SUPERMAN
(1978)
Director:
Richard Donner
This
review is respectfully and lovingly dedicated to the memory of
Christopher Reeve.
There are many popular
comic book superheroes out there. Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men,
and the Fantastic Four are all well-known, well-loved characters
in the superhero universe, but one stands above all others as the
torchbearer for all superheroes. An orphan from a distant planet,
his given name was Kal-El, but the world came to know and love
him as Superman. The creation of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel,
Superman has become the most influential comic book character of
all-time (and a bona fide pop culture icon to boot) since his
first appearance in the debut issue of DC's Action Comics
in June 1938. Quicker than a speeding bullet, more powerful than
a locomotive, and able to leap over tall buildings in a single
bound, the worldwide popularity of the last son of Krypton is
rivaled only by a select few. Soon after his arrival in Action
Comics, Superman began making appearances in other media.
The 1940s saw Superman adapted into a radio show, theatrical
cartoons, and a pair of serials, which later evolved into the
1951 movie Superman And The Mole Men (which essentially
served as a pilot for the television show starring George Reeves
as the titular superhero) and a 1966 Broadway musical. While he's
seen success on the small screen with Lois & Clark, Smallville,
and a number of animated shows, arguably the most famous
adaptations of Superman have been the series of movies that began
fifty years after his debut with Richard Donner's aptly-titled Superman.
Our story opens on the distant planet of
Krypton. The planet is no more than thirty days from its own
destruction, and only noted scientist Jor-El (Marlon Brando)
knows it. He takes the information to Krypton's council of
leaders, but they just think he's full of crap. That wacky Jor-El
and his crazy apocalyptic hooey. What a maroon. And since such a
Chicken Little proclamation like that would cause all sorts of
panic and chaos amongst Krypton's population (Kryptonians?
Kryptonites?), the council threatens to charge him with
insurrection and have him kicked right off the planet if he
doesn't keep quiet. Man, Krypton is like an intergalactic episode
of Survivor. The Krypton Tribal Council is totally gonna
vote Jor-El off the island. Come to think of it, Survivor:
Krypton would be awesome if it weren't for that pesky
"the world's gonna explode" thing (though wouldn't that
make for an interesting twist?). The prize for winning immunity
could be a red cape with the Superman logo on it, and the tribes
could be called "the Justice League" and "the
Superfriends." And when you get voted off the planet, they'd
just put you in the Phantom Zone and chuck you out into deep
space. Don't tell me you wouldn't watch.
Getting back on track,
Krypton's gonna go bye-bye, and nobody wants to listen to the one
guy who knows what's going on. The Krypton Tribal Council,
disagreeing with Jor-El and fearing he'd cause riots, forbid him
to say anything about the impending apocalypse and make him
promise that he and his wife Lara (Susannah York) will not leave
Krypton. Soon after that little proclamation, Jor-El begins
crafting an escape pod for he and Lara's infant son Kal-El in an
attempt to take advantage of a loophole in that restriction.
After all, they said Jor-El and Lara couldn't leave Krypton, and
last I checked, Kal-El isn't Jor-El or Lara. And where is baby
Kal-El headed? Good ol' Earth. Lara questions the decision to
send their child to the shallow end of the galaxy's gene pool,
but Jor-El insists, saying that the planet's environment and
culture will give Kal-El the advantage he needs to survive.
Jor-El and Lara say their final farewells and send their son on
his way, just as Jor-El's prediction begins to come true. The
planet begins to fall apart, and as Kal-El rockets toward its
destination, Krypton explodes and takes the entire civilization
with it.
Thus begins Kal-El's
journey across the cosmos, during which the ethereal voice of
Jor-El instructs him on the history of the universe and stresses
that he's not to interfere with human history. By the time the
spaceship lands in a wheat field in the rural Kansas town of
Smallville, three years have passed. As fate would have it,
Kal-El (now a toddler) is stumbled upon by a childless elderly
couple, Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha Kent (Phyllis Thaxter).
They naturally think something's strange about their discovery,
but things start getting stranger when Kal-El catches the Kents'
truck and holds it over his head while Jonathan changes a tire.
Since a toddler that can pick up a full-sized truck like it was
his favorite toy isn't something you see every day, the Kents
decide that the only way they can keep the pint-sized powerhouse
from being exploited is to adopt Kal-El as their foster son, whom
they name Clark. Flash forward several years, where young Clark
Kent (Jeff East) is finding it rough to keep his superpowers to
himself. After a particular lamentation, Clark is pulled aside by
Pa Kent, who explains that he has those powers to make a
difference, and that he'll understand his place in the world one
day. But the kicker is that after their heart-to-heart, Jonathan
suffers a heart attack and dies, a loss that deals a significant
blow to Clark's self-esteem ("all those powers, and I
couldn't even save him"). A few months after the funeral,
Clark leaves Smallville to find himself, and ends up at the North
Pole. Thanks to a weird green crystal he found in his spaceship
shortly before he left Smallville, Clark discovers a building
made of crystal and ice that we all know and love as the Fortress
of Solitude. Inside, Clark sees a projection of Jor-El, and it's
there that Clark hears his true name for the first time. Thanks
to some extensive recordings made by Jor-El, Clark begins an
education in everything there is to learn, including his origins
and Krypton's history, and his intended role as Earth's
protector. He emerges from the Fortress of Solitude twelve years
later, his erudition finally complete. He better be a rockin'
superhero if it takes him over a decade of training, I'll say
that much.
We now switch gears and
head to the urban sprawl of Metropolis circa 1978, where our main
narrative finally begins. The adult Clark Kent (Christopher
Reeve) is a complete and total dork, and has acquired for himself
a job as a newspaper reporter for the respected Daily Planet. On
his first day on the job, he's introduced to over-enthusiastic
photographer Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure), grizzled editor Perry
White (Jackie Cooper), and ambitious reporter Lois Lane (Margot
Kidder), whom Clark is immediately smitten with. Yeah, Clark's
got himself a crush on Lois, even though he wouldn't catch her
eye on the eye-catchingest day of his life, not even if he had an
electric eye-catching machine. She just totally blows him off
every chance she gets. A few days later, Lois prepares for the
interview of a lifetime, as she gets an exclusive interview with
the President aboard Air Force One at the Metropolis airport. Her
helicopter to the airport gets caught on a ground cable and ends
up hanging perilously over the edge of the Daily Planet building.
And just her luck, Clark walks out of the building and sees the
predicament. He springs into action, and in the moment we've all
been waiting for, he tears open his shirt to reveal the Superman
logo in all its glory. He leaps up, up, and away to catch Lois
and the helicopter just as they fall over the edge, safely
depositing them on the roof before flying away. Before the night
is out, he captures a cat burglar, saves Air Force One after
lightning hits a wing, and rescues a kitten stuck in a tree. He's
not just a hero, he's a nice guy too. And so begins one of the
most insane love triangles in cinematic history, as Lois falls
and falls hard for the caped wonder while turning a blind eye to
our favorite mild-mannered reporter.
But the movie isn't all
Superman saving kittens and walking old ladies across the street
and all this other goody-goody Boy Scout stuff. We've gotta have
some yin in this yang, which we find in megalomaniacal
super-genius Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). Aided by his bumbling
sidekick Otis (Ned Beatty), and his consort, Miss Eve Teschmacher
(Valerie Perrine), Luthor has begun sowing the seeds of a master
plan that he calls "the greatest real estate swindle of all
time." He and his motley crew have hijacked two nuclear
warheads that the government was intending to test and programmed
them to strike the San Andreas Fault, which would cause a massive
earthquake and knock most of California to off the map. But what
does that have to do with real estate? Y'see, in the meantime,
Luthor has bought up hundreds of parcels worth of useless desert
wasteland that will skyrocket in value once it becomes oceanfront
property. When the government launches the missiles, Superman
must race against time to stop them before millions of innocent
people are killed.
While I've always believed
that Superman II was better, there's no denying the
influence that this movie had. The movie really does have the
aura of being a live-action comic book, especially during the
finale. Richard Donner, who had gained fame two years prior with
the seminal "evil little bastard" movie The Omen,
does an outstanding job as director. The movie has some exciting
camera work and its own fun sense of style, but unfortunately,
much of the effects look very dated (and downright fake) in some
places. The movie won a "special achievement" Oscar for
its visual effects, but in many of the flying scenes, it's
painfully obvious that Christopher Reeve is just hanging in front
of a green screen. You'd figure that with all the advances in
visual effects that George Lucas used in Star Wars the
year prior, Superman would mooch a little. But nope,
none of that. However, even though the flying effects are
lacking, it helps it feel more like a comic book. Besides, better
effects would have made the more preposterous elements of the
movie stand out, like the silly writing. The script, penned by
David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, and Godfather
scribe Mario Puzo, just seems flat. Both Superman and Superman
II were written at the same time, and it looks very much
like Superman II has more meat on its bones. I mean, the
first hour is just SOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW. The movie takes almost an
hour to get to the main narrative. That's like if Kevin Smith
spent the first hour of Mallrats showing the actual
construction of the mall. I don't know how it was in 1978, but in
2005, everybody knows Superman's origins, so they could have just
sped the backstory up a teensy weensy little bit. I mean, I have
no problem with them trying to establish the character's mythos,
but it just went on and on and on until I just said "screw
it" and hit my remote's fast forward button. If they wanted
to spend so much time with the destruction of Krypton or Clark
Kent's teenage years, they should have made Superboy: The
Movie instead. However, once it gets rolling, the movie's
quality improves tenfold.
Speaking of quality, what
stands out most notably is both the score and the casting. The
score by famed movie composer John Williams is absolutely
marvelous, so wonderful that it's become the stuff of legend.
Williams once again creates a theme that itself has become as
popular as the movie. He did it with Star Wars, he did
with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and he did it with Superman.
The only bad thing about the music is Margot Kidder's song
"Can You Read My Mind?," which accompanies the scene
where Superman takes Lois flying over Metropolis. I don't even
know if it can be called a song, because Kidder doesn't even
sing; she just says the lyrics in her normal speaking voice as if
she were reading a poem. Just thinking about "Can You Read
My Mind?" makes me want to pound my head against a wall
until it goes away. But the horror of "Can You Read My
Mind?" is at least a little defused by the wonder of
Williams's score, so I guess it isn't all bad.
But back to the good, how
about that cast? Everyone else says it, and I will too: Warner
Brothers couldn't have cast anyone better in the lead role. A
veritable unknown prior to this movie, Christopher Reeve is
absolutely phenomenal in the dual role of Superman and Clark
Kent. Like Adam West as Batman, the Man of Steel became Reeve's
signature role. Of course, it doesn't help than none of his
movies outside of the Superman tetralogy are really all that
memorable, but you get the picture. And really, who wouldn't want
to get typecast as Superman? Would you argue with being
recognized as the world's most famous superhero in both life and
death? The big joke is that the characters within the DC Universe
have to be blind or stupid to not realize that Superman and Clark
Kent look exactly alike (a joke amusingly depicted when Teri
Hatcher hosted Saturday Night Live in 1996), but Reeve
makes the dual role entirely plausible. With just different
hairstyles, different postures, and different voices, Reeve
becomes a completely different person. I mean, the guy looks like
he stepped right out of a comic book. Am I wrong? The only other
cast member really worth bragging about is Gene Hackman's turn as
Lex Luthor. The movie is two and a half hours long, and it's a
crime that Hackman didn't get more screen time. While Luthor is
more comical than criminal here (and thus never all that
intimidating), Hackman is always charming and fun to watch. Due
to the character's lack of menace, he just seems more like an
annoyance than an actual threat. But whether it be detailing his
master plan, chiding Otis, or simply yelling Miss Tessmacher's
name, Hackman is wonderfully amusing. And while Margot Kidder
didn't exactly float my boat on my initial few viewings, she's
grown on me through time. While at times she appears if she only
talks tough until she needs Superman to step in and save her,
Kidder portrays Lois with the attitude and strength that the
character needs.
Unfortunately, there is
some bad in the cast. What's up with Marlon Brando? It's bad
enough he got a rather large paycheck for only fifteen minutes of
work, but Brando does an absolutely piss-poor job too. According
to reports, he simply read his lines from cue cards just out of
camera range (since he never bothered to actually learn them like
everyone else), and it shows. His acting is so wooden, it could
feed an army of termites until the end of time. And the fact that
he has some of the most pretentiously bad dialogue in the movie
just makes matters worse. If the guy isn't gonna bother to learn
his lines or put any effort into his work, then he doesn't
deserve top billing or that insane paycheck. I can forgive people
for bad acting as long as they try, but it seems like Brando
couldn't even do that. It's like he just said, "Screw you
guys. I'm Don freakin' Corleone, and I'll do whatever I
want." I wonder if there's a term worse than "phoning
it in." Maybe "carrier pigeoning it in" or
"smoke-signaling it in." "Shouting it in from
across the hills" or "Morse-coding it in" could be
applied here too. And just because they were the most famous
members of the cast doesn't mean that Brando and Hackman should
get top billing over the title character. If you thought Arnold
Schwarzenegger getting higher billing than Batman and Robin in Batman
& Robin was asinine, just check out the credits to Superman.
I can understand them giving Brando and Hackman top billing to
sell the movie, but wasn't "Superman" a big enough
name? Did they not have any faith in the title alone?
By itself, there's no
getting around that Superman has its flaws. But despite
that, it's still a very wonderfully entertaining and one of the
better comic book adaptations you'll ever see. And unlike other
comic movies, Superman lovingly references its source material.
We thrill as Clark outruns a locomotive, "ooh" and
"ahh" as he stops a speeding bullet, laugh at his
search to find a place to change into his Superman costume
(thanks to a telephone booth that has been replaced by a kiosk),
and smile when he proclaims his desire to defend truth, justice,
and the American way. As Roger Ebert said in his review, the
movie is a triumph of imagination over the difficulty to make it.
That's what makes Superman such a special character and this such
as special movie. Our imaginations are sent into a frenzy, and I
can't ask for much better than that.
Final
Rating: ****