980, one year before Superman II was released. In 1980, Ilya Salkind, the son of Alexander Salkind (the main producer of the Superman franchise) turned in an eight-page outline. The original draft had Brainiac and Mr. Mxyzptlk as the main villains and it had inner dimensions as part of the plot. Supergirl would appear and Brainic would have been her surrogate father. Superman and Supegirl’s relationship wouldn’t be true to the comics. In Superman III they’d fall in love and get married in Superman IV (which was already being planned). Scenes involving Brainiac and Mxyzptlk have been revealed. In one scene Superman fights Brainiac on horses. Mxyzptlk was going to give Superman some puzzles. Warner Brothers saw this script and thought it had many side characters so they tossed that script. Several of the elements from that script are present in Superman III. One of the scenes that was kept in the film was the Superman vs Superman fight. A good Superman fights an evil Superman. When the script was tossed, David and Leslie Newman who wrote the previous Superman films, were brought on to rewrite the script. Infamously, Richard Donner who directed Superman the Movie (1978) didn’t like the script and left the project. When he left, Richard Lester (who finished Superman II) was set to direct. Due to the tension between Donner and the Salkins, Margot Kidder refused a big part of the film. In the script, they found a way to get Lane out of the film. Gene Hackman, Lex Luthor was rumored to have similar frustrations. He later denied that and said he didn’t want Luthor to be a returning villain. Then you have the casting of Richard Pryor. He was a big comedian in the late ‘70s & early ‘80s. Pryor went on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and said he was a big fan of Superman. The producers heard this, saw that he was a big star and decided to cast him in the film. The film turned into a Pryor comedy with Superman instead of a Superman film with Pryor. The film released in June 1983 and the reviews were significantly worse than Superman the Movie (1978) and Superman II.  

The Review

• I knew most of the troubled production that I just talked about going into the film. I also knew it was a big drop in quality for Superman II. So I went into this movie not expecting a whole lot. The film pretty much met my expectations. This is such a weird Superman movie. Superman the Movie (1978) and Superman II understood the character of Superman, there were flaws in those films, some stuff was goofy. But they took the material seriously and tried to make a great movie. Despite the troubled production of Superman II they still put out a really good film. Superman III had a very troubled production and put out a disaster. Very clearly Lester and the Salkins did not understand the character for Superman. They saw the dollar bills that Superman the Movie (1978) and Superman II but didn’t want to do. Superman III (when I’m writing this I haven’t seen Superman IV yet), feels like an early example of producers putting out a movie for money and not because they had any heart or soul in it. When you take a character that’s as respected as beloved as Superman and you make a soulless sequel, it’s disrespectful and you shouldn’t be treating Superman like this. 

• The big problem with this movie is making Pryor the lead character. It’s called Superman III and Christopher Reeves is top billed. But Superman is basically sidelined in this film to make Pryor the lead. There’s 15-20 chunks of the film where you’re following Pryor and Reeves is nowhere to be found. They turned the Superman franchise into a comedy franchise and that’s not a good idea. One of the most memorable aspects of the first two is the opening credits. You have the classic pulled back Superman font. John Williams’ epic score is playing over the entire thing. Both of them are some of the best opening credits of all time. Superman III has an opening credits sequence but it plays like a screwball comedy. Where you have a blind man’s dog running away and so the blind man uses construction equipment thinking it’s the dog. It’s stupid stuff that you’d find in an early ‘80s comedy, it’s not something that you should find in a Superman movie. I didn’t know who Pryor was prior to hearing about this film and the production. I haven’t seen any of his work before or after this movie. In this movie, I didn’t really find him funny. Maybe he’s funny in other places, but in Superman III I didn’t find him funny at all. It’s probably not his fault, he’s probably not very funny because the script and the movie was a mess. He had to work with the material he was given. But when the producers were attempting to make an ‘80s comedy starring a well known comedian and it’s not funny, that’s not a good sign. 

• From there, the story and storytelling are very weird and clunky. The first half is pretty light on plot. You have Lois going on vacation, Clark decides to go back to Smallville, and Gus Gorman (Pryor) is trying to find a job to pay the bills. That’s basically the plot for the first half of this movie. You get to the second half of the film and there’s WAY too much plot in the film. They start adding in this evil businessman trying to take control of the oil in the United States. Gus starts working for this guy to pay the bills. And then Superman turns evil due to what Gus is doing. Followed by getting a Superman vs Superman fight. And then the final is Superman battling an evil computer. Also in here you get Clark reuniting with Lana Lang and teasing a possible romance there. Lang’s son looks up to Superman as this mentor figure. The back half of this film has enough plot for an entire Superman movie. There’s this interesting idea in the back half that if it had been the entire movie, it probably would have worked well. You have Superman being this legendary superhero that everybody respects and loves. You have Lang’s son look up to Superman. Superman is Lang’s son’s ideal and somebody that he respects more than anybody. But then Superman turns evil so everybody’s perspective on Superman changes. There’s a very interesting plot for a third Superman film right there. But that’s not what they did. They decided to focus the movie more so on evil corporations and businessmen trying to do shady business so Superman has to stop them. 

• On the villain side of things, as I mentioned earlier Hackman didn’t want to return as Luthor. So the villain of this film is basically a B-grade Lex Luthor. He’s another evil business that hates Superman and uses Kryptonite to defeat him. You can easily see how Luthor can easily fit into this movie. Having Hackman’s Luthor be in here probably would have elevated the film just a little bit. Because Hackman brings a certain gravatose to the film and he’s great as Luthor. They got this B-grade Lex Luthor that didn’t work. He’s not an interesting character. Even the way his henchman in the film operates feels like a ripoff of Tesmacher and Otis from before. Even when Luthor was the villain, his plots were never super complex. His villain scheme in the original is destroying a dam in California. By the third film they couldn’t have come up with a better villain motivation. On a plot level it’s not good and on a villain level it also doesn’t work. 

• Another thing that really holds back the film is a lot of the supporting cast from the previous films are gone. You still have Perry White and Jimmy Olsen in the film. But they basically bookend the film, they’re not really present for the middle hour of the film. Of course Kidder is gone for 95% of the film. So much of what worked about the first two films was the chemistry between Reeves and Kidder. Especially in Superman II when it’s focused on their relationship that’s what makes that movie shine. She’s gone from the film. I’ve mentioned it several times before but Hackman isn’t there, neither his henchman. We don’t have General Zod there anymore. So much about the charm and magic of the previous films through the character is 100% absent in this film. I get why Kidder didn’t want to be apart of the film, frankly I don’t blame her but that still means that the movie was missing something. Having a Superman movie without Lois Lane just feels weird. It shouldn’t happen, she should always be in a Superman movie. 

• As far as closing thoughts go, this is not a good movie. It was a misfire on every single level. Reeves was very open about not being happy with how this film turned out. We’ll talk about this next week, but he was hopeful in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace being good because he wasn’t a fan of Superman III. As much as I love Reeves as the character, it’s a shame he was given such a weak film. 

The Score: 7/10 (C-)