SUPER HEROES EVERY DAY BLOG (2021) — Danny Horn

Superman 1.1: Jesus Saves But Mostly He Saves Lois Lane

It’s a delicious fakeout. Nobody had seen a big budget movie based on a comic book before, and didn’t know what
to expect. So when the movie opens with a little boy reading aloud from a comic book, it looks like all of your worst
fears have come true.
The opening moments of Superman: The Movie are aggressively old-timey. There’s a faraway John Williams trumpet
lick, and then a monochrome stage curtain rattles open to reveal a dark theater screen of ancient aspect ratio. A film
projector cranks itself to life, whirring noisily as it projects the legend “JUNE 1938” on the screen. Someone is
attempting to make a point.
Fade up on a black-and-white bedspread, displaying a comic book with a bold cover illustration of a pair of Art Deco
spaceships hurtling away from some disintegrating solar system. The suggestion is that this is the first issue of
National Periodical’s anthology Action Comics, which debuted with a cover date of June 1938. It isn’t, really; the
actual first issue’s cover showed a guy in a circus outfit picking up an automobile and smacking people around with
it.
“In the decade of the 1930s,” the kid reads aloud from an unlikely page-one splash panel, “even the great city of
Metropolis was not spared the ravages of the world-wide depression!” Nobody said that it was. “In a time of fear
and confusion, the job of informing the public was the responsibility of the Daily Planet: the great metropolitan
newspaper whose reputation for clarity and truth had become a symbol of hope for the city of Metropolis!”
Except that it wasn’t, in June 1938. The newspaper that Clark Kent works for in Action Comics #1 is called the Daily
Star, and as we learn in issue #2 (where it’s called the Evening News), it’s located in Cleveland.
But that doesn’t matter, obviously, because this movie isn’t based on the Action Comics of June 1938, or of ’78, for
that matter, when Clark was working as a TV news anchor. Superman: The Movie isn’t actually an adaptation of
Action Comics at all. It’s an adaptation of “Superman”, which is the thing that you think of when somebody says the
word Superman.
The cultural mix of characters, names, images, story tropes and much-spoofed cliches that we think of collectively as
“Superman” was not actually authored by anyone in particular. Yes, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ignited the spark in
Action Comics #1, and there are elements in those first stories that turned out to be timeless, but the concept of
Superman that you know in your heart was constructed over several decades by multiple simultaneous teams of
creative and business people, in active collaboration with everybody else in the world.
I mean, yeah, somebody wrote scripts and drew pictures and hired actors and negotiated merchandising contracts,
but the real editors-in-chief were you and me: the people who bought the comic, and read the newspaper strip, and
watched and listened to and purchased and parodied the versions that we found most memorable and compelling,
all of them overlapping and contradicting each other, until we came to a general shared understanding that we could
all live with.
There’s a good chunk of the radio show in there, and some concepts that were first tried out in the comic strip. To
construct the cultural concept of “Superman”, we took some of the most memorable images from the Fleischer
cartoons, and when the ’50s TV show was on the air, we all pitched in to trim the radio cast down to its main
essentials. Some of the “Superman” concepts that we know originated in a 1942 hardcover novel which pretty much
nobody’s read for decades. There’s even a bit of Mighty Mouse in there, if you look close enough.
In fact, the cultural conception of “Superman” didn’t really pull together until December 1978, when everybody
went to see Superman: The Movie. As soon as it premiered, this movie instantly became the agreed-upon version of
“Superman” that everyone still thinks of as the genuine article. When there’s a new movie or TV show, nobody
compares it to the 1940s radio show, or the 2006 Superman Returns. The relevant comparison is Christopher Reeve
and Margot Kidder. Superman: The Movie may be the only film ever made that’s actually an adaptation of itself.
But sure, since they brought it up, we might as well start here: June 1938.
The origin story on page 1 of Action Comics #1 lasts for four panels and offers no details. The planet isn’t called
Krypton yet, and halfway through the first sentence, it’s already gone. “As a distant planet was destroyed by old
age,” the caption says, “a scientist placed his infant son within a hastily devised space-ship, launching it toward
Earth!”
And that’s it, no explanation — just a nameless planet that died of a broken heart. Now, that’s what I call a world-
wide depression; those people in 1938 Metropolis must be a bunch of crybabies.
The next thing you know, we’re on Earth, in the care of a passing motorist. There’s no farm family for ’38 Superman,
just one panel of a showboating baby wowing the crowd at a standing-room-only orphanage. Apparently the kid’s
physical structure is millions of years advanced of our own, whatever that means, and he is living that life.
“Hey toots,” he’s clearly saying, “grab an eyeful of this. What what!” Kid knows how to party.
And then, faster than an express train, he’s reached maturity, and he’s not looking back. Raised by an exploding
scientist and a passing motorist, he has barely touched the ground and has no plans to settle down. Here in 1978,
we’re about to get hit with forty-six minutes of tragic backstory including two fathers dying within twelve minutes of
each other, but 1938 Clark was born to run. The past is a distant planet destroyed by old age; by panel four, Clark is
all grown up, and heading for a Midwest city to start a new career in journalism, like Mary Tyler Moore. Next stop:
Cleveland.
We catch up with him on page 2 in a tremendous rush, carrying a blonde lady in a revealing dress, who’s been
bound and gagged for some reason. He’s leaping across the countryside, because at this point all he can do is jump
an eighth of a mile at a time; Superman can’t fly yet, and nobody asks him to. He’ll have to wait for the radio show in
1940 to really get airborne, and he doesn’t fly in the comics until 1943.
Still, it’s not everybody who can race through the night across enemy territory to reach the governor’s mansion,
carrying a full-grown human lady who looks like nothing but dead weight from here. He dumps her on the lawn and
tells her to make herself comfortable; apparently this is his new contactless lady delivery service.
Breaking down the front door with reckless disregard for good manners and architecture, the costumed figure
makes his way up the stairs, tossing a butler over his head as he squeals for mercy. This must be why we don’t hear
about that orphanage very much; it must be a mass of sawdust and splinters by now.
Upstairs in the hallway, the servant gloats, “Yes, this is the governor’s sleeping room — don’t think you’re going to
get away with this outrage!” Superman finds that the door is locked, and the butler crows, “Yes! And made of steel!
Try and knock this door down!”
It’s left to the reader to imagine why the governor of probably Ohio sleeps behind a steel vault door like his
bedroom is Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, but it doesn’t matter; the titanic intruder makes short work of the security
system, and enters the presence.
“Evelyn Curry is to be electrocuted in 15 minutes for murder,” our hero tells Governor Rich Uncle Pennybags, “I have
proof here of her innocence — a signed confession!” Apparently this is a murder investigation, conducted at
lightning speed with no time to explain anything to the paying customers.
It’s the bottom of the page and Superman hasn’t done anything super for a couple of panels, so the butler produces
a concealed weapon from his green bathrobe and plugs away at the man of steel. Butlers were ready for anything
back then; he also knows jiu jitsu if he needs a fallback.
The bullets ricochet off Superman’s tough skin — “this is no time for horseplay!” he scolds as he disarms the help —
and he delivers the documents to the governor in time to get a last-minute pardon for poor Evelyn C.
“He’s gone — disappeared!” says the rattled governor, and the butler agrees, “Yes — but here’s a note he left, sir —
‘You’ll find the real murderess bound and delivered on the lawn of your estate.'” I don’t know why Superman had to
write that down rather than just say it on his way out the door, but what do I know? My physical structure is a
million years less advanced than his; at this point I’ll probably never catch up. I hope he’s going out through the
same door that he came in; this is getting expensive. The governor isn’t made of doors.
“Gentlemen, I still can’t believe my senses,” the governor informs the science council. “He’s not human! — Thank
heaven he’s apparently on the side of law and order!” And that is it, as far as the Evelyn Curry mystery is concerned;
done and dusted in three pages, and the world moves on. This is the way that Superman behaves.
The pacing in this first issue is all over the place, because Siegel and Shuster didn’t know that they were making a
comic book at the time; they thought that they were pitching a daily newspaper comic strip. All the big syndicates
turned them down, calling their work immature and too much like science-fiction. Then National Publications
offered them a spot in the first issue of Action Comics, and Siegel and Shuster quickly pasted up their existing work
to fit a 13-page comic book story.
So what we’ve got in this first issue is an introduction page, followed by three short stories of varying length and the
beginning of a fourth, which stops abruptly after four pages and continues in the next issue.
On page 5, Siegel and Shuster introduce the basic template that they’ll use again and again: Clark walks into the
editor’s office, and the editor gives him an assignment that requires the attention of both reporter Clark Kent and a
dangerous space monster called Superman.
The editor doesn’t have a name right now, and he doesn’t need one. He’s not a character; he’s a narrative function.
The chief is here to give Clark a place to start, and then point in the direction of the door and tell him to get going.
Once the story’s over, Clark reports back to the paper for a final panel or two, where the editor congratulates him on
another great story, end of adventure.
In the first twelve months of the comic, there are six issues that work according to that template, with Clark going
out on newspaper missions. In the other half, Superman just shows up somewhere, gets pissed off about something
and starts hitting dudes.
This meet-and-greet is also where we get the first glimpse of the Clark/Superman dual identity, a narrative concept
so productive that here we are more than 80 years later, and people are still writing stories about it.
Siegel and Shuster put the irony right up front, with the editor asking Clark to cover the reports of a strange new
Superman who’s appeared around town. “Listen, chief,” Clark grins, “if I can’t find out anything about this
Superman, NO ONE CAN!”
This is one of those little audience-appreciation moments, like Dracula telling his dinner guest “I never drink… wine.”
The character is making a joke that within the story only he understands, but the readers are in on the secret too,
which is pleasurable and makes us like the character more.
As a rule, there are three steps to getting the audience to like a character and want to spend time with them: make a
friend, make a joke, and make something happen. Having a friend grounds the character and demonstrates that they
have worth in the narrative, the joke indicates that the character understands it’s their job to entertain the
audience, and the plot point moves the story forward, which is what we really want.
And we get it two panels later, when Clark gets a tip about a wife-beating and shows up on the scene as an
unstoppable force of vengeance, picking up the violent husband and hurling him against the wall so hard that the
apartment may never fully recover.
The battered husband loses consciousness right next to his battered wife, which allows for the first inexplicable
costume change. “Hearing police-sirens,” the narration informs us, “Superman hurriedly dons street-clothes over his
uniform.” What dimension these street-clothes apparate from is not shared with us, and the audience is not
expected to notice or care.
I mean, I suppose that Clark could have stashed the clothes right before bursting through yet another of the many
doomed doors that he regularly encounters, but that means that there was a suit jacket and a pair of glasses just
lying on the floor in the hallway, while Superman was tearing it up with the wife-beater. But we’re not supposed to
think about it; it’s just a magic power that makes the plot point work.
Decades later, the comics writers came up with an explanation for this — he’s got special “compressible clothes”
that Superman balls up into a little wad, and then shoves into a hidden pocket in his cape — but that idea is
embarrassing and depressing, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Anyway, while we’ve been chatting, the police have arrived, and Clark claims that he’s not responsible for all the
destruction. It looks like “our friend Superman” stopped by, he says, measuring out fistfuls of swift and terrible
vigilante justice. They don’t specify what happens to this bruised and broken family unit after that, but it doesn’t
matter. Superman saved the day, somehow. Problem solved.
And then, having established that Clark is secretly the best at everything, Siegel and Shuster give him the one thing
that he eternally fails at: going on a date with Lois Lane, a reporter currently installed as the Daily Star’s sob sister
but destined for greater things.
It’s not clear, within the story, what Clark thinks that he’s going to get out of a date with a strong-willed reporter
who despises him on sight. He’s got an enormous, dangerous secret concealed just below his necktie, and you’d
imagine that he’d want to direct people’s attention away from himself. But he’s lonely, I guess, and it’s hard to resist
Lois’ charm.
In her first panel, Clark stammers out an invitation, and she eyes him icily and cracks, “I suppose I’ll give you a
break… for a change.”
Suddenly, they’re on the dance floor, and Clark asks, “Why is it you always avoid me at the office?” She looks away.
“Please, Clark! I’ve been scribbling ‘sob stories’ all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.”
Those are the jokes, by the way, the ones that make us like her. They’re not laugh lines, but if you compare them to
the way that humans actually talk, you can see how heightened and screwball-comedy cutting they are. Clark is the
friend, those are the jokes, and here comes the plot point; Lois scores a triple crown in five panels.
Action Comics likes to have at least one outburst of sudden violence per page, and this time it’s Lois’ turn, smacking
a muscleman who’s trying to muscle in on their date. She’s the only other combatant in this 13-page battle royale
who’s allowed to get in the ring and throw a punch without calling down lightning from the gods; that’s how
important she is.
Naturally, this riles up the dance-floor reject, who happens to be the leader of a gang of hoodlums. “I’ll show that
skirt she can’t make a fool out of Butch Mason!” the riled hoodlum says, and before you know it, they’ve created a
road accident in order to abduct Lois and drive away with her. This is what happens when you try to arrange quiet
dinner dates in the pages of Action Comics.
Once we’ve all agreed that we like Lois, then everything else falls into place; this is the excuse for Clark Kent’s lunatic
behavior that we needed.
I mean, he’s psychotic, obviously. You can’t look at what he does over the course of 13 pages, and see anything other
than a power-mad cuckoo from outer space, dealing out chaos and carnage wherever he goes. The governor may
think that this monster is on the side of law and order, but so far all I’ve seen is a man who delivers beatings to
innocent butlers and Studebakers. He operates entirely on impulse, charging in and doing whatever the hell he
wants. Law, maybe, but definitely not order.
The only thing you can say in his favor, really, is that he helps out women who are in trouble. He saves Evelyn Curry
just before her execution; he hospitalizes the beaten wife’s oppressor, and he rescues Lois from being trafficked.
That’s what Superman does: he helps women. Admittedly, he tends to treat them more like cargo than anything
else, but his heart appears to be in the right place, assuming he has one.
So this is the Superman of June 1938, this reckless jokester who — if you get on his bad side — is liable to beat you
to death with your own car. It seems impossible that somebody would be able to keep this erratic story thundering
on for another 1,000 issues, but they managed it somehow, and now we’re watching a movie about it.
So that, as they say, is how it started. Let’s get back to the 1970s, and see how it’s going.
Superman 1.2: It Was Ilya’s Idea
“Hello, I’m Ilya Salkind,” the man says, “executive producer of Superman: The Movie, which actually I guess
everybody by now knows was called Superman on the screen.” We are one sentence into this DVD commentary and
already I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“The movie was an idea that I think I came up with,”
Ilya continues,
“and I say I think because there were so many people involved that it could have been somebody else, but it was to,
y’know, make the difference between the comic book and the movie — the big movie. The comic book idea, again,”
he goes on,
“was a combination, and frankly, you see, this is what happens when you have a lot of talented people, is that
everybody comes up with stuff, and it’s a collaboration, and I don’t know who came up with the comic book idea. I
know I came up with the black and white. That I do remember.”
There are one hundred and thirty-five more minutes of this.
Ilya Salkind, executive producer of Superman: The Movie, has an origin story to relate, one that has a fairly indirect
relationship with what’s happening on the screen in the film that he’s currently DVD-commenting on. Ilya was there
at the beginning, back when exploding was just a twinkle in the planet Krypton’s eye, and he wants to tell us all
about it.
It’s the story of a mighty family, who stole fire from the gods and financing from German film distributors. It’s a heist
movie about a gang of crooks so slippery that even they don’t know if they made money or not. Most of all, it’s the
story of a passionate, creative young man who had a brilliant idea that changed the world, and I’ll give you three
guesses who that turns out to be.
“And actually, here, that’s my father,”
says Ilya, as the curtains pull open to reveal a dynamic widescreen spacescape with the words ALEXANDER SALKIND
PRESENTS zooming by,
“and without him, there would be no movie, there would have been no Superman movie, there would have been
absolutely not the figment of a Superman movie, unless somebody else would have come up with it later, because
he was able to finance the movie. I had the idea, but an idea is great, but without money, to make a film like this, it’s
just an idea. So I really pull my hat — he used to wear hats, actually — I pull my hat in great gratitude, and even
more so, I dedicate everything that is linked to Superman to him, and all the other films we did, obviously.”
Listening to Ilya talk is a curiously aerobic activity. His speech pattern is like a guy bouncing a tennis ball on a racket,
trying to keep the ball in the air for as long as he can. Gravity wins eventually and he has to stop talking for a second,
but he’s always going for a personal record.
“The genesis of the idea could have come up because my grandfather, who was Michael Salkind and did the first
Greta Garbo movie, had a tendency to do movies with my father that were really heroic, in the sense that he did
Don Quixote, which is a classic, that was a famous tenor from the old days called Chaliapin, he’s like a Mario Lanza
from Russia, and he did Don Quixote, and he also did Cervantes, which is the life of the writer of Don Quixote, and
that was also a big movie in those days. So his movies had a tendency to be very positive, with heroes that were
real, or fictional, like Cervantes was a real hero in life, he actually lost an arm in the battle of Lepanto, but Don
Quixote, of course, was a creation. I guess that’s where I got this kind of attraction to heroes, fictional or real, and it
must have been in my childhood dreams, and later in my adult dreams, because you always have to follow your
dream. And, um, I think it’s important.”
Ilya’s grandfather, Mikhail Salkind — aka Michael Salkind and/or Miguel Salkind — was a lawyer who left Russia in
1922 after the Russian Civil War, which was an excellent time to go. Mikhail settled in Berlin with his wife Maria and
son Alexander, and became a film producer.
As Ilya says, Mikhail produced Joyless Street in 1925, which was the first film starring Greta Garbo and also
happened to be a landmark in the New Objectivity movement, if that interests anyone. The Salkinds left Europe
during World War II — another timely exit, stage left — and landed in Cuba, before settling in Mexico, where Ilya
was born.
The Salkinds remained a family on the move, continually shifting location from one place to another — Germany,
Cuba, Costa Rica, Switzerland — mostly because tax evasion is a lot easier when nobody can figure out what country
you haven’t been paying taxes to.
“This approach to Krypton,”
Ilya recalls,
“after we have left the small comic book and the curtains, and open, I remember very clearly telling John Williams
that if he could get some kind of feeling of a little bit of 2001, I would be, y’know, totally eternally grateful, because
that’s the film that made me decide to make films, really, 2001, which I saw as a young teenager, and it really made
me go ballistic. And if you really think about this intro, it’s not far from that Zarathustra, I mean, of course, it’s
Williams, and he knew it, but this opening was very important, musically, and it gave the size, immediately, of the
film. Of course, the size without an actor, who is possibly one of the two or three best actors in this century, I would
say, Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin, I mean, that was like the music, it just, or the approach to Krypton, it just
made the film become absolutely bigger than life. And that’s really the way to describe what I learned from 2001, as
a kid, that somehow ‘bigger than life’ was something that fascinated me, and Superman was really the one where I
could go, after convincing everybody, and we’ll go back to that, to really get to this bigger than life feeling, where we
are in an incredible world, where literally everybody is almost like a god.”
If you listen to this DVD commentary — and whether you choose to do that or not is entirely up to you — you’ll
notice that Ilya is principally concerned with two things. The first is size, and the second is “quality”, which is another
word for money, which is another word for size.
But what about the dinner? By this point, we’re eleven minutes into the commentary, and Ilya hasn’t talked about
the dinner in Paris yet, which must be a personal record.
“Since the beginning,”
he explains,
“when I came up with the idea, and I was having dinner with my father in Paris, and I just said out of the blue, why
don’t we do Superman, right? So he said, ‘Vat’s superman? Vat are you talking about?’ And I said, well, y’know, it’s a
guy that flies, I mean, he’s powerful like a god, he’s incredible, and he’s — everybody knows him! So he kind of was
taken a little bit aback, and he said, ‘Oh, okay, let me check this’, and so he went to talk to his different distributors
and backers, and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, they know the name, and yeah, interesting.’ And I said, yeah, but y’know, this has
got to be a film that is — a film! And I think that’s when perhaps the movie concept, calling it The Movie came. This
is a real — big — gigantic — epic movie. And my father immediately understood that, and agreed.”
The dinner in Paris is Ilya’s big scene, the magic moment when he rubbed the lamp and then asked the genie to go
and arrange financing.
“Now of course, we’re jumping many years, because this project started in ’74, when I first came up with the idea.
Now, why did I come up with the idea? I guess as I said, looking for something, y’know, bigger than life, but also a
hero, and I must say that on my mother’s side, she was extremely influenced by good role models, and I had seen as
a kid, things like Ben Hur, El Cid, and all those films had, I guess, y’know, created a very strong imprint in my
subconscious, because it was pre-conscious. And of course, Superman was the greatest hero of all time. I mean,
there’s just no kidding around, in terms of fiction, of course. So I think that’s what led to the idea.”
Ilya keeps talking about his fascination with heroes, which is a bit hard to swallow, because the Salkinds were
essentially a crime syndicate.
Alexander Salkind was one of the world’s eccentrics, who are put on this earth for the specific purpose of giving
people something to think about. Standing five foot three, he had shaggy, blue-rinsed hair, wore ascots and white
bucks, and was known to sport a gold lorgnette. Born in Russia, raised in Germany and married in Mexico, he spoke
seven languages, each one in an impenetrable bespoke accent all his own.
Alexander Salkind never paid bills; he settled lawsuits. Film crews who’d worked with the Salkinds before would line
up every week to get paid in cash, because his checks would be from a bank in Switzerland which took weeks to
clear, so that he could hang on to the money longer and earn interest on it. Sometimes people got paid in whatever
currency had the best exchange rate.
He was terrified of flying, and if he wanted to go to America, he’d take a week-long transatlantic liner, and then he’d
have to wait a month before he could sail back. For some obscure reason, he had a Costa Rican passport, and when
he was arrested by Interpol in Bern for misappropriation of funds just before Superman: The Movie premiered, he
explained that he was listed as Costa Rica’s cultural attache for Switzerland, which he actually was, and had
diplomatic immunity. Then he was heavily sedated, so that he could take a hurried flight to Mexico.
Alex was the kind of guy who creates a shell company for the purpose of transferring money to another shell
company, in order to pay himself back for a loan he borrowed from himself, using collateral that technically
belonged to someone else. When he was negotiating with Warner Bros for Superman’s distribution rights, he
claimed that his company Film Export A.G. had received a larger offer for the US and Canadian rights from Monopole
A.G., and he demanded that Warners beat Monopole’s offer. It turned out later that Alex owned Monopole too. I
forget how it all came out.
“As I perhaps didn’t say enough before,”
Ilya expounds,
“my father, and before him my grandfather, then with him, were able to raise money independently, and when my
grandfather got older, which was actually he passed away after The Three Musketeers — and that’s when I had the
idea, actually, after The Three Musketeers and after he passed away, so perhaps again there’s some kind of weird
connection there, but my father was able then, and I started working with him — well, I had started working with
him since already three or four films — and he could raise independent financing in a way that was, I would say,
almost impossible.”
The Three Musketeers was the Salkinds’ big early-70s hit, a swashbuckling adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel
starring Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Michael York and Frank Finlay which was released in 1973 — or, at least,
the first half of it was. The Salkinds had the bright idea to film two scripts at the same time and shoot enough
material for two full-length movies, but only pay everybody for one. The second half, The Four Musketeers, followed
in 1974, and then obviously everybody sued the Salkinds, and a good time was had by all.
After this, the Screen Actors’ Guild instituted the “Salkind Clause”, which would specify in actors’ contracts how
many movies they were supposed to be shooting. It never occurred to anybody before that you would need to
specify such a thing in a contract. It never does, until someone like the Salkinds comes along.
Oh, and Alex’s way of raising independent financing for The Three Musketeers really was impossible, or at least
implausible. To secure a loan, he used assets that belonged to a German film distributor named William Forman
without paying him back or even informing him that it was happening; that’s why Alex had to get out of Switzerland
in a hurry.
“We got a tiny little suite on the interior courtyard of the Plaza Hotel,”
Ilya recalls, talking about how they found a writer for the film.
“And those days, of course, the Plaza Hotel was legendary, and we didn’t have a writer, but in that little suite, I’m
sure that I suddenly, talking with my father, said, ‘Well, y’know, what are we going to do? William Goldman doesn’t
want to do it,’ and all that, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t we take Mario Puzo?’ And my father said, ‘Very good idea!
Puzo! Godfather! Fantastic! Let’s do it!'”
You’ll notice that once again, Ilya is just sitting around with his dad in a hotel suite when he lights up with another
little fire-from-the-gods flash of insight. A lot of Ilya’s stories involve coming up with ideas in hotel suites, or while
eating expensive food.
“Long story short, of course, discussions, agents, all that, but very quickly, he accepted. And that was perhaps the
most important step at that time, or perhaps even of all time, for the movie to start to breathe, because this is
something I really recall having said — it’s got to be bigger than life, but it’s got to be quality bigger than life. It can’t
just be a big movie.”
Around 47 minutes into the film, Ilya goes on a little journey to discuss the similarities between Superman, Star Wars
and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, all blockbuster movies that were made around the same time, and how all
of them featured good influences from outer space coming to Earth, except for Star Wars, which didn’t.
Then he brings up Jaws, and goes straight from that into the Salkinds’ exploits at the Cannes Film Festival, and how
he manages that segue is just to drop what he’s talking about in the middle of a sentence. You have to keep up, with
Ilya. There’s another “Ilya comes up with an idea” story in this one.
“So, of course, Jaws was based on a fantastic book, and this, I must say, because it’s something that’s been going
around for a long time, and we’re really at the early beginning here, after Puzo, which was the first part of the film,
to create that size. We, of course, started looking for directors, and also we started announcing the film in Cannes,
and I think my father — I don’t know, again, we had these sessions where we would kind of bounce ideas, and came
up with the plane, and then we created this tradition that — in the Cannes Film Festival, which is a market and a
festival at the same time, where they see intellectual films, but they also sell whatever film they can sell — we had
the first year, ’75 I think, we had one plane flying with — perhaps it was three planes flying — with, y’know,
SUPERMAN, SALKIND, PUZO. And then the year after, we had five planes, and it got to a point where we had an
armada of planes, and one of the events, also I had a boat with helicopters, I mean, it was pretty spectacular. And it
started creating this mystery buzz.”
Yeah, the planes. To generate buzz in the industry, the Salkinds flew planes over the Cannes Film Festival for four
years in a row — three planes in 1975 that said SUPERMAN SALKIND PUZO, and five planes in 1976 that said
SUPERMAN SALKIND HAMILTON. In 1977, there was a whole fleet, including a helicopter that tried to land a huge
SUPERMAN billboard on a boat, but the wind changed direction and the helicopter almost crashed, overbalanced by
the heavy sign, which hit the water and split into two. I wish I had a picture of that to show you, but it was the 70s
and nobody had cell phones.
Okay, back to Ilya. So far, they’ve got Mario Puzo writing the script, but they don’t have a director.
“So, to come back to Jaws, there’s a reason I’m going on Jaws, is that Stephen Spielberg had directed Sugarland
Express and Duel, and I remember that there was an agent that was calling in Paris where we were still based,
saying, y’know, we represent this young, very talented director Stephen Spielberg, and, y’know, he wants to do
Superman, it’s the kind of film he likes. And I did what I usually do, I went to see his films. So I saw Sugarland Express
and I saw Duel, and I came back and I said to my father, ‘This guy’s fantastic, I mean, he has it, he’s gonna be a major,
major director.'”
This is the tragic moment in Ilya’s Superman story; the brilliant idea that his father didn’t listen to. Spielberg is the
fish that got away.
“My father, however — I must say, Pierre agreed with me by the way, which was very nice — my father, however, did
not, and said, ‘Well, we’ve gotta wait until we see the result with the big fish.’ I said, ‘But this guy, y’know, we’ve
gotta take him, etcetera,’ — ‘No, no, no,’ — Okay, of course the movie opened, Jaws, and created perhaps, again, we
don’t know when the first blockbuster started, but I guess Jaws was the biggest. So after the big fish film opened,
and smashed every existing record, my father said, ‘Oh, we have to get this young man, he’s fantastic,’ and I said,
‘Well, I think it’s going to be pretty difficult.’ I mean, obviously, the agent was very polite and I don’t know exactly
what he said, but whatever it was, it was a polite no.”
We’re more than an hour into this DVD commentary, and Ilya is still in 1975. Spielberg is too famous, George Lucas is
busy with Star Wars, and Superman still doesn’t have a director.
“And then there was Sam Peckinpah. I had a meeting with Sam Peckinpah. I got out alive, which was great, but we
obviously didn’t make the film together, because — well, I was very, very young. I’m still very, very young, but I was
even younger, so it did not happen.”
I’m not sure what that means. Then Ilya describes his technique for finding a director, which is to look down the list
of top-grossing films, and cross people off until he finds one that wants to direct Superman.
“So I was really the one racking my brain for these kind of things, to find, y’know, who, what, where. And I came up
with Guy Hamilton — I had a very simple technique, I would just go through the box-office list of all time. Then I’d
look at the big films that worked, and that were good. At any event, Guy Hamilton came up in the box office with
Goldfinger, which was in my opinion one of the best Bonds. We met with Guy Hamilton, a wonderful man, extremely
pleasant, and we took Guy Hamilton to direct the film. And then we announced it, and there were more planes
flying in Cannes.”
And that basically says it all, as far as the Salkinds’ creative judgment is concerned. They don’t want a writer or a
director who have an interesting perspective and a story that they want to tell about Superman; they just want the
most famous writer they can get, and the director who’s made the most money.
Yes, Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather and Guy Hamilton directed Goldfinger, and both of those films were critically
and financially successful. But is the guy who wrote The Godfather really the best person to write a movie about
Superman?
“And then the draft of Puzo was an enormous draft of five hundred pages,”
Ilya sighs,
“and was extremely… epic and powerful. So with Guy, we all read Puzo’s script and agreed that it was just too big. I
mean, it would have cost a billion dollars, I don’t know. I mean, there were scenes in there that were unmakeable.”
Which means that after all this time and all those planes, the Salkinds still don’t have a makeable film.
So we’re going to leave Ilya and his DVD commentary’s fiction reality at this dramatic juncture, because we need to
take a look at the Variety ad that the Salkinds ran in November 1975. Variety is the primary trade publication for
Hollywood; basically, if you have something to say to the film industry and you don’t have any planes, then you put
an ad in Variety.
As we’ve seen, the Salkinds value size above any other virtue, and this ad — which took up five full pages in the
November 11th edition — was their way of showing off how big they were. They didn’t have a cast yet, or a
distributor, or a workable script, but they were big and important, and this was their way of expressing that truth.
The first page of the ad, in huge black type against a gray background, says:
ALEXANDER SALKIND
ANNOUNCES
THAT GUY HAMILTON
WILL DIRECT
THE $20,000,000
FILM PRODUCTION
OF “SUPERMAN”.
The next two-page spread is pretty amazing. In even larger black letters, it reads:
THESE FIVE MEN COMBINED
HAVE MADE A TOTAL
BOX OFFICE GROSS OF
ONE BILLION DOLLARS…
and then lists the director, the writer and the three producers, along with the names of their successful films.
GUY HAMILTON
“GOLDFINGER” “BATTLE OF BRITAIN” “DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER” “FUNERAL IN BERLIN” “LIVE AND LET DIE” “MAN
WITH THE GOLDEN GUN”
MARIO PUZO
“THE GODFATHER” (PARTS 1&2)
Presented by
ALEXANDER SALKIND
Executive Producer
ILYA SALKIND
Executive in Charge of Production
PIERRE SPENGLER
“THE THREE MUSKETEERS”
“THE FOUR MUSKETEERS”
And I guess if you add up the box office gross of all those films, you get a billion dollars, which is a really big number.
So the message is that These Five Men are strong, powerful and successful; they have made big movies and earned
big money.
The final two-page spread gets a little weird.
… FIVE MEN WHOSE TALENTS
AND ENERGIES ARE NOW
FOCUSED ON THE SUPER
FILM OF THE SEVENTIES!
There isn’t really a classy film-crit way for me to say this, so I’m just going to go ahead and tell you that in my
opinion, these five men in this five-page ad are boasting about their testicular production.
I mean, talking about their “talents and energies” is pretty clearly about these guys gathering up their collective
billion-dollar animal spirits and spurting out an epic blockbuster. They’re not making a third-rate comic book movie
with a silly-looking guy wearing tights. This is a fully masculine, erect production ready to spill its seed into movie
theaters around the world. All movie executives think this way; this ad is just a particularly blunt way of expressing
it.
If you think I’m reading too much into this, then take a close look at the last page of the ad, which says:
ALEXANDER SALKIND
presents
SUPERMAN… THE MAN
Seriously. Not Superman: The Movie. It says Superman… The Man.
I don’t know what to do with that particular postcard from the infinite; I simply set it before you, for your
consideration. I imagine that someone made a mistake somewhere, and they meant to say “the Movie”. But that is a
weird Freudian mistake to make, in front of all of Hollywood.
And ultimately, that’s what this movie is about: all of the wisdom and goodness and heroic spirit concentrated into
one man, who gathers it up and then shoots it skywards. Krypton explodes in a satisfying burst of orgasmic pressure,
and the seed spins across the incalculable vastness of space, to find purchase on a warm, fertile and welcoming
planet.
As Mikhail Salkind begat Alex, and Alex begat Ilya, now Ilya has blurted out this wonderful, bigger than life idea, right
in the middle of dinner. A Superman movie!
Superman 1.3: Brando and the Money
From “Godfather” to “Superfather”? Marlon Brando has been offered a reported “unprecedented” salary to play the
father — or older brother — of “Superman” for Alexander Salkind. (Variety, June 30, 1976)
The two Superman films, to be lensed simultaneously, will ring up a super budget of $25-30,000,000. Of that figure,
$2,700,000, goes to Marlon Brando who plays papa to “Superman”. (Variety, Dec 27, 1976)
Even Brando, long-famed for his temperament, posed no problems. Perhaps even he could hardly believe the money
he was being paid for his 12 days — $2.5 million, the most expensive salary on record. (LA Times, July 31, 1977)
We’ve read that white-wigged Marlon Brando, for just 12 days of work as Jor-El, Superman’s father on the planet
Krypton, snagged $2.7 million or $3.7 million or $4 million. (New York Times, December 10, 1978)
There are a handful of stories that make up the core mythology of Superman: The Movie — the dinner in Paris, the
lollipop, the dentist, the workout, the flying unit, the extra director. But the most important and enduring story —
the thing that everyone is sure to mention when they talk about the movie — is Brando and the money.
When you’re watching the movie, here in the present day, you can’t help but wonder why Marlon Brando and Gene
Hackman are billed first in the credits, followed by Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Glenn Ford, Trevor
Howard and Margot Kidder, in that order.
To anyone with a normal common-sense understanding of how movies work, the lead characters are Superman and
Lois Lane, followed by Lex Luthor; the guy who plays Jor-El should be credited fourth at best. Instead, Christopher
Reeve is credited third, and Margot Kidder is eighth, arriving directly after a guy whose character is named “1st
Elder”. Why does the main character’s dad, who only appears in the first twenty minutes of the movie, get top
billing?
Well, as we ended the last post, circa November 1975, we left These Five Men — writer Mario Puzo, director Guy
Hamilton and producers Alexander Salkind, Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler — focusing their considerable talents
and energies on the super film of the seventies, which then gradually collapsed over the next six months.
Here’s a rough timeline of the ’75-’76 production:
June 1975: The Salkinds announce that the production will begin in Rome in November.
July 1975: Mario Puzo submits his first draft of the script.
Sept 1975: Guy Hamilton signs on as director. Casting begins for the actor playing Superman.
Oct 1975: Puzo submits his second draft. It’s unmakeable. Puzo leaves the project.
Nov 1975: They get new writers to work on the script.
Jan 1976: Production begins in Rome. No progress on casting Superman.
Feb 1976: The special effects team begins work.
March 1976: Everything falls apart.
Seriously, it’s a mess. For one thing, they can’t find anybody famous who wants to play Superman. Robert Redford
and Paul Newman don’t want to do it. Arnold Schwarzenegger is too Austrian; Sylvester Stallone is too Italian; James
Caan wants too much money. Also, the script is way too long, and would cost a billion dollars to produce; they need
a new team of writers to get it into shape.
They’ve already started production, and they’ve built hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sets in Rome. Guy
Hamilton’s design and special effects ideas are weak; they have no idea how they’re going to make Superman fly.
Then the Italian unions start giving them trouble — meaning that the crew wants to get paid in money, which the
Salkinds are allergic to. The investors are getting nervous, especially the ones who are actually aware that they’re
investing in a movie about Superman.
And then — just a few months after the nick of time — in walks Brando.
In the mid-70s, Marlon Brando was one of the most famous actors in America, and if you’re too young to know who
he is, then you’re just going to have to trust me on that. He first rose to attention as Stanley Kowalski in the 1951
film A Streetcar Named Desire, popularizing method acting and sleeveless white T-shirts. At the Academy Awards, he
was nominated for Best Actor four years running, finally getting the award in 1954 for On the Waterfront. This was
followed by Teahouse of the August Moon, Mutiny on the Bounty, and so on.
Brando’s star dimmed in the mid-to-late 60s, but in 1972 he had an enormous success, playing Don Corleone in The
Godfather, which nabbed him another Best Actor award. He also starred in Last Tango in Paris, a controversial erotic
rape drama that everybody argued about for basically a year.
There was no doubt that Marlon Brando was a big name — maybe the biggest you could get, in 1976 — and Ilya
Salkind liked big things. When the Salkinds were almost ready to give up and stop production, Ilya got a call from
agent Kurt Frings, who said, “I can get you Brando.” It might take a couple million dollars to get him to say yes, so Ilya
called Alex, and Alex said they should do it, and they sent him a script.
And Brando signed on to play Jor-El, at an astronomical, unprecedented salary that nobody can quite agree on what
it was.
There are several reasons why it’s difficult to pin down exactly what Brando was promised for Superman, starting
with: it’s none of our goddamn business.
Putting that aside, there are a couple different ways to calculate the figure. In December 1976, Variety said that
Brando was getting $2.7 million dollars. In April 1980, the Los Angeles Times reported that Brando was promised
11.3% of the domestic and 5.65% of the foreign gross receipts, with a guarantee of $2.7 million dollars, which is
different.
And then, around the time the movie opened, the reliable sources — the official The Making of Superman: The
Movie book, and big profile pieces in the New York Times and Newsweek — started to cite the figure as $3.7 million
dollars, and that’s usually what’s quoted today.
Over the next few years, once everybody started suing each other, the LA Times insisted on $2.7, but the New York
Times stuck to $3.7. Personally, I believe the LA Times, because it sounds like they had access to court documents,
plus exaggerating salaries is standard practice for movie studio publicity.
But the point is that Marlon Brando’s extraordinary salary was discussed multiple times in great detail by all of the
above sources, as well as every other publication that wrote about the movie. And that’s why there’s such a thing as
Superman: The Movie.
You see, nobody had ever made a big-budget superhero movie before, and the obvious assumption was that it
would be… well, cartoonish. Some actor looking ridiculous in an obviously padded muscle suit, being dragged across
the set on visible wires, accompanied by the BAM! and POW! of the silly 1960s Batman TV series. The whole thing
was going to be a joke.
But paying several million dollars to an actor who isn’t even going to play Superman means that somebody must be
taking this seriously. It’s possible that it’s still going to be ridiculous and awful, but if it is, then it’s going to be one of
those expensive megaflops that offer lots of juicy material for cynical observers of the Hollywood scene and other
Monday-morning quarterbacks.
So everybody’s going to talk about it and write about it, and that attracts attention and more star power. Shortly
after the Salkinds signed Brando, they got Gene Hackman to play Lex Luthor for a further $2 million, and at that
point, it’s a real film.
Over the first fifty years of American movie-making, the studios developed a whole vocabulary of different
distribution terms — A-movies and B-movies, features and specials and superspecials and epics — in order to set
audience expectations about the value of a particular movie. For the most important pictures, a limited number of
prints would be distributed, at a higher ticket-price — and in the early days, they even sent out a live orchestra with
each print, and a speaker to introduce the film.
But by 1978, every movie was shown more or less the same way. Big pictures like Superman opened in wide release,
at the same price as other films, and you couldn’t drag a live orchestra around to convince people that this movie is
worth paying attention to.
So Superman — and the many superhero movies that followed — had to express that this movie was special in a
different way, and they did it by telling people how hard it was to make, and how much money it cost. After all, if
this was just a silly, inconsequential movie for kids, people wouldn’t go to all this hassle and expense.
This is what movie studios do, when they’re making a superhero film — they spend more than a year planting news
stories about what a chore it all is. The audience is told well in advance how much the cast are making, how difficult
the special effects are, and how hard the star had to work out to sculpt his perfect superhero body. There’s all this
extra-diegetic information that the audience is supposed to learn in advance and bring into the theater with them,
in order to appreciate the film properly as the eye-popping spectacle that it’s supposed to be.
Superman: The Movie was such a legendary example of this technique that it’s more than 40 years later, and people
are still whining about how hard it was to make. The entire mythology of the Superman production is about the
filmmakers overcoming tremendous odds — getting the financing, casting the leads, burning through five writers
and two and a half directors, and especially making people believe that a man can fly. So when the audience sees
the finished product and it’s actually really good, we’re awestruck — not just impressed with the superheroics on
the screen, but also with the everpresent awareness that the people who made it had to work really, really hard.
For the Salkinds, bragging about how much they were paying Brando was such a successful behind-the-scenes sob
story news hook that it made the rest of the film possible; everyone wanted a piece of the movie that could blow
that kind of money on a supporting role. In fact, Brando’s salary is such a crucial part of the mythology that they
bumped the reported figure up by a million dollars, just before the movie came out.
In the end, of course, nobody knows how much Brando actually received, because the Salkinds never produced
anything like a credible accounting of how much money they spent on the picture. And if nobody knew how much
they spent, then they couldn’t calculate how much was profit, so everybody who had a percentage of the movie had
to take the Salkinds to court to get anything out of them. Ultimately, Brando’s lawyers and the Salkinds’ lawyers
negotiated a settlement of some unknown amount, and then the Salkinds cut Brando’s character out of Superman II
so they didn’t have to pay him the money that they owed him for that picture, either.
So the one thing that everybody knows about the making of Superman — that Marlon Brando was paid either $2.7
or $3.7 million dollars — is almost certainly not true. Still, it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?
Superman 1.4: The Kojak Moment
ALEXANDER SALKIND is proud to announce the engagement of MARIO PUZO (The Godfather — The Godfather II —
Earthquake) to write the screenplay of SUPERMAN
it said, in enormous type.
This was another one of the Salkinds’ full-page ads in Variety, in March 1975. That was the whole thing, a one-line
engagement ring with no further information. That was enough, back in the days when they thought Puzo would
deliver a decent script.
Four months later, they followed up with another full-page Variety ad, which offered various items of interest. The
ad featured a big photo of a locked safe, with the words:
Faster than a speeding bullet…
famed author Mario Puzo has delivered his super “SUPERMAN” original screenplay for Alexander Salkind to the
“super kids”, producers Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler.
It is now under maximum security while the search for a super director goes on.
Which is difficult to know what to do with.
As we’ve seen in the last several posts, the Salkinds liked anything that was biggest and best, and Mario Puzo wrote
a best-selling book and a Best Picture movie, so obviously they want to show that off. But bragging that Puzo wrote
the Superman script really fast is an odd thing to do, and I’m completely puzzled by calling the producers “super
kids”. I can’t imagine what they thought that would convey.
Also, the insistence that the script is “now under maximum security” feels like a bit of a giveaway. Boasting like that
is usually a sign that the speaker is overcompensating for a deficiency that they want to conceal, like the fact that
the screenplay they’ve received is three hundred pages long, written like a novel, and utterly unfilmable.
I don’t have a copy of the Mario Puzo script, unfortunately. It’s easy to find the revised Newman/Benton script, and
the final shooting script by Tom Mankiewicz. But the Puzo script is out of my reach, which is a shame, because it
sounds amazing.
It was big, we know that. The Salkinds wanted to produce two films at the same time in order to get a bargain-priced
sequel, like they did with The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, so they were expecting a double-length
screenplay, but the 300+ page script they received was far too long and far too expensive.
The outline of the two movies was there in Puzo’s script: Jor-El sending his son away from the doomed Krypton, the
child landing on Earth and raised by the Kents, an adolescence in Smallville, a move to Metropolis, a love story with
Lois Lane, and battles with Luthor and a set of Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone.
But there was too much of it, the action sequences were impossible to achieve, and it was too silly.
This is what I’ve pieced together, from the various descriptions in books and interviews:
The movie begins on Krypton, with Jor-El being criticized by the Council for worrying everybody about a planet-wide
disaster. There are four nasty criminals — General Zod, Non, Ursa and Kru-El — who are already trapped in the
Phantom Zone when the movie opens.
A note, directly from the script: “Jor-El should be played by the same actor as Superman. Since he is Superman’s
father, this will seem natural. It also gives the star a chance to come into the film right away, rather than wait till we
are half an hour into the film.”
When we get to Metropolis, the Daily Planet has folded. Clark Kent is a TV news anchor, and Lois Lane is the station’s
weather reporter. Jimmy Olsen also works for the station; Perry White doesn’t appear in the script.
The villain’s name is Luthor Lux, and he eats Kleenex tissue when he’s stressed. His headquarters is protected by a
mirrored maze.
The script apparently involved an assassination attempt on the Pope, a detail that only one source has ever
mentioned — Reed Tucker’s book Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC.
When he’s wooing Lois, Superman realizes that he’s forgotten to bring champagne, so he scans the world using his
telescopic vision. He sees that Queen Elizabeth is about to break a bottle to christen a ship, so Superman swoops in
and snatches the champagne out of the Queen’s hands.
There’s also a sequence where Superman straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa — an element that David and Leslie
Newman cut from Puzo’s script, but went on to use in their own script for Superman III.
And then there’s the Kojak cameo, which everybody agrees is the stupidest scene in the script.
EXT. SKY OVER METROPOLIS – DAY
ON SUPERMAN — on a reconnaissance flight over Metropolis. But what is he looking for, studying the anonymous
pedestrians of the city down there. Suddenly his attention is arrested; his eyes narrow.
HIS POV DOWN: Down there, from the back, a shining bald head, a dark suit, a bit of swagger. Can it be?
MOVING SHOT, WIDE: SUPERMAN swoops down on his prey, seizes his shoulder.
SUPERMAN
(gotcha)
Hey!
The man whirls around and it is… TELLY SAVALAS. With lollipop and big grin
TELLY
Hey! Superman! Who loves ya, baby?
SUPERMAN smiles, trying to pretend he dropped down to say hi, and then flies up. As he ANGLES TOWARD CAMERA
we SEE the disappointed expression on his face.
For younger readers, Kojak was a popular 1970s television show starring the bald-headed Telly Savalas as a tough
New York detective who constantly had a Tootsie Pop in his mouth as a substitute for cigarettes, and “Who loves ya,
baby?” was his signature catchphrase. For even younger readers, “television” was the lame workaround that we all
looked at while we were waiting for Netflix and Amazon Prime to be invented.
Obviously, this is a dumb idea, but why it’s a dumb idea is an interesting question.
The fact that it’s a comedy scene isn’t a problem; in the finished movie, a big chunk of the middle is explicitly
screwball comedy. The problem with the Kojak moment is that it takes the audience outside of the movie,
introducing a meta-joke that makes you consciously aware that you’re watching something fictional. Superman
mistaking somebody for Lex Luthor might be an acceptable comic-relief moment, but that’s not the funny part —
the funny part is that they got Telly Savalas to make a cameo and say his catchphrase.
Basically, it’s a scene out of The Muppet Movie, which is full of cameos like that: Steve Martin as a waiter saying
“excuuuuse me!“, Paul Williams playing the piano, Richard Pryor selling balloons to chickens.
It’s okay to have meta-jokes in The Muppet Movie that take the audience outside of the story, because the audience
is already expected to be consciously aware of the film’s artificiality. A human character riding a bicycle is nothing
special; a frog puppet riding a bicycle is an arresting spectacle. Part of the pleasure of the movie is watching puppets
doing things that puppets can’t do, so having surprise celebrities pop out and do some shtick is all part of the show.
Having a moment of pure artificiality in the middle of Superman basically turns Christopher Reeve into a frog puppet
on strings for one scene, which is not the emotional impact that we’re looking for.
But the amazing thing about the Kojak scene is that it survived through several more drafts and several more
writers. When Puzo’s revised draft didn’t resolve the Salkinds’ concerns, he dropped out of the project, and Ilya
Salkind had to figure out who was going to fix the script.
Using his technique of going down the list of successful films and asking the people who made it if they’d like to
work on Superman, Ilya found David Newman and Robert Benton, who wrote the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde.
Coincidentally, they’d also written the book for a failed Broadway musical about Superman in 1969, called It’s a
Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman, but apparently Ilya didn’t know about that.
Newman and Benton wrote a new draft, cutting Puzo’s script to a manageable level and taking out much of the
silliness. In their version, Clark and Lois are newspaper reporters again, Superman doesn’t steal champagne from the
Queen and there’s no Tower of Pisa gag. After a couple of revisions, Benton left the project to direct his first feature,
The Late Show, and David Newman brought on his wife, Leslie, to write another draft with a stronger part for Lois.
The first two thirds of the Newman/Benton script are pretty close to what we see on screen, although the dialogue
isn’t as sharp and there are some iffy ideas that didn’t end up in the film.
For example, here’s an odd bit of stage direction, as Baby Kal-El’s ship approaches Earth:
EXT. MODULE – EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE – DAY
SHOTS: As the module gets closer. It seems as if it will surely land in the heart of the Soviet Union (raising the
question in the audience’s collective mind for the first time: what would have happened if Superman had been
Russian?) but just at the last minute, the old Earth takes another spin and the rocket heads for the dead center of
the United States.
This is a weird idea for several reasons. #1) It would probably just look like it’s headed for the middle of Asia
somewhere. #2) Is this a good time to raise new questions in the audience’s collective mind? #3) “The old Earth
takes another spin”? What could that possibly mean?
There’s also a slice-of-life domestic Eskimo sequence:
EXT. ALASKA – DAY
FULL SHOT — a narrow, snow covered road which runs alongside a vast Arctic lake. In the middle of the lake, great
icebergs float.
The truck comes to a stop, lets CLARK out. The DRIVER looks at him quizzically a moment, then drives on.
NEW ANGLE — CLARK stands at the edge of the ice-filled lake, looking due north.
FULL SHOT — A narrow, snow -covered road ends in the Arctic North. In b.g. , Eskimo igloos can be SEEN. CLARK
stands on the roadside, thumb out. DOLLY IN TIGHT TO him.
CUT TO:
INT. ESKIMO IGLOO – DAY
An Eskimo man stands at the opening of his igloo. CAMERA POSITIONED BEHIND him so that we SEE over his
shoulder. There, far away, is CLARK as we left him at the roadside, wearing only his thin jacket.
The Eskimo bursts out laughing and ducks back in. PAN OVER TO a fur rug where his wife is seated, preparing food.
Chattering in Eskimo talk, he points outside, laughing. The woman rises and rushes to the opening of the igloo,
peering out.
HER POV; Nothing to be seen. CLARK is gone. VERY WIDE SHOT.
ON HER: She turns and mutters, annoyed, to her husband.
“Chattering in Eskimo talk,” it says. I keep rolling that phrase around in my head; I may never recover from it. I feel
like if we tried, we could probably find a way to leave the Eskimos alone.
But the real problem with the Newman/Benton script is what they do with Lex Luthor.
As a personality, he could give ten psychiatrists five years work: a genuine case of rampant pathological aberration
that manifests itself in a changeability that is
so marked as to go beyond the term “mercurial.” He is one minute charming, sweet, paternal with his underlings;
the next minute he can (and often does) become savage, cutting sadistic, caustic. There is in him as well, a genuine
sense of humor, though invariably warped, and a great streak of self-pity, that causes him to wallow in anguish from
time to time. His own nervous habits are equally peculiar, i.e., he eats Kleenex nervously, chewing on it to calm
himself. This is the greatest criminal on Earth — LEX LUTHOR.
INT. LEX LUTHOR’S OFFICE – NIGHT
As ALBERT enters, he looks questioningly O.S. left.
ALBERT
Ready?
LUTHOR’S VOICE
Lay it on me.
ALBERT
I hope you like it.
LUTHOR’S VOICE
So far, Albert, it’s nothing to write home
about, y’know? Y’know?
(NOTE: Luthor’s constant “y’know” is a nervous twitch, though a verbal one. What drives him crazy is when people
actually reply to it.)
ON LUTHOR – Now we SEE him for the first time, seated behind his massive desk.
ALBERT
I know, but —
LUTHOR
(sharply)
Stop saying you know when I say ‘y’know.’
I know you know.
(with barely a glance
to OTIS hovering back)
Yes, I know you’re here, Otis. What do you
want, a brass band?
ON OTIS — at a loss for words; as always awkward and unsure of himself in front of his boss.
OTIS
I…uh…
LUTHOR
No speeches, Otis. Just watch
what Albert has prepared.
(to ALBERT)
What are you waiting for?
ALBERT whisks the cloth away to reveal an incredibly detailed table-top moquette representation of a section of the
Southwestern United States, particularly the California desert area. All look expectantly to LUTHOR.
LUTHOR
We are pleased.
He reaches forward, pulls a Kleenex from the desk dispenser and begins to chew it.
And that’s terrible.
I mean, I get that they’re going for mercurial, but they’ve layered on all these neurotic habits, like saying “y’know”
all the time.
Now, I’ve recently spent some time transcribing excerpts from Ilya Salkind’s DVD commentary, and couldn’t help but
notice how often Ilya says “y’know”, so it’s possible that this quirk in Luthor’s dialogue is actually the Newmans and
Benton making fun of their boss, and if so, then I have to respect the chutzpah. Still, it’s an irritating sound to fill up
your movie with.
And for the life of me, I cannot imagine watching Lex Luthor stand there on the movie screen and absently chew
Kleenex. I appreciate that nobody else has done it before in the history of motion pictures. But I feel like somehow it
would lead to mob violence.
And then there’s the self-pity, which is grating.
INT. LEX LUTHOR’S SUBTERRANEAN HIDEOUT – OFFICE – NIGHT
On the TV screen as we SEE the end of the same newscast.
TV NEWSCASTER
Man or myth? The answer is up to you.
REVERSE – On a battered OTIS, who sits glumly watching, EVE is putting his arm in a sling.
WIDEN THE SHOT TO REVEAL LEX LUTHOR seated at his desk, watching the TV with a dark, worried, preoccupied
expression. He is chewing Kleenex with great intensity. ALBERT stands nearby.
LUTHOR
I needed this, y’know? I
really needed this. Just when
I’m nearing the fruition of my
project, Big Bird flies into town.
(histrionics)
Go ahead! Kill me by inches! Put
me on the agony rack!
Here’s another one:
INT. MUSEUM – DAY
ON THE DOOR — as they enter, look around. LEX LUTHOR spots the glass cases and crosses to them quickly, quietly.
HIS POV: TRACKING down the row of cases filled with various rocks and minerals from the area. Suddenly the
CAMERA COMES TO AN ABRUPT HALT on one of the cases. One of the rocks inside is missing. We can READ the small
card below the empty space: “Meteorite That Landed in Addis Ababa in June 1940.”
CLOSE ON LUTHOR — glowering.
LUTHOR
They’re killing me by inches!
(to the sky)
Go ahead! Make me suffer! Milk
me dry.
Still, there’s most of a good movie here. It needs to get polished up and rearranged a bit, and somebody needs to
put their foot down and finally take out that Kojak cameo, but we might be able to make something out of this.
FAVORING LUTHOR: He gets up from his desk and begins walking out of the room. His very manner, not to mention
his beckoning gesture, causes his three cronies to follow him.
LUTHOR
(quietly, in a
patronizing tone)
Some people can read ‘War and Peace’
and come away thinking it was a simple
adventure story. Other people can read
the ingredients on a chewing gum
wrapper and come away with the
secret of the universe.
(pops a Kleenex in
his mouth; chewing)
Y’know.
But we have to eighty-six the Kleenex. Y’know?
Superman 1.5: The Discovery of Fire
Hang in there, folks; the credits are almost over. I’ve been using this journey through the opening titles to set up all
the backstory before the film actually starts, and we’re almost there. But there’s one more piece of the story to tell,
and it begins with a warning.
“Richard Lester had been suing the Salkinds for his money on Three and Four Musketeers, which he had never
gotten,” said director Richard Donner. This is from a 1979 interview with the magazine Cinefantastique. “He told me
he’s won a lot of his lawsuits, but each time he sued them in one country, they’d move to another — from Costa Rica
to Panama to Switzerland. So when I took the picture, Richard Lester took me aside and said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t
work for them. I was told not to, but I did it. Now I’m telling you not to, but you’ll probably do it and end up telling
the next guy.'”
But Donner didn’t listen; he agreed, and managed to direct about 75% of Superman and Superman II before they
fired him. As it turned out, he didn’t have to warn the next guy, because the next guy was actually Richard Lester,
signing on for another tour of duty with the Salkinds. On the whole, you should probably listen to harbingers; that’s
what they’re there for.
We left the production of Superman: The Movie in Rome circa July 1976, with two big-name stars, a rewritten script,
and a director who’s trying to figure out what he’s going to do with it all. They’ve been building sets and doing
unrewarding special effects tests, and then it turns out they have to move the entire production to England and the
director can’t come.
One reason that they have to get out of Rome is that Marlon Brando’s in the picture, and there’s some trouble
related to his 1972 film, Last Tango in Paris.
Last Tango in Paris is the story of an Italian director trying to figure out how much he can get away with. It was made
by Bernardo Bertolucci as an exploration of the effect of erotic domination in a person’s life, i.e. how much can you
do to a woman before she calls the police. Brando plays Paul, an American widower who rents an apartment in Paris
and has an anonymous affair with a 19-year-old woman named Jeanne, played and later deeply regretted by Maria
Schneider.
The big scene involved Paul anally raping Jeanne, using butter as a lubricant. This scene wasn’t actually in the script,
and Schneider learned about it just before they shot it. Apparently Bertolucci wanted Schneider to realistically
portray the feelings of someone being sexually assaulted, and he wanted to bring these out by sexually assaulting
her. They didn’t have #MeToo back then; the way I calculate it, this was somewhere around
#MeZeroPointZeroZeroOne.
Plus, nobody told her about the butter. People make a big deal about the butter for some reason; that appears to be
the final straw as far as Schneider was concerned. Part of me is curious to understand what was up with the butter,
and the other part is telling me that learning more about the production of Last Tango in Paris will not make me
happy.
Anyway, the movie came out, and it was hugely controversial, with some people considering it pornographic,
abusive and immoral. On the other hand, Pauline Kael liked it a whole lot, so opinions differ.
The Italian government took issue with the film, declaring it obscene and putting Bertolucci on trial. In January 1976,
the Italian Supreme Court said that all copies and negatives must be destroyed, and Bertolucci had his civil rights
revoked for five years. Apparently, Brando would have been arrested as well if he’d set foot in Italy, so the Rome
arrangement was not going to work out.
Plus, they weren’t having any fun in Rome anyway. Here’s Ilya, from a 2018 interview: “We had a lot of problems in
Rome. I love Italy and I love to eat there, but I would say that to work with the Italians is a different story. [Laughs]
They do have a little tendency to exaggerate. And so finally we realized that nothing was going to happen there, and
we decided to move to England because in England the pound was very, very low — boy, I think a pound was a
dollar — so it was very cheap.”
I don’t understand what Ilya is trying to say about Italian people, but in addition to that, the British government was
giving tax breaks to film productions in the UK that used a majority British crew, and if the Salkinds love anything in
this world, it’s not paying taxes. Now all they have to do is fire the director and get another one.
You see, outgoing director Guy Hamilton was a tax exile himself, which means that he owed a lot of money to the
British government, and he didn’t feel like giving it to them. In Hamilton’s view, the government had far too much
money already, and giving them more would only spoil them. He could avoid this if he only spent thirty days a year
in Britain, but you can’t shoot a movie in thirty-day annual sprints, so he had to bow out of the project.
You may have noticed by this point that quite a few people who worked with the Salkinds were wanted by the
authorities, for one reason or another. This is probably a coincidence.
So Ilya used his masterful producer technique of going to see successful films and then asking the filmmakers if they
felt like working on Superman. This was summer 1976, so he went to see The Omen, directed by Richard Donner.
The Omen is the story of an American working in the United Kingdom, who’s warned that someone he’s associated
with is evil, but he doesn’t believe it until it’s too late.
It’s a gloomy and intense movie that has very suspenseful scenes, but not a lot of character development; the
people are basically props, given the minimum number of characteristics needed to bring them to a sticky end. It’s
very well made and does exactly what it sets out to do, but there’s no romance and no humor, and the action scenes
are chaotic.
Watching The Omen, I have no idea what the Salkinds saw that made them want to hire Richard Donner for
Superman without even talking to him about it. There is no resemblance between the two films at all. The only thing
that I can think of is that it was the sixth-highest grossing film in 1976, and the directors of Rocky, A Star Is Born, King
Kong, Silver Streak and All the President’s Men were busy.
Donner started out as a television director in the 1960s, directing a bunch of Western shows and then moving into
adventure, crime and comedy. He directed seven episodes of The Rifleman, three episodes of Kojak, Gilligan’s Island
and Perry Mason, and six episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. He made three
movies before The Omen: a 1961 drama about test pilots working on the X-15 rocket, a 1968 Sammy Davis Jr/Peter
Lawford comedy called Salt and Pepper, and Lola, a 1969 romance about a 38-year-old writer of pornographic novels
who falls in love with a 16-year-old girl. In 1975, he directed a well-received TV-movie called Sarah T. — Portrait of a
Teenage Alcoholic.
In other words, he was all over the place. He’d done comedy, drama, romance, cops, cowboys, lawyers, slice-of-life
and suspense. The one thing that he hadn’t done was anything remotely like Superman. But by some kind of magic,
he turned out to be the right person for the job.
Here’s some more from that 1979 Cinefantastique interview:
“I got a call one day from a European voice that said ‘This is Alexander Salkind. You know who I am?’ And I said, ‘No.’
And he said, ‘I produced The Three Musketeers. We’re doing Superman now, and we’ve just seen The Omen —
would you like to do it?’ So I said, ‘That’s flattering, but I’d like to read it first.’ And his reaction was, ‘You don’t have
to read it. Everybody likes it.’
“But I said, ‘Well, I’d feel better if I’d read it.’ He was calling from Europe, but there was a copy of the script over here
which they had sent over — and twenty minutes later I was reading it. I mean, literally, that’s how fast it was here. I
called him back later and said that I would be interested if I could do a major rewrite and bring in a new writer. But
they said they were very happy with the screenplay, and everybody liked it; so I said, ‘We had better just forget
about it.'”
But the agents negotiated, and worked out a deal: Donner would get a million dollars, and he could bring along a
writer — Tom Mankiewicz, who’d written several James Bond films as well as being a well-known “script doctor” and
rewriter.
Donner immediately clashed with Pierre Spengler, who I haven’t talked about much but was Ilya’s best friend and a
producer on the film. Donner didn’t like Spengler from the start.
“It was a well-written script, quite honestly. But it was a ridiculous script. For one thing, here was this producer, a
guy named Pierre Spengler, who was going to supervise making this film for the Salkinds, and he had a 550-page
screenplay. Well, number one, I said, ‘You can’t shoot this screenplay, because you’ll be shooting for five years.’ And
he said, ‘Oh, no. It’s fine.’ I said, ‘That’s totally asinine,’ but that was literally a shooting script and they planned to
shoot all 550 pages. You know, 110 pages is plenty for a script, so even for two features that was way too much.
“See, they had gotten a wonderful screenplay from Mario Puzo. And they had a director — who was a good director
— an Englishman named Guy Hamilton. So you had European producers and an English director making an
American fable. And nothing wrong with it, except that I don’t think they really knew what the fable was.”
So — as he’s told people many, many times — Donner decided to do the film, in order to protect Superman from
these European producers.
Mankiewicz wrote a lot of new dialogue, and tightened up the Luthor/Superman interactions so that there could be
one climactic face-off between the hero and the villain, rather than three encounters, as the current script had it. He
took out the volcano and the Kleenex and made a lot of interesting choices which we’ll talk about once the film
actually starts. At the time, Writers’ Guild rules said that there could only be four people credited as writers in a film,
so Mankiewicz was credited as “Creative Consultant”, after the other four writers.
Donner and Mankiewicz decided that what the film needed was verisimilitude — it should feel genuine, as if
Superman existed in the real world, without springing camp meta-jokes on people. That was so important to them
that they had it hanging as a banner in the production office.
But you might notice that already, even before they’ve started, Donner saw the process of making this movie as a
struggle between the good guys, who loved Superman (himself and Mankiewicz) and the bad guys, who didn’t
understand Superman (the Salkinds and Spengler).
And so begins the ancient battle of Art vs Commerce, which is going to come up quite a bit as we dig into this
history. The artist has a vision but needs money to bring it to life; the businessperson has cash but needs the artist to
produce something marketable, preferably on time and under budget.
This round of that age-old story is particularly intense, because Donner is very specific about what he wants, and
he’ll keep shooting take after take until he gets it, even if he’s only producing forty-five seconds of useable footage a
day. The Salkinds and Spengler know that this is breaking the budget, but they can’t be specific about it, because
they’re playing con games with the investors and they don’t want anybody to know how much money they’re
actually spending.
The productive friction between Art and Commerce is what culture is all about, those two forces striking against
each other and giving off sparks. Sometimes that means you’ve discovered fire, and invented civilization; sometimes
it means you’ve burned your house down. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.
Superman 1.6: We Built This City
Tracking across the limitless void, we zero in on a mighty red sun, which soon fills our view. An ancient blue planet
orbits this commanding star, home to a noble civilization of powerful beings who live in a domed city carved into the
mountains of pure white crystalline rock. As the music builds to a fanfare so emphatic you’d think the orchestra
would explode, the camera lingers on this frozen, glittering landscape.
So here’s my question: If Krypton is so great, why is it all indoors?
I mean, I’m not an expert on civilizations that are a million years more advanced than our own, but I’m pretty sure
that good planets have furniture; from what I can see, everybody on Krypton just stands around and glows.
You can tell that Krypton is a terrible planet because it blows up fifteen minutes after we get there, which is the
exact thing that planets aren’t supposed to do. You had one job.
As we saw in the first post, the original version of the Krypton story was one sentence long: “As a distant planet was
destroyed by old age, a scientist placed his infant son within a hastily devised space-ship, launching it toward Earth!”
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster wanted to jump right into the action and introduce their super-strong, bulletproof
action hero to the world, and they didn’t waste time on details.
But they got a second chance eight months later, in the Superman newspaper comic strip. This was what Siegel and
Shuster really wanted to do in the first place, write a daily strip about Superman, and they only turned to comic
books once all the newspaper syndicates turned them down. After Action Comics became an instant hit, selling
hundreds of thousands of copies of Superman’s reckless adventures every month, the McClure newspaper syndicate
signed the pair for a daily strip as well, debuting on January 16, 1939.
Now, I would argue that Siegel and Shuster were actually comic strip writers at heart. That’s why the early Superman
comics are so fast — they’re written like adventure comic strips, with something exciting happening at the end of
every four panels. If you happen to have reprints of the early issues of Action Comics, take a look at any given story
in the first year and a half and imagine it printed in the newspaper, with every two rows a single strip with a punch
at the end. Every four panels, there’s a decision, or a discovery, or a scene change, or Superman punches somebody
into a wall. Telling a story four panels at a time seems to just come naturally to them.
The concept of the character was already sold, so they didn’t have to jump straight into the middle of a midnight
raid on the governor’s mansion. With a little extra space to stretch out, they decided to spend the first two weeks
developing the origin story.
This isn’t just any distant planet; it’s called Krypton now, and it’s full of laboratories. We don’t see a lot of the super
advanced civilization, because most of the panels focus on the feverishly emoting characters, but Jor-L’s wearing a
sci-fi tunic and there are tall buildings with trendy curved balconies. Besides that, we’re supposed to use our
imaginations. There’s probably flying cars or something. Although, if everybody can run really fast, then maybe they
don’t need flying cars. Look, it’s not important whether they have flying cars or not.
The important thing is that Superman has a father and a mother, and he came from somewhere. The first panel
explains: “Krypton, a distant planet so far advanced in evolution that it bears a civilization of supermen — beings
which represent the human race at its ultimate peak of perfect development!” And then we see Jor-L, Krypton’s
foremost scientist, who can run really fast and jump really high. Then in the last panel, we get to the point:
Superman is loved.
I mentioned this before, and it’s probably going to come up a lot: the three steps to getting the audience to like a
new character is to make a friend, make a joke and make something happen, and I can’t stress enough how
important that “make a friend” step is. People tend not to trust strangers, and if you introduce a character who has
no relationships, they tend to make us uncomfortable.
In the first issue of Action Comics, Superman spends most of his time hitting people, breaking things and running
away, but Siegel and Shuster gave him a civilian identity right on page 4, because they knew that the character had
to be connected to other people. From the start, Clark has a connection with his newspaper editor, and a strained
but crucial relationship with Lois, and those earth-bound relationships ground him, and make it okay for us to ride
along on his campaign of destruction. So many things change between issue #1 and the many versions of Superman
today — his powers, who he fights, the way he behaves and what he stands for — but there is always an editor, and
there is always Lois, because without them, the character doesn’t work.
But I have to admit, when the lead character’s strongest relationship is with a woman who despises him on sight and
dates him out of pity, it would be nice if somewhere in the universe there were people who really cared about him.
Given the opportunity to start over, the very first thing that Siegel and Shuster did was give him a family to lose.
Of course, they’re lunatics; what else would you expect? After all, these are super-strong monsters from outer
space.
Lora tells her husband, “Jor-L, I’m afraid our newborn son, Kal-L, is rather a roughneck! He gave the doctor a
discolored eye, and I’ve had difficulty in preventing his leaping from my arms!”
“Just like your dad!” replies Jor-L. Apparently he gives people random thrashings, in between his duties as a
foremost scientist, and if you look at the way Superman behaves on Earth in 1939, then yeah, that tracks.
So far, we’ve had six panels of peace and there hasn’t been any property damage yet, so obviously that situation
needs to be corrected, through the medium of an earthquake that destroys the family home while the family’s still
in it. This is probably the only example in 1939 when a house falls down and it isn’t technically Superman’s fault.
But that’s not really a suspenseful cliffhanger because hello, we already told you these people represent the human
race at its ultimate peak of perfect development. You can’t kill these people by collapsing a house on them; they’re a
special breed that can outlast their own architecture.
Jor-L appears to be entirely on his own, as far as this problem is concerned; we actually don’t see a single other
character for the first week of strips outside of this thermonuclear family. They just hustle off to “Jor-L’s other
residence,” and he gets to work in his secondary laboratory, figuring out the terrible truth with a compass and a
protractor.
Krypton is doomed, as it turns out. “Our recent volcanic eruptions were a warning,” runs Jor-L’s diagnosis, “but soon,
due to an internal cataclysm, Krypton will explode into fragments!”
And check out the facial expression on Lora, here. Joe Shuster’s eyes were already failing by this point, and the
Siegel and Shuster studio had hired a couple assistants to actually lay out and draw the panels. The one thing that
Shuster did himself was inking the characters’ faces, and that panel is why.
There’s a whole doomed planet out there, full of superpeople with their own pleasures and concerns, but right now,
the only thing that matters is Superman’s mom, and the predestined destruction of this family.
The pacing of this story is absolute clockwork, every strip advancing the narrative another step. Here’s how the first
week breaks down:
Monday: Jor-L meets his newborn son.
Tuesday: Earthquake, the house falls down.
Wednesday: Jor-L rescues his family from the rubble.
Thursday: Jor-L is horrified by his discovery.
Friday: Jor-L reveals that the planet is doomed.
Saturday: Jor-L decides to build a giant ark.
And then you have all of Sunday to think about it, and wonder what’s going to happen next.
Now, Jor-L is clearly perfect and can accomplish anything, given time and newsprint, so the flaw in the plan needs to
come from somewhere else. That’s how we end up with Retoz and his dumbass science council, who sit around a
conference table and ruin everything.
“But I tell you, Retoz!” Jor-L insists. “It’s the only way we can save everyone from a terrible death! You’ve got to
believe, and to help me!”
“Sorry, Jor-L,” Retoz sneers. “The council believes your fears unfounded —— we’d advise you to forget this silly tale
of Krypton’s coming doom!”
So I guess there haven’t been enough long-term studies on the rocket, and there might be side effects of evacuating
the planet. The rocket only has emergency approval anyway, and making everybody get on it before the planet
explodes is an infringement on their personal freedom.
You know, I thought this was supposed to be a super advanced civilization at the ultimate peak of development, but
if these anti-rocketeers are allowed to run the government and make important decisions, then maybe this planet
isn’t worth saving after all.
So screw it, if nobody else wants to come, then Jor-L is going to build his own goddamn space ark, and his family will
go off and find some other civilization that isn’t run entirely by dummies. Krypton’s going to have to get along with
the second most foremost scientist, that’s all.
This is the funny thing about Krypton, that Siegel and Shuster didn’t originally portray it as a place worth saving.
Later on, in the 1950s, the writers got terribly sentimental about Krypton, and they were always going on about how
beautiful and noble and technologically advanced it was, but Siegel and Shuster didn’t really care about world-
building. World-exploding was more in their line.
The important thing, amid the chaos of the entirely foreseeable consequences, is to save the one person that’s
worth saving. Little Kal-L, the kid who punched his own doctor in the face while he was being born, is going to get his
chance to meet a passing motorist, and change history.
“Krypton is doomed!” the man says, and that prophecy echoes through the decades. There will be other survivors
and refugees from this disaster, one day, and they’ll find places to live, and people to love.
But always, necessarily: Krypton is doomed. Then again, aren’t we all? I mean, when you think about it.
Superman 1.7: Jor-El and the Magic Wand
“This is no fantasy!” Jor-El declares. “No careless product of wild imagination.” He’s talking to a huge screen,
showing a projection of oversized, grim faces surveying the scene. “No, my good friends,” the speaker assures them,
stepping into the frame. “These indictments —”
At that moment, the long, thin lucite rod that he’s holding goes BLINGG!! and lights up at the end. And he looks at it,
clearly saying to himself, so what the hell is this thing supposed to be?
So here we are, arriving on the scene in the actual movie for the first time in seven posts, and instead of talking
about how grand and atmospheric it is, I can’t take my eyes off that wand.
In a sequence full of delightfully inexplicable sci-fi attractions — the giant projected faces, the huge dome, the hula
hoop circles that revolve around the accused criminals — the thing that fascinates me is the clear plastic rod that
Jor-El plays around with, to no particular purpose.
Here’s what I know about the wand:
It lights up twice during the scene, with a sudden echoing BLINGG!! sound, and both times, Jor-El seems mildly
surprised by it. The first time is in the middle of his second sentence, as per above, and he regards it coldly and then
keeps on talking.
He holds it up in both hands when he says, “These are matters of undeniable fact.” Then he gestures to indicate the
three criminals, while he holds the rod with his other hand. When he approaches the accused and describes the
charges against them, he’s got it in the crook of his arm.
The second time it lights up is when Zod threatens Jor-El, saying, “You alone will condemn us if you wish, and you
alone will be held responsible by me.” It goes BLINGG!! again and everyone looks at it nervously, and then the scene
keeps going. Then Jor-El holds it in both hands as he slowly exits the chamber.
The one thing that he doesn’t do with the wand is to point at anybody, which you’d imagine would be the only
reason to carry it around. The erratic light certainly doesn’t seem to be connected to anything in particular; it’s just
an effect that calls attention to itself, to no particular purpose.
But a prop doesn’t have to have a specific narrative purpose in order to be in a movie scene. The wand doesn’t do
anything, but it means something: namely, that Jor-El is a big, important science wizard.
He’s large and stately, like an ocean liner, and always filmed from below, to make him look even bigger. The nine
other people in the scene are all paying painfully close attention to every word that he says.
When he directs the council to render their verdict, they each immediately say, “Guilty!” because it’s clear that’s
what Jor-El wants them to say. Then they all vanish, leaving him as the sole representative of justice and power.
Then Zod says, “The vote must be unanimous, Jor-El. It has therefore now become your decision.”
That decision has obviously been made already, because Jor-El’s the one who’s been smacking them around with
charges the entire scene. Zod just says that to give us one more reminder that Jor-El is the most important person in
the world.
We have no idea what’s going on, by the way. This world, which is apparently called “Kryptin” thanks to Jor-El’s
unique pronunciation, has projection screens and prosecutors and defendants and a perpetual-motion hula hoop
thing, but that’s about all that we know.
The other characters in the scene are about to leave the planet and the movie in ninety seconds, with no further
bearing on the plot until the sequel. In fact, given that the three Phantom Zoners don’t do anything until Superman
II, you might wonder why Superman I bothers to literally shine a spotlight on them for the first five minutes of the
movie.
The answer is that this scene is not about them.
In the previous version of the script by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, the criminals were already
packed off to the Phantom Zone before the movie starts.
This is how the Newman/Benton script begins:
As we SEE this, we HEAR, VOICE OVER: the somber VOICES of different MEN, each saying, “No,” in a firm VOICE.
CAMERA CONTINUES PULLING BACK until we suddenly realize we have been seeing all this from a large picture
window in:
INT. COUNCIL ROOM – DAY
A futuristically designed room that overlooks the city of Krypton. The room is austere, dominated by an enormous
angled, black table. From somewhere inside the table itself, a series of very complicated equations appear. Seated
around the table are the twelve members of the council of elders.
But the first glimpse of the room ENDS THE PULLBACK, as we SEE the FIRST ELDER. As the last “No” is spoken, he
turns TOWARD CAMERA, and speaks:
FIRST ELDER
No. I’m sorry, Jor-El, but the decision of
the Elders is unanimous.
Well, apparently it’s not unanimous enough. Tom Mankiewicz, who wrote the final version of the script and is
actually good at this, knows that you shouldn’t start your movie by saying “No, No, No” twelve times to the
character that the audience is supposed to instantly respect.
Instead, Mankiewicz wrote this opening trial scene, with the wand and the screens and the cowering criminals, so
that the audience would see Jor-El as a commanding, powerful figure, rather than a pitiful reject spluttering in
protest at the council’s unfair decision. In terms of the comic strip story that we looked at in the last post, this scene
is the movie’s version of Jor-L single-handedly digging his wife and newborn son out from under a collapsed building.
This is his hero shot.
After all, that’s what we paid him all that money for. Marlon Brando is delivering the multimillion-dollar gravitas that
the film needs right at the start, to prove that this isn’t the Batman TV series, and he’s doing it terribly well.
He sounds weary, as if arranging this entire kangaroo-court show trial all by himself has been a painful but necessary
duty. He looks upon the accused with the facial expressions of an archangel regarding the unworthy, as he glides
across the set, with the unhurried silhouette of a container ship about to block the Suez Canal.
Oh, and he’s reading off cue cards. That’s a thing that Brando started doing one day, because he’s Marlon Brando
and people let him get away with it. He said that in real life, people don’t memorize everything that they’re about to
say, so it was more realistic for an actor to search for their lines. He told the LA Times, “Reality lies in the pauses…
the groping for words… the stumbling. That’s why I do it.” Coincidentally, it’s also a lot easier to not look at the script
until you get to the set.
Since his early days, Brando had a well-deserved reputation as a difficult eccentric. He was one of the first actors to
bring method acting to popular American cinema, which meant that he could be a pain in the ass and everybody
needed to be okay with it, because that was his method. He was always “testing” and “teasing” directors and fellow
actors, which was basically a way to assert his dominance over anybody who might have authority or ideas of their
own.
For Richard Donner, that meant that when he first sat down to talk to Brando, the star said, “You know, I was
thinking that maybe in space we don’t look like people. Maybe we look like a green suitcase, or a bagel. Maybe we
don’t even speak at all; we just make electronic sounds.” And then everybody around him nodded, and Donner had
to patiently explain to the room that Brando’s character is Superman’s father, and the moviegoing public might not
be ready to accept a Superman movie starring bleeping luggage.
But Jor-El takes this fantasy, this careless product of wild imagination, and turns it, seemingly effortlessly, into a
matter of undeniable fact. As the movie’s opening act, he takes a scene that could have easily been silly sci-fi kitsch,
and single-handedly makes it seem impressive, all while wearing a white spit-curl wig and a Superman muumuu, and
carrying around a stick that goes BLINGG!! You can’t just hire any bagel to do a job like that; you’re going to need a
bagel with everything.
Superman 1.8: See You Later
And in the other corner: General Zod and his Kryptonian dance crew, appearing temporarily in their standing-room-
only farewell stadium show.
Now, I think it’s fair to say that there were mistakes on both sides. Yes, Non is a mindless aberration whose only
means of expression are wanton violence and destruction. True, the woman Ursa’s perversions and unreasoning
hatred of all mankind have threatened even the children of the planet Krypton. Admittedly, General Zod — once
trusted by this council, charged with maintaining the defense of the planet Krypton itself — was chief architect of
this intended revolution and author of this insidious plot to establish a new order amongst us, with himself as
absolute ruler.
I think the important thing is that we come together as a bipartisan coalition, put the past behind us, and start
working on the issues that really matter to the average Kryptonian.
Okay, maybe not. I guess it’s hard to arrange a plea deal after you try a post-verdict Hail-Mary power seduction on
the guy in charge of the sentencing.
“Join us,” Zod said — ugggh, so embarrassing — “You have been known to disagree with the council before. Yours
could become an important voice in the new order, second only to my own!” — the guy is walking away, why do I
always do this? — “I offer you a chance for greatness, Jor-El. Take it! Join us!”
And then it gets really cringey: “You will bow down before me, Jor-El! I swear it! No matter that it takes an eternity!
You will bow down before me! Both you — and then, one day — your heirs!”
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a breakup like that, but believe me, that moment is going to stick with you, popping
into your mind unbidden on an average of once every five or six weeks, for the rest of your life. Going from “we
could be so great together” to “I will harm your unborn children” is really just giving them a good argument for why
they’re walking away from you in the first place.
And then, sure, the world splits open and you’re standing in a spotlight on a frozen planet, and a big angry crack in
the universe comes out of the sky, and swallows you forever in torment and regret. I think we’ve all been there, at
some point.
Now, nobody in the movie actually says the words “Phantom Zone”, or explains that it’s a spooky ghost dimension
populated entirely by numbskulls and failures. But that’s the good thing about being a superhero movie; you hardly
have to explain anything, as long as it looks sparkly and interesting, and acts in accordance with the audience’s
desires at the moment.
Honestly, if you can make the audience really want something — for a dead character to be alive, for the sundered
hearts to find each other again — and you drag it out to the precise, most aggravating psychological moment, the
audience will accept literally any lunatic plot contrivance to get the outcome that they’re hoping for. This is a
fundamental principle of the dramatic arts, commonly known as the “fly around the world backwards and make
time go in reverse” technique.
Obviously, in this case it’s simple; we’ve been looking at these bearded shouty people for several minutes when we
were hoping to see the beginning of a Superman movie, so if you want to pick them up in a spangly diamond and
hurl them into space then we are fine with it, and further explanation is not required.
Still, while we’re here, it might be enlightening to take a look at a few pivotal years in the history of Kryptonian
jurisprudence. After all, Krypton is supposed to be a million years more advanced than we are; maybe we can pick
up some tips to get us through the next hundred thousand or so.
The original version of Krypton’s super-penal system, if you’ll pardon the phrase, was revealed in a 1950 issue of
Superman. The procedure was that they would put the condemned prisoners into suspended animation, along with
a crystal that emitted mind-cleansing rays, which would remove the criminal part of their brains. This painless,
humane process took 100 years to work, so while everyone’s waiting for them to wake up, the Kryptonians loaded
the suspended animation capsule onto a rocket, and sent it off into space, in a satellite orbit that would return them
to the surface when they’re all cooked.
Naturally, the hundred-year sentence and crystal-powered lobotomy need no explanation; that’s customary for any
advanced civilization. The odd part is shooting the prisoners into orbit, rather than just leaving them somewhere
and forgetting about them. As it turned out, the planet didn’t last a hundred years, so the criminals all floated away,
to parts unknown.
The Superman writers used this gag twice — once in 1950, and again in 1958 — but the idea didn’t really catch on as
a long-term story generator. You can’t keep accidentally cracking open brainwashing punishment space capsules like
they’re Kinder Eggs; it gets old.
So the new hotness was the Phantom Zone, which was introduced in a Superboy story in 1961. This was during the
Silver Age of Comics, which for Superman started in 1958 and ended in the late 60s, and was an incredibly fertile
source of lunatic plot contrivances.
During the Silver Age, there were six Superman titles running simultaneously — Action Comics, Superman,
Adventure Comics, Superboy, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane — and they were all
edited by the same guy, Mort Weisinger. Weisinger wanted all of the titles to share a continuity, so that a character
or an idea introduced in one title would pop up again in another.
Part of the reason for having this continuity was that kids would become fans of the whole range of Superman titles,
rather than just one book. If you were interested in Mon-El when he first appeared in Superboy in 1961, then you’d
want to pick up Adventure Comics in 1963, when he joined the Legion of Super-Heroes. Having this shared base of
characters and ideas created a full-blown mythology that you could follow over years, and feel rewarded for your
long-term investment in the books.
More importantly, sharing the ideas across titles meant that the writers had more to work with, as they churned out
story after story. These days, when most superhero fans are adults, a single comic book story lasts for six issues,
which get collected in a paperback book. During the Silver Age, the stories were written for middle schoolers, so
each title usually had two to three different short stories per issue. On the rare occasions that they ran a single 26-
page story in an issue, they would call it a “novel” and make a big deal about it.
So they were burning up story ideas incredibly quickly — in 1963, for example, between the six Superman titles,
they published 56 issues with a total of 124 stories. That’s more than ten different Superman stories every month for
years and years.
Imagine that you had to write ten Superman stories this month, according to the following principles:
Each story has to include several opportunities for using superpowers;
The good guys always win;
Nobody ever dies or gets seriously injured;
You can’t obviously recycle any previous Superman stories that have ever been written;
At least six of the ten stories have a shocking visual hook that would make a good cover.
Under those circumstances, you would be desperate for any story-productive gimmick that could help you generate
next month’s batch.
So you invent super-pets, and time travel devices, and robot duplicates, and different colors of Kryptonite that each
affect the character in a different way, and a world where everything is backwards, and a tiny city that exists in a
glass jar in a super-secret clubhouse/wax museum. You invent a whole new category of story — the “imaginary
story” — so that sometimes characters could die or get married, without screwing up the whole enterprise.
And for our purposes, today — you invent an extra dimension full of angry telepathic Kryptonian criminals.
And you do it in a story that starts like it’s an advertisement for IBM Selectric typewriters, obviously. This is “The
Phantom Superboy” from Adventure Comics #283 (April 1961), and it starts at the Kents’ general store, where young
Clark Kent eagerly tells his pal Lana, “I’ve been trying out the first electric typewriter on the market! It just arrived
today!”
This was extremely trendy in 1961, because IBM had just released the Selectric — a big update from previous
electric typewriters because it used a “typeball” rather than having a separate key for each letter. That might not get
your heart racing, but Clark and his friend Lana Lang are enchanted by it.
There’s even a one-panel how-to guide: “First, you must be sure the machine is plugged in! Then turn the switch to
the ‘ON’ position! You don’t ‘hit’ the keys! You barely touch them, because this machine practically does everything
by itself!”
Clark goes on, “It has terrific speed and sensitivity! Everything’s done by electricity, except the brainwork! After all,
one must do something for oneself!”
Now, I’m sure at this point you’re wondering why I’m wasting your time talking about typewriters, but this is the
reason that the Phantom Zone exists, and it’s not my fault.
You see, Lana makes the observation that brainwaves are electrical impulses, so if someone had super-strong
brainwaves, then they could operate the typewriter without even touching the keys, and that’s such a silly idea that
they decided to write a whole story around it.
So then a mystery box full of dangerous Kryptonian junk lands in the New Mexico desert, as so often happens, and
naturally Superboy opens it and starts messing around with it.
“Warning!” the instruction manual says, in Kryptonese. “The contents of this box are weapons developed by
advanced Kryptonese science! We of Krypton consider them too dangerous to keep. We have therefore sealed them
in a container, placed the container in a satellite rocket and launched it into outer space, where the weapons can
never menace our planet!”
You may have noticed that whenever Kryptonians are holding something hot, they decide to send it out into space,
where it will never be seen by anyone ever again. This is why the anti-roxxers refused to go into space when Jor-El
said that the planet was going to be destroyed. For Kryptonians, the rest of the galaxy was just a garbage dump for
whatever they wanted to get rid of.
Naturally, having perused this deep-time nuclear-waste disposal warning, Superboy immediately tries out every
single thing that he finds in the box, including an electro-atomic evaporation ray, which destroys a mountain, and an
enlarger ray, which turns a nearby lizard into a giant dinosaur, which falls down a hill and breaks its own neck.
Pleased with his success, Superboy tries on a thought helmet which explains the Phantom Zone ray. “Hearken,
wearer of the helmet!” it cries. “Until outlawed by the rulers of Krypton, yonder weapon was used as a means of
punishing criminals.” I have no idea why it’s talking like the waiter at Medieval Times. “By pressing the black button,
convicts were projected into a Phantom Zone for the duration of their sentence, after which time they could be
recalled only by pressing the white button!”
The helmet tells Superboy about the first couple of prisoners sentenced to the Phantom Zone, including General
Zod, “who used a duplicator ray to create a private army to overthrow the government!” In the panel, a prosecutor
who isn’t wearing pants shows off a squad of Zod’s robots, who were all imperfect duplicates bent on overthrowing
the current government and installing Zod as dictator.
Of course, Superboy — whose family motto might as well be “fuck around and find out” — winds up accidentally
projected into the Phantom Zone himself, where he can’t communicate with anybody who can help him undo it. He
blames the lizard, although honestly, Superboy? Reptiles are not the problem here.
The Kents don’t know where Superboy is, so the next morning, they decide to activate the Clark Kent robot to take
his place — which is exactly the thing that General Zod was sentenced to the Phantom Zone for. It’s no wonder
everybody on Krypton hated this family.
As I said, this all turns out to be a weird infomercial for electric typewriters, so Superboy uses his super brainwaves
to type an SOS message for his dad.
Pa Kent uses the PZ ray to bring Superboy back to the material plane, and Superboy decides to dump the Kryptonian
mystery box in the ocean, because once you drop something in the ocean, it will never be seen by anyone ever
again, sigh.
The story ends with an explicit message that the writers recognize that this plot device has future story potential.
“Maybe some day when I grow up,” Superboy muses, “I’ll revisit the Phantom Zone and meet all the criminals from
Krypton who are still there!”
As it turns out, they return to it only two months later, in Superboy #89 (June 1961), when Superboy needs to find a
place to stash a new friend who he’s just fatally poisoned with lead. With no real understanding of what he’s doing,
Superboy sends Mon-El into the Phantom Zone, and promises that he’ll let him out once he finds a cure for Mon-El’s
condition, which he one hundred percent does not ever do.
And just a few months after that, in Adventure Comics #289 (Oct 1961), a madman named Jax-Ur escapes because
“a passing comet created a momentary warp in the Phantom Zone”, whatever that means. This is the story where
it’s revealed that all of the criminals evaporated on Krypton now hang around on Earth for some reason, watching
everything that everyone else does and muttering curses and imprecations, just waiting for their own chance to slip
out through the back pasture and cause trouble for thirteen pages.
This was followed in 1962 by seven more stories about the Phantom Zone baddies. Just in May 1962 alone, there
were PZ stories in three different titles. In Superman, eight criminals escaped through a hole torn by an atomic test
blast and moved into a deserted mining town; in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane, a temporarily unbalanced Lana
Lang sent both Lois Lane and Superman’s mermaid friend Lori Lemaris into the Phantom Zone; and in Action Comics,
Jax-Ur hypnotized Supergirl’s father into creating a Phantom Zone-destroying solvent made out of, I am not joking,
Supergirl’s tears.
So there was Jax-Ur and Zax-Ur, Kru-El and Tor-An, Dr. Xadu, Professor Vakox and General Zod. There was the brilliant
scientist Quex-Ul, who got mindwiped and ended up with a minimum wage job at the Daily Planet, and Ras-Krom,
whose dastardly plan to dress up in a long beard and steal Russia’s atomic missiles was foiled because he believed in
the Kryptonian superstition that if you see a comet then you need to go hide in a cave for 24 hours.
In fact, from 1961 to 1964, there were eighteen different Phantom Zone jailbreaks, not even counting the dozen
times when they menaced a regular person who got stuck in the Zone. People talk about how great Krypton was,
but if this was their justice system, then the recidivism rate is off the charts.
But that was life during the Silver Age, when the writers were trying to generate as many stories as possible. If they
struck on a productive gimmick like the Phantom Zone, they would keep on using it, passing it back and forth
between different writers and titles, and putting a weird new spin on the idea every time.
This happens all the time in superhero comics, because long-running serialized narrative is basically a process of
natural selection for story ideas. A weak idea, like Superman falling in love with a mermaid, tends to drop out after a
while, because there aren’t that many stories that you can write about it. But a strong idea, like a hidden dimension
filled with angry telepathic ghosts with superpowers who all hate Superman like poison, will get picked up and used
and embroidered over time, passing from one writer to another.
That’s how a weird little idea like the Phantom Zone — apparently conceived as a gimmick to give Superboy a reason
to communicate by brainwaves through an electric typewriter — makes its way across the years, and into a movie
script written by the guy who wrote The Godfather.
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is why my clients should be found not guilty, by reason of the story
concept’s insanity. The defense rests.
Footnotes:
In Richard Donner’s commentary on the Extended Edition DVD, he talks about the Phantom Zone diamond effect,
saying, “Now, what you’re about to see was an effect that I saw that Sunday, on a commercial for cereal. That — that
thing. And we called the company and they came in, and designed this piece, and it was actually from a commercial.
It’s that two-dimensional piece that spins around.”
Does anyone know what cereal commercial he’s talking about? I’m just curious; I can’t imagine seeing that effect in a
70s cereal commercial.
Superman 1.9: Staff Meeting in Space
It’s basically like Footloose, if everybody in Footloose was a glowing space angel, and instead of dancing it was
saving your civilization from a global cataclysm. I suppose when you think about it, it’s not really that much like
Footloose.
But it’s striking, after a first scene that was specifically constructed to establish that Jor-El is the primary
representative of the Krypton way of life, to go straight into a scene where all of a sudden he’s the wild one, a teen
rebel trying to get through to the jive turkeys who are running the place. They refuse to listen, of course; that’s
standard practice for jive turkeys. Everything on Krypton seems to be either crystalline or circular, but if there’s such
a thing as a square on this planet, then these people are the squares.
And this appears to happen immediately after Jor-El’s successful prosecution, when you’d think everybody would be
high-fiving him. But he’s changed out of his black executioner gown, and into his white heavenly-host staff meeting
gown, and now he’s in trouble. Jor-El does not get a lot of downtime.
It’s the gowns, really, that elevate this scene into the realm of art. The comics pictured Jor-El a bunch of times
between 1939 and 1978, and he was usually dressed in a sci-fi tunic with a cape, in some combination of red, green
and yellow. The 1948 version pictured above was an outlier in having a red shirt with a yellow circle; the many late-
50s appearances were remarkably consistent, with a green tunic, yellow circle and red accessories.
This look is obviously intended to reflect Superman’s circus-strongman costume, but tweaking the bold primary
colors by replacing the deep blue with a more alien green. It looks standard-issue outer-spacey, as seen in Buck
Rogers, Flash Gordon and the thousand copycats that followed, with accents at the shoulder that evoke a military
uniform.
In contrast, the impossibly shiny white costumes worn by the film’s Kryptonians look like nothing on earth. I’m just
going to go ahead and assert that the whole point of a superhero movie is to show us things we’ve never seen
before, and so far the movie has delivered spectacularly. There’s the revolving hula-hoops machine, the black-box-
theater projected faces, the diamond Phantom Zone effect, and now these incredible costumes.
The material is used for cinema screens, and it’s made out of miniscule balls of glass. When the flying unit was
testing front projection — having the actor holding still, while they project film on a screen behind him — they
noticed that this material lit up with a blinding reflection when the light hit it in a specific way.
So they cut the material into little strips and made the costumes, and mounted a front projection box on each of the
cameras. The light from the projection box bounces off a mirror and hits the glass beads, and then the beads reflect
that blinding flash back to the camera. It’s both literally and figuratively brilliant, and it’s the kind of trick you can
only use once.
They had to use cotton gloves to handle the material, because it would lose its shine if you touched it by hand —
and unfortunately, now that I know that, I get nervous when I see the shot of Jor-El putting his hands on the other
guy’s shoulders, because I’m thinking, dude, don’t touch the material! But maybe Marlon Brando’s hands are made
of star stuff, and it doesn’t matter.
Another remarkable thing about this scene is how still Jor-El is. He knows that everyone on the planet will die if
these science quacks don’t listen to him, and if there was ever a moment for spluttering frustration, this would be it.
But Brando moves slowly through the scene, absolutely assured of his facts.
“This planet will explode within thirty days, if not sooner,” he patiently explains, not raising his voice. Asked to be
reasonable, his response is, “My friend, I have never been otherwise. This madness is yours.”
He’s not yelling at them, because he knows how this meeting is going to end, and how their world will end. He
speaks the truth, knowing that it won’t change anything. These people are already dead. He’s just sad about it.
This atmosphere of stillness and resignation is a break from previous versions of the scene, which often have the
council either laughing (as in Superman #53) or shouting (as in the 1940 radio show). There’s usually some kind of
uproar when Jor-El goes into his Cassandra routine.
But these people aren’t laughing. These people are terrified of him.
As in the previous scene, Jor-El is the most important person in the room, the man who commands all available
attention. Whether he’s the hero or the goat, everything else exists in relationship to him.
It’s not clear what they think he will do, if defied, but they are desperately worried about it. They act as if a single
word from him could bring down the planet’s entire power structure. When they all stand together on the opposite
side of the room, it could look like they’re threatening him. Instead, it looks like they’re huddling together for safety.
And that’s why you need a real A-1 bonafide movie star in this role, even if you have to pay him ridiculous money to
do it. You need a guy who’s spent the last three decades actually being the most important person in any room he’s
walked into.
The heavenly host is arrayed against him, and he concedes the point. And then their entire world is consumed in
fire, as they feared it would be, if they crossed him. Stay tuned for the biggest “I told you so” in galactic history.
Superman 1.10: Crazy Little Thing Called Love
So Plan B, as I understand it, was to get everybody in the science council to sign off on constructing a fleet of
massive space arks, which would carry the entire population of Krypton to a planet that’s not scheduled to blow up
within the next thirty days.
I imagine that Plan C was for Jor-El to just take his own wife and baby in a family-sized rocket ride to elsewhere, but
then the stupid science council said that would create a climate of fear and panic, so he had to promise that he and
Lara wouldn’t leave the planet.
They’re currently working on Plan D, which is to at least get the kid somewhere with a supply of passing motorists
and farm families, and even that’s getting the science council all worked up, so they’re going to have to work fast.
Meanwhile, Lara is advocating for some unspecified Plan E. It would have been easier if they could have stuck with
Plan A, which was for the planet just not to blow up in the first place.
So Jackie Cooper is terrible as Perry White, is I think my message at the outset of this post. He’s surrounded by
screwball comedy characters at the Daily Planet, and he doesn’t have a single funny line. He doesn’t listen to any of
the other actors; he’s just waiting for his chance to do the blandest possible take on his next line.
He was fourth choice for the role, brought on the set in a big hurry and dressed up in shirt sleeves and a tie. First
choice was Jack Klugman, who would have been perfect; Klugman could have been Perry White first thing in the
morning, with fifteen seconds notice. But at the last minute, Klugman turned them down, and their backup choice,
Eddie Albert, wanted too much money. Then they hired Keenan Wynn, but as soon as he arrived, he had chest pains
and had to go to the hospital. So they called Jackie Cooper and basically just told him to get on a plane, and they’d
tell him what the part was when he arrived. Apparently there was some kind of Jackie Cooper delivery service that
you could call when you wanted one.
That’s not today’s problem, of course; we don’t have to deal with him until 48:30, which is around 35 minutes away
from where we’re currently standing, and even when he’s there, we won’t have to pay him that much attention. I’m
just bringing him up now because I’ve already written two posts this week about how great Marlon Brando is, and
I’m about to write about how great Susannah York is, and I don’t want you to think that I’m a suck-up.
Because, damn it, Susannah York brings it in this scene; there is no way around it. She appears as Superman’s mom
for a total of six minutes in this movie, and it breaks my heart just to look at her.
Admittedly, it’s not hard for a professional actor to key in to their character’s feelings when you’re playing a mother
who has no choice but to put her newborn baby in a catapult and fling him into the outer darkness. I’m not saying
it’s easy, but you don’t need weeks of sense memory and animal work to get there. Lots of people could play this
part. I’m just saying that Susannah York is one of them, and I like looking at her while she’s doing it.
Of course, it helps that the script gives them the absolute minimum number of words to get the scene across, and
then stays out of their way and lets them do their job. Here’s the whole thing:
Lara: Have you finished?
Jor-El: Nearly.
(He walks towards her.)
Jor-El: This is the only answer, Lara. If he remains here with us, he will die as surely as we will.
Lara: But why Earth, Jor-El? They’re primitives, thousands of years behind us!
Jor-El: He will need that advantage to survive. Their atmosphere will… will sustain him.
(His gaze rests on the baby in his wife’s arms. Then Jor-El moves to the structure that he’s working on. She follows.)
Lara: He will defy their gravity.
Jor-El: He will look like one of them.
Lara: He won’t be one of them.
Jor-El: No. His dense molecular structure will make him strong.
Lara: He’ll be odd. Different.
Jor-El: He will be fast. Virtually invulnerable.
Lara: Isolated. Alone.
Jor-El: He will not be alone.
(He peers closely at the crystal in his hand.)
Jor-El: He will never be alone.
And that’s it.
It’s ninety-seven words long. Two long shots, a couple medium shots and a brief flutter of close-ups, in an avant-
garde performance space that we’ve all agreed to pretend is an aerospace research lab. The only splashes of color in
the scene are the baby’s swaddling clothes, and the echo of those colors in Lara’s hair and face. One of the actors
spends most of the scene very specifically not looking at the other actor.
I have watched that scene dozens of times now, and it repays my attention every time. If any of the people involved
had not done their jobs precisely the way they were supposed to — the writer, the actors, the director, the set
designer, the costume designer, the cinematographer — it would have been silly sci-fi B-movie trash. It is
breathtakingly good.
One of the things that I like best about it is the simple back-and-forth rhythm that starts halfway through the scene:
He will look like one of them. He won’t be one of them. He’ll be odd, different. He’ll be fast, virtually invulnerable.
Isolated. Alone. He will not be alone. He will never be alone.
I was really bad at analyzing poetic rhythm in college — feet and trochees and spondees and anapests — to the
extent that I had to stop studying English poetry and fell into bad company and French literary theory instead, where
all you needed to know were made-up words that don’t mean anything, so I can’t say exactly why the rhythm of that
dialogue appeals to me the way that it does. But it is elevated above the plane of ordinary speech, and I think it’s
beautiful.
And the interesting thing — yes, don’t worry, there’s an interesting thing — is that this scene was in the
Newman/Benton script, and it sucked. What we see on the screen is the rewrite by “creative consultant” Tom
Mankiewicz. Here’s how it would have been, without him:
INT. JOR-EL’S LABORATORY – KRYPTON NIGHT
A large room with complicated equipment scattered everywhere. Jor-El is working on something that looks like a
computer in the center of the room. LARA, Jor-El’s wife, enters and watches him as he places glowing crystals into
the heart of the machine.
JOR-EL
I have programmed the memory cells with
answers to the problems he will face.
Lara does not seem impressed.
JOR-EL
(firmly)
It’s the only logical conclusion. If he remains
here, he’ll be as dead as…
LARA
— as we will be.
JOR-EL
Lara, please…
LARA
But why Earth, Jor-El? They’re practically animals.
JOR-EL
(patiently)
They are primitive, Lara, but they are not animals.
LARA
A million years behind us.
(pleading)
Jor-El, he’s only a baby.
JOR-EL
(comforting)
Their atmosphere will sustain him. He will look
like one of them.
LARA
He’ll be weightless.
JOR-EL
Yes, true. But on other worlds there would be other problems —
heat, cold, no life, no life support systems… No, Lara, believe me;
Earth is the least of evils. On Earth, his lighter gravity will render
him almost weightless – that can’t be helped. But with his denser
molecular structure, he will also be strong.
(trying to see the good)
He will be fast; he will be virtually invulnerable.
LARA
(despair)
He will be odd, different.
JOR-EL
(conceding)
Well, physiologically, he… won’t quite fit.
That version hits exactly the same beats, and almost all of the ninety-seven words in the finished scene are in there.
But Mankiewicz took out the clunky lines, like “Jor-El, he’s only a baby,” and “that can’t be helped”. He shaped the
words into that back-and-forth rhythm, and he wrote a real ending to the scene — “He will not be alone; he will
never be alone” — instead of the disappointing “physiologically, he won’t quite fit.”
And best of all, Mankiewicz cut the following section completely, which would have been intolerable.
JOR-EL
(urgent)
Lara, there isn’t much time.
She turns away from him.
JOR-EL
(patiently reasoning with her)
You see…
(warmly)
You still have some vestiges of primitive…
what is the word they used to say?
LARA
‘Feelings.’
JOR-EL
You’ve been doing some research in the archives.
LARA
I want to know what my child is going
to face.
JOR-EL
(smiles)
Then you have one of those ‘feelings.’
It was called: ‘love.’
A sudden tremor produces an ominous CREAKING SOUND, growing LOUDER. Now a large crack appears in the wall.
Instinctively, Lara runs to her husband’s arm for safety. Then, at the last second, she overcomes this “weakness” and
steps back from him.
LARA
And you? Don’t you feel something?
On Jor-El – as he turns away, unable to admit the emotion he feels.
So, I mean, fuck that. Right?
You’re intelligent people, and I’m sure that I don’t have to explain why that would have been juvenile and
embarrassing, but I’ll do it, just to have it on the record.
Terrible underlying concept #1: Logic and reason are male, and therefore associated with strength; love and emotion
are female, and therefore associated with weakness.
Terrible underlying concept #2: As civilizations advance, they become more logical and less emotional, stepping
upward from the primitive instincts of the female, toward the higher achievements of the rational male. If you
project far enough into the future, civilization would become so rational and science-based that they would even
forget the word for “feelings”.
Now, there are vestiges of that primitive worldview in the finished scene — the man is talking about powers and
advantages; the woman is talking about feelings and fears. Ultimately, we’re expected to believe that Jor-El’s more-
or-less rational plan is the correct answer, and that Lara’s emotional response doesn’t actually accomplish anything.
But Brando as Jor-El is clearly feeling this loss as deeply as she is; he’s just got a different way of expressing it. She’s
trying to catch his eye, and he just stands there playing with his crystals, because in that moment, he can’t face her.
Of course he feels love for his son, and pain at their parting; that’s why he’s constructed this elaborate years-long
Powerpoint presentation that he’s packing into the spacecraft.
So this moment belongs on the Tom Mankiewicz honor list: another bullet deflected by a smart script doctor. Maybe
civilization is advancing, after all.
Superman 1.11: A Misuse of Energy
You think you’re having a hard day? Try being a tinfoil cop in a Superman movie.
I mean, there’s no glory in this. Everybody else on Krypton looks like a gorgeous space angel on graduation day,
decked out in starstuff. Not you, though. You look like an asshole.
This, if you’re not familiar, is Officer Jiffy Pop the Science Cop, Krypton’s thin tin line and the only thing that stands
between us and an actual scene from Superman: The Movie. Don’t get too attached, cause he’s not going to be with
us for very long. In fact, if you only watch the theatrical cut, as God intended, then you won’t see him at all.
In the 2000 Director’s Cut, the gentleman shows up right after the Jor-El/Lara scene discussed in the last post, which
ended with Jor-El saying, “He will not be alone. He will never be alone.” Then there’s a cut to the science council,
who are once again standing around and fretting. Jor-El gave them a pinky-promise that he and his wife wouldn’t
leave the planet, but apparently they’re not not-leaving the planet enough, because the council still has that empty,
thwarted feeling.
“The energy input to Jor-El’s quarters is now in excess,” says the vision in silver. “Our data indicates the loss is due to
a misuse of energy.” These people are moments away from falling into a crevasse, and melting in the hot magma of
a planet they all thought was just shifting its orbit a little bit to the left.
“Investigate!” says Elder #1, who simply hates it when energy is misused.
“And if the investigation proves… correct?” asks Elder #2.
Elder #1 sighs. “He knew the penalty he faced, even as a member of this council.”
Shot of Elder #2, looking grave.
“The law will be upheld!” Elder #1 declares, and the investigator vanishes with a little swooshing noise, leaving the
hula hoops to revolve on their own. And he’s never seen again, unless you’re watching one of the TV cuts, in which
case he is.
So today it is my task to introduce to you the many different versions of Superman: The Movie, which are difficult to
keep track of, because some of them have multiple names and they all sound alike.
Here’s the breakdown:
Theatrical version (1978): The film that was released to movie theaters, otherwise known as the actual movie. 143
minutes.
ABC-TV version (1982): The film as it first aired on ABC-TV in February 1982 as a two-night event, including lots of
deleted scenes and extra footage. 182 minutes.
KCOP version (1994): Another TV version of the film, which is six minutes longer than ABC’s, including two complete
scenes that had never been seen before. It’s known as “KCOP” because that’s the LA station that first aired it. 188
minutes.
Director’s Cut, also known as the Expanded Edition and the Special Edition (2000): Another cut of the film which
Richard Donner had some input into, which they thought might get a theatrical release. That didn’t happen, but it
was released on DVD. 151 minutes.
Extended Cut (2017): A remastered version of the KCOP cut in original widescreen format, released on Blu-ray. 188
minutes.
I’d probably have a decent chance of keeping this all in my head at the same time, if it wasn’t for the “Expanded”
version and the “Extended” version, which I get mixed up beyond all remedy. Also, it turns out there are several
other TV cuts of varying lengths, and I’m not sure the director was that involved in the Director’s Cut.
Naturally, at this point you’re asking, why are the other cuts so much longer than the theatrical version?
This is why: Superman had been a huge box-office hit in 1978/79, and then played to limited audiences on HBO.
There wasn’t such a thing as “home video” back then, so if you wanted to see Superman again, which everyone did,
then you had to wait for a TV network to show it. So the first network to air the film was guaranteed a huge
audience, and the Salkinds, who held the TV rights, knew that the networks would pay a premium price for it.
ABC wanted the film, but the 143-minute running time was inconvenient. Adding commercials would bring that to
180 minutes, which would air from 8pm to 11pm, and that was a problem. So I need to take a moment — and you
can not imagine how elderly this makes me feel — and explain to younger readers what “prime-time” used to mean.
Gather round, children, and I will tell you a tale.
Back in the old days, when people wanted to watch a television program, they had to sit in front of the TV at a
specific time, and if you didn’t, then you couldn’t. There was no way to control what happened on your own TV set.
You couldn’t put a show on your watchlist and catch up a couple days later — in fact, you couldn’t even pause it
when you wanted to go to the bathroom. It was like having a wild animal in the house that did whatever it wanted.
Obviously, Superman was going to be a huge hit with the whole family, so it needed to air in the 8-10pm slot, before
the kids went to bed. They could fit Superman into two hours if they cut a lot out, but that wouldn’t make anyone
happy. Really, the only way to do it was to expand the movie to 4 hours of network TV, and show it over two nights
as a special event.
The Salkinds said sure, no problem. Donner had shot a lot more footage than he actually used; that’s why they’d
fired him in the middle of the second movie. So there were lots of longer takes, and alternate takes, and several
sequences that were cut entirely. If they threw all of that together, then they could bump up the running time to 182
minutes, plus 58 minutes of commercials to fill the four-hour time slot. Then they dredged up another six minutes in
1994, mostly to sell to overseas markets, which brought the film to a bloated 188 minutes.
So what’s in those extra 45 minutes? Well, there are a few things that I think are worthwhile, including a couple lines
in the science council scene that actually mention the Phantom Zone by name.
For example, when Elder #1 threatens Jor-El, he specifies, “You would be banished to endless imprisonment in the
Phantom Zone. The eternal void, which you yourself discovered.”
I can see why that line was cut — the Phantom Zone doesn’t really become germane until the second movie, and
the second sentence is terribly clunky. But I can see potential value there.
But then there’s the Krypton Kop, who is terrible. In the actual movie, there are two scenes of Jor-El, Lara and the
baby, and they’re separated by a dramatic establishing shot of Krypton. In the TV version, between those two
scenes, there’s the scene described above, with the Elders telling this investigator to go and investigate.
Again, the reason why they cut this is obvious: it doesn’t accomplish anything, and it distracts from the family
drama. Theoretically, it’s there to add some more urgency to the situation — Jor-El needs to get that spaceship up
into the sky before the lawman shows up at the lab.
But you can’t really add any more dramatic urgency, when the whole planet is moments away from exploding. That
ticking clock is already about as emphatic as you can get.
There’s even more of the security guard in the Extended TV cut — an extra six and a half seconds of his helmet as he
travels to Jor-El’s place, and then, once the planet starts coming apart, this ludicrous two-second shot of the guard’s
eyes as he meets his unmourned end.
On the whole, the extra footage just slows things down, rather than adding anything of value. And then they added
58 minutes of commercials over the two nights, so the whole thing was a pretty raw trick to play on the children of
America. I guess some people just live in a house with no mirrors, so they don’t have to look at themselves in the
morning.
Over the next couple decades, different versions of the film aired on TV, and once people had VCRs, fans started to
trade increasingly blurry tapes of the extra material. The official VHS and DVD releases just had the original
theatrical version, but there was clearly some appetite for a longer cut.
In 2000, editor Michael Thau worked with Donner to create the Director’s Cut, which is eight minutes longer than
the theatrical film and not really very much better.
Thau actually wanted to cut some material from the original film — Lois’ poem from the flying sequence, and a
couple minutes of the car chase scene — but Donner said no, so those scenes stayed. The new cut does include the
Krypton cop scene and the apologizing-to-Dad scene, which in my opinion do not improve the experience.
The Blu-ray box says that the Director’s Cut is “Richard Donner’s definitive vision of his film,” but if that’s the case,
then it’s unclear why he didn’t release that in the first place. As far as I know, there aren’t any stories about Warner
Bros or the Salkinds forcing him to cut scenes that he wanted to include. The Salkinds were lifetime subscribers to
the bigger-is-better club, and they’re the ones that added all the footage they could find, just four years later.
In fact, I would suggest that the motivation to add some more footage for the 2001 DVD release may have been that
the fans were more likely to buy new box sets if they incorporated at least some of the material from the TV
versions. Then in 2017, for the Blu-ray release, Warner Bros just went ahead and put out the entire 188-minute
“Extended Cut” TV version, along with the 151-minute “Expanded Edition” Director’s Cut.
In a 2018 interview, Donner said,
“The original cut that was released in theatres was my cut, and anything else I had nothing to do with. That long
television version had nothing to do with what I thought was the proper version. If there are other versions floating
around, I have no idea where they came from. At certain points in your life, you lose control of a film. I thought it
was foolish — everything that I had taken out of the film, they put back in. It was stupid. But anything for money.”
In the end, this is another iteration of the endless struggle between Art and Commerce, which is still going on, four
decades after the movie’s release. Luckily, this is the only superhero movie that ever had problems like this, so
everything from here on is going to be smooth sailing. Somebody break open Jiffy Pop’s helmet, and let’s have some
popcorn.
Superman 1.12: Glass Houses
Everything is crystals, for some reason, so it’s honestly difficult to tell how much of this is the computer and how
much is interior design. The way that you activate it is to take one of the crystals, and put it into one of the glass
tubes, and then you take it out again, and put it down in a big stack of identical crystals. Every once in a while, one
of the crystals turns green, if that helps. You know, they say that any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic, but there’s still such a thing as a user interface.
As we’ve seen, Jor-El is a powerful and intelligent science wizard, but like all parents, he has a hard time wrapping up
a phone call.
“You will travel far, my little Kal-El,” he says, strapping the baby into his personal spacecraft. “But we will never leave
you, even in the face of our death.” The kid shifts restlessly in his car seat.
“The richness of our lives shall be yours,” Jor-El continues. “All that I have, all that I’ve learned, everything that I feel,
all this and more, I bequeath you, my son.” I swear, this is the end of every phone call I’ve ever had with my mother.
“You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life,” Jor-El goes on. “You will make my strength your own, see my
life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son.
This is all I can send you, Kal-El.”
Meanwhile, the kid is like, Okay, do you just want to come? Because I am not getting any younger here, and if I stick
around, I’m not going to get a lot older. Maybe a little less talk and a little more altitude, Pops.
Then there’s a muffled, rumbling thud from outside, which is the planetary catastrophe version of Hey, sounds like
my ride’s here.
Jor-El moves across the room towards something that for the sake of argument I’m going to call the control panel,
and he touches one crystal with his left index finger and one crystal with his right index finger, and that, as they say,
is that.
And from that point, everything goes exactly as planned. The Last Son of Krypton ascends in his experimental
lifeboat, the world’s first crèche test dummy.
And he rises, an innocent child elevated into the infinite, on a one-way trip toward every medium that’s ever been
invented. He has an honorable discharge from his origin story, and experienced his last restful moment. It’s all flying,
from now on.
Oh, and he’s also the first Kryptonian infant to break through the glass ceiling. This is a typical act of destruction; it
wouldn’t be Kal-El if he wasn’t smashing some kind of architecture.
And then — who could have predicted it? — the civilization made entirely of chandeliers comes to its inevitable
messy end.
So that’s a wrap on the home planet, as the science council comes to the hasty conclusion that Jor-El might have
known what he was talking about. To be fair, the planet’s orbit does shift a bit, so maybe we could call it a draw.
Ultimately, they died of a lack of imagination; they simply couldn’t conceive of a situation where they might be
wrong. And then, avoidably, their world dies.
“Ha! Ha!” they said. “We have observed Earth people with our astro-telescopes! They are thousands of eons behind
us, mentally and physically! Why, they do not even possess X-ray vision!”
“Would you send us to live among such a people, Jor-El?” they said. “Death is preferable to life in such a world of
inferior people.”
“What you tell us is sheer nonsense,” they said. “Krypton is not doomed, nor will it ever be!”
“If Krypton is to die,” they said, “we shall die with it.”
And then they died, repentant and concluded. And that’s why you always leave a note.
Superman 1.13: … Except for Star Wars
A planet explodes into fragments, and boils away into the void. A tiny space capsule streaks across the stars, heading
for a crash landing on a seemingly unimportant planet. An orphan with a destiny grows up on a farm, unaware that
he’s the latest in a line of noble heroes.
With a blend of space opera, high-stakes action, romance, danger and comic relief on an epic scale, Superman: The
Movie was the biggest, most exciting cinema spectacle of its time… except for Star Wars, which did the same stuff
but bigger, better, and eighteen months earlier.
Time-wise, it easily could have been the other way around. The Salkinds acquired the film rights to Superman in
November 1974, when George Lucas was still wrestling with his first draft. Production on Superman was planned to
start in November 1975, months before filming started on Star Wars. But then Mario Puzo’s script was too long, and
they couldn’t find anybody to play Superman, and they had to move from Rome to London, and get a new director.
Principal photography on Superman finally started in March 1977 — and two months later, the whole world
changed.
It’s impossible for us now to hear the words Star Wars the way they must have sounded back then, when they were
just a couple of boring nouns, and not a genre-defining media juggernaut. It helps if you imagine that it was called
Sky Battles. So on the one hand, you have a movie about Superman — at the time probably the best-known fictional
character besides Mickey Mouse and already a massively popular comic book, comic strip, radio show and television
show — and on the other hand, you have Sky Battles, which nobody’s ever heard of. Which one would you expect to
be the box office sensation of the decade?
Now, this blog is a history of superhero movies, and one of the big questions I want to examine is why it took 25
years for Hollywood to realize that “superhero” was a profitable genre that everybody needed to get involved in.
You’d think it would be obvious right away. Superman: The Movie made $134 million domestic, more than any other
movie in 1979 or 1980 (…except for The Empire Strikes Back). In 1981, Superman II made $109 million, crushing
everything else released that year.
That would have been a record-breaking success for a sci-fi/fantasy film… except for Star Wars, which made $307
million on first release, and stayed in first-run theaters for an incredibly long time. Star Wars was the #1 movie in
1977 and the #8 movie in 1978, and was still making first-run money well into 1979.
Superman did well, when compared to similar mid-70s blockbusters: Jaws (1975, $261 million), King Kong (1976, $52
million) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, $116 million). In that market, if Star Wars hadn’t happened,
Superman could have been the breakthrough family-friendly blockbuster that redefined what big movies look like.
But it arrived eighteen months late, when people were still showing up at Star Wars for the fifteenth time.
And it was Star Wars that inspired a massive copycat trend of action-adventure space opera. Television bit first —
Battlestar Galactica began in 1978, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 1979. Hitting the theaters in 1979, there
was Star Trek: The Motion Picture and H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come, followed by Flash Gordon, Galaxina
and Battle Beyond the Stars in 1980, as well as cheap Italian ripoffs like Starcrash and Star Odyssey. Even James Bond
went to space, in 1979’s Moonraker.
Some of this took advantage of existing intellectual property — Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers — which was
easily repurposed in Star Wars’ wake. But there was plenty of superhero IP sitting there on the table, and nobody
really wanted it, outside of Saturday morning cartoons. There was a short-lived live-action Spider-Man TV series in
1978, and a well-received Incredible Hulk series from 1978 to 1982, but nobody making films had any interest in
following the example of Superman: The Movie.
Nobody else rushed in to take advantage of the demonstrated audience appetite for comic book heroes. The next
big-budget investment in superheroes was in 1989, with Batman. Not counting the weird, unsuccessful exceptions of
Swamp Thing and Howard the Duck, Superman and the Salkinds basically owned this entire space — which we now
recognize as an apparently limitless gold mine — entirely unchallenged for ten years.
So I think we can’t really understand Superman and the birth of the superhero blockbuster without reckoning with
Star Wars. At this moment in the movie — Kal-El’s spangly star cruiser speeding away from the doomed planet of
Krypton — the audience is supposed to be spellbound by this epic journey across the galaxy. But we’d just seen
World War I dogfights in space, and in that context, Superman’s spaceflight looks simplistic and tame.
This is a big topic which is going to unfold over time, so for now, I’m going to suggest two areas where I think Star
Wars has an obvious advantage over Superman: character collection, and the limits of verisimilitude.
By “character collection”, I mean that Star Wars doesn’t actually have more characters in it than Superman does, but
it feels like it does.
Comparing the main characters, Star Wars has nine — Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, Ben Kenobi,
Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin — and Superman has somewhere between eight and eleven — I’d definitely
count Clark, Lois, Jimmy, Perry, Lex Luthor, Otis, Eve and Jor-El, and maybe include Lara, Ma and Pa Kent for
perceived importance, even if they don’t get a lot of total screen time.
For secondary speaking parts, Star Wars has Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, Stormtroopers, Jawas, generals, black-clad
Death Star employees, rebel pilots, and miscellaneous scum and villainy, while Superman has the Science Council,
the Phantom Zoners, Lana and the Smallville teens, a mugger, a news vendor, an assortment of reporters, soldiers
and helicopter guys, Lois’ indigenous friend, Metropolis onlookers and rubberneckers, a girl with a lost cat, and a
little room full of guys concerned about an out-of-control missile.
But in Superman, the characters exist in little isolated bubbles: Jor-El and Lara on Krypton, Ma and Pa Kent in
Smallville, the Daily Planet reporters, Luthor and his associates. Superman has experiences with each group, but
people in one group never interact with any of the others. In fact, by the end of the film, I’m not sure that Lois
knows that there even is such a person as Lex Luthor.
Star Wars feels like it has a bigger and more exciting cast, because they spend a lot of time collecting all the main
characters, as seen in The Muppet Movie and The Wizard of Oz, and then those characters stick around for the rest
of the film. Luke meets up with C-3PO and R2-D2, and then they find Ben Kenobi; Ben helps them recruit Han Solo
and Chewbacca, and they all go and rescue Princess Leia. Assembling this team of allies and friends is one of the
principal pleasures of Star Wars, and Superman doesn’t have anything comparable to that.
And then there’s all the stuff in the background of Star Wars, which gestures towards a huge galaxy of characters
and stories happening outside our field of view. I was a kid when Star Wars came out, and what I remember most is
that every time people talked about the film, they always mentioned the cantina sequence. People just loved seeing
all those weird aliens in one place; it felt like an explosion of sci-fi concepts coming together all at once.
In reality, the cantina sequence is a lot of rubber masks, a few furry full-body puppets, some interesting sound
effects and a lot of brown tunics; from the neck down, most of those characters are wearing exactly the same
clothes. The brilliant move was to put all of them together in one tightly-packed scene, so it feels like the movie
suddenly explodes with crazy aliens, even if we only see them once.
Superman, on the other hand, has Grand Central Station and the Statue of Liberty. The helicopter rescue is the
movie’s big crowd scene, and it’s packed with middle-aged white people. The Star Wars cantina offers an incredible
variety of different life forms in a spaceport bar; Superman’s helicopter scene isn’t even as diverse as actual New
York.
Richard Donner’s insistence on “verisimilitude” does what it was intended to do: it makes Superman extra special,
because he’s the one fantastic element in an otherwise real world.
But George Lucas gave us lots of worlds — a seemingly infinite galaxy of creatures and cultures to discover. He
offered verisimilitude in space, creating its own fascinating version of reality. Star Wars is a challenge to other
filmmakers — try and top this, if you can — in a way that Superman is not.
Star Wars wins this first round decisively, spawning a franchise that continues to be productive more than forty years
later, while the Salkinds’ Superman franchise spluttered out after several increasingly diminished sequels.
But Star Wars has had its own ups and downs, and there are many points in this history when superheroes will have
the upper hand. Eventually, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will inspire the Star Wars producers to
invest in unsatisfying spinoff films like Rogue One and Solo, a clear win for the caped crusaders.
They will keep circling each other, Star Wars and the supes, both of them fighting to stave off the curse of the singing
cowboys. For now, while we’re spinning through space with Kal-El, wave hello to the Millennium Falcon as we pass
by. We’ll be seeing them again, and it’s good to keep up friendly relations with the neighbors.
Superman 1.14: Music from the Hearts of Space
All right, here’s the situation: we are currently three weeks in on this new format that I’ve invented for myself, where
I try to comment on every element of Superman: The Movie that I can think of, and today is one of those “face the
music” posts, both literally and figuratively. At some point, I have to write about John Williams’ orchestral score,
because it’s an important part of the movie and people who like movie scores are entirely obsessed with it, but I
don’t know much about music and I am utterly hopeless on the subject.
I mean, I have this booklet that came with the Superman: The Music box set, and here’s what it says about the score
during the “space capsule flying across the galaxy” sequence:
“Scherzo for the starship’s three-year journey. A swirling woodwind line suggests the speed at which the spacecraft
is traveling while high-register violins sing a lofty melody exclusive to this cue; statements of the Fanfare are overlaid
skillfully.”
My issue, obviously, is that I don’t know what scherzo means; I even went and read the Wikipedia article on scherzo,
and I still don’t know what scherzo means.
But what the hell, let’s give it a shot. I’ve got the booklet and there’s a music-only audio track on the Special Edition
DVD, and I ought to be able to make something out of this.
The music in Superman: The Movie is by John Williams, who had recently scored, both literally and figuratively, with
a little movie called Star Wars, released the previous year. By this point, Williams was getting multiple Academy
Awards nominations per year. He was nominated for Valley of the Dolls in 1967 and Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1969, and
won for Fiddler on the Roof in 1971. In the early ’70s, he scored the three big disaster movies: The Poseidon
Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno.
Among the five big mid-70s blockbusters — Jaws, King Kong, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and
Superman — Williams wrote the score for four of them, and the one that he skipped, King Kong, wasn’t very good,
so there. I don’t know what anybody else was doing in the 1970s, but John Williams basically owned the big movies.
The number one thing that you need to know about John Williams is that the man likes his leitmotifs. Somebody put
together a “Complete Catalogue of the Themes of Star Wars“, and it’s 70 pages long. He’s got a theme for Luke, a
theme for Leia, a theme for the Rebels, a theme for the Empire, and one each for Yoda, the Emperor, the Force, the
Death Star, the Jawas, the Droids and Boba Fett. He’s got two for Jabba, three for the Ewoks, and a pair of themes
called “It’s a Trap! (A)” and “It’s a Trap! (B)”.
For Superman, Williams held the line at nine motifs, and so far in the movie we’ve heard five of them:
#1) Superman — Fanfare: This is a trumpet flare that announces that Superman is coming. In the movie, we hear it
as those first four trumpet notes as the monochrome curtain is opening. (It’s much more developed on the
soundtrack album “Theme from Superman” track; the first twenty seconds of that track is the Fanfare.)
#2) Superman March — A Theme: This is the big one, which starts as the S logo forms and then the “SUPERMAN”
title appears. It’s the one where the brass goes dut-dut-dut-DAAAAA! and then continues on like that. You know, it’s
the thing that you sing when you’re singing the theme from Superman. (You see? I can write about music. Turns out
it’s easy.)
#3) Superman March — B Theme: This is the secondary melody, which starts when the Glenn Ford credit goes by,
and the orchestra has the A Theme out of its system. You might ask why you need an A Theme that lasts 30 seconds
and then a B Theme that appears right after it, rather than just having one theme and calling it the Superman
March. The answer to that question is that I don’t know.
#4) Krypton theme: This is a big statement of how huge and exciting Krypton is, which climaxes as we track into the
shot of the dome.
#5) Crystal theme: This is a little five-note motif that starts when Jor-El stares at the crystal and says “He will never
be alone.” It pops up throughout the movie to indicate the alien tech, and the radioactive kryptonite.
There are four other leitmotifs, but we haven’t heard them yet, so I’ll come back to those later on.
So far, the music has mostly been there to let you know how big and important and scary and doomed everything is.
When something is strange or frightening, John Williams is there to help you recognize that. That is what he does for
a living.
Personally, my favorite part of the score so far is the Krypton theme as we get closer to the big white dome. The
music just gets bigger and more elaborate as it crescendoes, and I think in the middle somebody runs to ask the
other symphony down the hall if they could come in for a minute and help out.
I tried to picture being on a stage and introducing someone using that theme, and wondered who could possibly be
so important that they would warrant that intro. All I came up with was if there was a person in the world who had
invented the sun.
In the trial scene, John lets us know that this is an alien planet by using a bunch of eerie strings and percussion.
There’s also the weird zing of an ARP synthesizer, a fully polyphonic keyboard that used top-octave divide-down
oscillators, in case you were wondering where all the noise was coming from.
When the big faces on the wall say “Guilty!” there’s the ring of an ominous bell. There are several places during the
Krypton scenes when you hear a bell, and it’s not one of those jingle bells or happy wedding day bells; this is more
the “everything that you love and believe in will crumble to ash” type bells. People don’t always know about the
different types of bells that there are.
It’s important to keep an ear out for these bells because if you hear a lot of them, your planet might be about to
blow up. If you hear bells and a spooky wordless chorus of female ghosts, then you need to grab your backpack and
head for the nearest exit, which may be behind you.
There are more bells and some martial percussion behind Zod while he’s yelling at the outbound Jor-El. The CD
booklet says that “an unsympathetic French horn phrase underscores Jor-El’s exit” but I don’t know how you can tell
if a French horn is unsympathetic or not.
I don’t need to say much about the music when the criminals are trapped in the Phantom Zone, because it sounds
like it always sounds when a huge rotating mirror arrives from outer space and swallows you in eternal torment.
It’s when the Science Council all gang up and form their special shame triangle against Jor-El that you get the bells
and the wordless ghost chorus, which should have been a clue for the council that this wasn’t the best choice they
could have made. I don’t know why people don’t pay attention to their background music; if I heard that bell and
ghost chorus, then I wouldn’t even go outside that day. I’d just stay home with my PlayStation.
The first time you get anything of a warm sound on Krypton is when Jor-El is making his big farewell speech to the
baby, which is quite beautiful and I don’t really know anything to say about it. It might be a scherzo for all I know,
but I don’t think so.
You’d think there would be a lot of music around the destruction of Krypton, but there isn’t; it’s mostly just
crunching sounds and screams. John is saving his energy up for that swirling woodwind line during the space
capsule’s flight across the sky.
So that is everything that I can think of to say about the musical score, and you are welcome to it. I will now sign off
and let people correct all my mistakes and make fun of me in the comments. Go on, you and your lightning bolts!
Superman 1.15: Journey Across the Gulf of Space!
Well, if little Kal-El thought he could stretch out and relax during the journey from there to here, then he was
mistaken; his dad has prepared a three-year-long audiobook for him to listen to on the trip. We see the boy traveling
through clouds of space plankton in his star bubble, and above the sound of a passing scherzo, we hear extracts
from Jor-Audible.
The first fragment that we hear is “… which Einstein called his theory of relativity.” I don’t know if that’s chapter one
or not; I would hope they’d ease the kid in a bit before jumping straight to Einstein. This is a weird belief that
science-fiction writers have, that you can learn things more efficiently if you’re being brainwashed by a computer,
because education is basically a data download, and actual engagement with the material just gets in the way.
So I want to take a look at what kind of schooling is going on here, and try, for at least a couple minutes, not to talk
about Beppo.
Because I have to face it: superhero movies could hardly be more popular right now, but so far, I am not exactly
nailing the zeitgeist. Instead of writing about the new trailer for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, or set news from
Thor: Love and Thunder, I’m obsessing over a 40+ year old film starring a character that isn’t even that popular these
days.
So the last thing I should be doing, only three weeks in, is to get in a discussion about yet another forgotten comic
book story from the late 1950s, especially if it involves a mischievous Kryptonian super-monkey who stowed away
on Kal-El’s space capsule and is probably in there right now, getting the full deets on Einstein.
“Embedded in the crystals before you,” Jor-El brags, “is the total accumulation of all literature and scientific fact
from dozens of other worlds, spanning the 28 known galaxies.” That is a lot of literature and scientific fact to embed,
and it makes me wonder if Jor-El could have been a little more choosey with the curriculum. Even the accumulation
of all literature from one world can wear on you after a while, especially if it includes all 13 of The Southern Vampire
Mysteries.
The scherzo gets in the way quite a bit, so all you can hear is fragments — “Early Chinese writings point out the
complex relationships…” and “By carrying this complex equation to its ultimate power, my son…” Meanwhile, we see
the kid placidly getting older, aging before our eyes as he passively accepts this wide-ranging lecture on whatever
the hell Jor-El thinks he’s going to need when he arrives at kindergarten in Kansas. Kal’s going to be pretty
disappointed when he shows up with his lunchbox and it turns out the teacher hasn’t even gotten to early Chinese
writings yet.
But using the word “complex” twice in two sentences tells us everything we need to know. These lines aren’t
supposed to be taken literally; they’re just sound effects, to indicate that Jor-El is filling the kid up with as much
smartness as he can, as he tumbles through the 28 galaxies and pushes the concept of “remote learning” about as
far as it can go.
That is actually space plankton, by the way; that’s one of the scientific facts that I’ve accumulated about this movie.
The producers contracted with Oxford Scientific Films, a production company in the UK founded by a group of
Oxford University scientists, who made natural history films for the BBC and National Geographic. For this film,
Oxford Scientific traveled to Bermuda to do microscopic photography of bioluminescent oceanic plankton in the
waters of Castle Harbour, which is a pretty soft gig if you can swing it.
They used this odd-looking footage to create weird “galactic effects” for the credits, and for this star-spanning
journey across the sky. There are a lot of plankton shots used over the course of about a minute of the film, and they
each look completely different. They don’t really represent anything in particular, like black holes or meteor swarms
or something; they just look interesting, which is all you need from a special effect.
Meanwhile, Beppo must be chilling in the back seat, drinking a piña colada and taking in as much early Chinese
writing as he cares to help himself to. I’m sorry, I know that I said that I wasn’t going to do this, but it’s actual
Superman canon that there was a stowaway super-monkey in Kal-El’s transport, and the mainstream media have
been suppressing the story since Crisis on Infinite Earths.
We learned about this in the Silver Age, of course, that slap-happy slice of pre-history that I talked about last week in
the Phantom Zone post, when the writers were encouraged to invent anything that came into their heads which
might make for an attention-grabbing cover image. In October 1959, a story called “The Super-Monkey from
Krypton!” in Superboy #76 explained that one of Jor-El’s test animals got out of its cage, and slipped into the rocket
just before it left Krypton. I don’t know what the writers were doing in the previous seventy-five issues of Superboy
— just killing time, really, waiting for their chance to introduce a super-monkey.
The concept is perfectly straightforward, really: the monkey was from Krypton, so it had super-powers on Earth. It
ran away from Kal-El’s rocket before any passing motorists showed up, and headed for the nearest jungle. After
spending a couple years tossing elephants around and punching mean gorillas in the face, he decided to return to
Kansas and hang out with his old roommate, Superbaby.
Being a monkey and therefore mischievous by nature, Beppo swiped the super-suit and dressed up like young Clark,
disturbing Pa Kent in his bath and stealing a jar of coins from Ma Kent, then destroying Clark’s toy fire truck and
setting off some Fourth of July fireworks.
At the end of this pleasant and instructive afternoon, Beppo got the mistaken impression that he was being chased
by a comet, and he flew off into space, where he remained for years, doing who knows what.
Look, I’m not saying that this was one of the high spots in American literature or anything, I’m just saying that there
is a super-monkey in that space capsule somewhere, and if Richard Donner thinks that he can erase our cultural
heritage and replace it with space plankton, then I for one am going to stand up for what I know in my heart is the
truth.
Anyway, at a certain point, Jor-El stops beating around the bush, and starts getting real.
“Chief among these powers,” he informs his spin-dryer son, “will be your sight, your strength, your hearing, your
ability to propel yourself at almost limitless speed.” I hope the kid is taking notes.
Then, with no segue at all, his master’s voice goes straight into “The early history of our universe was a bloody
mosaic of interplanetary war,” which is not the answer to a question that anyone asked.
Then Jor-El says, “Each of the six galaxies which you will pass through contain their own individual law of space and
time,” which is a [citation needed] if I ever saw one, and then, just when he’s really got the kid on the ropes, he lays
down the law: “It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history.” Okay, pops. We’ll see about that.
Now, if Professor Brando really knew what he was talking about, he would give his son some useful information, like
what to do when you accidentally turn into a monkey and get kidnapped by an organ grinder who’s giving out free
bananas. Kal-El is about to have pretty much the most hectic possible life, and I don’t think the seminar on early
Chinese writing is going to prepare him for what’s about to come his way. Still, maybe he can get an internship or
something.
Superman 1.16: Passing Motorists
Sure, Superman was popular in 1938, but a lot of things were popular back then, like Mickey Rooney and Betty Boop
and the Spanish Civil War. Being popular in the late 1930s does not guarantee that your story will still be told in the
2020s. Pop culture is a competitive environment, and for any popular idea, there are a dozen copycats trying to get
their own share of the audience’s attention and affection.
It’s a process of natural selection, and the characters and stories that survive for decades in the popular imagination
are the strongest and most adaptable. Sherlock Holmes, the Wizard of Oz, Mickey Mouse, Dracula and Superman —
all of the long-lasting pop culture icons have overcome dozens of challengers, continually finding a niche in the
changing cultural landscape that keeps them alive for another generation.
One thing that these pop culture champions have in common is that they managed to jump out of their original
medium, and often out of the reach of their original creator, inspiring plays and parodies and sequels and pastiches
and comic strips and films that strengthened the concept by passing on the story-productive details, and removing
the parts that didn’t work as well.
Superman is the perfect example: a story that started in comic books, but very quickly expanded into a comic strip
and a radio show, then a cartoon, a movie serial and a TV series. Each version of the story is an opportunity to tweak
and expand, and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Over time, Superman ended up with a core set of characters and ideas that are practically bulletproof. The concept
“Superman and Lois” was there in the first issue of Action Comics in 1938, and it worked so well that 83 years later,
there’s a TV show called Superman & Lois.
The concept “Ma and Pa Kent”, on the other hand, took a while to find its place in the cultural conception of
Superman. The details that worked, like running a farm, stick around forever. But sometimes a concept’s evolution
takes a weird turn, and you end up drugging a crowd of elderly people at a lemonade party. Here, I’ll show you what
I mean.
As we’ve seen, in June 1938, there wasn’t such a thing as a Kent family, just a caption that said, “When the vehicle
landed on Earth, a passing motorist, discovering the sleeping babe within, turned the child over to an orphanage.”
We got to see that passing motorist in the comic strip, which launched in January 1939, and I have to say, he looks
just like I dreamed he would. “Good heavens! It’s a child,” says the passing motorist. That was his first take, too.
Sometimes you just nail it.
In January ’39, when Siegel and Shuster got the chance to retell the origin story for Superman #1, they created the
Kents, a belated explanation for where Superman’s human name came from. They were “an elderly couple”, and the
wife was called Mary; the husband didn’t rate a name yet.
This version is just four panels long: #1) the Kents find the child; #2) the child wrecks the orphanage; #3) the
orphanage is quite happy to hand the baby right back to the Kents; #4) profit.
“The love and guidance of his kindly foster-parents was to become an important factor in the shaping of the boy’s
future,” says the caption, which is a little hard to swallow, given that the character was still mostly hitting dudes and
threatening to drop them out of windows.
When the radio show started in February 1940, they spent the whole first episode on Jor-El and the destruction of
Krypton, but they skipped Superman’s youth entirely. At the start of the second episode, the announcer said,
“During the long journey of the rocket ship to the Earth, the child has become a man. The rocket landed in a desert.
Superman stepped forth full grown, to explore this strange new world in which he found himself!” And then he’s just
flying around, eavesdropping on people at a trolley station in Indiana, for some reason.
It’s obvious why the radio show would want to skip over Superman’s boyhood — they’d already spent the first
episode on another planet; they wanted to get Superman out there punching people. It’s the same logic that made
Siegel and Shuster dash through both Krypton and childhood in a couple of panels, the first time around.
But in 1942, when radio scriptwriter George Lowther wrote a novelization called The Adventures of Superman, he
expanded quite a bit on the origin story, setting the first two chapters on Krypton and then spending the next three
chapters on Clark and the Kents. This drilldown on the family story added several elements to the characters that
endured, which means that some of the things that you know about them came from a book that you probably
never knew existed.
Most importantly, this is where the Kents became a farm family. When they were introduced in Superman #1, they
looked solidly middle-class, providing love and guidance while sitting comfortably in their living room armchairs.
Lowther brought them out into the sunshine, where they could bring up their alien offspring in wholesome
surroundings.
Unusually for a Kent sighting, nobody’s driving; Eben Kent is out plowing the fields in the South Forty, when the
rocket crashes right next to him.
Then we get a whole bunch of new information:
Eben Kent and his wife, Sarah, never knew where the child had come from, never pierced the mystery that
surrounded his strange appearance on earth. Destiny perhaps played a part in directing the rocket to the Kent farm,
for the Kents were childless and desired a child above anything else on earth. And here, like a gift from Heaven, was
the infant Kal-el. The old couple took him into their home and raised him as their own.
They called him Clark, because that was Sarah Kent’s family name. The circumstances surrounding his arrival were
almost forgotten as year ran into year and the infant grew to be a strong and handsome boy, helping Eben with the
chores about the farm, listening to stories at Sarah’s knee in the long winter evenings. He seemed no different from
other boys of his age. He attended the little country school, played games, went fishing in the hot summer
afternoons, and worked and studied as all boys do.
It was not until his thirteenth year that the incident occurred that was to set him apart from ordinary humans, and
was to give him his first glimpse of the powers he possessed, beyond those of the earth people who were his
companions…
Practically everything in those three paragraphs is new, even the improved spelling of Superman’s Kryptonian name,
which was “Kal-L” the last time we saw it. The Kents are childless, Clark is Sarah’s maiden name, the boy has an
idyllic farm upbringing, and he discovers his powers at puberty. Sarah makes his costume, too, and Eben dies when
Clark is 17, of a heart attack brought on by his attempt to lift an anvil over his head.
The radio show had its own reboot in 1942, when it was picked up for national broadcast on the Mutual
Broadcasting System. The relaunch, written by Lowther, included Eben and Sarah, and had Eben die before Clark
leaves for Metropolis.

In 1944, when Jerry Siegel was in the Army, National Periodicals took the liberty of starting a Superboy strip without
telling him, starting in More Fun Comics #101. The early Superboy stories followed a pattern: one or more children
are playing outside, when they encounter two or three mean adults with guns. The adults, who are criminals of one
kind or another, try to push the kids around, and then Clark turns into Superboy and destroys their house. I swear,
that kid hates architecture more than anything else in the world.
The Kents didn’t make an appearance in the More Fun stories, beyond that one panel of cooing over the wild animal
they’ve brought into their home. Superboy moved over to a regular spot in Adventure Comics #103 (April 1946), but
the Kents didn’t become regular supporting characters for several years.
Okay, more Kents: we meet a new pair in the first installment of the 1948 Superman serial, “Superman Comes to
Earth”, and they’re pretty much the same as they were in Lowther’s novel. Dad’s name is Eben Kent, but Mom has
changed from Sarah to Martha. Clark grows up on a farm, and Martha makes his costume.
I hope that you’re all finding this fascinating, by the way, because I am feeling like a grade-A nerd at the moment,
obsessing over these historical details. But here I am, waist-deep in Kent facts, so I’m passing them on to you. You
can do what you like with them.
Back in the comics, Superman #53 (July/Aug 1948) celebrated the character’s 10th anniversary with a story called
“The Origin of Superman!”, which continued to tweak the story. They’re a farm family driving an automobile again,
but this time they’re named John and Mary, and they look like characters from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.
The weird thing about this retelling is that it erases Superboy from the story, several years after he started appearing
as a regular feature. They don’t give an age for when he starts to develop his powers, but it appears to be late
adolescence. Mary dies first, and Clark has already grown up when Dad, on his deathbed, gives him the name
Superman.
After that, it gets so confusing that I can’t keep it all straight. Superboy gets his own comic in 1949 in addition to his
regular spot headlining Adventure Comics, and there are occasional flashbacks in Action Comics and Superman, and
there’s just too much material to sort through. I’ve looked at a bunch of books and websites, and everyone has an
idea of when the changes happen in the 1950s, but they contradict each other, and I’m not going to be the one who
actually sits down and looks at every goddamn issue of four different titles to figure it out.
So Pa Kent becomes Jonathan sometime around 1950, probably in Adventure Comics, and he owns a general store.
Ma Kent is first referred to as Martha in 1952, in Superman #74. The question about whether they live on a farm or
own a general store is cleared up in Superboy #78, where they explain that the Kents lived on a farm when they
found Clark, and then moved into Smallville to open a general store when he was old enough to go to school.
The general store is actually a great example of how the story evolves to fit the needs of the current format. The
Kents became regular characters once the Superboy book started, but you can’t keep writing adventure stories that
take place on a farm. By 1949, when Superboy has one story a month in Action Comics and three stories every two
months in Superboy, there was too much narrative pressure to keep him locked down on a farm. Owning a general
store was the perfect solution, because it gave the characters the opportunity to mix with a variety of people, which
opened up story potential.
But after a while, if you have to write multiple stories a month about Superman, Superboy and Supergirl, you just
run out of ideas and start doing weird stuff, even if it contradicts everything else.
So in May 1963, Leo Dorfman decided that he was going to write the definitive story of how the Kents died, and it’s
done in such an off-hand way that it’s not even featured on the cover. The cover line on Superman #161 is very
excited about the “Sensational!” story in which “Superman Goes to War!”, while the Kents’ death is given a little box
in the corner that says “Extra! The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent!” That’s gratitude for you. Kids those days, am I
right?
And then it turns out to be completely insane, unconnected to anything else that’s ever been written about the
Kents. In this story, Superboy takes his parents on vacation — “How thoughtful of Clark to build us a pleasure cruiser
for our Caribbean holiday!” says Martha, which is amazing — and they dig up a pirate treasure chest, which is
contaminated with a “fever plague” that kills them both.
Of course, it’s not that simple — first Superboy takes them back in time 100 years to go mess around with
Blackbeard the pirate, and later on, when they get sick, he thinks it’s because of the time travel, and he feels really
bad about it. He tries a bunch of ridiculous things to try to cure them, like squeezing all the sap out of a Brazilian
orchid tree. That doesn’t work, so he arranges for teenage Lex Luthor to be released from prison so that he can cure
them with a vibro-health-restorer machine, which also doesn’t work.
Superboy even tries projecting them into the Phantom Zone, but it only works halfway because solar flares are
causing a magnetic storm, and that apparently interferes with the Phantom Zone projector somehow.
So they die, both of them, from a random pirate disease, and it’s heartbreaking, just like it was when one or both of
them died in completely different ways.
It rattles on this way, through the decades. Writers pick up whatever they remember from the past, and they write
something new, based on whatever they need at the moment. If you’re just writing about Superman, then Clark can
be inspired to put on the cape after the Kents die, but if you’re writing Superboy stories, then you’ve got to keep
them alive, and give them a general store.
And because long-running cross-media serialized narrative is a fertile environment for the natural selection of story
concepts, the most useful ideas carry on, and the stupid ones get left behind. Giving the Kents a farm in 1942 was a
productive idea — it grounded the characters in old-time Americana, and made it clear that these are good, simple
folks, who would raise Clark to believe in the right things. On the other hand, having them both die of pirate fever
while being unsuccessfully beamed halfway into the Phantom Zone is a stupid idea, because it doesn’t mean
anything in particular, so that part of the story was ignored, and nobody used it when they wrote further Superman
stories. The only reason that I know about it is because I specifically went looking for dumb, forgotten Kent
concepts, and there it was.
Now, technically this post should end right there, because I’ve done the overview of how the Kents’ story evolved,
and tied up the main idea about natural selection. At this point, I should wrap up this metaphorical Zoom meeting,
and give you some of your afternoon back.
But.
But I have to tell you about “The Fantastic Faces!” from Superboy #145 (March 1968), because otherwise I wouldn’t
be able to sleep at night. I can not take this secret to my grave; it must be shared with the world.
Here’s the setup: in 1968, the editors decided that it was weird, having teenage Superboy living with foster parents
who are clearly grandparent-age. It’s not actually weird at all, or at least not any weirder than anything else in
Superman comics, but it was the end of the Silver Age, when they started taking things much too seriously. Kids
weren’t reading Superman comics as much as they used to, and the powers that be thought that a younger, hipper
Ma and Pa Kent would help to reverse that slow slide in readership.
They could have accomplished this in a subtle way, by altering the characters’ hairstyles and taking off the glasses,
but they decided to do the opposite, and make a huge deal out of it.
The story begins with the above splash page — Superboy showing pictures of his parents directly to the reader, and
announcing sternly, “These are the faces of Mom and Dad Kent! Take a good look at them! You’ll never see them
again!” I don’t know why he thinks it’s our fault.
The way that the writers are going to get this unnecessary job done is to project their own desire for a younger Ma
and Pa Kent onto a character in the story. In fact, they project it all the way through a dimensional rift to a sci-fi
planet called Thraxx, where the latest hit in home entertainment is an opti-screen show called The Superboy of
Earth.
The situation on Thraxx is a bit complex. The Superboy of Earth is produced by a guy named Jolax at the Galaxo
Movie Studio, which doesn’t really exist. Instead of hiring actors and filming them, Jolax is using his super-space
camera, which uses special telescopic lenses to record happenings in other dimensions. Naturally, instead of doing
anything useful with this incredible invention, Jolax uses it to spy on Superboy, and then sell the footage as a TV
show.
“Actors, sets, stage hands, cameramen, special effects… who needs them?” he brags to his assistant. “I save all that
money by filming real events! I’m brilliant!” And I guess he is, in a way.
Thraxx is one of those planets where everybody talks about space and technology all the time, so people zooming by
in their flying cars yell things to Jolax like “By the jumping moons, Jolax! Your new show was good!” and “Galactically
terrific!” which obviously is very gratifying.
But — great moonquakes! — Jolax has a big problem: people have been writing in with their electro-styluses to
complain about the Kents, and the big tycoons in the skyroom have a request. “All the optiviewers say that Jonathan
and Martha Kent look too old to have a teen-age son like Superboy!” they say. “But that’s easily remedied! Before
we sign a contract, you simply hire new, younger actors to play the roles of Ma and Pa Kent!”
Naturally, Jolax can’t just hire new actors, because he’s filming the real thing, so he needs to come up with a way to
transform the real Jonathan and Martha Kent into younger versions of themselves.
The lunatic plot contrivance that Jolax comes up with is to convert his super-space camera into a dimensional
transporter, and then transport a bottle of youth serum to Earth. (The Thraxxians use youth serum to punish
criminals by turning them into babies, as naturally they would.) So Jolax takes a deep breath and spits a bottle of
youth juice across the dimensional spaceways, to land directly in the well on Jonathan and Martha’s property.
Obviously, this plan works out perfectly; how could it possibly fail? “Have some lemonade!” Martha chirps. “I just
made it with fresh, cold well-water!” And then they all go to bed, and during the night, Ma and Pa get twenty years
younger.
At this point, Jolax basically drops out of the story, and now it’s all about how the Kents are going to deal with this
surprising blow to the status quo.
They spend several pages thinking that the effect is due to a weird glowing space jewel that Superboy picked up in
the asteroid belt — and they can’t let anybody see them getting younger, or people in town will figure out that their
adopted son is Superboy.
The first thing they try out is to put on wax old-age masks, which actually works well enough that Lana Lang doesn’t
notice anything’s different. But the masks melt in the summer heat, so they have to try something else.
Superboy learns that the jewel isn’t responsible for the change, and then he has one of those convenient flashes of
insight that give characters exactly the information that they need to move the story forward. He finds the bottle in
the Kents’ well, instantly divines that it’s a bottle of alien youth serum, and comes up with a truly twisted plan.
The idea is: take the remaining lemonade, and serve it to some other oldsters in town, so that nobody will know that
the Kents are responsible. This is an example of what happens when you provide years of love and guidance to a
foster son who’s actually a monster from outer space.
The heist goes off without a hitch. Jonathan and Martha put on their old age masks, and invite a bunch of senior
citizens over for a cool glass of lemonade.
Just as they all sip on their spiked drinks, Superboy zooms by, spilling out a pot of luminescent crystals behind him.
The crystals make it look like an extremely low-flying comet, which brushes them with its long tail.
And that’s when the lemonade party gets out of hand, as all the seniors magically become juniors. The Kents take off
their wax masks just at the right moment, and now everyone thinks that they got younger because of the comet.
There’s a comedic kicker at the end of the story, where the sky tycoons on Thraxx ask Jolax to create a new series
about Superman and his old parents, which he can’t deliver. It’s actually a cute comedy story in the haphazard late-
Silver Age style, but then the family appears on the final page to inform us that they are deadly serious about this.
“A final message from us, readers!” Superboy announces all the way through the fourth wall, and into our
dimension. “The youth serum’s effect is permanent… and I wouldn’t change Mom and Dad Kent back if I could!”
Which is true, for a while. But ten years later, when they write the script for Superman: The Movie, they ignore this
silliness and cherrypick the elements that work: an old couple, a farm family, and a meaningful, tragic death that
inspires young Clark to become a hero. And that’s how superhero movies work, from then on.
Superman 1.17: For Unto Us
“Once, there was a civilization,” says the announcer in the Superman: The Movie trailer, over a shot of Jor-El doing
science stuff with crystals, “much like ours, but with greater intelligence, greater powers, and a greater capacity for
good.”
Jor-El touches the machine, and the starship rises to the ceiling, and then everything goes to hell. We see people fall
into the red pit of their doomed civilization, and then: BLAM! the whole planet explodes.
“In one tragic moment,” the announcer resumes, “that world was destroyed. But there was one survivor.” We see
Kal-El in the star bubble, a brief clip of the crash landing, and then Pa Kent is kicking at his tire. Ma taps him on the
shoulder, and they look at the wreck of the spaceship.
As they gaze in wonder, the announcer says, “Because of the wisdom and compassion of Jor-El — because he knew
the human race had the capacity for goodness — he sent us his only son.”
The music swells, and we see little K, standing up with his arms outstretched, and we wonder: if Jor-El was so all-
fired wise and compassionate, maybe he could also have sent some pants?
That’s about as explicit as anybody needs to get, really. The answer is yes, the filmmakers intended to draw some
parallel between the story of Superman and the story of Jesus Christ. So I’m going to lay out the case for the
proposition “Sure, Superman is kind of like Jesus,” and then we’ll figure out where we are from there.
Okay. As the trailer says, the magical and wise science wizard Jor-El sends his only son to Earth, with specific
instructions on helping people, making life better and other early Chinese writing. The spaceship looks like a star.
Kal-El is raised in a relatively low-status household, and is then inspired to discover his true identity and purpose. He
has magical abilities that set him apart from other men, including raising someone from the dead. (In this case, the
part of Lazarus is played by Lois Lane.)
And then he punches a lot of people, and does a lot of property damage, and he spends a lot of the story
desperately in love with a woman who doesn’t appreciate him. This is where the parallel with Jesus starts to break
down, although don’t say that to the Christians, who are pretty determined to claim Superman as their own.
For example, Stephen Skelton, who wrote the breathless book The Gospel According to the World’s Greatest
Superhero in 2006. In his introduction, he details some “startling revelations” about the connection between
Superman and Jesus:
For instance, did you know that…
Superman and his father share the last name of El — the Hebrew word for God. Thus in the Superman story, when
“El” the father sends “El” the son down to Earth, “God” the father sends “God” the son down to Earth.
Superman’s earthly parents, Martha and Jonathan, were modeled after the biblical parents Mary and Joseph — and
as I later discovered, Mary and Joseph were the original names of the earthly parents.
Superman’s enemy is a villain called Lex Luthor, a name suspiciously like Lucifer. And both figures are fueled by the
same all-consuming, all-corrupting hunger for power and glory.
And that’s just the tip of the Kryptonian iceberg.
If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that at least two of these revelations aren’t as startling as Skelton
thinks they are.
The names “Jor-L” and “Kal-L” come from the comic strip in 1939, and were then respelled “Jor-el” and “Kal-el” in
the 1942 Adventures of Superman novel, and honestly, it’s just a science-fiction name. It could have been any letter.
The idea that Jerry Siegel thought “hey, I think this guy in a space tunic is a supernatural entity, and I’ll make ‘L’ part
of his name to represent the Hebrew word for God” is laughably remote. People also say that “Kal-El” could be
translated “Voice of God”, but I am informed by Reddit that “Voice of God” is actually ‫“( קול אל‬Kol El”). It’s a cute
coincidence but not an actual thing.
And the idea that Jonathan and Martha Kent were “modeled after the biblical parents” strains the meaning of the
phrase “modeled after” beyond the breaking point. For one thing, Mary was a virgin and actually gave birth to Jesus,
and Jor-El didn’t send a rocket full of space sperm to impregnate Martha Kent, thank goodness. The Kents just found
the kid, and raised him, which is actually kind of like Moses, and it’s also kind of like Tarzan, Dick Grayson and Little
Orphan Annie. Orphans in stories get adopted; otherwise, they die and the story is very short.
Also, I don’t know who told Skelton that “Mary and Joseph were the original names” for the Kents, but that is half-
true at best. As we saw yesterday, the first time the Kents are mentioned in Superman #1, the wife is named Mary,
and the husband doesn’t have a name. They were known as Eben and Sarah for a while, and briefly John and Mary,
but Pa Kent was never Joseph. On its own, I don’t find “Mary” particularly startling as a coincidence, because Mary
was the #1 most popular name for girls in 1939. When they used “John and Mary” in 1948, those were the
equivalent of “Smith and Jones” as the classic generic first names.
And the Lex Luthor/Lucifer wordplay is just lame, and I refuse to engage with it.
But people like playing with correspondences like that, and I’m not such a confirmed grouch that I would want to
dump on people who are having a good time and not hurting anybody; if talking about Superman helps Stephen
Skelton express his ideas about religion and salvation, then I don’t need to pick a fight with the guy.
On the other hand, while I’m on the subject, I might take a minute to nitpick on David Bruce, who wrote a listicle-
style post for HollywoodJesus.com called “How Superman Retells the Story of Jesus“, which it doesn’t. By the way,
there’s a website called HollywoodJesus.com, and if you’re looking for a startling revelation, that’s my personal pick
of the day.
The comparison gets off to a bad start right at the top, saying, “Superman comes from the planet Krypton — which
sounds like Tikkum olam, a Hebrew concept of restoring the world’s wrongs.” Personally, I don’t think Krypton
sounds any more like Tikkum olam than any other handful of random sounds you might pick out of a comic book,
and anyway, it’s Tikkun olam. It actually sounds a lot like Tickle Me Elmo, which raises a bunch of new questions.
Bruce references all of the evidence that I’ve mentioned so far — the Hebrew word for God, the star, Mary and
Joseph — and he points out that in the movie, Martha is wearing a cross and carrying a Bible at Jonathan’s funeral,
which is perfectly accurate, as far as that takes you.
The point where I think it gets interesting is when he equates Lois interviewing Superman with the Gospel writers,
and then says, “The flight with Lois is a takeoff on Peter’s walk on water — (Matthew 14:28-29) Both Peter and Lois
slip downward.”
It’s true that Lois is essentially spreading the Gospel of Superman to the readers of the Daily Planet, but that
interview is played as a hormonally-charged flirtatious dance that climaxes with a flying sequence that’s clearly a
metaphor for sex, and if that’s what Jesus was up to with Peter and the Gospel writers, then there are a lot of things
that I missed in that story.
In fact, to claim Superman as a Christ-figure, you have to ignore the fact that most of the movie is a love story. The
romantic triangle of Clark/Lois/Superman is an essential part of this mythology, and it has no parallel in the life of
Jesus. If you want to say that Eve Teschmacher is Mary Magdalene witnessing the resurrection, then I’m not going to
argue with you about it, but if there’s no place in this reading for Lois Lane beyond “disciple”, then it just doesn’t
work, and that’s all there is to it. Lois is not Superman’s disciple; she’s much more important and complex than that.
But I think the biggest difference between Superman and the story of Jesus is that Superman doesn’t want people to
worship him, or follow him. Superman’s services are offered free of charge to whoever’s in his general vicinity with
no strings attached; he doesn’t require people to believe in him, or even know that he exists. He doesn’t have any
special message for the world, beyond a general expectation that you should act in accordance with the civil laws of
the United States. He didn’t emerge from a farm on Kansas with a new way of thinking about life on Earth, and its
relationship with Heaven. He just rescues cats and punches people, and if you piss him off then he wrecks your
house.
So it’s kind of pathetic, as a retelling of the story of Jesus — walking through the outlines of some Jesus-adjacent
events, but drained of insight and inspiration. If you made a movie about Jesus where he does all the flashy miracles
but doesn’t actually say anything profound, then it would be the story of a very nice magician.
Honestly, I don’t really understand it when people talk about Superman as being a god. My personal view is more
that he’s a reckless, whimsical and dangerous space monster, and if that’s your view of God, then you may need to
keep mulling that over for a while.
The key difference is that Superman didn’t create the world, and neither did Jor-El. Superman doesn’t really build
anything, other than his own secret ice castle and wax museum; he’s more involved in the area of breaking stuff, and
not apologizing for it. He has ridiculously good eyesight, but he’s not omniscient; he can do things that no human
can do, but he’s not omnipotent.
It’s true that if Superman chose to, he could hold the world at ransom and become an “all-powerful” dictator, as the
Phantom Zoners try to do in Superman II, but that’s not a thing that a god does; that’s just a terrorist who acquires a
lot of political power because he poses an unbeatable military threat.
Yes, Superman could flatten a city in an afternoon, but that’s the power of an atomic bomb, not the power of a god.
He doesn’t make anything, he doesn’t control events, he doesn’t have a plan, and he doesn’t offer spiritual
salvation. He’s just really, really strong, and nobody can hurt him.
I don’t think that comparing Superman to Jesus or calling him a god helps you understand Superman very well, and
in my opinion, the comparison takes all the stuffing out of Jesus. Still, if it helps you get through the day, then I can’t
stop you. I’ll just turn the other cheek, and you can let me know when you’re finished.
Superman 1.18: Opening the Box
Holding the hand of the extraterrestrial cuckoo that she’s about to bring home and housetrain, Martha Kent says,
“All these years, I prayed for a child.” She should have looked into the best practices on that, I think they’ve been
doing it wrong.
So the mystery box cracks open and, as with all mystery boxes, something interesting is loosed upon the world.
It could be a vampire’s coffin, or a crate of Kryptonian weapons, or a treasure chest that gives you pirate fever. If
you’re Erwin Schrödinger, there’s a good chance that it’s a radioactive undead cat, who wants an explanation for
why you boxed it up with a little hammer and a flask of acid.
Once you open that box, the consequences are yours. You are unleashing something, and you’re probably going to
have to pay for its college tuition.
In this case, Jonathan and Martha technically don’t open the box themselves; it drops out of the sky and unleashes
itself. Still, they’re the ones who decide to grab a wild animal from space and bring it home, which is at best a public
health concern.
You may have noticed that I refer to Kal-El as a dangerous space invader on the regular, and there are a couple
reasons why I do that. For one thing, it makes me laugh, and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. But the important
reason is that if you look at Superman in a way that’s counter to the way the creators want us to feel, it helps you
identify what they’re doing to make us not feel that way.
On its own, catching an unearthly organism that you don’t understand and can’t identify and deliberately
introducing it into your family structure is a frankly lunatic thing to do, even if it does look like a cute little baby.
Presented with different lighting and music, the audience would be very uneasy about the choice these people are
making. In fact, Richard Donner just did exactly that, in his previous movie.
In The Omen, a newly-childless couple is handed a baby of uncertain parentage, and when the child turns five, he
kills every character in the movie and brings about the end times. So Donner’s handling of the adoption sequence in
The Omen is a little different than the adoption sequence in Superman.
There’s the lighting and the music, obviously, and the camera angles that establish a crippling absence of hope.
Robert is sitting in a crappy dark hospital slash church in Rome in the middle of the night, and a priest who I guess is
also a doctor??? is telling him some very bad news. Robert’s wife has given birth in this terrible gloomy place, and
Father Spiletto says that the baby was stillborn. They probably should have gone to a real hospital, instead of this
creepy museum that appears to be staffed by factory second clergy.
“I’m afraid it will kill her,” Robert moans. “My god, she wanted a baby so much, and for such a long time.” You hear
that a lot lately, it must be going around. “What can I tell her? What can I say?” Father Spiletto has something of an
unorthodox answer to that question.
It turns out that at the exact same moment that Robert’s baby died, another mother was giving birth in this hospital,
and in that case, the mother died and the baby lived. So the Father pitches the idea that Robert could just take this
baby, and tell Katherine that it’s their baby, and everything will be fine.
“Your wife need never know,” says Spiletto. “It would be a blessing to her.” Robert doesn’t ask the obvious question,
which is why is there such a high body count in the maternity ward.
It takes a lot of work to make the audience scared of a baby, so Donner does everything he can. In every shot, the
kid’s eyes are screwed shut, and he’s red-faced and howling. The scene is dark, with little pools of light for the actors
to stand in, and the kid just does not stop screaming.
So there’s a great little scene with Richard happily carrying the baby to Katherine, and they smile and kiss, and
snuggle with the child, paying no attention to the fact that the baby is shrieking at the top of its lungs the entire
time. I don’t know what the filmmakers did to that baby to piss him off to that extent, but whatever they did, it
worked, and they got a good take.
Naturally, the corresponding sequence in Superman is the exact opposite of that. It’s an impossibly bright and sunny
day, with picture-perfect puffs of white clouds hanging in the sky. The Kents are completely alone — every shot
shows a clear view all the way to the horizon, in every direction — but it feels warm, and safe; the characters are
completely at home in this environment.
Jonathan is a little put out by their tire blowing out, but he’s not making a big deal about it, and he does an exquisite
little double take when he notices the scorched furrow in the field created by the space capsule that dropped out of
the heavens right next to them.
And the baby is utterly perfect — cute, but still approachable, immaculately clean, and showing off the superhero
movie physique that we’ve all come to expect. I don’t know if they had a Junior Men’s Health magazine in 1978, but
if they did, then obviously this kid had the cover spot.
When I first watched the movie, I thought it was odd that the kid was entirely buck naked on screen, but I get it now
— he’s supposed to be a brand new thing that just arrived in the world, and he’s available for whoever wants to call
dibs on him. Wearing clothes means that you have parents; if the kid is naked, then nobody else has a claim on him.
Now I want to take a close look at the dialogue in this scene, because there is a very artful trick to this sequence,
which they figured out post-shooting script.
As I discussed in an earlier post, there are three major versions of the script: Mario Puzo’s draft, the
Newman/Benton draft, and the shooting script by Tom Mankiewicz. The Puzo script hasn’t been published, but the
Newman/Benton script and the shooting script are available online. Following the progress from Newman/Benton to
Mankiewicz to the actual finished scene, you can see exactly how they achieved the perfect version of this
sequence.
So here’s the Newman/Benton version:
Jonathan steps out of the cab and looks at the punctured tire.
JONATHAN
(muttering)
Blamed cheap rubber them
Detroit wiseacres are puttin’ out.
Bitching, he goes around to the rear and unstraps the spare tire and hauls the jack out.
ZOOM IN TO TIGHT CLOSEUP of Martha – Her face freezes in astonishment and disbelief as she sees something in
the wheat field.
MARTHA
Jonathan!
ON JONATHAN – who turns and looks, amazed.
JONATHAN
Great God almighty! What is it?
MEDIUM SHOT – the space module has landed in the fields. Jonathan rushes to the strange, eerie metal craft nesting
in the charred wheat.
MARTHA
Be careful, Jonathan!
Suddenly a wall of the module opens and a metallic capsule ejects with a little boy still fastened inside.
JONATHAN
What the heck –?
He looks inside the module, then leans over and touches the capsule, burning his hand.
MARTHA
Jonathan!
The little boy, aged 3, springs out of the electronically controlled belts, half-naked.
MARTHA (stunned)
It’s a… baby.
JONATHAN
What’s your name, boy?
MARTHA
Don’t just stand there gapin’, Jonathan.
Can’t you see he’s cold?
Jonathan takes off his jacket, drapes it around the little boy. Now he looks again at the module.
JONATHAN
(can’t get over it)
ho-leeeeeeee.
She lifts the boy with much difficulty and walks back to the truck, regarding the child with wonder. Her husband
walks ahead, shaking his head, looking back.
JONATHAN
Well — gotta change that tire
if we’re gonna get home.
MARTHA
(pointedly)
All of us.
[… Skipping past the description of the jack slipping off and the child holding up the front of the truck …]
TWO SHOT – DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD – DAY
The baby sits happily in Martha’s lap. The couple looks ahead, lost in thought, serious.
MARTHA
The good lord works
in mysterious ways.
JONATHAN
He sure as heck does that.
MARTHA
All these years, happy as we’ve been,
how I prayed and prayed
He’d see fit to give us a child.
And just when I finally
accepted my bitter lot…
(firmly)
No one must ever know.
JONATHAN
Folks’ll ask questions.
MARTHA
(determinedly)
We’ll say he’s a child
to my cousin in North Dakota,
and just now orphaned.
(cuddling the baby)
Poor thing.
JONATHAN
Guess I’d better hitch up the rig
and come back to get that…
that thing he was settin’ in.
What do you make of that thing?
Martha? You listening?
MARTHA
I was thinkin’ what to call him.
I was thinkin’ I had an uncle
who was a fine man, you recall him?
The church sexton?
JONATHAN
Who? Clark? I never cared
two hoots for that fella.
(pause)
Jonathan Jr.
That’s got a ring to it.
MARTHA
(gives him a look)
We don’t want a child called ‘Junior,’
ain’t that so, Clark?
Why sure it is.
He scowls a bit, then looks outside the window as he drives.
JONATHAN
Yup, better get that thing ‘fore
somebody finds it who shouldn’t.
Okay, here’s the Mankiewicz shooting script:
JONATHAN steps out of the truck cab, looks sadly at the punctured tire.
JONATHAN
(muttering)
If a man didn’t know better, he’d think
Detroit made those things
to blowout on purpose.
Grumbling, he goes around the rear to unstrap the spare tire and haul out the jack.
CAMERA SUDDENLY ZOOMS IN ON MARTHA: Her face is frozen in astonishment at something she’s seen in the
wheatfield.
MARTHA
Jonathan!
JONATHAN turns, looks, eyes widening, equally amazed.
JONATHAN
Great God Almighty! What is it?
The space module has landed in the fields. The engines are silenced.
JONATHAN rushes to the strange, eerie metallic geode nesting in the charred wheat, MARTHA close behind him.
MARTHA
Careful, Jonathan.
Suddenly: a wall of the module opens. A capsule ejects a little boy still fastened inside, cushioned by the three
blankets.
JONATHAN
What in the Sam Hill —
He looks inside the module, leans over, touches the capsule, burning his hand.
MARTHA
Jonathan!
The little boy, aged 3, suddenly springs out of the electronically controlled belts, half naked.
MARTHA
(stunned)
It’s a … baby.
JONATHAN stares, dumbfounded. MARTHA smiles softly at the baby, wraps him in the three blankets, picks him up.
MARTHA carries the BABY back to the truck, looks at him with wonder. JONATHAN walks in front, shakes his head.
JONATHAN
Well – better change that tire
if we’re gonna get home
and see about contactin’
that boy’s proper kin.
MARTHA
(defensively)
He hasn’t got any – not for sure.
Not around here anyways.
You saw that magic contraption
he came in, same as me.
JONATHAN has arrived at the truck, starts jacking up the front end…
JONATHAN
I did. But I ain’t gettin’
hauled off to no booby hatch
by tellin’ other people I did –
and neither is you.
JONATHAN removes the lugs and the punctured tire.
MARTHA
You take things easy now, Jonathan.
You mind what Doc Frye said
about that heart of yours…
[… Skipping past the description of the jack slipping off and the child holding up the front of the truck …]
INT. TRUCK CAB – DAY
The BABY sits happily in MARTHA’S lap. The COUPLE look ahead, lost in thought, MARTHA in particular.
MARTHA
(carefully)
All these years, happy as we’ve been,
how I prayed and prayed
the Good Lord would see fit
to give us a child.
JONATHAN
(looks – alarmed)
Martha, there is something
downright strange about that boy.
Where he come from,
what he just did back there.
Now surely you don’t mean to…
MARTHA
(firmly)
No one must ever know.
JONATHAN
But folks’ll ask questions . . .
MARTHA
We’ll say he’s child to my cousin
in North Dakota, and just now orphaned.
Jonathan, he’s a baby…
(cuddles baby)
Poor thing.
JONATHAN
Well…
(sigh)
Maybe we could give it a try for the time bein’.
I’d better hitch the rig and come back
to get that… that thing he was settin’ in.
What do you make of that thing? Martha?
Martha Kent, you listenin’ to me?
MARTHA
I was thinkin’ what to call him.
I was thinkin’ I had an uncle
who was a fine man, you recall him?
The church sexton?
JONATHAN
Who?- Clark? I never cared
two hoots for that fella.
So, comparing the Newman/Benton script with the shooting script, what changes did Mankiewicz make?
For one thing, there isn’t as much tension between Jonathan and Martha in the shooting script. Newman/Benton
has Martha scolding Jonathan: “Don’t just stand there gapin’, Jonathan. Can’t you see he’s cold?” At the end of the
scene, Jonathan suggests naming the kid Jonathan Jr., and Martha passive-aggressively confers about it with Clark:
“We don’t want a child called ‘Junior,’ ain’t that so, Clark? Why, sure it is.”
Jonathan’s first line is softened a bit, changing from “Blamed cheap rubber them Detroit wiseacres are puttin’ out,”
to “If a man didn’t know better, he’d think Detroit made those things to blowout on purpose.”
Martha’s description of being childless has also softened. In the Newman/Benton script, she says, “All these years,
happy as we’ve been, how I prayed and prayed He’d see fit to give us a child. And just when I finally accepted my
bitter lot…” Mankiewicz takes out the phrase “bitter lot,” and just focuses on the happy part of the line.
All of these changes lighten the tone, making the characters less grouchy.
Here’s the scene that we see in the movie:
(Jonathan looks at the punctured tire, and kicks it in frustration.)
Jonathan: Now, wouldn’t that beat all get-out. Would you —
(Turning to Martha, he realizes that she’s gaping at something in the field behind him. He turns, and they look at the
scorched field.)
Martha: (awed) Pa!
Jonathan: Oh, my.
(They look over the rim of the crater, and see 3-year-old Kal-El walking out of the capsule. He raises his arms to
them, in greeting. Jonathan and Martha smile.)
(Jonathan takes the tire off.)
Martha: (entranced) All these years, as happy as we’ve been, how I’ve prayed and prayed the Good Lord would see
fit to give us a child. (She embraces Kal-El.)
Jonathan: Honey, would you hand me that rag up there?
Martha: You take things easy now, Jonathan. Remember what Doc Frye said about that heart o’ yours.
(He laughs, then grows serious and looks at the boy.)
Jonathan: Now, the first thing we’ve got to do when we get home is find out who that boy’s proper family is.
Martha: He hasn’t got any. Not from around here, anyway.
Jonathan: Martha, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?
Martha: (a little shyly) We could… say he’s the child of my cousin in North Dakota, and just now orphaned.
(Jonathan laughs, and shakes his head.)
Jonathan: Oh, Martha…
Martha: Jonathan, he’s only a baby!
Jonathan: Martha — now, you saw how we found him. (He notices she’s looking away.) Martha Clark Kent, are you
listening to what I’m saying?
And then the jack slips out, and Kal-El lifts up the truck, end of scene.
The most striking thing about that scene, compared to the shooting script, is that Jonathan has been completely de-
grouched.
The Detroit tire rant is gone, replaced with a tame “Now, wouldn’t that beat all get-out.” There’s no tension between
Jonathan and Martha at all; she says that she wants to adopt an alien boy, and he just stands there and twinkles. He
calls her “honey”. She reminds him about his bad heart, and he chuckles.
Jonathan smiles at everything that Martha says in the scene, and the harshest that he can get with her is “Oh,
Martha…” Glenn Ford has clearly made the choice that Jonathan Kent absolutely adores his wife.
There’s no line about getting hauled off to the booby hatch. There’s no line about how he doesn’t like one of
Martha’s relatives. There’s no line about how strange he thinks the child is. They took out almost every instance of
no, don’t, ain’t, never, and neither.
And in addition to the dialogue, there are a dozen little physical moments that tell the story of their marriage. They
are constantly showing us that little Kal will be brought up in a loving home, where he’ll be safe, and appreciated.
I don’t know who made the choices that ended up changing the scene so much — it was probably a collaboration
between Donner, Mankiewicz and the actors, somewhere between read-through and shooting. They cut out
everything that wasn’t necessary, and focused on the real heart of the scene, which is how much Jonathan loves
Martha.
And that’s how they slip this little fiend past us, and turn a scarcely-believable plot contrivance into something that
feels natural and correct. Then Clark kills everybody in the movie, and brings on the end times. I mean, you can’t say
they weren’t warned.
Superman 1.19: Left Behind
At the end of football practice, a pretty girl walks up to Clark and says, “Listen, a whole bunch of us are going up to
Mary Ellen’s, to play some records. Would you like to come?”
And he says oh, I’d love to, but I’m not supposed to interfere with human history. You have no idea how big of a
crimp it puts in a guy’s social schedule, having a rule like that.
So Kal-El has journeyed across the gulf of space and landed himself a sweet arrangement where he gets to live on
Earth rent-free, and we’re twenty-five minutes into the movie, so obviously we’re clear of the origin story, and we
can get into the plot, right?
Okay, maybe not. Our hero is still a teenager, and there’s twenty more minutes worth of origin story before the
movie actually starts. And for a lot of that time, we’re going to be looking at young Clark, which personally I find a bit
trying.
I don’t know if anybody else feels this way, but in my opinion, young Clark is too close to the uncanny valley for me
to be fully comfortable with him. I’ve always had a weird feeling about him, but it wasn’t until I started working on
this blog that I learned why: that’s not his hair, his voice or his nose.
The actor’s name is Jeff East, and he’s a good-looking guy, in his natural environment. He was a child actor who
broke into film at age 16 as Huckleberry Finn in a 1973 musical adaptation of Tom Sawyer, and then headlined a year
later in the sequel, a musical Huckleberry Finn. He’d also been in a few TV-movies for The Magical World of Disney.
In 1977, East had the starring role in a film called The Hazing, where he played a college athlete whose fraternity
brothers strip off his clothes and make him find his way down a mountain in a jockstrap, which I suppose is
somebody’s idea of a good time. His fellow fratboy has an accident and dies of exposure on the mountain, and the
rest of the movie is about how they cover up the death so the fraternity doesn’t get shut down. I think it’s a
romantic comedy.
That’s where Richard Donner discovered East; Donner saw the film, and decided East should be the young Clark
Kent.
So this is what it looks like when you take a guy with a big mop of curly hair, and you try to balance a wig on top of
him. I don’t love it, but I think they would have gotten away with it if they hadn’t done the nose piece. Apparently
they thought that this nose made him look more like Christopher Reeve. It doesn’t. I’m not sure what it makes him
looks like.
At least the voice sounds right, because it’s Reeve dubbing the lines. They didn’t tell East that they were going to do
that; it was a late decision, made after the shooting. He didn’t actually know that his lines were dubbed until he saw
the film at the premiere, which is a rough blow for a guy who’s getting his big break in a blockbuster movie.
Anyway, this is Clark, and at the moment his job is to be lightly bullied, and left standing on the sidelines while the
football players drive off with all the girls for a debauched record-player party at Mary Ellen’s. If he wanted to, he
could pick up young Brad here and hurl him into the sun, but he’s promised his parents that he wouldn’t act like an
angry extraterrestrial when people are around.
This is the first time that we see the filmmakers making the deliberate choice to ignore something from the comics
— i.e., his career as Superboy, the half-portion hero who took up the cape and tights somewhere around middle
school, and appointed himself the pint-sized champion of truth and light.
We talked a few days ago about the history of the Kents, who were pure backstory in Superman’s life until 1944,
when National decided to broaden the character’s appeal by cutting him down to child size and having him work the
birthday party beat.
It’s a silly idea, having a little kid running around with extrahuman powers and perceptions, and it easily could have
run its course and been forgotten — but it worked, somehow, and Superboy became so popular that he got his own
bimonthly title in 1949. At the time, the only other National superheroes to have their own books were Superman,
Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman; Superboy was at that level.
So there it sits, this extra period in Superman’s life that got filled up with its own cast of regular characters and
recurring villains. At one point, they even decided that Clark knew the young Lex Luthor when they were kids, and
Superboy was accidentally responsible for Luthor losing all of his hair.
Somehow, they managed to wait all the way until Superboy issue #8 before they introduced a flashback of
Superbaby. Fortunately, this is as far back as they could possibly go — although there were a couple Silver Age
stories where Clark traveled through time and visited Krypton before he was born, Back to the Future style, so it’s
possible that for a brief moment we actually had Superembryo.
The above panel is from the Beppo story which I discussed last week; I love that in this story, both of the Kents just
straight-up call the kid Superbaby when they’re alone at home. “That was naughty, Superbaby!” they say. The kid
isn’t even wearing his costume.
The movie doesn’t include any of that. There’s a little nod to the tradition — the cheerleader is called Susie in the
script, but in the movie she’s Lana, named after the supporting character Lana Lang in the Superboy comics.
But it’s clear in the film that Clark hasn’t spent his adolescence flying around town, solving mysteries and performing
heroic feats to the acclaim of all. He’s been keeping his powers on the down low, and he doesn’t get a costume until
he’s all grown up.
It’s obvious why they made that choice: dramatically, Superboy is a dud. The first third of the movie is about how
Superman came to be — the joys and heartbreaks and hard-won wisdom that made him a man worthy of putting on
the outfit and saving the world. The journey to find that identity, to understand who he is and what he’s for, is the
emotional throughline of the movie.
That structure was there from draft #1. The Puzo and Newman/Benton scripts were insufficient in a lot of ways, but
they knew from the first that the story should be: Krypton, Smallville, Fortress of Solitude, and then he becomes
Superman. Having the guy act like Superman from a toddler on up denies him any kind of mature character
development.
Overall, the film is remarkably faithful to the collective cultural understanding of Superman as we all knew him in
1978, but this is one element that they couldn’t include. Superboy had to die, so that Superman could live.
Superman 1.20: Contest of Champions
Sure, you like Superman; maybe you like him a whole lot. But did you spend six weeks in 1977 going from one
newsstand to another, hunting for copies of Aquaman, Jonah Hex, Starfire, Unknown Soldier, Challengers of the
Unknown, The Secret Society of Super-Villains, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth and Welcome Back, Kotter, each at
35 cents a throw, just for the chance to win a walk-on part in Superman: The Movie? There are all kinds of heroes in
this world.
I don’t know where you were in late spring 1977, but unless you were Edward Finneran and Tim Hussey — and how
many of us, in these troubled times, can truthfully say that we were — then you must have been wasting your time
and your nickels. The event was called The Great Superman Movie Contest, and it propelled Mr. Finneran and Mr.
Hussey into a very brief but memorable career in blockbuster movies.
Specifically, they appear in the shot where the football players run past Clark and the shouty coach, and drop their
helmets at Clark’s feet. The two contest winners are the kids in gray, and as they pass Clark, they each spin around
and say, “See you later, Clark!” — “See you later, Clark!” It’s really cute.
I don’t like to pick favorites, but I have to say that I think Mr. Hussey, who’s the first one in line, gives a better
performance. Young Finneran is good, I’m not saying he’s not, but there is a kind of artless grace in Hussey’s spin
that I think elevates his performance above the ordinary.
Superman: The Movie was the first big-budget comic book film, and the relationship between the film and the comic
book was fairly complex. Editor Julie Schwartz was in charge of the Superman titles at DC, and he didn’t think that
the comic should do anything in particular to connect to the film; Schwartz thought the books were selling just fine,
and the movie would bring new readers to the comic. It didn’t, as it turned out, but that’s a story we’ll pick up
another day.
In 1977, Superman was the brightest star in the DC Comics firmament, headlining six regular titles — Superman,
Action Comics, Adventure Comics presents Superboy, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman Family
and World’s Finest, plus featured roles in The Super Friends and Justice League of America.
DC clearly saw that it was helpful to have a Superman-heavy presence on the newsstands when the movie came out
— Adventure Comics switched from featuring Aquaman to Superboy in October 1977; they added a seventh title, a
Superman team-up book called DC Comics Presents in August 1978; and they published four extra-large format
Superman comics throughout ’78, including Superman vs Muhammad Ali, which we will definitely be discussing in
detail at a later date.
But the only direct connection between the comics and the movie were two brief but exciting promotional activities
— The Great Superman Movie Contest in spring 1977, and The Second Great Superman Movie Contest in fall 1978.
The first contest offered a grand prize of spinning around and saying “See you later, Clark” in a feature film, plus
hanging out with Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill in Calgary and getting a tour of the DC offices in New York.
Entering the contest was a bit of a rush. On the letters pages of selected DC comics with August and September
cover dates, there was a little strip at the bottom with a letter on it. You needed to collect enough letters to spell out
two words: S-U-P-E-R-M-A-N, and then either C-L-A-R-K or K-A-L-E-L. That’s 13 comics total, and not necessarily the
ones that you wanted.
The contest ran in comics with August and September cover dates, which came out in late spring, because cover
dates are always dated a few months ahead of your lived experience. There were only 9 issues with August cover
dates that had the contest, and 33 issues with September dates, so it was mostly a one-month experience; I bet
there were a lot of kids asking for an advance on their allowance, so they could break into show business.
You had to have your submission in by July 15th. They chose the winners on July 18th, and then notified the prize
winners by telegram; the winners had to hustle out to Calgary just a few weeks later.
The kids had a good time, which is nice; Mr. Finneran wrote an article for Back Issue magazine in 2018, and talked
about what a neat experience it was. It was probably a little deflating that they didn’t get to meet Christopher Reeve
or Margot Kidder, or see anybody in a Superman costume flying around Pinewood Studios, but they met the stars of
the 1940s serials and they got to see Calgary in August.
The Second Great Superman Movie Contest happened in late fall 1978 — in comics with January and February ’79
cover dates, natch — and was considerably more difficult to enter.
The first prize was “the actual cape worn by Christopher Reeve in the filming of Superman: The Movie!” which is
very cool; I can imagine “Do you want to come over and see Superman’s cape?” could be an effective pickup line, in
the right circumstances. I don’t know if other people measure things in pickup potential, but I do, and there is game
in Superman’s cape.
Entering was rough, though. You needed to get hold of at least 25 different DC titles — an almost 100% increase
from the first contest’s paywall — and each one had a multiple-choice question about Superman history. The
questions were randomly distributed over 40 issues, including House of Mystery, The Unexpected and Weird
Western Tales, and you just had to keep buying comics until you collected all 25 questions.
And DC Comics was not fucking around with these questions. If you think that multiple choice questions are easy,
then DC Comics will deliver a hard lesson about reality.
Here’s question #1:
Women with the initials “L.L.” have always played an important part in Superman’s life. He met one such woman,
Lori Lemaris, the mermaid from Atlantis…
a) as Clark Kent while on assignment at sea for the Daily Planet
b) when he saved the underwater city from destruction
c) when she telepathically contacted him for help
d) while Clark was a student at Metropolis University
And that is question number one. You would think they’d go easy on the first couple, get you accustomed to your
situation, but no: they go straight to 1959 mermaid knowledge. Life is stern and life is earnest, children, and if you
do not appreciate that, then DC Comics is here to educate you on the subject.
The answer is d), by the way, which I happen to know because I take an interest in undersea superhero relations.
But I am not special, and here is question #9 to prove it:
Nearly everyone on Krypton owned a “Jor-El”, an amazing creation named after the man who invented it. The “Jor-
El” was…
a) an all-purpose vehicle for land, sea and air
b) a home-maintenance robot
c) a robot teacher
d) a portable weather-control device
The internet has informed me of the answer to this question, thanks to the Supermanica wiki, but I didn’t have
internet access in fall 1978, so I would have fallen flat on this one. It comes from a 1960 Superman story called “The
Revenge Against Jor-El!” and the target market for this contest was not even alive in 1960. The Second Great
Superman Movie Contest does not like you. It thinks you suck, and it wants you to fail.
#8 is a fun one, as well:
Everybody knows Jor-El had a younger brother, Zor-El, who was Supergirl’s father. Jor-El also had a twin brother
named…
a) Amn-El
b) Mon-El
c) Kal-El
d) Ral-El
e) Nim-El
The thing I like about this question is that it starts out saying that “everybody knows” something that I don’t believe
I’d ever heard of. It’s basically saying that you have already failed at this question before the question has even
started, and “everybody” knows how ignorant you are. Why are you still trying? says The Second Great Superman
Movie Contest. You worthless sack of shit.
I’m going to give you a couple more, just in case you still have a will to live. Here’s #18:
According to the Superman television program of the 1950s, before becoming editor of the Daily Planet, Perry held
the post of…
a) Commissioner of Police for Metropolis
b) Mayor of Metropolis
c) ambassador to the Court of St. James
d) representative to Congress
The answer to this one, obviously, is I don’t know, how could I possibly know this, I live in 1978 and I am only a child.
This one knocks me out, question #24:
Lara’s occupation before she met Jor-El was…
a) computer programmer
b) astronaut
c) usherette at a 3D video theatre
d) inventor
e) physicist
So, again, I don’t know, and the only way I could know is if I wait several decades for the internet to be invented, and
then Supermanica would tell me that “she worked in a shop that manufactured robots”, which isn’t even one of the
choices.
But everybody had to do their best and get a postcard to DC Comics by January 2nd. They received 2,000 entries,
which they had to grade by hand, and only 21 entrants got all 25 questions right. To pick the winner, they got
Christopher Reeve to come and do the drawing — he was in New York to do the Today Show, which was right across
the street from DC’s offices.
The winner of the Superman cape was Darvin Metzger of Bountiful, Utah, who enjoyed it very much, as naturally he
would. Of the other 20 entrants who got all the answers right, Reeve picked 10 out of the box as second prize
winners, who each got a page of original Superman art by Curt Swan. The other 10 got a 2-year subscription to their
favorite DC comic.
To qualify for a third prize, the entrants had to get at least 15 questions correct, and they were supposed to each get
a one-year subscription to their favorite comic. But then it turned out that 1,400 of the 2,000 entrants qualified, and
that’s a lot of one-year subscriptions to give away. So they sent all the third prizers a form to fill out that offered
them a one-year subscription, or…… they could get a “DC Prize Pack” of 20 books that would include “classics from
the DC library” (i.e., old back issues that were lying around), some foreign editions (which were also lying around)
and at least one autographed comic (autographed by whoever happened to be in the office). Apparently, enough
winners opted for the DC Prize Pack that DC Comics managed to stay solvent for a little while.
And what about the cape? Well, Darvin sold it in 1988 for $600, and then it turned up at a Sotheby’s auction in 1997,
where it sold for $23,000. It changed hands again in 2019 at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills for $155,000.
Somehow, all of this activity sold either comic books or movie tickets or both, and then Superman fought
Muhammad Ali, for the sake of intergalactic peace. We’ll check back with DC Comics again soon to see what else
they got up to in 1978, but first, let’s get the hell out of Smallville.
Superman 1.21: Strangers on a Train
And he’s off, streaking across the screen in the film’s first true “how’d they do that” moment. Vastly underestimated
teenage space monster Clark Kent isn’t allowed to kick footballs or attend age-appropriate social gatherings, so he’s
expressing his frustration in a typically reckless way: using his super-speed to race with the Kansas Star, an occupied
passenger train full of curious little girls with binoculars.
He hasn’t developed any catchphrases yet, so he doesn’t realize that it’s not supposed to be “faster than a
locomotive” — it’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. The dumb kid’s got it all mixed
up.
Modern audiences, who are used to everything being done by greenscreen, may not appreciate how clever this
entirely practical effect actually is. That really is Jeff East out in the sunshine, running faster than a train.
They accomplished this by putting him on a harness suspended from a crane, so that his feet don’t quite touch the
ground.
The camera is tracking alongside the boy as he speeds along, keeping the crane out of the frame while he pretends
to run, suspended just above ground level. It’s a lovely shot.
They actually swung him in front of an oncoming train, too, for the moment when he turns and jumps the track. I
don’t always get this excited over the making-of details, but I think this one is clever and effective and I wanted to
tell you all about it.
Now that’s out of my system, let’s turn to the other element in the scene: the little girl who spots Clark running and
tries to attract the attention of her parents, who don’t see him, as per the standard ironic nobody-believes-children-
who-spot-the-supernatural trope.
The parents themselves are a bit of a clever effect, because this is the first superhero movie Easter egg: they’re Kirk
Alyn and Noel Neill, who played Superman and Lois Lane in the 1948 chapter serial Superman, the first adaptation of
this story to reach the silver screen.
So we might as well take this opportunity to take a glance at how they handled the introduction to the material, the
first time around. As we’ve discussed before, after Superman’s debut in Action Comics, the character quickly jumped
to a comic strip and a radio show, but he was a bit slow making his way to the Saturday afternoon matinees. Fellow
comic-strip heroes Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Dick Tracy all had their own serials in the late 30s and early 40s,
Fawcett Comics’ knockoff Captain Marvel had a serial in 1941, and Superman’s buddy Batman made it to the screen
in 1943, but Superman took the long way around and only showed up once the serial format was on the wane as a
force in American entertainment.
He finally made it to the screen in Columbia Pictures’ 1948 serial, a 15-week storyline in which Superman squared
off against the glamorous and ruthless Spider Lady, a camp science criminal who holds Metropolis for ransom with
the threat of her powerful reducer ray.
Superman was played by Kirk Alyn, a song-and-dance man from 1930s Broadway and vaudeville who moved to Los
Angeles to try and break into movies, which he mostly didn’t do until Superman came along. He had a dancer’s
muscular physique, and played Superman on the balls of his feet, always in the process of leaping in and out of the
frame.
Of course, if you’re going to do a version of Superman then you need to go through the whole origin story first, with
Jor-El and Lara and the whole “Krypton is doomed” scenario.
The science council scene at the start of chapter one is four minutes long, and feels like an eternity, going through
the evidence for and against Jor-El’s theory, several times over. Maybe it’s just because I’ve spent the last several
weeks looking at multiple iterations of the science council sequence, but it seems to me like they went to all the
trouble of making costumes out of the living room curtains and just wanted to make sure they got their money’s
worth.
At the end of the sequence, Krypton blows up, as it always has and always will, depicted by shots of models of an
exploding volcano and the Hoover Dam burst open by floodwaters.
All of the complex effects in the serial like careening rockets and exploding planets are handled with animation, so
every once in a while things turn into cartoons, and stay that way until events settle down.
They do the Kents-as-passing-motorists scenario, and then we see young Clark, apparently put to work on the farm
as a toddler, which is an aspect that the other versions we’ve looked at haven’t thought to address. This shot makes
me wonder if the Kents weren’t such a generous foster family as we thought; they just stumbled across the world’s
most productive child labor market in history.
There’s also a cute scene where Mrs. Kent points at a haystack and tells young Clark to dive in and use his x-ray
vision to find her wristwatch, which she apparently hid there in order to test his mutant abilities. This might actually
be a normal part of farm life that maybe I’m not aware of.
We get some teenage heroics too, in a somewhat confusing scene where Clark saves his father from both a tornado
and a downed electric line at the same time.
Kirk enters the picture in a scene where his parents finally work up the nerve to tell him it’s time to leave home, and
since he’s clearly thirty-eight years old it’s hard to blame them for wanting to move things along.
“You’re different from other people,” Mr. Kent says. “Your unique abilities make you a kind of Superman. Because of
these great powers — your speed and strength, your X-ray vision and super-sensitive hearing — you have a great
responsibility.” This is true except I don’t know why Clark is sitting around in the house wearing glasses.
“I know what you’re going to say, Dad,” Clark chimes in. “I must use my powers wisely, and justly.” He must have
read the comic book too.
“Yes, you must use them always in the interest of truth, tolerance and justice,” Dad continues. But mostly you must
use them outside, and somewhere else.
“Very well,” Clark agrees. “And when I leave, I’ll get a job that’ll keep me close to world events. Then when anything
happens, I’ll know about it at once.” I don’t know why they didn’t figure this out years ago; have they really just
been doing chores all this time?
Mom completes the routine by handing Clark a parcel. “Here’s a uniform I made for you,” she says, “out of the
blankets you were wrapped in, when we found you. It’s a strange kind of cloth, that resists both fire and acid.” If
that’s the case, then I don’t know how she managed to cut it, and sew it together. Has anyone ever gotten to the
bottom of that?
In the next scene, Clark’s leaving the house, and the announcer says, “Shortly after this, Clark’s foster parents passed
away. Remembering their last wishes…”
And the audience says, what? They looked fine, just a second ago! What the hell happened in that house?
And then, inevitably, like summer following spring: a train. I don’t know why a young Clark Kent is attracted to trains
like cats to catnip; it’s just one of those things.
But look what’s inside, furiously tapping on her typewriter: Noel Neill as Miss Lois Lane, composing. She’s got no
time to wait until Clark gets to Metropolis. It’s been thirty-eight years, and there’s only a couple minutes left in the
installment; if he’s not going to come to her, then she’ll have to go and pick him up herself.
Neill’s Lois is instantly the most interesting person in the room — scolding, teasing and bossing Jimmy Olsen around,
then smiling indulgently when he looks away. She’d spent a few years being the best thing in the “Teen Agers”
musical comedy series as a bossy high school newspaper reporter, and she knows how to get the job done.
Clark shows up at the train platform, and naturally there’s an emergency: Lois and Jimmy’s train is approaching, and
part of the track is busted; the train will crash if it speeds past this point. This is a problem that can only be solved by
having everybody stand in a line and have a group discussion. There doesn’t seem to be any way to signal the train
and get it to stop before it reaches the danger spot, which seems like a design flaw in the rail system that somebody
should have been paying attention to, like, a while ago.
Disaster looming, Clark hops behind a bush and emerges in the brilliant costume of the high-flying hero Superman.
With only seconds to spare, Superman leaps over to the broken track, bends it back into shape, and basically just
holds it there while the speeding train passes over his fingers.
That’s the end of the first chapter, and at the start of the second episode, he gets a little moment to stand up and be
triumphant, and then it’s back behind the bush to change into Clark again.
This is an important aspect of the premise that so far has only been explored on the movie screen, here and in the
Fleischer cartoons: that Superman needs to go and hide somewhere when he wants to swap identities. In the
comics, it can happen between panels, and on the radio show, he just changes his voice — but in the serial, they
have to show Kirk Alyn running behind a bush, which is not exactly dignified.
So that’s the kind of fun these two had with a train back in the day, and now they’ve got a cameo in Superman: The
Movie. Unfortunately, in the theatrical version of the film, all you get to see is a brief shot of Noel giving the girl a
puzzled frown, and the side of Kirk’s head.
In the longer cuts of the movie — the 2000 Director’s Cut/Expanded Edition, and the three-hour TV Extended Cut —
you get the full cameo scene, which is very cute, and one of the few extra moments that I think is worthwhile.
In this sequence, we see the family from inside the train, and the girl wakes her mother and points out the window.
“Golly!” she cries. “I saw a boy out there run as fast as a train! Faster, even!”
Her mother chuckles, and tweaks the girl’s nose. “Ha ha, Lois Lane!” she smirks. “You have a writer’s gift for
invention; I’ll say that for you.”
The girl splutters, “But… but…” and her dad looks up to say, “Lois, please read your book.”
“No one ever believes me,” the girl crabs, as Noel Neill just sits there grinning, simply thrilled to be part of the story
again.
So, I mean, I get why this scene is unnecessary, and possibly even misleading. The audience arrives at this moment
knowing that “Lois Lane” is important — which means that this incident matters, and should be kept in mind when
Lois returns to the screen around twenty minutes later. As the movie goes along, they might even wonder when Lois
is going to recognize Superman as the boy in Kansas who ran past her train.
But the incident doesn’t matter, and it’s not referred to again. It’s a gun on the wall that doesn’t get fired, which
means it’s a distraction, and it’s the kind of self-indulgent meta-joke that Richard Donner’s “verisimilitude” approach
is specifically trying to avoid.
Still, it’s cute as hell, seeing the two of them on a train together, as the new Clark Kent speeds over the horizon,
Metropolis-bound.
Superman 1.22: The Death of Uncle Ben
It’s been a rough afternoon for young Clark Kent, secret teenage king of the sky. First he got left behind after football
practice, and then he met the love of his life, who it turns out is nine years old and currently heading east on the
Kansas Star. Now he’s getting advice from his foster father in a lengthy one-take walk-and-talk, all the way up the
front drive.
“I mean, every time I get the football, I can make a touchdown,” Clark says.
“That’s for sure,” his father nods.
“Every time!”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, is it showing off, if somebody’s doing the things he’s capable of doing?” Clark asks. “Is a bird showing off
when it flies?”
“No, no,” Jonathan shakes his head. He’s got about sixty percent of an answer to that question, and he’s going to
bluff his way through the rest of it in real time. It’s called parenting.
“Now, you listen to me,” he says. “When you first came to us, we thought that people would come and take you
away, because — when they found out, y’know, the things you could do? That worried us a lot.” He sighs. “Then a
man gets older, and he thinks very differently, and things get very clear. And there’s one thing I do know, son — and
that is, you are here for a reason. I don’t know whose reason — whatever the reason is, y’know? Maybe it’s
because… well… I don’t know, it’s…” He trails off. “But I do know one thing: it’s not to score touchdowns.”
“Well, okay,” Clark shrugs, “but could I just score a few touchdowns while I’m waiting for whatever the hell you’re
talking about?”
But that’s the beauty of the scene — that Jonathan approaches something very, very big, and then he gets all
Midwestern about it.
When he says “Maybe it’s because…” it’s pretty clear that he’s about to invoke God. If you live in Kansas and there’s
“a reason” for something, then obviously it’s God’s reason — but then he looks at Clark, and how do you say to your
teenager in cold blood that he might be kind of the Messiah?
It’s an extraordinary moment, capturing a truth about the lives of the Kents and their mystery starchild. That would
clearly be a topic of curiosity and concern if these were real people, but in the forty years since these characters
were created, nobody had ever taken them seriously enough to write it down.
And the framing of the shot is just showing off, really — a single take that lasts a full sixty-nine seconds, with the
camera mounted on a pickup truck that’s being pulled along by crew members. It puts real focus on this moment,
this conversation, in a clear signal to the audience that you’re supposed to pay a lot of attention to what’s happening
here. And then the guy falls over and dies, which puts a period at the end of that sentence like you wouldn’t believe.
This is the Talk, which we’ve seen bits and pieces of over the last week that we’ve been discussing the Kents. The
Talk originally came from that 1942 Adventures of Superman novel by George Lowther, the one that invented the
farm family concept. In the book, Eben’s on his deathbed, reading Clark the instruction manual:
“Lad, ye have within ye powers there’s no explainin’. Ye’re a — a modern miracle, that’s what ye be. ‘Tis not for you
nor me to question the ways of God.” He raised himself against the pillows. “But these powers ye have, lad, and it
rests with you whether ye’ll put them to good use or to bad!”
Clark said nothing. He sat looking out at the western hills, tears burning his eyes. Old Eben went on.
“There’s great work t’ be done in this world, and you can do it. Ye must use these powers of yours to help all
mankind. There are men in this world who prey on decent folk — thieves, murderers, criminals of every sort. Fight
such men, son! Pit your miraculous powers against them! With you on the side of law and order, crime and
oppression and injustice must perish in the end!”
Clark sat and said nothing and the shadows deepened in the room.
“One thing more —” Old Eben’s voice came feebly out of the growing darkness. “Men are strange. They believe the
wrong things, say the wrong things, do the wrong things. ‘Tisn’t that they want to, but, somehow, they do. They’d
not understand ye, lad. ‘Tis not given me t’say how they’d act toward ye, but I know it would not be in the right
way.”
He took a deep breath before going on.
“So ye must hide your true self from them. They must never know that you’re a — a superman.”
That’s a nice emotional moment as well — old-fashioned, and in farm dialect, and Clark doesn’t get a chance to talk
for three pages, but it’s a real scene, and it’s a lot better than any of the other versions managed to do. In the weird
1963 story “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent,” where both parents die from opening a pirate’s treasure chest in
Bermuda, Jonathan manages to say, “You must always use your super-powers to do good… uphold law and order!”
Which you’d imagine is material they’d already covered, since in that version, Clark has been flying around using his
powers since he was a superbaby.
And then there’s the 1948 serial that we talked about yesterday, where Jonathan approached his son and said,
“You’re different from other people. Your unique abilities make you a kind of Superman. Because of these great
powers — your speed and strength, your X-ray vision and super-sensitive hearing — you have a great responsibility.”
Which is — wait a minute. Great powers and great responsibility… isn’t that somebody else’s big line?
Because I was under the impression that Spider-Man got the Talk from his Uncle Ben, saying exactly the same thing.
Spider-Man’s tragic origin story came from Amazing Fantasy #15, in August 1962. In the original comic, teenage
science nerd Peter Parker goes to an exhibit at the science hall on the fascinating world of atomic science, and an
irradiated arachnid chomps on his hand, granting him a full set of spider powers.
At first, Peter figures he’ll use these powers to make a buck on TV, and when he sees a cop chasing a thief, Peter
doesn’t bother to try and stop the crook. A little while later, Peter’s elderly uncle — who’s raised him since he was a
boy — is shot and killed by a burglar, and when Peter tracks the killer down in his spider-suit, he realizes it’s the guy
who he didn’t stop when he had the chance.
At the end of the story, as Peter realizes that everything is his fault and he’s been called to serve as a crime-fighter,
the closing caption hammers it home: “A lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last
that in this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility!”
Uncle Ben’s death is a much bigger deal in Spider-Man’s origin story than Jonathan Kent’s in Superman’s, no matter
how much Superman: The Movie tries to emphasize it.
For Spider-Man, Peter’s guilt about not saving his uncle is the single point of inspiration that turns him into the
superhero that he’ll become, and he thinks about it pretty much every time he’s under stress. If Uncle Ben hadn’t
died, Peter wouldn’t be Spider-Man — or at least, not the Spider-Man that matters.
The equivalent tragedy in Superman’s story is the death of Jor-El, and the destruction of Krypton. You couldn’t tell
the story of Superman without blowing up his home planet; it wouldn’t make any sense. But you could kill Pa Kent,
or both Ma and Pa, or let them both live, or any other possible permutation, because ultimately that’s not the thing
that inspires him to become a hero.
That’s why the Superman chronicles all contradict each other; every time somebody tells this origin story, they make
up their own timetable of Clark’s childhood. That’s especially true if Superboy is in the mix — Clark couldn’t possibly
be inspired by his father’s deathbed speech, because he’d already been wearing the cape and helping people out
since he was a little kid.
The funny thing about Uncle Ben’s “great powers/great responsibility” line is that Uncle Ben doesn’t actually say it.
In the first Spider-Man story, Ben Parker has exactly two lines of dialogue:
You’re not foolin’ me, Petey! I know you’re awake — and it’s time for school!
Don’t fatten him up too much, dear! I can hardly out-wrestle him now!
If you want to turn that into some kind of inspirational life lesson, then I suppose you could try, but I wouldn’t
bother, if I were you. The “great powers” line doesn’t come from Ben; it’s just in the caption in the last panel, direct
from Stan Lee.
These days, everybody thinks that it’s Uncle Ben’s line, because of the 2002 Spider-Man movie. It’s actually not easy
to give Ben an opportunity to say that, because the line only makes sense after Peter gets spider-powers, which Ben
doesn’t know about. In the movie, they manage to work it in after Peter punches the school bully:
“Peter, these are the years when a man changes into the man he’s going to become for the rest of his life. Just be
careful who you change into. This guy, Flash Thompson — he probably deserved what happened. But just because
you can beat him up, doesn’t give you the right to. Remember: with great power comes great responsibility.”
It’s an odd thing to say following a high school fistfight, but later on, Peter remembers it at a more opportune
moment, and gets inspired from that.
When they rebooted the Spider-Man movies with 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, they made sure that the new
Uncle Ben got another whack at the idea:
“Your father lived by a philosophy — a principle. He believed that if you could do good things for other people, you
had a moral obligation to do those things. That’s what’s at stake here. Not choice — responsibility.”
That paraphrase is not particularly well-formed, and it’s not memorable at all, which pretty much explains why they
had to reboot the series again, five years later.
But in Superman, Clark doesn’t actually need Jonathan to die, in order to set out on his mission. He’s already got one
tragic backstory involving a dead father, and giving him another one eleven minutes later is not strictly necessary —
especially because then Clark has to go to the North Pole and talk to his original dead father, and get inspired all
over again.
That’s a hard truth for Jonathan to grapple with, as he grabs his left arm and sinks slowly in the west, but that’s show
business for you. You are here for a reason, Jonathan Kent, but it’s not to score touchdowns. See you on the other
side.
Superman 1.23: The Myth of the Monomyth
Around dawn, Clark wakes from a restless slumber and there’s a hum somewhere — some high, electric, pulsing
hum coming from the general barn area, and it gets louder, the longer he thinks about it. Something’s out there,
something that was buried a long time ago.
People should always dig up mystery boxes, it’s just good protocol. If somebody went to all the trouble to bury their
secrets deep in the earth, then obviously it’s supposed to be dug up and exposed to the open air again. Nine times
out of ten, something terrible happens, but you never know, you might be the lucky one.
It’s December 15th — just before Christmas, 1978 — and Clark is unwrapping his gift ten days early. Inside, he finds
a little green lightsaber, which is literally the thing that every kid in America is hoping for this year.
This is the Call to Adventure, and if you’ve got your Joseph Campbell Hero with a Thousand Faces bingo card handy,
you can cross that one off the list. This is the hero venturing forth from the world of common day, aka this wheat
field, into a region of supernatural wonder, aka the North Pole, where he’ll get Supernatural Aid and/or Cross the
First Threshold, and then go into the Belly of the Whale and set out on the Road of Trials, which I think is the Daily
Planet typing test. Unless the Belly of the Whale was the space capsule, of course, in which case the Road of Trials
was probably running faster than the train, and now it’s time to meet Woman as the Temptress. Which is probably
Lois, but at the moment she’s only nine years old, so it might be somebody else.
Well, today’s the day that we get all this figured out. It’s time for us to ask whether Superman: The Movie follows
Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey, as an example of the universal monomyth. The answer, obviously, is
of course it fucking doesn’t.
So, yeah, let’s get started. The Hero’s Journey comes from a 1949 book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by
the comparative mythology rock star Joseph Campbell. Campbell compared more mythology than anybody else, and
the thing that struck him — surveying the combined wisdom of thousands of years of human civilizations, in every
corner of the globe — was how monotonous and dull it all was.
It’s all just one story, Campbell griped. It’s the same thing, over and over again. I’m sick of it. So he wrote a tell-all
exposé of the entire mythology racket, alleging that everyone who ever lived has just been copying off each other
this whole time.
It’s called the monomyth, and you don’t need to write that down, because according to Campbell, everybody’s
already got one. When you strip away all of the extra stuff like details and context, you find that everyone is really
telling the same story, which must be wired into our very nature as a symbol of universal cross-cultural truth. And
it’s lucky that Campbell came along, because otherwise we would have gone on thinking that learning about other
cultures offered new perspectives that enriched the collective human experience.
There are a lot of steps to this and I know you have other things to get to today, so I’ll just give you the basics. The
story is called the Hero’s Journey, in which a dude living in the everyday world is called to go on a quest into a scary,
magical world beyond. He’s guided by a wise mentor — let’s face it, probably also a dude — who guides the hero to
discover his true abilities, and pass through the threshold into a land of discovery. There, he makes new friends and
learns new skills, and undergoes a series of challenges and temptations — basically fistfights, monsters, women, and
a confrontation with his dad. At the end of these trials, he descends to the underworld, where he sheds his original
identity and is reborn anew. Then he returns triumphantly across the threshold to the regular world, and brings
everybody presents and hope.
If that story sounds familiar to you, then you might be thinking of Star Wars, like everybody else was in 1978. George
Lucas has said that he couldn’t figure out how to crack the story that he really wanted to tell, and then he read The
Hero with a Thousand Faces, and everything fell into place. He used the Hero’s Journey model as a blueprint, so the
story is about Tatooine moisture farmer Luke Skywalker receiving the call to adventure (Leia’s message) and meeting
a wise mentor (Ben Kenobi), who teaches him how to use the Force, and initiates him into a mysterious new world
(the Mos Eisley Cantina, and points north). He gains allies, he fights battles, he rescues the princess, and he deals
with his dad issues. He becomes a legendary Jedi Warrior, and the Ewoks cheer and everything’s okay, until the next
movie when everything suddenly sucks again.
The thing that’s really aggravating about the Hero’s Journey is that people say, “It’s the foundation of every great
myth — for example, Star Wars!” And it’s, like, no, it’s the other way around. Lucas wrote Star Wars in accordance
with the H.J., so you’re not allowed to use that as evidence that the monomyth is a pre-existing structure that’s
foundational to human thought. But people do it anyway.
The problem with the Hero’s Journey is that there are lots of stories in this world that follow all kinds of different
patterns, and anybody who says there isn’t is trying to sell you something. As a rule, anyone who tries to sum up a
very complex set of data into a single, simple formula is almost certainly wrong, unless it’s me in which case I’m
probably on to something.
You should always be suspicious when a white dude says that he’s figured out a rule that applies to all civilizations
throughout time, especially if he thinks that his culture produces “literature”, and every other culture produces
“mythology”. When white people look over the horizon at not-white people, they tend to see what they want to see.
[citation: see World, The History of.]
According to this way of thinking, white people’s fiction comes from individual artists making artistic choices, and
everybody else’s fiction is an unconscious expression of primeval Jungian pre-thought, which they believe is literal
truth because every other culture besides ours is too stupid to tell the difference between fiction and reality.
Apparently we were the ones who figured out that there’s such a thing as fiction, and then we had to go around and
tell everybody else about it, often at gunpoint.
The idea that there are rules inherent in the human experience that restrict creativity, curiosity and imagination is
just patently false. Saying that you’ve discovered one of those rules is just announcing to the world that you have
learned everything that you plan on ever learning in life, and you assume that everyone else will stop here as well,
once they catch up to you.
Superman turns out to be a particularly bad example for the model, because the entire premise is backwards. The
Hero’s Journey is about a normal person in an ordinary world who is called to participate in a journey of discovery,
across the threshold of hyperspace / the rabbit hole / Platform 9¾. The hero discovers his special abilities during his
training with his mentors, and develops those skills during his adventures.
What the Hero’s Journey is not about is an entirely magical person who arrives from Wonderland and shows up in
the ordinary world with no trouble at all, complete with all of his powers and abilities as of the orphanage. You can
try to claim that Krypton is his “normal” world and Earth is “magical” to him, but that’s not what the story is about.
From the start, Krypton is presented as a special place that’s much farther advanced than Earth, where everyone is
brilliant and strong. Clark doesn’t spend any time trying to adjust to this crazy new planet Earth; the big problem in
the Kents’ life is trying to keep normal people from discovering how special the kid is, before he’s ready to go out
and get a newspaper job.
So people who try to explain Superman in terms of the Hero’s Journey end up looking confused and silly. For
example, in 2006, Mark D. Stucky wrote a paper called “The Superhero’s Mythic Journey: Death and the Heroic Cycle
in Superman” in The Journal of Religion and Film, which says:
In the film, Superman has a complex call to his role as superhero (when viewed through the lens of Campbell’s work
on mythology). The overall “call” consists of three distinct calls and journeys. Each journey is a stage of a longer
overarching journey, with the later stages building on the earlier ones over a span of about 30 years. For Superman,
each of the three stages has:
The death of someone close to him.
Different symbols of his own death and resurrection.
Different experiences of atonement with a father figure.
Atonement here is reconciliation in a relationship, a symbolic life rising from death. Where there has been
separation and disconnection (death of a relationship), there is a rejoining, rekindling, and rebirth (resurrection of
that relationship).
Which is all very well, but Campbell didn’t say that you could do the journey three times in a row, no matter how
many father figures you happen to have.
Stucky goes on to assign stages in the Hero’s Journey to moments in Superman: The Movie, essentially at random.
One of the stages in the Hero’s Journey is called the Belly of the Whale, which Campbell describes as a way of
passing through the magical threshold “in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of
conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have
died.”
Stucky identifies the baby’s journey in the spacecraft as the Belly of the Whale — “He is symbolically dead since no
living soul knows of his existence” — but he also describes Clark’s time in the Fortress as being the whale’s belly, as
well as his time underground, fixing the San Andreas Fault. You can’t just say that people are in the Belly of the
Whale every time they go indoors; it doesn’t get us anywhere.
He also says that flying out of the Fortress is a resurrection, and that Eve helping him out of the pool is another
resurrection, and then he talks about Lois’ death and resurrection, when she isn’t even the Hero. The whole thing is
a mess, and everybody else who tries the same exercise ends up in the same place.
Ultimately, the test of all of these kinds of “Superman is really X” theories is whether the idea helps you understand
something about the story or the production that you didn’t know before. If George Lucas says that he was
influenced by Hero with a Thousand Faces, then that illuminates some of the story choices that he made, which is
worth discussing.
But if the discussion tells you more about the model than the movie, then it’s not really helpful. It’s the same thing
as the “Superman is a Christ figure” comparisons, or the question of whether Superman is Jewish because Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster were Jewish. It’s just a thing that people say.
This is especially true if you happen to be Zack Snyder, and you’re making Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in
2016. Snyder was really into Joseph Campbell too, and you could argue that part of the 2013 Man of Steel is about
Clark doing the “Refusal of the Call to Adventure” step, if you have nothing else to do.
Or if you really have a lot of time on your hands, you could do what the costume designer did in Batman v
Superman, which is to take a lengthy Joseph Campbell quote, translate it into fake Kryptonian and stitch it into the
texture of Superman’s costume.
The quote is four sentences long, scattered around Superman’s body. On his chest, it says, “And where we had
thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god,” followed by “Where we had thought to slay another, we shall
slay ourselves” on his wrist, “Where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own
existence” around his bicep, and “Where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world” around his
belt.
It’s a nice touch, if you spend a lot of time looking at Henry Cavill’s belt area, which I do, and that’s how I noticed it. I
knew studying fake Kryptonian on Duolingo would pay off, eventually.
Superman 1.24: A Balanced Breakfast
Martha wakes up, and remembers.
In that first moment just after dawn, her head still clearing from sleep, there’s a fraction of a second when nothing
has changed.
She opens her eyes and Jonathan isn’t there, because he couldn’t sleep — worried about the taxes again — and he
ended up dozing in the armchair in the living room, a magazine in his lap.
She opens her eyes and Jonathan isn’t there, because his leg is bothering him again, and he went downstairs to do
those funny exercises the doctor told him to try.
She opens her eyes and Jonathan isn’t there, because
Because he isn’t there.
And Martha remembers.
There’s work to do. It’s a farm, there’s always work to do, and now there’s even more. She’ll get up, and get dressed,
and she’ll make breakfast for Clark — a complete breakfast, the best way to start the day, with two eggs, a slice of
buttered toast, a glass of orange juice and the delicious whole-grain oats crunch of General Mills’ Cheerios.
So that’s the tone that we’re going for, I guess, in this moment between Jonathan’s funeral and Clark’s goodbye.
Martha’s world is falling to pieces around her — tomorrow, for the first time in her life, she’ll wake up to an empty
house — but the really important thing that we need to capture here is the breakfast cereal.
After a brief establishing shot of the farm, we see the view from the kitchen windows. Everything is dark and still,
with Martha quietly moving across the screen in silhouette. There’s just one exquisite pinpoint of light, and what are
the odds, it’s aimed directly at the spot where Martha happens to put down a box of great-tasting, heart-healthy
Cheerios.
Looking through the window, she sees her son, standing alone in the sunrise. He’s leaving, of course; they always
knew that he would. God granted them this miraculous child, but they knew, in their hearts, that he wasn’t really
theirs. He belonged to the sky, somehow. They were just the people lucky enough to love him, for as long as it
lasted.
Oh, and the box of Cheerios is in this shot too, and it must be one of those special imaginary boxes that has the front
printed on both sides; what a lucky coincidence for General Mills. This is probably their happiest day since they were
promoted from Lieutenant.
There’s another oats-focused shot in the Director’s Cut, too, which adds an extra 33 seconds of Martha calling for
Clark, chirruping at the parakeet and waving the cereal box around.
So yeah, it’s another 0-1 game in the age-old tournament of Art vs. Commerce. The Salkinds were sick of paying
other people’s money for cranes, trains and dolly shots; they wanted a little money coming in the other direction for
once. And who would even notice a bit of subtle product placement, besides every single person who watches the
scene?
To be fair, the Cheerios cameo is the only one that stands out; the other sponsors are pretty low in the mix. There’s
one where Lois checks her Timex watch when she’s waiting for Superman to arrive, but it’s not particularly
noticeable.
And then there’s the JVC sign when people are watching the news through the TV showroom window, which doesn’t
really stand out either.
According to the credits, Clark’s wardrobe was also furnished by Barney’s, and Eve’s jewelery by Cartier, not that
you’d notice. We’ll have to wait until Superman II to get any more really obvious product placement, especially in
the New York street fight where it turns out Superman really, really wants to sell us cigarettes.
But nothing is entirely pure in this fallen world, not even Superman. He was doing product placement all the way
back in 1941, in Action Comics #32. The story was about Superman smashing the gambling racket in Metropolis,
which is centered on a secret gambling establishment called the Preston Club.
The story itself is pretty pedestrian for a Superman comic. Clark urges the mayor to close down the Preston Club, but
when they pay a visit to the notorious den of vice, everyone’s just sitting around reading the newspaper. Lois
manages to get in that night, but she’s exposed as a reporter, and Preston drugs her with a special fluid that causes
complete amnesia. Superman beats up some thugs and then cures Lois with a shot of mental hypnosis, which is all
fairly routine.
But then we end up in Clark’s laboratory, which is a one-time concept as far as I know. He explains to us what he’s
been working on: “The Krypto-Raygun — a startling invention with which I can snap pictures — they are developed
right in the gun — and can be flashed upon a wall!” And I suppose that could be kind of startling, assuming you’re
easily startled.
Next thing you know, he’s clinging onto a wall like Spider-Man with his new toy, gathering up all the evidence he
needs, assuming that images that can be flashed upon a wall are admissible in Metropolis.
There’s some smash-em-up action at the club, where Superman continues his one-man war on interior design by
smashing the door in and wrecking all the furniture. Then he heads to city hall, where he gets a shot of the mayor
telling the mobster to go to hell — I’m not sure how that picture helps the case, but maybe Superman has a
scrapbook projected on his wall at home.
After a brief spot of hostage-taking and a mountainside car chase, the story ends with the Krypto-Raygun providing
the crucial evidence that the police force needs to conclusively settle Preston’s hash, and then we never see it again,
except at the department store.
That was all an ad for a toy, obviously, and quite a misleading one, because it suggests that the toy is able to take
pictures as well as project them, which it can’t.
It’s pretty sweet, though, especially with the packaging. It was made by Daisy Toys, who had a whole line of different
projectors. They came with thin metal film strips that you could feed into the gun, and then you’d project the film on
the wall, one frame at a time, to tell a little story. They had sets for other comic strips, including Red Ryder, Big Chief
Wahoo from Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Dan Dunn and Captain Easy, plus sets with Fighting Planes of the World
and one that had “Wild Animals, Night Before Christmas, Little Black Sambo”, which is a nice varied assortment.
They went all out on the Superman set, creating a custom art deco design with a raised image of Superman pointing
down the barrel of the gun. The box makes up a whole bunch of science words for different parts of the toy,
including the Krypto-Ray Filter Tandem, the Krypto-Wave Accumulating Antenna, the Beam Source and Picturizing
Chamber, and the Chronology Control and Krypto-Contact Lever.
I honestly don’t know why they even bothered trying to make a story about boring things like gambling and
racketeering, when they could have just published this diagram, and kids would have been absolutely entranced by
it. Sometimes Commerce deserves the win, and that’s all there is to it.
The really startling thing about this invention is that the ad copy invented Kryptonite, two years early.
The ad says: “RAYGUN looks exactly like the KRYPTO-RAYGUN used by SUPERMAN in his never-ending fight against
crime… like the one SUPERMAN had made of KRYPTONITE — that amazing metal from SUPERMAN’S birthplace —
the Planet KRYPTON!”
As far as I know, that’s the first time the word “Kryptonite” was ever used. The real Kryptonite, the dangerous one,
was first introduced on the Adventures of Superman radio show in June 1943, in a story called “The Meteor from
Krypton”. It didn’t hit the comic books until 1949.
I assume this is just a case of parallel evolution — a copywriter coming up with a cool-sounding word, like the
Krypto-Contact Lever and the Krypto-Beam Generator Housing, and then the radio show writers came up with it
independently a couple years later. After all, if the Krypto-Raygun was really made of Kryptonite, Superman wouldn’t
have been able to settle Preston’s hash; the hash-settling would have been on the other foot.
There’s an even weirder example of in-comics product placement in the 1978 Superman comics, but I’m going to
save that story for another day, when we can sit down and have a good long chat about it. After all, we haven’t even
finished breakfast yet, and look at the time.
Superman 1.25: Syd Field Forever
All right, folks: we are five weeks into the blog and thirty-eight minutes into the movie, and we’re finally getting out
of Smallville. We’ll spend next week in the Fortress of Solitude, and then we’re heading for Metropolis, I promise.
The structure of this movie can be fairly challenging, especially for the modern viewer, because it takes so long to
get to what people expect a Superman movie to be about. We first get a glimpse of Christopher Reeve as Superman
at minute 47, and even then it’s only for one shot. We don’t really get the full “Clark Kent changes to Superman and
does something heroic” until 68 minutes into the movie, which is a long time to wait, if you’re not prepared for it.
The simple answer for why there’s such a long prologue is that that’s how the story is supposed to go — you have to
understand that the character came from Krypton, and grew up on Earth, to know who he is and what he’s about.
But in the first issue of Action Comics, that was all taken care of in the first few panels; by the top of page 2,
Superman was haring across the countryside, dropping off bound-and-gagged ladies on people’s front lawns.
It’s not like the filmmakers didn’t have a choice. You could easily imagine a movie that begins with a big spectacular
Superman rescue, and then the backstory is handled in a five-minute flashback. As far as the plot is concerned, this
three-part prologue is just dead weight; once we reach Metropolis, nothing happens that requires the audience to
know that Clark wasn’t allowed to play football when he was in high school. You could watch the entire movie
without knowing about the Phantom Zone or the Fortress of Solitude — both of those pay off when you watch the
sequel, but you can go from 47:00 to 2:23:00 without them, and you’d hardly miss them.
So if they could have condensed this backstory down — making the movie shorter, cheaper and faster-paced — then
why didn’t they?
Well, because nobody had ever made a blockbuster-budget superhero movie before, and everyone was worried that
it would look silly. Right now, 91 movies into what we recognize as an enormously popular and financially successful
film genre, we take it for granted that you can put famous actors in primary-color make-believe circus costumes and
fly them around on strings without anybody going bankrupt, but at the time, they were fighting against the current
trend of modern thought.
In 1978, superheroes were kitschy, silly, embarrassing kid stuff. Comic books were throwaway junk culture. Imagine a
movie where you dress a grown man up in a weird costume, and then he goes around and tells everybody that he’s
going to fight crime. Who would want to see that movie?
In a world of low expectations, waiting 47 minutes before you show Superman in his red-and-blue union suit isn’t
wasting time; it’s creating a context in which the audience won’t laugh when they see him.
The Krypton scenes are long and not necessarily plot-positive, but they’re grand and visually compelling. The
Smallville scenes gradually introduce the idea that this seemingly normal young man has extraordinary powers: he
lifts the car as a toddler, he kicks the football into the distance, he runs as fast as a train. He’s not silly, and the movie
isn’t laughing at him, and by the time you actually see him fly, you’re ready to see what he can do that deserves all
this buildup.
People sometimes say that this movie has a three-act structure — Krypton, Smallville and Metropolis — which is
incorrect. It actually does have a three-act structure (although it’s a flawed one), but this is all part of the first act.
The concept of a three-act structure comes from Syd Field’s 1979 book Screenplay: The Foundations of
Screenwriting, which describes a model for how the well-structured screenplay should work. This is Field’s ideal
paradigm:
Act 1 is the Setup, which introduces the main character, the dramatic premise, the situation and the character’s
relationships with the other people in the film. In a 120-minute movie, with one page of the screenplay
approximating one minute of the film, the first act should be about 30 minutes/pages long.
Act 2 is the Confrontation, where the main character encounters obstacles to fulfilling their dramatic need. This
involves conflict with whoever and whatever is keeping the main character from getting what they want. This act is
the middle 60 minutes of the movie.
Act 3 is the Resolution, which takes the story to its conclusion, resolving the main questions of the film. This is about
the last 30 minutes of the film.
Along the way, the story moves via plot points: the actions and decisions that drive the story forward. There should
be a major plot point towards the end of act 1, and another near the end of act 2, which spin the narrative in a new
direction. Each act should be guided by a dramatic question that the main character is trying to resolve.
Now, I’m not generally a big fan of simple models that set limits on creativity and imagination; see my recent rant on
the subject of the Hero’s Journey. You can go too far with this model — Field claims that this is the structure of every
successful movie, which is unlikely — but the three-act structure is a productive way to analyze how a movie works.
So here’s my take on the three-act structure of Superman: The Movie.
Act 1 (0:00 to 47:00) is all of this prologue material: Krypton, Smallville and the Fortress of Solitude, ending with
Superman revealed, flying out of the Fortress for the first time. Kal-El is sent away from Krypton just before its
destruction, and he’s trained by Jor-El during his space voyage; the child lands on Earth and is raised by the Kents,
where he learns about love, hard work, responsibility and self-control; Clark chooses the hero’s path, and receives
more training at the Fortress of Solitude, until he’s ready to go out and engage with the world as Superman.
The dramatic question is: Will Superman discover his purpose?
The plot point that changes the direction of the story is Clark moving to Metropolis, and getting a job at the Daily
Planet.
Act 2 (47:00 to 1:43:00) is about Superman and Lois. Clark meets and falls in love with an extraordinary woman, and
when she’s in mortal danger, he becomes a superhero. He performs a string of heroic public deeds, and earns
acclaim, although he keeps his real identity a secret. Lois is determined to learn more about him, which jeopardizes
his secret, but he’s so infatuated with her that he can’t resist getting to know her better in his Superman guise. They
have a life-changing date, which makes him question whether he should continue to lead a double life.
The dramatic question is: Is Superman doing the right thing, leading these two lives? How can he fully connect with
Lois, while he’s pretending to be two people?
The major plot point is that Lois publishes her interview with Superman, which unintentionally reveals his weakness:
he can’t see through lead.
Act 3 (1:43:00 to 2:23:00) is about Superman and Lex Luthor. Once the villain knows that Superman has a weakness,
he’s able to discover another: there’s a meteor from Krypton that can weaken him. Luthor organizes a complex heist
that gives him control of some warheads. When he’s ready, he calls Superman to his lair, where he reveals his secret
plan and then incapacitates the hero. Lois is endangered by Luthor’s plan because she happens to be where the
warhead is aimed. Superman manages to escape from Luthor’s Kryptonite trap, diverts the warheads and fixes the
damage, but he’s too late to save Lois.
The dramatic questions are: Is Luthor clever enough to outwit Superman, and destroy California? Can Superman
save everyone, especially Lois? What are the limits of his abilities, and how can they be overcome?
Looking at the structure in this way, you can see that all of this prologue material in act 1 isn’t really as disconnected
as it seems. The film’s structure makes sense: Superman becomes a hero, Superman falls in love, Superman fights a
villain and protects the woman he loves.
The first act is supposed to be about the main character, and it actually is: Once Kal-El/Clark enters the picture in Jor-
El’s laboratory, he’s the focus of every scene. For the audience, if you know that this is a movie starring Christopher
Reeve, then it can feel like the movie doesn’t really get started until he appears — but structurally, the character is
there the whole time; we just see him at different ages, and played by several actors.
But there’s also a big flaw in this structure, which is that Act 2 and Act 3 don’t really have very much to do with each
other.
The dramatic question of Act 2 is whether Clark is doing the right thing leading a double life, and it ends with a scene
that makes that question explicit: at the end of his flying date with Lois, he considers revealing his secret identity,
but then he chickens out and doesn’t go through with it. But then that question, still unresolved, drops out of the
movie completely — there’s nothing in Act 3 that even touches on whether he should reveal his identity. It’s a huge
part of Superman II, so if you think of the two movies as being a continuous story, then maybe that helps, but as far
as this movie is concerned, the central question that dominates half the movie is apparently forgotten, without
being resolved.
Also, the two main plot threads — Superman loves Lois, Superman versus Lex Luthor — only connect in one scene:
the bridge between Act 2 and Act 3. Lois writes the interview, Lex reads it, and what he learns becomes the keystone
of his plan.
But Lex doesn’t know Lois, and he doesn’t interact with her. He reads her story in the newspaper, but he doesn’t
consider her to be important. His plan puts her in immediate danger, but that’s completely accidental — she just
happens to be in California, close to where the warhead strikes the San Andreas Fault.
I think that the structure could have been improved by connecting Lex and Lois in a deeper way: perhaps making her
part of his scheme, deliberately targeting her, or holding her hostage to get Superman to do what he wants — or,
best of all, she discovers Luthor’s plan with her investigative reporting skills, and takes action that puts her in danger.
The script does manage to deliver a strong emotional moment for Superman and Lois at the very end of the film, so
it doesn’t feel like the Lois plot thread is forgotten, but the central questions of Act 2 go unresolved, until the sequel.
So that’s how the movie actually works. The idea that the “three acts” are Krypton, Smallville and Metropolis is an
obvious misconception — that would mean they’re burning through Act 1 and Act 2 in 47 minutes, and then Act 3
would be an hour and a half.
I hate to nitpick all the time like this, but I’m afraid that I’ll have to until people stop being wrong, which I’m hoping
will happen any day now. Meanwhile, if you need me, I’m headed north.
Superman 1.26: Let It Go
Man, when Clark Kent says he’s going north, he does not mess around; dude goes north. He is currently just about as
north as you can possibly get, clad in a jacket comfort-rated for Easter in Massachusetts, looking for the right place
to toss a magic crystal and summon his own personal snow castle.
It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small, except for the ice palace, of course, which is fucking
enormous. Here he stands, and here he stays.
So this is probably a good moment to mention Geoffrey Unsworth, O.B.E, cinematographer and secret Santa, who
made this trip to the Arctic actually work. The North Pole sequence relies on a bunch of talented crew members
constructing the sets, the models and the matte paintings, but without the right lighting, it would fall apart, and that
was Unsworth’s job.
There’s something the matter with me, but this sequence always makes me think of the 1964 film Santa Claus
Conquers the Martians, which is going for the same effect. It’s got fake snow and lots of little peaks and crags and
different levels to walk on. But it looks like a middle school play, mostly because of the lighting.
Now, the one thing that this doesn’t look like is the outdoors. You would never try to show this to people, and tell
them that it was filmed live on location in the Arctic. Every element is immaculately white, and there are lots of
straight lines which wouldn’t occur in nature. The water doesn’t look like natural water, ditto the sky, and so on.
As a viewer, your response to these shots is not that you, strictly speaking, “believe” in what you’re seeing. Clark
steps down onto a little platform of ice, which jiggles under his weight and you can see that it’s a free-floating piece
that’s in the water. It looks obviously artificial, but it’s a clever effect, and your brain registers it as a pleasurable little
surprise.
It’s the same response that you have at Disneyland, really, when you’re on Pirates of the Caribbean or Indiana Jones
Adventure. You’re not suspending your disbelief, because obviously you still don’t believe it, but it’s so much fun to
look at that you accept it, and admire the technique.
A lot of this movie is about making sure that Superman doesn’t look silly, no matter how silly the plot points actually
are. Currently, secret teenage king of the sky Clark Kent is following some imaginary alien telepathic homing signal
that’s been programmed by his dead father into a glowing green piece of fake crystal. It’s directed him to the North
Pole, apparently on foot, where it will magically turn into Santa’s Workshop Community College wherever he drops
it, and then special guest star Marlon Brando will tell him all about immortality and the human heart. This is a
ridiculous thing to put in your blockbuster movie.
But god damn, that matte painting. Right? You just want to keep looking at it.
That is the whole point of superhero movies, to show us things that we’ve never seen before; that’s why all these
people are working so hard to create this Disneyland dark ride. A jaded, sensation-hungry public demands visual
surprise, and Superman: The Movie is delivering.
And then there’s the model work, also lit brilliantly and accompanied by trilling strings and deep ice-crunching
sound effects, as magical crystalline lumber emerges from the sea and arranges itself into an ice barn.
Again, it doesn’t look “realistic”. It turns out there are things that are more important than realism, like being
beautiful and clever and surprising.
These days, we’re accustomed to everything being done digitally, which allows the filmmakers to do things that are
even more visually impressive. But here, at the birth of the superhero movie, we can see these craftsmen reaching,
to push on the limits of what practical effects can do.
Something that I want to watch out for, as we travel through these movies, is how long it takes for somebody to do a
visual sequence that looks better than Clark in the Arctic. I can’t think of any examples, right now. Maybe there isn’t
one.
Superman 1.27: House of Wax
It was bound to happen; it’s how these tall tales work. When you’re telling stories about the strongest man in the
world, there’s a natural narrative pressure to make him even bigger and stronger and more unbeatable, over time.
Paul Bunyan, the mighty fabled lumberjack of the Northwoods, started out as seven feet tall, able to chop down tree
after tree without stopping for rest. As the legend grew, Paul soared to forty feet tall. In the later tales, Paul could fell
a tree just by shouting at it, and his bootprints created the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota.
The same thing happened to Superman. In 1938, he could pick up an automobile; in 1940, he demolished a house
with a single blow of his fist; in 1943, he hit a baseball so hard that it circled the globe; and by 1949, he could crash a
couple of moons together to make a sun for a distant planet that didn’t already have one.
So when it’s time for him to relax, he can’t sit around and watch TV. He needs to do something spectacular, and if
that means creating a creepy private exploding wax museum, then the rest of us are going to have to come along for
the ride.
Superman wasn’t actually the first adventure hero to build a dangerous secret clubhouse in the polar wastes. Doc
Savage, a pulp science-hero who starred in 181 stories from 1933 to 1949, had a “Fortress of Solitude” in the Arctic,
where he stored the super-scientific weapons that he confiscated from his enemies, and constructed some perilous
inventions of his own. The igloo-shaped dome was first mentioned in story #1, Man of Bronze, and was referenced in
almost every story after that.
The readers finally got to visit the place in 1938, in a story called Fortress of Solitude. In this story, the infamous John
Sunlight, poetic genius of evil, happens across Doc Savage’s fresh-frozen storehouse, and steals a bunch of Doc’s
toxic inventions, like a ray that turns people into black smoke. Doc feels a bit guilty for creating such a thing and
leaving it around for people to find, so he hunts Sunlight through the Arctic, until the villain is apparently eaten by a
polar bear, problem solved.
Once Superman gets running, he needs a home away from home as well, so that he can invent his own death rays
and generally let his hair down. His first super-clubhouse was a “secret citadel” that he built into the side of a
mountain outside Metropolis, in a 1942 story in Superman #17 that’s actually called “Muscles For Sale!”
The first thing that we see is his trophy room, which is filled with the most astonishing nonsense.
“An old ray-gun Luthor tried to annoy me with… Righab Bey‘s turban… a poster advertising my appearance with
Jordan’s Circus… part of a broken axe Pedro attacked me with… a blanket given me by Wacouches, boy chief of the
Chirroba tribe… Count Bergac‘s monocle… “The Archer‘s” arrow… Yes, these and many other trophies prove that
crime does not pay!”
Okay, so many things. I might as well start with “part of a broken axe Pedro attacked me with,” about which I have
no idea what he’s talking. Who could Pedro possibly be, and why would you keep part of his broken axe on display?
And what happened to the other part?
The whole thing is very deep-cut fanservice, in a way that I wouldn’t expect from 1942. “Jordan’s Circus” goes all the
way back to December 1938, in Action Comics #7. Righab Bey was in Superman #10 in 1941, Wacouches and Count
Bergac in #11, Luthor in #12, and the Archer in #13. I guess when you’ve only been going for four years and you
haven’t gone full-on science-fiction yet, you have to dig pretty deep to come up with a whole room full of trophies.
But the point of this first trip to the newly-installed secret citadel is to use the gym. “Now for some super-exercises!”
says our hero. “Even a Superman must keep in trim!” Then he goes up and down a rope backwards, lifts up the
chinning bar and lowers it to his chin, runs around a track so fast that he almost catches up with himself, and
squeezes himself in an enormous vice, all of which feel pretty pointless given what he actually does on a daily basis,
just by being Superman.
Superman returns to this mountain hideaway for exercise several times in 1942 and 1943, and then they forget
about it for a while.
In spring 1949, right around the time that Doc Savage ran out of steam, Superman brings his new alien boyfriend
Regor of Uuz to work out at his place. This is the first time that it’s referred to as his “Fortress of Solitude” and
located in the polar wastes, which is such an obvious lift from Doc Savage that, in-universe, the character might have
actually just moved out, and handed the keys over to Superman.
Superman uses the workout routine to humiliate Regor, and to make sure that he knows how strong and powerful
Superman is, in the world’s first recorded example of super-negging.
In 1958, they finally got back to the icecapped Fortress of Solitude that everyone knows about. This issue, Action
Comics #241, was Superman’s entry into the Silver Age, a period when they took continuity very seriously, and fully
exploited any plot element that could be used to generate new story ideas. This was Superman aimed squarely at
middle schoolers with diamond-tipped accuracy, and the stories in this period reflected the playtime adventures
that kids enjoyed.
And what could be more middle-school than a secret clubhouse where everybody else has to keep out? Superman is
the only person who can get into this re-Arcticed Fortress, because the key weighs several tons, and it’s cleverly
disguised as an arrow marker to guide planes.
This isn’t just a 24-Carat Fitness anymore; in the Silver Age, everything has to be collected and labeled. The very first
thing that Superman does is to go visit his secret wax museum dedicated to his nearest and dearest, as naturally it
would be.
First stop is the Lois Lane Room, where he’s slowly assembling a necklace of flawless pearls that will be given to Lois
in the event of his death, which he is apparently planning for.
And there’s also a Jimmy Olsen Room, where Superman is making a swell hand-made sports car, which again, will be
presented to Jimmy when Superman dies.
Everything about the Fortress wax museum is unnerving, so the fact that it begins with an unasked-for rundown of
Superman’s death gifts seems appropriate. You know, I don’t believe that the idea of handmade surprise
inheritances has ever come up before in human civilization; I have no idea where Superman picks these things up.
There’s also a memorial to Batman in the Fortress, including a wax statue and what I suppose are wax replicas of
some of the machines in the Batcave, including the Electronic Clue Analysis machine and the Crime Probability
Predicter, both of which I now desperately want for myself. I wonder what Superman’s planning to do with those,
after he dies?
He’s also made a Clark Kent room, which he says is there to make sure that nobody would suspect that he’s Clark if
they ever found their way into the Fortress, but who even knows with him anymore?
You wouldn’t think that this deranged personal tourist attraction would come up very often in a comic where the
hero is supposed to be out fighting super-criminals and space invaders, but the Silver Age Superman writers doubled
down on the wax museum like you wouldn’t believe.
Later in 1958, when Superman is visited by his dead parents in a borrowed time machine, the Kents run across a
room labeled “In Memory of the Parents of Superman” — and then they’re disappointed to find that it’s got wax
figures of Jor-El and Lara instead of them.
But then Superman shows them that he’s got another room for “the Earth Parents of Superman”, where he’s
decided to memorialize his farm family in a dinner-table tableau, with Martha handing around a plate of vittles. They
seem to think that this is touching; everybody does, when they find out that an all-powerful space god has been
dressing up their life-sized action figure replicas in his spare time.
And of course there’s more; there’s always more with the Silver Age. The writers keep noodling on the Fortress of
Solitude for years, and by 1961, Superman is making wax figures of himself labeled “Clark Kent” and “Superman,
Clark Kent’s Secret Identity”, a distinction that you wouldn’t think that he would need a label to appreciate.
Then, in a moment of very Silver Age reflection, he thinks, “Hm-mm! If an intruder ever forced his way into this
secret room, he’d learn the secret of my dual identity!” — and his solution to this non-problem is to attach bombs to
the figures’ legs, so that when anyone opens the door, the wax figures would explode…
… which is what happens, while he’s testing the security system.
“Good!” he congratulates himself. “Not a trace is left of the statues! My secret will be safe from intruders! I can
easily replace the destroyed statues…”
So at this point, I think we have every right to ask Superman to fill out his timecard in 15-minute increments. Dude,
how do you have time for all of this?
And then, he has to go and install the same security system on the statues in the Batman and Robin room, and the
ones in the Supergirl room, which also have labels that announce the hero’s secret identity. All of this is to decorate
the Fortress for himself, because nobody else is ever allowed to enter, and he is not even done making wax figures
yet.
So, Superman, we need to discuss this. Now he’s adding a Hall of Enemies to his private wax museum, including
Young Luthor before explosion and after explosion.
Clark, I know you live at super-speed, but there is a limit. You need to go outside. I mean, this is why it’s called
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, and not Superman’s Date Night Pleasure Palace.
Eventually, all the wax figures get pissed off with Superman, and decide to gang up on him. Superman, nobody told
you to make all these statues in the first place. Do not come to me with these problems.
And there’s tons more in the Fortress, too. There’s a swimming pool filled with molten lava, and an intergalactic zoo,
including a dinosaur from a primeval world in space that he rides around like a horse, and a giant bowling alley with
giant pins, and an art room where he paints a Martian landscape that he can see using his telescopic vision.
By this point, the trophy room is stocked with a giant Jack-in-the-box, and an electronic plastic surgery machine, and
an anti-gravity belt, and a “telepathic-sending trophy” for communicating telepathically, which I don’t even
understand what that is.
He’s also got a “Super-Univac” in the Fortress that can foretell the future, and a room labeled Forbidden Weapons of
Crimedom, and a Zone-ophone to communicate with people in the Phantom Zone, and I haven’t even mentioned
that he has a glass bottle filled with the surviving Kryptonian city of Kandor, which was shrunk and stolen from the
surface of the planet before Krypton perished and now rests, tiny but hopeful, on some special shelf where
Superman will one day enlarge it and return it to its rightful place, which no longer exists.
For my money, the single most exhausting thing in the entire place is Superman’s diary, constructed out of enormous
sheets of metal which he inscribes with his super-fingernails, and written in Kryptonese, a language that only he
understands. This is late-stage Paul Bunyan-ism, a disorder that manifests in tall-tales characters who have been
one-upping themselves for decades, until they get to the point where it really would be a whole lot easier if they just
did it the normal way.
The place is a magnet for intruders, too. In the first of the Silver Age Fortress stories, after Superman talks for pages
about how nobody could possibly get through the door, we find out that Batman snuck in by hollowing out a space
in the key and staying there for several days in order to pull a birthday prank on Superman.
The bottle city of Kandor also provides a steady stream of tiny Kryptonians, for good or ill, who manage to escape
from their glass prison on a regular basis. And once somebody’s loose in the Fortress, there are a thousand science-
fiction devices to play with, culled from previous stories or just made up on the spot.
As weird as this all is, it’s obvious why Superman writers have returned to the Fortress of Solitude again and again.
The thing is bursting with plot contrivances, which can get you into and out of any kind of trouble you can imagine. If
you need a spare Superman robot, or a monitor that beeps when an alien spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere, or a
zoo full of dangerous extraterrestrial creatures who invariably escape and stun humanity, then the Fortress is your
answer, every time.
The Fortress is a mystery box, really, that’s filled with your fantasies, needs and deepest fears, a locked room that
yearns to be unlocked, to facilitate story progression. The Fortress is a sacred space just begging to be defiled, and
out tumble the secrets.
Now, one thing that you may have noticed is that Jor-El has absolutely nothing to do with the Fortress of Solitude, as
seen in the comics. From 1942 to 1978, the Fortress has been Superman’s private arts and crafts project, which he
built to amuse himself, in increasingly worrisome ways. It’s not a legacy passed down to him by the Allfather, in
order to instruct him in the ways of Kryptonian thought.
The Fortress being a communications platform for Jor-El is entirely an invention of the movie, which repurposes the
real estate in order to support a different kind of story. Really, Jor-El wasn’t particularly important in the comics; he
was acknowledged, but never revered. But this 1978 vision of Jor-El dispensing wisdom from outer space turns out
to be durable, and it’s picked up in future movies and TV shows.
Eventually, the movie version wins, with the concept feeding back into the comics, in the eternal natural-selection
struggle between competing story elements which sprawls across the decades. In 2006, following the history-
rewriting Infinite Crisis storyline, Superman gets tired of his current Fortress that’s in the Amazon rainforest for some
reason, and he decides to construct a new one in the Arctic, which he builds by throwing a Kryptonian sunstone into
the polar wastes and generating the 1978 model all over again.
Deranged wax museum, super-gymnasium, storehouse for forbidden weapons and final resting place of Pedro’s
broken axe, the Fortress of Solitude has been everything we needed it to be, and here in 1978, it transforms itself
into an empty shell that we can fill up with lectures and crystals. Let’s go inside, and see.
Superman 1.28: Grad School
It’s a weird quirk of human nature, that we think old things are smarter than new things. I mean, when you’re
talking about the course of a single lifetime, then yeah, children need to be educated by adults.
But then people generalize that to entire civilizations, thinking that people in the ancient world had wisdom,
medicine and daily life practices that were better than we have now — that they were healthier, which is untrue,
and they knew more about nature, which is unlikely. So people buy expensive treatments and nutritional
supplements, or go on fad diets based on shaky anthropological assumptions, in order to live more like people in the
past.
It’s nonsense, of course; human knowledge is cumulative, and we as a civilization know way more now than anybody
ever knew before — or, at least, somebody knows it, and the rest of us can look it up on Wikipedia. The ancients
were not smarter than we are; they had worse teeth, they died younger, and their pop music was dreary in the
extreme.
Anyway, the reason why I’m bringing that up is because here comes young Clark Kent, wandering around at the
North Pole without a scarf on, and he drops a crystal, which grows into a glittering entry hall that turns out to be the
registration desk at Ice University.
There’s a jar of loose crystals on the desk, which I guess is the Kryptonian equivalent of a take a penny/leave a penny
tray, and Clark picks one out of the bowl to examine. If he takes it outside and hucks it off into the distance, then he
might be able to grow another ice castle; pretty soon, you won’t be able to move for all the ice castles. This is an
urban planning problem that people don’t really consider.
Clark gives his crystal the once-over, and then he chooses a promising-looking hole to stick it into. This turns out to
be the correct way to operate this device, or maybe the same thing happens no matter what you touch.
Against all odds, we’re still in the part of the film that’s trying to impress us with how grand and serious everything
is. At some point, they’re going to have to face the fact that they’re making a comic book movie, but for now, we’ve
still got John Williams leaning heavily on the glass harmonica and choir of angelic voices, telling us that we’ve got an
incoming call.
And hey, it’s Jor-El. He’s calling long-distance from outer space and the past, and if what I’ve read about Brando’s
salary is true, we’re paying about a hundred and fifty-six dollars a minute. This better be good.
“My son…” he says, ethereally. “You do not remember me. I am Jor-El. I’m your father.” I thought he was going to
open with a joke.
Then things get very cosmic, very quickly.
“By now you will have reached your 18th year,” Jor-El predicts, “as it is measured on Earth. By that reckoning, I will
have been dead for many thousands of your years.”
Clark gives him a puzzled frown. Technically, that sentence isn’t the absolute weirdest thing that’s happened to him
in the last four minutes — it’s been a challenging day, for all of us — but it certainly inspires at least a couple of
follow-up questions.
I suppose there must be a way that you could science up an explanation for that statement — something relativity
something something — but really, it’s just a reflection of that “ancient civilizations were smarter” idea. Wisdom
comes from far away, and Jor-El is already a) from another galaxy and b) dead, so why not give him a full hand, and
say that he’s also thousands of years old?
Although during Kal-El’s audiobook journey to Earth fifteen years ago, the first thing that Jor-El talked about was
Einstein and the theory of relativity, so if that was recorded many thousands of our years ago, then he was
astonishingly up-to-date.
He also talked about early Chinese writings, although now that I think about it, maybe he meant early in the
morning. It doesn’t pay to make a lot of assumptions, when Jor-El’s around.
I’m sorry, he’s still talking. “The knowledge that I have,” says Jor-El, “matters physical and historic, I have given you
fully on your voyage to your new home. These are important matters to be sure, but still matters of mere fact. There
are questions to be asked, and it is time for you to do so.”
Now, I have to say, I have not seen a lot of evidence that young Clark has benefited in any material way from the
“matters physical and historic” download that he received in his spacefaring infancy. We didn’t see him in class,
wowing the teacher with his in-depth knowledge of anything in particular. We didn’t see him puzzling over some
grand project in theoretical physics. The kid wanted to kick a football and hang out with girls.
So they’re doubling down here on what I think is the weakest plot point in the movie so far. They got Krypton right,
and they got the Kents right, and I’m thankful, because that was the important stuff. But this “education from space”
idea is not sufficiently connected to any actual event in the movie. It’s just sound effects.
Strangest of all, Jor-El says, “Here, in this Fortress of Solitude, we shall try to find the answers together.” Which is not
what the Fortress of Solitude is about. It’s for solitude, Pops, i.e., he’s supposed to be alone, just him, and his insane
personal obsessions.
As we discussed in yesterday’s post, the Fortress of Solitude as we’ve seen it in the comics has nothing to do with
Jor-El; it’s a means of personal artistic expression for Superman, who packs it to the rafters with absolute crazy that
gets worse every time we visit.
I mean, look at this panel, from 1962. By this point, the Lois Lane Room has at least three portraits, two statues,
several bouquets of rare flowers, and a lock of Lois’ hair, preserved under a glass bell and labeled Lock of Lois’ Hair.
Hachi machi, that’s a lot to take in, and that’s just the one corner of the room that we happen to be looking at.
Imagine Superman patiently constructing all of this in his Arctic ice castle, and meanwhile, the actual Lois Lane is
sitting around in Metropolis drumming her fingers, and wishing that Superman would call and take her out to dinner.
This is a deep-rooted problem.
Anyway, back to Jor-El, and whatever he’s talking about.
“Your name is Kal-El,” he announces. “You are the only survivor of the planet Kriptin.” That’s not my fault, that’s the
way he says it, and as far as young Clark knows, that’s the way that the planet’s name is pronounced. I don’t know
how Clark ultimately figures out that it’s actually called Krypton; maybe there’s a T.A. who has office hours after Jor-
El’s lectures.
The old man continues, “Even though you’ve been raised as a human being, you are not one of them — not one of
them.” This is the point where he starts to develop little echoes that help to accentuate his points. “You have great
powers — great powers — only some of which you have as yet discovered — as yet discovered.”
And then it just goes full-on planetarium, with a big swell of celestial music and a journey through the space
plankton. “Come with me now, my son,” Jor-El says, “as we break through the bonds of your earthly confinement,
traveling through time and space.”
Which sounds pretty good — everybody likes breaking through the bonds of stuff — but the curriculum turns out to
be a lot longer than you might expect. We hear a bunch of stray quotes from the class notes, for example:
Your powers will far exceed those of mortal men…
It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history… rather, let your leadership stir others to…
In this next year, we shall examine the human heart. It is more fragile than your own…
In the past two years…
And it’s, like, wait, what? Did we just spend a whole year examining the human heart? It’s like if the University of
Phoenix was run by an actual mythological phoenix, who lived a full life, died in the flames, and then sprang forth
resurrected from the ashes, and you’re still in the same class. How do you transfer out of this shit?
No time for questions, more space plankton.
As we pass through the flaming turmoil which is the edge of your own galaxy…
This year, we shall examine the various concepts of immortality, and their basis in actual fact…
What is virtue?
The total accumulation of all knowledge spanning the 28 known galaxies is embedded in the crystals which I have
sent along with you… study them well, my son, and learn from them…
Over the past twelve years, we have reasoned out logical judgments…
So, yeah. In this sequence, we are led to understand that Clark just stands there in the same spot for twelve years,
with no furniture, bathroom breaks or extracurricular activities, studying the 28 accumulated crystals or whatever,
while everybody else is moving on with their lives.
At this point, he’s never going to get to Mary Ellen’s in time to listen to those records; that’s just the first of a
thousand social activities that probably would have broadened his outlook a lot more than hanging out with his
procedurally generated dad and talking about what is virtue.
In my opinion, this sequence is just about the goofiest idea that they have in this whole movie, and I recently read a
whole bunch of Silver Age Superman comics, so my tolerance for goofiness should be at an all-time high. I just don’t
see what they’re trying to get at.
This detour into the cosmos might be worth it, if there was a single moment in the whole rest of the movie where
Superman is called upon to use his vast understanding of intergalactic philosophy, but for some reason, it never
comes up. Twenty-nine minutes from now, a guy is going to come up behind him and hit him on the head with a
crowbar, and that’s about as intellectual as things are going to get, in his line of work. Mostly, he breaks things.
So I don’t know why they’re making a big song and dance about his training with Professor Alexa here. It doesn’t
make any sense, and by this point, the audience would really prefer to watch the Superman movie that they bought
a ticket for, forty-seven minutes and many thousands of your years ago.
Superman 1.29: Fear of Flying
And then, finally, triumphantly: Superman, revealed.
After Krypton and Kansas, after the Arctic and the Elders, after scherzos and Cheerios and Einstein and everything —
here he is, looking exactly like we hoped he would. They gave us backstory and atmosphere, and possibly a little
extra tedium, just to make sure that we really, really wanted him.
We are ready, and he has arrived. And he doesn’t look ridiculous at all, as we feared he would. He looks magnificent.
And he does what we’ve wanted him to do, most of all: he flies. Calm and purposeful, with his bright red cape
trailing behind him, like a king.
Flying is Superman’s killer feature; it’s the thing that everybody loves best about him. When you think about
Superman, the first thing that you think of isn’t his strength or his bulletproof body. You think about a man in a red
cape, soaring across the sky.
Of course, it’s a clear violation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original intentions for the character. Flying is
specifically a thing that he shouldn’t do. And yet, here we are.
I mean, they couldn’t have been more specific. The man can leap one-eighth of a mile, and hurdle a twenty-story
building. That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, as regards auto-aviation.
So this is what we get, in the early Siegel & Shuster comics, both in the comic books and the comic strip. He races,
he bounds, he streaks, he speeds, he springs and he hurtles — but he doesn’t fly. How could he?
Siegel and Shuster’s Superman was basically a guy — a guy from another planet with a physical structure millions of
years advanced from our own, but still a guy. He can punch really hard, jump really high, run really fast and lift really
heavy things. Bullets bounce off his chest, and if you give him half a chance, he will definitely knock your house
down. But he’s still affected by gravity, and he obeys a vague approximation of the laws of physics.
Here’s an example from 1940. Superman races at terrific speed, makes a tremendous upward leap to what looks like
the roof of someone’s house, and then makes another leap up to catch a passing plane.
He messes around with the plane for a couple panels, and then heads back down. “Superman strikes earth!” the
caption says. “Not pausing, he somersaults back up into the sky!” And then he bounces back up to play with another
plane.
At the end of that sequence, he actually uses his cape to glide back down: “Seizing the sides of his cape, Superman
navigates it like a sail so that he swoops out of sight in a giant curve before onlookers can quite understand what is
happening!”
So it’s not really physics that we would recognize, but there appear to be limits to what he can do in the air.

Overall, the record is a bit murky, because it’s not always consistent. The above example is from spring 1941, where
Superman spends a lot of the story leaping up into the air, and then having lengthy negotiations with people flying
by in an invisible helicopter. In that case, the story requires a hero who can hover long enough to say “cease your
crooked shenanigans”, which is at least flying-adjacent.
On the level of individual panels, it’s sometimes unclear exactly how he’s getting from one position to another —
he’ll arc up in one panel, and then “zoom” straight ahead through the sky in the next — but in general, in the comic
books and the comic strip, Superman is still leaping and cape-sailing until late 1943.
And then there’s the 1940 radio show, when he flies right away; it is literally the first thing that he does.
The first episode premiered on February 12, 1940, and the first words spoken are: “Up in the sky! Look! It’s a bird!
It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” These are not things that you say about someone who jumps really far.
Episode 1 of the show is set on Krypton, and ends with the baby in the rocket; at the top of episode 2, the rocket
lands on Earth, and Superman is all grown up. The narrator explains:
“The rocket landed in a desert. Superman stepped forth full-grown, to explore this strange new world in which he
found himself. Today, as our story continues, we find him hovering, with his curious power, above a quiet highway in
Indiana.
“A trolley car is just pulling up the hill, and as Superman wheels and turns in curious flight, unseen below, a man and
a boy come out of the shed that serves as waiting room.”
There’s no ambiguity there. He takes one step out of the spaceship, and then goes straight up into the air.
In the radio show, the stunt had to be audible, so they used a rushing-wind sound effect, and Superman would
announce everything that he’s doing. He’d say “Up! Up!” when he was rising, and “Faster! Faster!” when he was
trying to catch up with somebody. When he had to dive, he would say something like, “There’s Lois’ car — just about
to go off the cliff! I can’t let that happen… Down! Down!”
The difference is that Siegel and Shuster were writing the comics, but they didn’t write the radio show; they had
nothing to do with it. I don’t know if the radio producers made the conscious decision to change his powers. I think
it’s just as likely that they read some of the comics, which were ambiguous, and just assumed that he’d been flying
the whole time.
When the Fleischer Studios started making cartoons in 1941, they also began with Superman flying right from the
start. The first thing that we see is Superman streaking across the screen in flight, accompanied by the “Up in the
sky! Look!” catchphrase from the radio show.
Once the cartoon gets going, and Clark hears that Lois is in danger, he dashes into a storeroom, changes into
Superman, and flies out the window. This was just a thing that everyone assumed that Superman did, and it
required no explanation.
Here’s the generally accepted first example of Superman flying in the comics, in October 1943. Kids in a children’s
hospital say, “Let’s see ya fly!” and then in the next panel, Superman cries “Up-up-and away!” as he finally takes
flight.
So everybody in America recognized that Superman could fly as of early 1940, when the radio show premiered, but
it took more than five years for Siegel & Shuster to admit it, and put it in the comics. That says to me that
Superman’s creators were deliberately resisting the idea, because that wasn’t their conception of the character.
After all, it doesn’t make sense that he can fly. He doesn’t have wings, or a propeller. What keeps him in the air?
What makes him go faster? When he pushes against something in mid-flight, or catches a falling helicopter, what’s
the force on the other end that he’s “standing” on?
Siegel and Shuster were writing science fiction — their Superman did things that you could imagine a really, really
strong person could do. But flying? That’s magic. Siegel and Shuster’s Superman was a guy, not a god.
But the impossibility is why we love it, and why it means so much to us. Flying is the thing that Superman shouldn’t
be able to do, but he does it anyway; he’s that cool.
That’s why they had to get the flying right, in the movie — not so that we would “believe” it, but because we love
the unbelievable. America understood that before Siegel and Shuster did. They caught up with us, eventually.
Superman 1.30: After Brando
As the ground pitched and buckled, Jor-El and Lara moved together across the floor of the great hall of
Kryptonopolis. There was nowhere they could go; Jor-El knew that better than anyone. He’d tried to warn them, and
had suffered for it.
The dying planet was in its final spasms, rock and crystal crumbling around them. Sliding, crunching sounds,
unimaginably loud. They were lost, all of them, irretrievably lost, but Jor-El and his wife ducked and flinched, as
everything they’d ever known fell to pieces around them. They continued to move down the hall, looking for —
what? shelter? a way out? No hope, no time, but still they kept moving. What else could they do?
The floor gave way. The population of Krypton, a proud and noble people, falling and crying and dying, every one. A
great darkness. A final, splintering crunch, and then a burst of light and sound that no one was left to witness.
And then things really started to go badly.
Filming the fall of Krypton in April 1977 was difficult and stressful, obviously, but at least the planet fell on schedule.
It had to — Marlon Brando’s contract said that he was to be paid an astronomical sum for twelve days of shooting,
starting March 28th. He was gone by mid-April, and then they filmed all the other Krypton shots that didn’t need
Brando — the villains on trial being swallowed by the Phantom Zone, the filler shots of fleeing Kryptonians falling to
their doom. That went fine.
It was in May that they started to run into trouble. That’s when they assembled the interior of the Fortress of
Solitude on H stage at Shepperton Studios, and they attempted the first flying shots.
Flying was a nightmare. They knew it would be, and it was.
As we discussed in yesterday’s post, flying is the thing that people love the most about Superman, because it’s the
least believable thing about him. It doesn’t make sense — he doesn’t have wings, or an engine. He doesn’t even flap
his arms. He just moves through the air by faith alone, in whatever position feels comfortable for him. And we
accept his ability to fly because we know that it’s impossible, due to our natural human tendency to believe
everything backwards.
Superman has to fly a lot in this movie, and in all kinds of different environments. He has to soar across the Fortress
of Solitude set, and swoop down to rescue a cat in a tree on location in Brooklyn, and race a speeding missile across
a desert landscape, and dance around the Statue of Liberty, and look straight at us as he rockets away from the
ground. Each of these shots is its own special little boutique pain in the ass, and there are dozens of them.
So they tried everything, and it mostly didn’t work. At one point, they actually took a life-sized Superman dummy
and catapulted it into the air, just to see what it looks like. It looks exactly like somebody fucking around with a life-
sized Superman dummy.
There was a lot of flying that they had to shoot on the Fortress of Solitude set in May, because they were filming
both Superman and the sequel at the same time. In the first movie, once Superman appears and does his one little
flying turn, we go to Metropolis and we don’t hang around in the Fortess anymore, but in Superman II, there are
many important Fortress sequences, including a long section with the Phantom Zone villains.
The villains enter the sequence all flying together, which means that it’s three times more likely that the flying gets
screwed up in any given take, plus they’re carrying Lois and Lex Luthor, so just imagine how much could go wrong.
And there are lots of other complex scenes to film, like the “depowering” sequence, which they weren’t sure how
they wanted it to look.
So this is the moment when people started to notice some tension between director Richard Donner and the
producers: the shady Alex and Ilya Salkind, and their pal Pierre Spengler.
We talked earlier about Donner’s savior complex, and his feeling that he needed to save Superman, “the American
fable”, from the European producers who didn’t understand it. He walked into the project with a bit of a chip on his
shoulder, prepared to defend his film against the people who were paying him to make it. Donner was right, but it
turns out being right isn’t everything.
Donner was a perfectionist. Everybody says so. There’s a story about the day Donner was filming the Kansas scenes
on location in Canada, when he made the entire company wait several hours until the sun was in exactly the right
position. He would direct each person individually, and do take after take, and then come back tomorrow with a
better idea, and they’d have to start over again.
So stringing up five people on three sets of wires and floating them across the set was exactly the kind of situation
to inflame Donner’s perfectionist tendencies. It was a world full of things that could go wrong.
But the Salkinds didn’t understand what the problem was. Ilya thought of himself as a creative guy, but he didn’t see
what was wrong with the last twelve takes that made Donner want to try a thirteenth. All the producers could see
was that everything was costing them money — not Brando money, sure, but still money, and if Donner kept wasting
it, then they were going to have to go and find another German film distributor to defraud.
By the middle of May, they were a week behind schedule, and by the end of May, they were two weeks behind
schedule. If things went on like this, their planned seven-month shoot would become an eighteen-month shoot.
(Spoiler: it became an eighteen-month shoot.)
As the filming on the Fortress of Solitude at Shepperton went into overtime, they started filming on the Daily Planet
set at Pinewood Studios as well. Christopher Reeve stayed at Shepperton to film the depowering/repowering
scenes, along with continued work with the flying unit, while the rest of the cast moved to Pinewood to shoot the
villains’ arrival at the Daily Planet.
With the schedule steadily slipping away, the producers decided to postpone the planned Superman II location
shooting in Washington DC to an undetermined date. By the end of May, the frustrated Salkinds stopped visiting the
set, leaving Spengler as the only contact between Donner and the producers — and Donner hated Spengler.
And then it was June, and things went really badly in June. Let’s get to Metropolis, and we’ll pick up the story from
there.
Superman 1.31: Metropolis Now
Metropolis, at last! After forty-seven minutes and six weeks of blog posts, we are finally making landfall on the scene
of an actual Superman movie.
Metropolis is the big time, where an up-and-coming newshound and secret frequent flyer from the Midwest can
find his true calling — scoops to break, women to fall helplessly in love with, and super-villains to discourage.
Complex and thrilling, the City of Tomorrow has all of the promise, danger and heartbreak that a newbie superhero
needs, to discover what he’s truly capable of. Also, it’s New York.
And that’s the first thing that the movie wants you to know: after the sci-fi shine of Krypton, the idealized Americana
of Smallville and the frozen fantasy zone of the Fortress of Solitude, we have arrived in the real world. Donner’s
vision of “verisimilitude” — that this should feel like the true story of what happens when a powerful space angel
crashes into our lives — requires a recognizable city that the audience will instantly accept.
So the sequence begins with a taxi driver making his way through midtown traffic, and a symphony of New York
street sounds: cars honking, a traffic cop blowing a whistle, and the distant whine of a police car’s siren. Exiting the
vehicle, we see a pushy street vendor selling fresh fruit to the bustling pedestrians passing by, and we approach the
Art Deco facade of the Daily Planet building on East 42nd.
Then the camera does a slow pan upwards, until we see the Chrysler Building, or whatever it’s supposed to be called
in this universe.
There’s no story-based reason for why they had to include a shot of one of New York’s most famous landmarks, and
it would be a tighter scene if they just moved across the sidewalk, and into the Daily Planet building. But the director
wants to make sure that we know exactly where we are, and there’s no nonsense about Delaware.
That purposeful desire for specificity continues through the film, with the sequence of the cops trailing Otis through
Grand Central Station…
and the scene of Superman handing a cat burglar over to a cop outside the Solow Building at 9 West 57th Street,
with the recognizable big red sculpture of a “9” in the front plaza. (Although it looks like a lower-case e from this
angle, so in Metropolis this may be the e e cummings building.)
And then there’s the most obvious location name-drop in the film, the sequence where Superman and Lois fly
around the Statue of Liberty for forty-five seconds. Again, they could easily have done the scene without using a
New York-specific landmark, but the statue is there to reinforce the idea that the couple is actually flying around in
the real world.
You might think that this contradicts the comic book continuity, which holds that the two cities are separate places,
but there are lots of examples in the comics that suggest that Metropolis is another name for New York — including
this 1950 Action Comics scene of Superman setting off fireworks from Miss Liberty’s torch, in order to tell some girl
who isn’t Lois that he’s in love with her.
Now, we saw earlier that in the very early days of the comic, Superman was based in Cleveland, Ohio, which they
used all the way up through Action Comics #11 in April 1939.
It was the comic strip that first mentioned “Metropolis, N.Y.” in June 1939, and the name made its way into the
comics that fall, in Action Comics #16 and in Superman #2, which also places the city in New York State.
There are lots of little hints over the years that Metropolis is New York. Its tallest building is called the Emperor
Building in 1945…
and the Monarch State Building in 1951.
The stone lions outside the New York Public Library’s main branch appear in a World’s Finest story in 1947…
and in a Superman story in 1950.
In 1951, Superman takes a horse-and-carriage ride around a park obviously modeled after New York’s Central Park…
and in 1964, Metropolis is the location of the United Nations headquarters.
In a Superman story in 1951, we find out that Metropolis even has a Lexington Avenue subway station and a Queens
Boulevard Line.
So life would be easier if DC Comics just said that Metropolis is their fictional name for New York, but they can’t,
because Batman ruins everything.
You see, when Batman started, Bob Kane and Bill Finger set his adventures in New York — this panel’s from a
December 1939 story — and then came up with the name “Gotham City” in December 1940.
And then in 1942 — well, damn, I guess they have a Statue of Liberty, too. There’s statues everywhere! The huddled
masses yearning to breathe free are simply spoiled for choice; America is lifting our lamp beside golden doors all
over the place.
And they’ve got an Empire State Building, too. In 1950, they call it the Monarch State Building, just like Superman
did in 1951…
and in 1964, they call it the Gotham State Building, so that Batman has something to climb when he’s temporarily
turned into King Kong.
They’ve got their own set of stone lions at the Public Library, too.
So that means we have two extra New Yorks on our hands, and if neither of them can be located in New York, then
we have to find someplace else to put them. In 1978, around the time of the movie’s release, the newspaper comic
The World’s Greatest Superheroes located Gotham City in South Jersey, somewhere in Cumberland County, and
Metropolis across the bridge in Kent County, Delaware. But that’s not a very interesting answer, so the two cities’
locations have varied over the years.
After forty years, Superman: The Movie was the first to locate Smallville in Kansas, rather than a suburb of
Metropolis, and that idea caught on. Kansas feels right, for a homespun fictional farm family, especially because it
resonates pleasingly with Dorothy’s home in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale and Clark Kent both fell out of the sky,
and if you spend your childhood in Kansas, then I suppose Metropolis and the Land of Oz are pretty much equally
exotic.
So the 1978 movie’s choice of a location for Smallville was picked up by the 2001 TV show Smallville and the 2011
film Man of Steel, and now everybody assumes it was set in Kansas the whole time, which it wasn’t.
But dropping Metropolis in Delaware feels unsatisfying, because in our hearts we know where it should be: in the
same town as the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the stone lions at the Public Library. It makes
sense to have Gotham City in New Jersey, as the tarnished sister city across the bridge, but Metropolis is the most
exciting city in the world. Of course that’s New York; where else could it possibly be?
Superman 1.32: Murder, With a Smile
The thing to remember about Superman: The Movie is that nobody had ever made a live-action feature-length
superhero movie before, so they didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what a superhero movie was supposed to be
like. It could go in almost any direction: science-fiction, fantasy, drama, fairy tale, action-adventure. Should it be
aimed at kids, or adults? How scary should it be?
The movie that they ended up putting together is famous for changing tones throughout the prologue: the glitter
opera of Krypton segueing into Norman Rockwell in Smallville. The teen football scene could fit into a contemporary
live-action Disney film with no questions asked; one of these days, I’m going to get around to writing that
Superman/Escape to Witch Mountain comparison that American film criticism has been waiting for all these years.
But the most important tone shift happens right here, in our first visit to the Daily Planet. This is when the story
really begins, and we find out what a Superman movie sounds like. The answer, thank goodness, is screwball
comedy.
Everybody makes a big deal about the first line of dialogue on Krypton — Jor-El saying “This is no fantasy — no
careless product of wild imagination,” which is a cue for the audience to take the glowing space angels seriously. But
there is just as much meaning in the first line of this sequence, which is: “Smile!”
And she does, adorably. Jimmy Olsen is playing with his camera, taking shots of the Daily Planet newsroom, and
when he invites Lois Lane to smile for the camera, she looks directly at us, and shoots us an inviting grin that cannot
be ignored.
We get a quick flash of Jimmy’s happy smile too, which is equally infectious. We’ve been in the newsroom for about
thirty seconds, and it’s bright and noisy, and everyone is smiling.
Then Lois has a question: “How many Ts in ‘bloodletting’?”
And Jimmy, without missing a beat, gives her the answer: “Two!”
He’s still smiling, which means he’s not taken aback by the sudden turn towards the grotesque. These bright, sunny
characters clearly talk about gruesome crimes all day.
So here’s the screwball dialogue, which if you don’t mind I’m going to give you a chunk of it.
Jimmy: What are you writin’, Miss Lane?
Lois: Ode to Spring. How do you spell ‘massacre’?
Jimmy: Uh… m-a-s-s… a-c…
Lois: c…
Jimmy: r-e.
Lois: r-e. Thank you!
(She pulls the page out of her typewriter, and walks towards the chief’s office, reading it over as she walks.)
Jimmy: Golly, Miss Lane. How come you get all the great stories?
Lois: (knocking three times on the door) A good reporter doesn’t get great stories, Jimmy…
(Perry is in the middle of saying the same phrase to someone in the office; clearly this is an old Daily Planet saw.)
Perry: A good reporter (Lois chimes in, in unison:) makes them great!
(She ignores whoever Perry’s talking to, and hands him the story, moving smoothly into her pitch.)
Lois: Chief, here’s that story on the East Side murder case; the way I see it, it’s a banner headline, front page, maybe
my picture right here…
Perry: There’s only one ‘p’ in rapist. Lois Lane, say hello to Clark Kent.
Jimmy: I told you one ‘p’.
Clark (revealed as the person Perry was talking to): Hello, Miss Lane, how are —
Lois (waves in his direction, without looking at him): Hiya, hiya… (She walks past Clark, and keeps talking to Perry.)
Remember my dynamite expose on the sex and drug orgies in the senior citizens’ home?
So that’s the situation in the newsroom, total domination by Lois Lane. That’s the point of the scene so far — to
introduce Lois as the most important person in the room, which is very screwball comedy.
If you’re not familiar, screwball comedy is a variation of romantic comedy that was popular from around 1934 to
1944. It developed as a response to the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code), which was
one of those self-regulatory devices that an industry comes up with because they don’t want the government to
regulate them, like the Comics Code and the MPAA ratings. Under the Hays Code, you couldn’t show anything
passionate or sexual, or depict sex outside of marriage as a good idea. With a lot of potential content locked out, the
makers of screwball comedies found ways to indicate adult situations, without actually expressing them outright.
The speed is the first thing you notice in screwball comedies; there’s a lot of rat-a-tat fast-talking dialogue, especially
from the female lead, who makes all the men around her try and catch up to her. The woman is usually the more
assertive member of the couple, and the man is somewhat emasculated — because he’s mild-mannered, or from a
lower social class.
There’s often a satiric view of social mores, especially around courtship and marriage, and the woman behaves in a
way that’s just on the edge of scandalous — more independent than people expect, or more aggressive, or cynical.
There’s usually a disguise or a secret identity, and there’s often a love triangle, where the fast-talking man and
woman end up together, because nobody else can keep up with them.
Christopher Reeve said that his portrayal of Clark Kent was inspired by Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, so I’ll use that
to illustrate how the fast-talking emasculation works. Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 screwball comedy about a timid
paleontologist who gets swept up in the chaotic wake of a reckless, impulsive heiress, played by Katharine Hepburn.
They meet on the golf course, where David is trying to ingratiate himself with a lawyer who he’s hoping will
persuade a rich client to donate money to David’s museum. Just as they’re getting started, David hooks his ball, and
a stranger playing a different hole mistakes it for hers. She drives toward a different hole, and he tries to tell her that
she’s made a mistake.
David: But you don’t understand —
Susan: See? There it is, right next to the pin.
David: But that has nothing to do with it, it —
Susan: Oh, are you playing through?
David: No, I’ve just driven off the first tee —
Susan: I see, you’re a stranger here. You should be over there. This is the eighteenth fairway, and I’m right on the
green. If I sink this putt, I’m going to beat my record.
(David sees that Mr. Peabody is watching, impatiently.)
David: (calls to Mr. Peabody) I’ll be with you in a minute! (to Susan:) What kind of ball are you playing?
Susan: PGA.
David: Well, I’m playing a Kro-Flite.
Susan: Mm-hmm, I like a PGA better.
(They get to the green, and Susan addresses the ball.)
David: No, I’m just trying to prove to you that you’re playing my ball. You see, a PGA has two black dots, and a Kro-
Flite has a circle, you see —
Susan: Mm-hmm, I’m not superstitious about things like that.
David: Oh, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it —
Susan: Stop talking for a minute, will you, please? (to the caddy:) Will you take out the pin?
(She putts, and makes the shot.)
David: Oh, my. This is so silly, I never saw such —
(They approach the hole, and David picks up the ball.)
David: There, you see? It’s a circle.
Susan: Well, of course it is. Do you think it would roll, if it was square?
David: No, I have reference to a mark on the ball —
Susan: I know, I was only being silly.
David: That proves it’s a Kro-Flite, that’s my ball —
Susan: (overlapping) Well, what does it matter? It’s only a game, anyway.
David: My dear young lady, you don’t seem to realize, you’ve placed me in a very embarassing position!
Susan: Oh, really? I’m sorry.
David: The most important corporation lawyer in New York is waiting for me, over on the first fairway —
Susan: Then it’s silly of you to be fooling around on the eighteenth green.
David: (resigned, holding the ball) You don’t mind if I take this with me?
Susan: No, not at all. Tell the caddymaster to put it in my bag when you’ve finished.
Now, I have to say, I don’t see a huge resemblance between Reeve’s Clark Kent and Cary Grant’s David, apart from
wearing glasses and being mild of manner, but that should give you a sense of the aesthetic.
Lois is being the classic screwball heroine here — independent, driven by her own interests, ignoring the man who
she considers irrelevant. She talks over people, repeating their lines and blowing past whatever conversation was
happening before she walked in. She’s the dominant figure in a room with three men, one of whom is her boss and
another is literally Superman. The cynical, scandalous element is her matter-of-fact attitude about her subjects:
bloodletting, massacres, sex and drug orgies in the senior citizens’ home.
Lois is a beautiful young woman acting in a not-traditionally-feminine way, and if you’re not head over heels in love
with her by this point in the scene, then maybe watching movies just isn’t for you.
So of course, within moments, she’s got the ignored, emasculated hero dealing with an extremely metaphorical
pants explosion, humiliating him in a way that we’re going to have to repair in the second half of the scene. Let’s
meet back here, and talk about that tomorrow.
Superman 1.33: The Coming of Clark Kent
It’s a textbook case of Hollywood ugly. Christopher Reeve is tall, handsome and built like a truck, with piercing blue
eyes and a terrific smile. About thirty minutes from where we’re currently standing, he’s going to be the smoldering
hunk in one of the all-time heart-melting romantic comedy scenes, and everyone in the theater will be thoroughly in
love with him.
So how much work do you have to do, in order to make him look like a forgettable schlemiel? Well, you grease his
hair down and give him big unfashionable eyeglasses, and then he hunches his shoulders, swallows his dialogue, and
projects an uncomfortable glassy stare, with his mouth pulled tight in what you might call a resting frogface. At that
point, he makes a convincing nerd that you wouldn’t look at twice.
I’m kidding, of course; he’s still insanely gorgeous, and if you don’t feel like hitting that, then I would be happy to
take your turn. But the show must go on.
We left Clark Kent yesterday in the middle of an involuntary pants explosion, trying to open a bottle of fizzy soda. He
is that most unfortunate of men, the male lead in the opening salvo of a screwball comedy, his superheroic dignity
sacrificed on the altar of a humiliating meet-cute.
In the middle of a routine designed to show everyone that he’s a normal human whose physical structure isn’t any
more millions of years advanced than anyone else’s, he’s been struggling to open Mr. White’s soda bottle, and Lois
absently takes the bottle out of his hands and bangs it on the desk a few times to loosen the cap. When Clark opens
the bottle, the liquid sprays all over his crotch, and Lois is quick to apologize.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, brushing unhelpfully on the less interesting part of his pants. “I didn’t mean to shake it up
like that!”
“Well, of course not, Lois,” Clark smiles. “I mean, why would anyone want to make a total stranger look like a fool?”
That line sounds like it’s supposed to be a joke without actually being one, and Lois is unsure how to react. They
actually give her a moment to register several different responses — surprise, polite amusement, and then wariness,
because she’s not sure why she’s smiling, and it’s just sunk in that this is some new type of person that she’s never
run across before.
I’m open to other interpretations, but I think that line is meant as the verbal equivalent of the greased-down hair
and uncool glasses — an indication that this guy doesn’t fit in, in a scene that’s otherwise non-stop laugh lines.
For example, the following Perry/Jimmy exchange. Cub photographer Jimmy Olsen slipped into the office uninvited
as Lois entered, to meet the new guy and see what all the shouting is about, and he’s been hanging around near the
doors.
Perry: Olsen! Why am I paying you forty dollars a week, when I should have you arrested for loitering? Go get Mr. —
Clark: Kent.
Perry: — a towel! Move, kid, move!
Jimmy: (awkwardly backing out) Right, chief!
Perry: And make mine black and no sugar!
Jimmy: Right, chief!
Perry: And don’t call me sugar!
Jimmy: (confused) Right, s-sugar.
(Jimmy immediately hands the order to a passing copy boy.)
Jimmy: Hey — chief wants coffee, no sugar. I’ll take a tea with lemon. (He hurries away.)
So that’s adorable, and none of that is in the shooting script. In the script, Jimmy’s left behind in the newsroom
when Lois barges into the office, so his little interjections and reactions were added during shooting. I think they
realized that they had a super-cute Jimmy and weren’t doing enough with him, and they took steps to correct that
error.
This introductory scene is almost over and the main character of the movie is still standing around awkwardly with
tight lips and wet pants, so they have to do some quick footwork to make sure the audience actually has a reason to
like Clark.
The key to getting the audience to like a new character is to have them make a friend, make a joke, and make
something happen. The joke is coming up, and since he’s Superman he’s basically a walking plot point, but we need
to see the friend, to prove that somebody in the cast likes Clark.
It’s weird how receptive we are to picking up social cues from characters on the movie screen; once we like one
character, then we look to them to tell us who else in the environment is worth caring about. At the beginning of the
scene, Jimmy gave Lois his recommendation — “Golly, Miss Lane, how come you get all the great stories?” — and
then Lois vouched for Perry, by doing a funny sales pitch for her latest story that implied a long-standing, pushy-but-
affectionate relationship between the chief and his star reporter.
You can see what happens when a character doesn’t get that stamp of approval: the redshirt copy boy doesn’t make
an impression. Jimmy just gives him the coffee order and walks away, clearly treating the guy like he doesn’t matter,
and the audience instantly follows that cue, and forgets about him completely. I know that he’s just a non-speaking
member of the newsroom background crew, but we’re just getting started with the Daily Planet staff, and Jimmy’s
disrespect is a cue not to be curious about this low-status chump.
So poor, put-upon Hollywood-ugly Clark needs a reference in order for us to care about this secret identity, and
Perry provides it, telling Lois that Clark’s got the city beat.
When she objects that that’s her beat, Perry says, “Look — Clark Kent may seem like he’s just a mild-mannered
reporter, but listen — not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does
he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I’ve ever seen.”
You wouldn’t think that a character would need a solid-gold typing test when we’ve just spent the last forty-five
minutes watching him outrace a train and fly around in his personal ice castle, but that line helps us to accept that
Clark belongs in this new environment. Audiences are weird like that, and skillful scriptwriters know how to quickly
establish a character in the audience’s esteem. Less-skillful scriptwriters, please take note.
There’s another little moment here where Clark asks Perry to send half his salary to his silver-haired mother, which
helps to connect Clark to the loving son we saw in the prologue and establishes that he’s kind, but a lot of people
are kind, and you wouldn’t want all of them in a movie. The most important thing at the end of the scene is for Clark
to make the joke that we’ve been waiting for.
Amused by his fish-out-of-water demeanor, Lois asks him, “Any more at home like you?” and he responds with a
deadpan “Not really, no.” This is his first actual funny line, which means we now have a set of four characters that
we’re going to care about for the rest of the movie. Clark Kent, you are cleared for takeoff.
Superman 1.34: Meanwhile, in the Comics
The year was 1978. With a blockbuster Superman movie on the horizon, DC Comics editor Julie Schwarz said that he
didn’t plan on changing anything in the Superman comics to tie in with the movie, because a) the books were
already selling well, and b) the movie would bring in new readers.
Neither of those statements turned out to be true.
In reality, the sales of both Action Comics and Superman had been falling precipitously for over a decade. Between
1965 and 1975, Action Comics lost 56% of its sales — 525,000 copies a month to 231,000 — and Superman lost 64%,
going from a healthy 824,000 copies a month to an anemic 296,000 in ten years.
In 1979, when Superman: The Movie was by far the #1 box office draw in the country, Action Comics sales actually
dropped, from 184,000 in 1978 to 161,000 in 1979, and they kept on going down. Superman sales went up a little
bit, from 223,000 to 246,000, but then they dropped all the way to 179,000 in 1980.
It’s now an accepted fact that successful superhero movies encourage people to watch more superhero movies, but
they don’t do much for comics sales. Today, we’re going to take a look at a 1978 issue of Action Comics, and see if
we can figure out why.
To understand what was happening in the Superman comics of 1978, you need to know about the Bronze Age,
which started around 1970 and lasted until the universal reboot in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.
So far, we’ve talked about the Silver Age of Comics of the late 1950s and early 60s, when the Superman titles had a
firm grip on the imaginary fantasy landscape of the American middle-school child. That’s when the Super-comics
came up with crazy ideas like the Fortress of Solitude, the Phantom Zone and Beppo the Super-Monkey, and kids just
ate it up.
But then Marvel Comics came along in 1961, and started targeting the adolescent crowd with more relatable heroes
like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four — moody characters, with complex relationships and hurt feelings. By the
end of the 60s, Marvel was the hip trendsetter, and DC’s line of golden oldies started to look childish and square.
That led to the Bronze Age of the 70s, when DC tried to be more relevant to the youth of the day, with mixed results.
For Superman, that meant ditching the boring old newspaper business, and transferring Clark and Lois to glamorous
new jobs in television news. In 1970, the Daily Planet was acquired by the Galaxy Broadcasting System, and soon
after, Clark became the anchorman for the WGBS evening news.
Tired old characters that people actually enjoyed, like Perry White, Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor, were put on the
backburner, replaced by grouchy media mogul Morgan Edge, and bull-headed sports reporter Steve Lombard. The
new expanded cast also included stressed-out director Josh Coyle, gossip reporter Lola Barnett and newsanchor
Melba Manton, and if you’ve never heard of any of these characters, that’s because the entire concept was a
crippling failure, and after fifteen years of steadily declining audience share, the only thing DC could do was destroy
their entire fictional universe and start over again from scratch.
Still, they were trying to keep up with the times, and one important innovation was a technique that they’d picked
up from Marvel — keeping a continuous story going from one issue to the next. In the Silver Age, when DC was
targeting the middle-school market, they often had three different stories in a single issue. Story elements from
earlier issues could return, so the readers were expected to remember that things like the Phantom Zone and the
bottle city of Kandor existed, but every story had a definite ending, and you could read them in pretty much any
order.
But Marvel characters always remembered what happened in the previous issue. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s big
breakthrough in 1961’s Fantastic Four was to treat the characters like more-or-less real people, and a Fantastic Four
story would often begin with the heroes still squabbling over whatever they were complaining about at the end of
the last issue. This soap opera approach allowed for more complex storytelling, and readers were encouraged to
pick up every issue.
By 1978, the Superman books had fully adopted this approach as well, and in the issue that I want to talk about
today — “The Giant from the Golden Atom!” from January 1978’s Action Comics #479 — the story opens with
Superman cleaning up the mess from the previous month’s planetwide alien invasion.
Unfortunately, the move from the Daily Planet to the WGBS evening news breaks an important part of the core
premise of Superman stories. The reason why Clark Kent became a newspaper reporter in the first place is that he
needs to stay nimble — going out and investigating news stories, and then popping into the alleyway to transform
into the high-flying hero Superman. But becoming the anchor of a television show means that Clark needs to spend
a lot of time in the studio, and during the broadcast, it’s essential for him to sit still in a chair for half an hour, unable
to escape, because there are cameras pointed at him the entire time.
In other words, being a newspaper reporter was story-productive, with acres of potential for plot development, but
becoming a television news anchor creates nothing but story-killing constraints. An anchorman isn’t even supposed
to go out and interview people. He’s just a guy who sits behind a desk and says things.
Naturally, this makes Superman even more exhausting than usual; he has to do everything faster than the speed of
television. In this case, he has to get to a WGBS meeting in twenty minutes, so he has to pour — it — on! which isn’t
a great choice of words considering he’s cleaning up after a flood.
Nineteen minutes later, he’s back from mopping up literally every place in the world. “Clearing those trees in Africa
threw me off schedule,” he thinks, “but I more than made up the time in Mongolia!” Fine, Superman; I’m sure you
did.
When he gets back to Metropolis, Superman finds that the WGBS building is surrounded by an eerie red glow. His
first thought is, “Is it Edge’s idea of a bizarre publicity stunt?” which is hard to figure.
Inside, all of the electrical equipment is glowing, and we see a panel of the lamps and televisions exploding, which
you’d think would be fairly devastating for a television station’s business model; not having any cameras, monitors or
lighting equipment can alter your whole work schedule. Luckily, by the next page, everybody’s forgotten that it
happened and everything is fine; I guess they were insured.
Approaching the building, Superman drops to the sidewalk and starts shadow-boxing an invisible opponent, which
lasts for a page and a half.
At the end of the fight, he gets punched so hard that he crashes into a brick wall, which destroys an entire building
on a busy street, reducing it to rubble. This is standard practice for a Superman comic.
But look what they’ve added to the panel — a little sign that says “Condemned by City of Metropolis,” which is
adorable. Superman’s been engaged in a one-man war against architecture since Action Comics #1, and even now,
forty years later, they think that we need to be reassured about the safety of the citizens of Metropolis. We do not.
Anyway, Superman doesn’t have time for all of this. He’s already spent twenty minutes cleaning up after the last
disaster, and now he’s got a work meeting, so somebody else is going to have to deal with the aftermath this time.
And check it out, it’s a whole staff meeting. They left Perry behind, sitting alone in the empty offices of the Daily
Planet, so now Clark runs the daily news allotment session with a large selection of the current cast. There’s Clark
and Lois, of course, and a grown-up Jimmy who doesn’t wear bowties anymore. Steve the sports guy is sitting on the
desk at the left, and that’s Lana Lang in the green stripes, also grown up and I think she has a British accent for
reasons that I have not yet discovered. The woman with the afro at bottom left is Melba Manton.
I don’t know who the guy with the mustache in the middle is. He only appears in this one panel, and nobody talks to
him, or looks in his direction. The meeting goes on for two pages, but after this panel mustache guy disappears, into
the ether. DC Database doesn’t know who he is, either. Man of mystery.
The one who gets the most attention is Steve Lombard, the comic relief bully. He’s got a big gold trophy for being
named Sportscaster of the Year, and he wants to show it off in the evening’s broadcast. Steve is blustery and
obnoxious, and once the meeting’s over, Clark’s going to deliberately trap him in the storage room, just to get away
from him.
I talked yesterday about the formula for getting the audience to like a character — make a friend, make a joke, and
make something happen. Steve delivers on the joke, but fails on the other counts. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a
character in the whole place who actually likes Steve; everyone seems to be annoyed by him all the time.
And in this case, he’s positioned as a storyline speed bump, who insists on coming along with Clark on his
assignment. This prevents Clark from putting on the Superman cape and making actual story progress, so Steve is
clearly acting in direct opposition to the interests of the audience. That means we don’t like him, so if Clark wants to
use his heat vision to weaken the screws in a shelving unit and crush Steve under a rack of heavy videotape
canisters, then that is entirely fine with us.
Anyway, the actual plot is about a giant, super-strong gold creature that is apparently invisible to everyone except
for Superman, for reasons that I don’t believe are ever satisfactorily explained. That’s who Superman was fighting
outside the WGBS studio, and once the news allotment meeting is over, he’s got to find the guy again before he
destroys an electric power station, which is what he’s already done.
So Superman rushes out to the exploded power station and has a standard fight sequence with the guy, picking up a
large piece of what used to be someone else’s wall and smashing him over the head with the unlikely sound effect of
SHAWHOOM!
This is a typical story structure for the period — some asshole alien shows up unexpectedly and starts breaking
things, until Superman convinces him to stop. There’s a steady stream of asshole aliens arriving in Metropolis on a
regular schedule in 1978 Superman comics.
The gold guy doesn’t feel like talking, but then Superman hits him with a power line.
“Joined by a sputtering high-intensity electrical arc,” the caption says, “the Man of Steel and the alien giant become
— for an instant — one mind.” This kind of thing happens more often than you think.
So it turns out that the guy is a college student from a university in sub-microscopic space, who was disliked by his
fellow students because they couldn’t handle how strong and smart and awesome he was. To prove his brilliance, he
started experimenting with spectrum neutrino-bombardment, which exploded in his face and somehow made him
grow all the way out of the atom that he lived in, into our world. This is distressingly common among lonely college
students; we should probably form a committee or something.
The poor invisible chump thinks that he can get back to his tiny world if he accumulates a large enough charge of
spectrum-electricity, and he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that he’s blowing stuff up in Metropolis. So he
socks Superman in the face and flies away, leaving behind the only person who has any interest in helping him.
Asshole aliens do not stop and ask for directions.
Superman figures out that the guy’s home world must be in Steve’s gold trophy, but obviously he can’t explain that
to Steve the human speed bump, so that slows him down for another page.
Naturally, the solution is to use his super-speed to make a fake trophy out of modeling clay and gold paint, and
switch it for the real trophy, which we now know is crawling with tiny little jerks with grudges. I would watch how I
handle that thing, because I wouldn’t want to get super-strong microscopic college students all over my shirt, but
Superman does not sweat the small stuff.
What happens next is extremely sciencey. We catch up with the gold guy when he’s about to destroy a nuclear
power complex, and after a spirited battle, Superman picks him up into the air, and you’ll never guess how he solves
this whole problem.
What he does is that he gives the guy a super-speed backrub, in order to generate enough static electricity to reduce
him back to atomic size, and send him back where he came from.
That is the actual thing that Superman does.
Then he throws the trophy into space, which accomplishes who knows what. He’s concerned about the guy
enlarging himself again and continuing to be a nuisance, although if I were him, I’d be more worried about all of the
other atoms in the world, each of which might carry its own crackpot university. Who knows how many millions of
tiny faculty meetings are going on at this very moment, inside your body? It hardly bears thinking about.
This is the American legend that Richard Donner is working 26 hours a day to bring to the silver screen, this untidy
alien sitcom, which ends with a comedy beat about Steve’s fake trophy melting under the studio lights.
So what do we make of the Superman comics of 1978, so far? I have to admit that I admire the creators’ willingness
to shake up the status quo, and introduce new characters and situations. They could have just kept on doing stories
for decades about Lois getting into trouble, or trying to figure out Superman’s identity, but instead they decided to
move on, and find new things to think about.
The problem, of course, is that the new characters aren’t as interesting or as likeable as the original set. In this issue,
they’re essentially doing a superpowered action-adventure episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, with Steve in
the Ted Knight role, but he’s not actually funny, and there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the WGBS
staff members and the lunatic outer space crises that pop up in their lives on a monthly basis.
There’s some electricity here, to be sure, but it’s mostly static, and we can’t power a blockbuster movie franchise on
this low-energy lightbulb. The movie is going to have to make its way on its own.
Superman 1.35: The Dentist
Superman: The Movie was the first feature-length blockbuster superhero film, and at the time, it was hard to
imagine what that would actually be like. Would it be a self-consciously silly romp, like the 1966 Batman film based
on the campy TV show? What would it look like, once you put a guy in blue tights and a red cape, and strung him up
on wires?
The producers, Alex and Ilya Salkind, were constantly announcing that they were spending the most money in
history to make the grandest movie in history, but they were hucksters, and nobody knew if they could pull it off.
Co-producer Pierre Spengler’s negotiation with DC Comics for the film rights took two and a half months, because
DC was concerned that the project could turn into an embarrassing flop, which would reflect badly on their marquee
character. According to a Variety article, when they finished, it was “spelled out in the contracts that the performers
signed to play both Superman and Lois Lane must have had no connection whatsoever with pornographic films.”
So that tells you how low DC’s expectations were, for this project. They actually thought it was possible that the
Salkinds would hire porn stars to play Superman and Lois.
There is a mythology about the making of Superman: The Movie, which grew in story and song as it passed from
Variety to the Los Angeles Times, from Starlog to American Cinematographer, from the making-of book to the
making-of TV special, and all the making-of DVD featurettes to come.
It’s the heroic saga of a group of unlikely allies, coming together to perform a great feat that will be sung through the
ages — and the most satisfying backstage legends are the ones that end with everyone agreeing that the conclusion
was meant to be. It took us a long time, they say, but we perservered, and in the end, destiny guided our hand to
make the perfect choice.
So far in this blog, we’ve discussed the dinner in Paris, Brando and the money, and the lollipop. The next song in the
cycle is The Tale of the Dentist.
From the start, the question of who would play Superman was paramount; the movie would live or die based on this
choice. He had to look strong and muscular, without going overboard into Hercules territory. He had to be attractive,
and compelling. He had to be competent in a wide range of styles, from action-adventure to romantic comedy. And
he had to look like the guy in the comic book.
The casting process began in September 1975, after the Salkinds hired Guy Hamilton as the director, and it lasted all
the way to February 1977, just a month before shooting began. According to the legend, they met with 200 actors
across that year and a half of searching, and screen tested a half dozen or so. As Hamilton began pre-production in
Rome, they started calling around to see who was available.
Alexander Salkind’s first choice was Robert Redford, one of the most acclaimed American actors of the time. His big
break was in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a huge critical and box office success. He went on to
headline a string of hit films — The Way We Were and The Sting in 1973, The Great Gatsby in 1974 and All the
President’s Men in 1976 — which made him an incredibly bankable star. He would have been wrong for the part, of
course — he was blond, and forty years old — but the Salkinds valued previous box office success above all else.
He said no. They didn’t have secure financing yet or a complete script, and he was so well-known that he thought
people wouldn’t accept him in a cape.
So then they asked Paul Newman, Redford’s Butch Cassidy co-star, which tells you a lot about how the Salkinds were
leading this process. Newman was also a very successful and well-regarded actor, but he was 52 at the time, and if
people wouldn’t accept Redford in a Superman costume, they definitely wouldn’t suspend disbelief for Newman.
To be fair, the Salkinds offered Newman the choice of either Superman or Lex Luthor, which he also wasn’t right for.
He turned them down.
It got a little crazy after that.
They asked Warren Beatty, who would have been great, if it was 1965. Beatty tried on a costume and ran around his
pool, and told the Salkinds that he felt too ridiculous.
They talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and decided that his Austrian accent wouldn’t work, even if they wrote in the
script that it was a Kryptonian twang.
Clint Eastwood was too busy.
Steve McQueen said no.
Sylvester Stallone really wanted it, but the Salkinds felt that he was too Italian for the part.
After a while, it just got silly.
Ilya met with singer Neil Diamond, who was thinking about breaking into acting. They talked to Kris Kristofferson,
James Caan, James Brolin, Ryan O’Neal, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sam Elliott, David Soul, Robert Wagner, Charles
Bronson and Paul Rudd (not the one you’re thinking of).
An out-of-touch Alex Salkind even took a meeting with the promoter of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Alex was
interested in having Ali come in for a screen test, until Ilya broke the news that Ali was Black.
At one point, the three front-runners were Nick Nolte, Perry King and Jon Voight, and they actually put Voight on
contract, so that they could use him if they couldn’t find anybody else.
The odd thing is that when people write about casting this part — both at the time, and ever since — they only talk
about the way the actors look, and not what they would bring to the role, or what kind of Superman they would be.
Muhammad Ali wasn’t rejected just because he was Black — I mean, he was rejected just for that, but he shouldn’t
have been — when the real problem was that his carefully cultivated public persona was aggressive and boastful.
One of his famous catchphrases was “I am the greatest!“, which plays well for a champion boxer, but that’s not the
guy that you want playing Superman.
In September 1976, they conducted a very well-publicized screen test with Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner,
known at the time under her previous name, Bruce Jenner. A few months before, Jenner had set a world record in
the decathlon at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, taking it away from the previous gold medal winner, Soviet
decathlete Mykola Avilov. That was apparently a big deal at the time.
A charming world champion, Jenner was being called the World’s Greatest Athlete, and had ambitions of becoming a
lead actor, which everyone assumed would happen effortlessly. Even Variety, a trade paper known for being cynical,
referred to Superman as “the role [Jenner] might have been born to play.”
So Jenner flew to London to do a screen test, and guess what, it turned out that acting and being on a Wheaties box
are not equivalent skills.
A month after Jenner’s tryout, Guy Hamilton had to drop out of the project, and in November, Richard Donner got
the director’s job. The production was still cycling through the long list of living human beings with Y chromosomes,
trying to keep the project afloat. If they couldn’t find someone to play Superman, then they were finished.
And just when they were getting desperate, Ilya Salkind’s wife had a dentist’s appointment in Beverly Hills.
As the story goes, Skye was having her teeth cleaned, and suddenly she looked up at the dentist and thought, that’s
Clark Kent! She came home raving about the guy, who had never acted in his life before, and things were so bleak
over at Shepperton that Ilya said, you know what? Let’s bring him in for a screen test.
It wasn’t one of the great ideas in American cinema. Don Voyne, D.D.S., was a very handsome man with a great body
and a strong jawline, but he couldn’t make you believe he was hot if his hair was on fire. You can watch a video of
Voyne’s screen test on the fan site Superman1978, and I recommend that you do, because it’s hilarious.
In the scene, Superman has come to Lex Luthor’s lair, to have a confrontation about some bit of villainy.
Voyne begins with his hands on his hips. “It’s all over, Luthor,” he says —
— and then points at the other person in the scene, to complete the line: “You’re coming with me!”
At that point it’s essentially over, four seconds after it starts. That line read is enough to disqualify young Dr. Voyne
from the list of potential Supermen.
I mean, if you’re looking for an angry Superman, then Voyne’s your guy; he projects nothing but pissed-off vibes. He
is fed up with Luthor’s criminal schemes, and he is not shy about letting it show.
To be fair, the script points in that direction. “It’s too late!” Luthor sneers defiantly, as Superman stomps across the
room. “The rocket is already on its way, and even you can’t fly fast enough to stop it!”
Our hero grabs Luthor, picks him up like a rag doll, and gives him a little shake. “I won’t have to fly anywhere not
after you tell me where the controls are!” Superman says, all in one breath.
“Controls, who’s got controls?” asks Luthor, who you will be interested to know is not being played by Eugene Levy.
“I’ve traced the signals to this room,” Superman says, giving Luthor the stink eye, and another little shake. “Now, you
tell me!”
Luthor still denies it, so Superman yells, “Don’t force me to do humanity a favor!” and drops him like a bad habit.
Then he stalks out of the room, snarling, “You overblown, deluded creep!”
It’s very watchable, if you like muscular, furious men dressed up in tight clothes, which I’m not going to lie to you, I
don’t hate. But if Dr. Voyne is considering cancelling tomorrow’s appointments because he’ll be busy signing the
standard rich and famous contract, then he should probably think again.
And then, like a miracle from Heaven: Christopher Reeve.
Reeve was a tall, handsome actor who trained at Juilliard, and after graduation went straight into a two-year stint as
Ben Harper on the CBS soap opera Love of Life. At night, he performed on stage, and in 1975, he appeared on
Broadway with Katharine Hepburn in Enid Bagnold’s A Matter of Gravity.
Hoping to break into films, he moved to Los Angeles in 1976, where his best offer was the lead in the NBC TV series
Man From Atlantis, an adventure show where he’d have to wear green contact lenses, and webbed hands and feet.
Reeve turned it down, and a pre-Dallas Patrick Duffy took the part, for as long as it lasted. Then Reeve got his first
movie role — a bit part as a sailor in Gray Lady Down, a Charlton Heston disaster movie about a nuclear submarine.
Disappointed, Reeve returned to New York and appeared in My Life, an off-Broadway play starring William Hurt. And
then somebody asked him if he wanted to play Superman.
Reeve’s agent expressed interest in the role, and casting director Lynn Stalmaster had the gift of seeing the potential
that nobody else in the production could see. He says that he kept putting Reeve’s picture on top of the pile of
headshots, and Donner and the producers kept putting it at the bottom of the pile.
Finally, after the humiliating experience with the dentist, Ilya and Donner decided to meet with Chris Reeve. None of
the people involved thought there was much promise. In his biography, Reeve said that he only went to the meeting
because it was on the way to Grand Central Station, where he was headed to go visit his dad; if it was in another
part of town, he wouldn’t have bothered.
So he came, and they talked, and Donner was not immediately impressed. Reeve was 6’4″ and 188 pounds, and
Donner thought he was too young and skinny for the part. Ilya says that he was the one who decided to do a screen
test, but Ilya says a lot of things, so who even knows.
They offered Reeve the screen test, and Reeve said that he couldn’t go — he was still doing the play, and he didn’t
have an understudy. To clear Reeve’s schedule, Donner bought out the entire house, at five bucks a seat.
On February 1st, 1977, Christopher Reeve appeared on set at Shepperton Studios wearing a padded Superman
leotard and black shoe polish in his hair. He sweated like a horse under the hot studio lights, making big dark sweat
stains under his arms. He was magnificent.
Superman1978 has a video of Reeve’s screen tests as well, and that’s worth watching too, to see how magic just
happened, right in front of everybody. They do a version of the interview scene with Lois, and amusingly, Reeve
starts the scene with his hands on his hips, as Don Voyne did. But the dentist looked petulant and stagey, and Reeve
looks confident and at ease.
“Good evening, Miss Lane,” he says, from his perch on the wall. “Thank you very much for finding the time for this
interview.”
And then he steps down easily to land on the floor, and he’s Superman.
From that point, you don’t need me to tell you what he’s like. He’s Christopher Reeve and he’s playing Superman, as
he was obviously destined to do.
Superman 1.36: When the Shooting Starts
Something odd!
wrote the LA Times, in July 1977.
Director Donner doesn’t know the exact budget of the film.
“Whatever it is, I’m not privy to it,” he said, sprawled in a chair. “That’s the way these producers work, apparently. It
doesn’t make my life any easier, I can tell you. I’ve no way of knowing whether I’m going over budget or not.”
An unusual way to make a movie?
“I would say so. Yes.”
And yeah, I would call it unusual, if by unusual you mean “rancorous and dysfunctional”. It started out okay in April
1977; everybody had to stay on track while they were filming the Krypton scenes at Shepperton Studios, because at
the stroke of twelve days, Brando would turn into a green suitcase and disappear.
Then in May, Richard Donner shot the scenes in the interior of the Fortress of Solitude, which is when things got
complicated. Most of the main cast of both Superman and Superman II arrived, and they had to film a bunch of
flying sequences involving six actors up on wires. By the end of May, the production was two weeks behind
schedule, and they’d only been filming for seven weeks. You wouldn’t think a thing like that was possible.
Naturally, after filming the scenes that took place at the North Pole, everything in the production went south. While
Reeve stayed behind in the Fortress for some extra Superman II scenes, the rest of the production moved over from
Shepperton to Pinewood Studios, and the Daily Planet.
The Daily Planet set is pretty much the definition of “bustling” — a crowded space full of desks, chairs, office
equipment, supporting beams, glass partitions, and I’m going to estimate maybe forty-five background artistes, all in
constant motion, to let the audience know how exciting and fast-paced it is in the newsroom of a great metropolitan
newspaper. It’s a gorgeous and convincing set, although one thing you may notice is the lack of clear, open surfaces
where you could conceivably park a camera and get a decent shot.
In the first movie, there are four sequences in the Daily Planet newsroom: the introductory scene which we’ve just
been talking about, the lengthy one-take walk-and-talk with Clark and Lois leading up to the helicopter scene, the
scene where Perry tells the reporters to find Superman and Lois gets a note, and the scene where Clark gets a high-
pitched message from Lex Luthor.
And in Superman II, which they were filming at the same time, there’s a sequence of Non and the Phantom Zone
villains smashing their way through the office, busting up walls and windows, and generally murdering the interior
design. That’s the sequence that they filmed first, in the last week of May, because it didn’t involve Reeve, who was
still messing around in the Fortress.
For the first week at the Daily Planet, they had to shoot around one of the characters, because they hadn’t managed
to get their hands on a functioning Perry yet. As I mentioned earlier, Jackie Cooper was actually the fourth Perry that
they hired, and the only one with the staying power to appear in the movie. The third choice for Perry, Keenan
Wynn, had been rushed on to the set in a big hurry, right off the airplane and into makeup and wardrobe, and then
he collapsed and was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with exhaustion and relieved of duty. So we’re
just getting going at Pinewood, and already we’ve damaged Keenan Wynn; it’s not a promising start.
They’d scheduled two weeks for the Daily Planet filming, and it ended up being five weeks, which seems to me like
one of those Nemesis punishing people for their hubris type situations. Did they really think they could film all of
these sequences in two weeks, including building the set twice? It staggers the imagination.
For one thing, there are dozens of people in every shot. They have to clear space for the camera to move around,
and make sure that it isn’t reflected in any of the glass partitions, like they fail to do in the lobby sequence coming
up next. Plus, they keep losing Perries.
Things were also slowed down by a couple acts of God. First, all of the lights in the set’s drop ceiling shorted out
Pinewood’s electricity, including the backup generators. It took two days to get back online from that. And then the
heat from the lighting rig set off the sprinklers, and the water damaged some of the set dressing, which had to be
replaced.
But from the producers’ point of view, most of the delays were acts of Donner.
Alex and Ilya Salkind, executive producers and leaders of the crime syndicate that funded the movie, were engaged
in complex financial shenanigans, which, to be fair, is pretty stressful. They thought they were making a 20 million
dollar movie, which was transforming before their eyes into a 50 million dollar movie, and you can only create so
many self-dealing fictional shell companies until people start to notice. I mean, you can’t get blood from a stone.
Well, you can, actually, they did it all the time, but eventually you have to go out and find another stone.
They’d saved some money by screwing over the entire crew that they’d used at Shepperton Studios, which was
helpful. Pinewood was a full-service studio with its own in-house crew, so when they wrapped up the Fortress
scenes at Shepperton, the Salkinds just informed everyone that their services were no longer required, and moved
on.
But then they have to watch Richard Donner shoot take after take on the Daily Planet set, and the battle of Art vs
Commerce swings into high gear.
Ilya’s issue was that from his point of view, Donner just couldn’t make up his mind. His favorite example was that
Donner shot the effect from the red sun of Krypton three hundred times, then ended up using take #3.
And you can’t argue with the math. The main unit on a feature film usually gets around three minutes of useable
footage a day, and Donner’s daily average was 40 seconds. That’s around one or two complete shots per day, for five
weeks, and it drove the Salkinds nuts.
So they started having shouting matches in the office, which had a morale-sapping quality that you wouldn’t believe.
Ilya would say, “You’re over schedule, you’re over budget,” and Donner would say, “Show me a fucking budget,” and
they couldn’t, because writing down numbers on pieces of paper was to the Salkinds what a cross and holy water
were to vampires. If you tried to tabulate where the money was coming from and where it was going, they would
flinch and hiss, and turn to dust.
Convinced that Donner was going to bankrupt the production, the Salkinds sent Donner’s attorney a letter that said
that the schedule was in such disarray that it qualified as breach of contract, and was grounds for dismissal. This
assertion was grounded in the legal principle that sometimes you can just say things that don’t make any sense, and
nobody will notice. It was not an effective strategy.
After a while, Donner would sometimes authorize an expense, and the Salkinds would just cancel it with no
explanation. It didn’t seem to occur to them that spending all your time scheming against your own director did not
actually get the movie made any faster.
So that’s when the Salkinds hired Richard Lester, to hang around and be the substitute director if they ever managed
to push Donner out.
Lester spent much of the 1960s making strange British comedy films, to varying degrees of success. This included
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) with Peter Sellers, The Mouse on the Moon (1963) without Peter
Sellers, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) with the Beatles, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum (1966) with Zero Mostel, and the post-apocalyptic black comedy The Bed Sitting Room (1969), which is one of
those cultural artifacts that exists just to remind you that you haven’t seen everything yet.
Left adrift at the end of the 60s, Lester fell into bad company, aka the Salkinds, and made The Three Musketeers and
The Four Musketeers in 1973. The Salkinds liked Lester because he was a fast worker and could get a film done on
schedule, and then — because they’re the fucking Salkinds — they didn’t pay him for it.
He spent the next few years trying to sue them, like everyone does eventually, and found out that it’s hard to sue
people who live in seven countries at the same time. At one point, he actually won a lawsuit, but the judgment was
rendered against a Bahamas-based company incorporated in Liechtenstein that didn’t have any money. Finding that
they’d moved the money to Mexico, Lester bought a vacant lot in Mexico in order to get standing to sue them there,
and then found that they were pretending to live in Switzerland.
Finally, once they’d tired him out, they told him that they’d pay him for The Three Musketeers if he came and
replaced Donner as the director for Superman, and he said yes, which is what happens to a person once you’ve let
the Salkinds into your life.
Then they found out that they couldn’t fire Donner for breach of contract just because he was directing the film that
they had contracted with him to direct, so Lester became an uncredited producer who they thought could keep
Donner focused.
Donner was kind of stunned when Lester showed up as his babysitter, but they quickly bonded over how much they
hated the Salkinds. Everybody who worked on this film ended up forming these deep emotional bonds; I believe
that we could achieve universal peace, if we could only get every person in the world to work on a film for the
Salkinds at the same time. Lester ended up taking over some second-unit shooting, and he helped make a couple of
important decisions that we’ll get to later on.
Meanwhile, the execs at Warner Bros were starting to see rushes, and they were so happy with the results that they
started investing money in the production. Naturally, the Salkinds were pleased to see money coming into the
project rather than going out, but the investment gave Warners more control over the film, and they wanted Donner
to stay.
And so they all crept forward, this beleaguered band of brothers: inching toward posterity, forty seconds a day.
Superman 1.37: The Invention of Lois Lane
Okay, listen up, everybody, because we’ve got a lot to do today, and we don’t have time for side chatter.
We’ve reached the Metropolis section of Superman: The Movie, so that means we’ve got a live Lois Lane on our
hands, and for the rest of this week, we’re going to drill down into who this captivating and terrifying woman is, how
she works, and what we’re going to do about her.
Back in the first post, we looked at June 1938’s Action Comics #1, which introduced the fantastic action hero
Superman, and his spineless, unbearable coward of a secret identity, Clark Kent. We also met the only two
supporting characters that the comic had for the first several years — editor George Taylor, and the girl covering the
Daily Planet’s lovelorn beat, Miss Lois Lane.
Taylor didn’t really have a lot to say for himself, and as far as I recall, he hardly ever got up from behind his desk, so
he was more of a framing device than an active character in the story — somebody to give Clark an assignment in
the first couple panels, and congratulate him on turning in a good story at the end. The only real supporting
character that Clark interacted with was Lois, and right from the start, she hated him worse than poison.
They didn’t have Kryptonite back then, to weaken Superman, and make him suffer. They didn’t need it. They had Lois
Lane.
It’s a bold move, introducing a whole new variety of hero that the world has never seen before, and giving him a
sidekick who can’t stand to be in the same room with him for more than ten seconds.
“I absolutely loathe you!” she said, in Action Comics #9. “You contemptible weakling! — Don’t you dare even to talk
to me any more!”
So it’s a good thing they could fill up panels with Superman running along telephone wires and smacking people in
the face with their own property, because it’s going to be tough keeping a conversation going under these
conditions.
It was kind of like if Charles Schulz started Peanuts with only Charlie Brown and Lucy, and half the time, Lucy would
just glare at Charlie Brown in icy silence. You’re not going to make a beloved Christmas special that way; you’d be
lucky to get to Thanksgiving without breaking out into some kind of true-crime tragedy.
The problem is that this is not scaleable. By January 1939, there’s both a monthly comic book story and an ongoing
daily newspaper strip, and not long after, they’re going to start a quarterly comic that’s just Superman stories.
Having a sum total of two characters who can’t interact with each other puts a limit on the kinds of stories that you
can tell, and that’s going to become increasingly restrictive over time.
For the first couple of years, the Clark/Lois stories basically went like this: Clark approaches Lois with some kind of
conversation starter, Lois tells him to go take a single bound, Lois goes out by herself to investigate a news story, Lois
gets in trouble, Superman rescues Lois, Clark files the story first, Lois vows revenge. The main variant was that
sometimes at the beginning of the story, Lois pretends that she wants to hang out with Clark, but she’s actually using
him to get someplace that she wants to go, and then she ghosts him and goes off on her own.
So if they think they’re going to generate multiple stories a month in every available storytelling medium for the
next 80+ years with that premise, then they’re kidding themselves; it’s just not going to happen. One way or
another, they’re going to have to figure out what else they can do with Lois Lane.
This problem hit hardest on the radio show, which premiered in February 1940 with fifteen-minute episodes, three
days a week. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were writing the comic books and the comic strips, but the radio show was
written by other people, and had its own narrative necessities.
That’s the medium where soap operas got started — on the radio, fifteen minutes a day — and it’s easy to see how
soaps would naturally emerge from that format. Daily radio serials had a small cast of actors, and if a particular actor
appeared on the show that day, then their character would probably stick around for the whole episode; you
wouldn’t bother to pay an actor to come into the studio just to say a line or two. And once you’ve got them there,
you have to give them something to do, so the characters would talk and talk and talk, to fill up fifteen minutes of
airtime.
If you’ve got a small cast of characters who all live near each other — they have to, because otherwise how are they
going to talk to each other all day — then you need to give them stuff to talk about, so they all have interpersonal
problems and conflicts and concerns. The audience probably isn’t tuning in every single day, so you really only need
something to happen once in a while, and then the characters can spend the next several days clustering together in
little discussion groups to talk about what happened, and how everyone feels about it. And there you have it: a soap
opera.
Now, in the comics, you can have as many characters as you know how to draw, so it’s okay for Clark and Lois to have
little furious bite-size conversations that only last a panel or two, because then one of them can go off and have a
dangerous adventure with somebody else, leaving the other behind. But on the radio, if you’re going to pay an
actress to come in and say lines, then you’re going to want her to participate in the entire fifteen minutes.
In fact, the very idea of a radio show character saying “You contemptible weakling! — Don’t you dare even to talk to
me any more!” is utterly unthinkable. The concept “don’t talk to me any more” is utterly foreign to a radio character;
their entire existence is based on everyone continuing to talk, from now until the sponsorship message.
So as soon as the radio show started, the first thing they did was create a new editor that Clark could actually talk to
— Perry White, the crusading newspaper editor and grouchy comedy chatterbox, who said more words in his first
episode than George Taylor ever said in his entire three years in the comic book. And then they had to deal with
Lois.
It took them three tries to get a working Lois on the show; the first one was played by Rollie Bester, and she showed
up in episode 7 at the end of February 1940, in a storyline called “The Atomic Beam Machine”. Bester’s Lois was a
tough dame, kind of film-noir sarcastic.
Here’s her introduction:
Lois: Call in your office, Mr. White.
Perry: Oh, thanks, Lois. Oh, by the way, Kent — I don’t think you know Miss Lane. Lois, this is Clark Kent.
Clark and Lois: How do you do?
Perry: Wait here until I come back, Kent, I won’t be a minute. (He exits.)
Lois: The boy wonder, huh?
Clark: Why, Miss Lane, what do you mean?
Lois: They tell me you talked yourself into a job, went out west, and came back with the biggest story of the month,
all in less than a week.
Clark: Well, I — I guess I was pretty lucky.
Lois: Huh! I’ll say you were lucky! Now you’re the white-haired boy, eh?
Clark: I’m afraid I don’t quite understand…
Lois: Got the old man hypnotized. He thinks you’re Horace Greeley.
Clark: Ha — I’m afraid I don’t…
Lois: Oh, don’t act so dumb. All this nonsense about a time bomb in the cellar! What’s the big idea?
Clark: Miss Lane, I only wish I knew.
Lois: You mean to tell me you didn’t make it up, out of your head?
Clark: I certainly did not!
Lois: I don’t believe it.
Now, in the comics, they would have jumped away from this conversation after two panels, to go see what
somebody else is up to, but they’ve paid Rollie to appear in this episode, so she’s going to stick around for another
minute and a half.
Clark: Listen! Don’t you hear something?
Lois: I hear the presses in the basement.
Clark: No, no — outside! Come to the window.
(He opens the window.)
Clark: Now — don’t you hear anything?
Lois: What do you think you hear?
Clark: A plane! There’s a plane out there, flying low!
Lois: Well, I’ll be — now, look, Mister Kent, this is a big town! You’ll find quite a few planes flying around here, all
day and all night. If it bothers you, you’d better go back to the farm.
Clark: No, no, really, I mean it —
Lois: Yes, really, I mean it, too. Tell the old man about your big discovery; here he comes now.
Perry: Well? Well? Anything new?
Lois: Yeah, your star reporter heard a plane.
So she’s fun, right away — a complete personality. She’s very different from the ice queen of the comic, with an
actual sense of humor. This kind of relationship won’t be feasible over the long term either, but at least there’s more
going on here than we see in the comics of the time.
A few weeks later, Rollie Bester was replaced by Helen Choate, and her Lois wasn’t any friendlier to Clark. Here’s a
scene from late March 1940, when she’s rescued from a steam laundry in “The Prison Riot”:
Lois: No! Please! Please!
Superman: There she is — fainted, too. Got to get her out of here, and turn off that steam, quick! And when she
comes around, she’ll just see Clark Kent, and so will all the rest.
Lois: (coming around) Oh… the tunnel… down that tunnel…
Guard: Miss Lane, are you all right?
Lois: Yeah… I’m all right.
Guard: Well, I reckon you can thank your friend, Clark Kent, for that.
Lois: Kent? (disgusted:) I didn’t see you. How’d you get here?
Clark: Well, gee, Miss Lane, never mind that now. The point is, I did get here, and just in time!
Lois: Was it you that got me out? I thought I saw a tremendous figure in a red cape.
Clark: Well, gosh, I’d sure hate to disappoint you, Miss Lane. I guess you figured I was Superman!
Lois: Oh, no. Don’t worry, Clark Kent. Why did you stop to look after me? If you’d been on your job, you’d have gone
after those convicts, down the tunnel! (with dripping contempt:) Oh, no. You’ll never be confused with Superman.
This second Lois is closer to the one in the comics — bitter and disdainful, without the benefit of being funny. This is
from the next episode, “The Mystery of Dyerville”:
Perry: Hello there, Lois! Come in, close the door.
Lois: Did you want to see both of us, Mr. White?
Perry: I certainly did. You made out so well on that prison break, that I’m going to send you and Kent out again.
Clark: Oh, gee, that’s great, Mr. White!
Lois: I’m sure Mr. Kent could cover it much better alone.
Perry: Well, you’re going along, Lois, so sit down and listen. Have either of you heard of what’s going on in
Dyerville?
Lois: I haven’t heard a thing about anything.
Clark: I have, chief!
Lois: Oh, the human encyclopedia, he knows about everything!
(They talk about the mystery going on…)
Lois: And that’s where you’re sending me and Kent, Mr. White?
Perry: (sarcastic) If you’re sure you don’t mind, Lois.
Lois: Well, I’d feel safer with a more adequate escort.
Clark: Well, gosh, Miss Lane, I — I’ll do the best I can to keep you out of trouble.
Lois: Thank you, Mr. Kent, I’m usually able to do that much for myself.
They can’t keep that up for much longer; it’s dreadful. Lois doesn’t have any reason for being vicious here, she’s just
a generalized area-denial weapon that makes things more tense and unpleasant. Again, if they could cut away
quickly to something else, then they might be able to keep it up, but conversations that go on this way for a minute
at a time aren’t that much fun to listen to.
So it’s a relief in June when the third Lois comes along — Joan Alexander, who instantly brightens things up. Here’s
her intro in June 1940, in “Horace Morton’s Weather Machine”:
Clark: Hello, Miss Lane!
Lois: Oh, hello, Mr. Kent!
Clark: Say, you’re looking great! Well, what’s new?
Lois: Ask me later, after I’ve seen the old man.
Clark: White? Well, that’s where I’m headed myself, he just called me.
Lois: He just called me too! Say, what’s the big idea?
Clark: Ha! Haven’t you heard? Conference of Leaders of American Journalism! Well, here we go…
They go in and talk to Perry, and everyone’s in a great mood — each taking their turn to have a little wisecrack. Perry
wants to talk about Lois’ uncle Horace Morton, who has a secret weather-predicting system that appears to be the
most accurate ever recorded.
Lois: I know what you’re leading up to, Mr. White. You want me to go out and get an interview from Uncle Horace
on how he does it, but it just isn’t any use.
Perry: Just the same, young lady, that’s where you’re going! You, and Kent!
Lois: Aw, please, Mr. White; I haven’t seen him for years! I doubt if he even knows I exist!
And that’s it, no backtalk about not wanting to go on assignment with Clark; the two of them are perfectly happy
taking a long car trip, and investigating the mystery together. They talk like companions in an adventure story —
asking each other questions, pointing out mysterious details, chewing over the evidence. You can’t do all of that, if
the two leads despise each other and can’t have a civil conversation.
Here’s a scene from the next episode, after they’ve seen Horace make a strange weather prediction, and are left
alone to talk it over:
Lois: Mr. Kent, what do you make of it?
Clark: I’m darned if I know. But I’ll tell you this — something awfully funny’s going on around here.
Lois: What do you mean?
Clark: I don’t know. But all that machinery, and the electricity!
Lois: Oh, that’s for the weather forecast. He said so, himself!
Clark: Oh, bunk. Don’t you believe it. I’ve been in weather bureaus before, and I never saw anything like that! They
use barometers, and wind speed indicators, and charts, and stuff like that!
Lois: Well, he made a forecast. If he didn’t use the machinery, how did he do it?
Clark: Eh, that’s what gets me. As far as I can see, he didn’t do a thing, he just grabbed it out of the air! And of
course, you realize he was laughing at us, all the time.
Lois: Yeah, he certainly was having a whole lot of fun.
Clark: If you ask me, he didn’t make a forecast at all. He just said so, to throw us off.
Lois: He’s a weird person, Mr. Kent.
So you can see how this relationship is a lot more story-productive than the previous versions of Lois. The two of
them are standing around and discussing the thing that they just saw, like good little soap opera characters, avoiding
the sarcastic tension of a couple months earlier that would just get in the way of the story.
Unfortunately, to get here, they have to dumb Lois down — she’s the sidekick now, asking questions and making
incorrect guesses, so that Clark can explain the plot to her. That diminishes her character to some extent, smoothing
away the rough edges that originally defined her, and making her a more generic adventure-story talk-to. Still, this is
a Lois Lane that can keep on doing radio stories with Clark for another eleven years; if she’d stayed as aloof and
unfriendly as the second version, she would have been written out, and replaced with Jimmy Olsen, a younger and
more naturally subservient sidekick.
This Lois-taming process only took four months on the radio, from February to June 1940, but it took a lot longer in
the comics. This is a panel from June 1940’s Superman #5, and they’re still making a big deal about what a coward
Clark is, and how little Lois respects him.
There are some ice-thawing moments, like this panel from Action Comics #26 in July 1940, where Lois is concerned
about Clark’s safety — and she’s calling him Clark instead of Mr. Kent, which the radio Lois won’t be able to bring
herself to do until November.
But then it’s back to the coward material in September, when she expects him to have a brawl with a guy at a
construction site.
They finally figure out the benefits of a more friendly Lois by Action Comics #31, in December 1940. In this story,
Clark gives Lois a lift to Brentville, a quiet vacation town where it turns out some bank robbers are filling the streets
with anaesthetic gas to steal money that they use to build a deadly subatomic death-ray gun.
So you can see the story-productive benefits of a more placid Lois. The writer wants to get Clark and Lois to a
specific location together to have an adventure, and the easiest way to do it is to back off the coward stuff, and just
make them friends.
In fact, that technique works so well that they do it again three months later in Action Comics #34, using exactly the
same panel design. By early 1941, the comic book has caught up to what the radio show figured out last June.
Strangely, the comic strip hangs on to Angry Lois for way longer than the others; in this example from October 1940,
Lois is apparently furious with Clark just for coming up and speaking to her.
In November, he helps her to get her job back after she’s been fired for cause, a good deed that gets Lois all the way
to “I’m afraid I’ve misjudged Clark. He’s — he’s okay!!”
But months later, in April 1941, she’s saying, “Odd, Clark — half the time I can’t make up my mind whether you’re a
swell fellow or a heel…”
It takes another seven months for the comic strip to finally catch up to the idea that Lois and Clark can peacefully
coexist in the same newspaper, which finally happens in November 1941.
So that is the journey of the early Lois Lane, who finds it in her heart to make peace with her co-star three times
over, across three mediums. Oh, except for the comic strip in April 1942, when she tells him that if he scoops her
again, she’ll bash his brains in. The end.
Superman 1.38: Unattainable You
Clark Kent sits down at his new desk on the first day of his new job, and he looks across the tangle of typewriters at
the woman that he loves, as of three minutes ago, and for all time.
We’re at the point in Superman: The Movie where the film starts building a new, updated version of the
Clark/Lois/Superman love triangle, and we’re going to get into that soon, I promise. But first I want to look at what
that relationship has been so far, to set the stage for later discussion about how things work in this 1978 romantic
reboot.
Yesterday, I talked about the first few years of the Lois/Clark dynamic, and how they figured out that it wasn’t story-
productive to have two lead characters who couldn’t carry on a conversation for more than a couple panels. Today, I
want to broaden that view to look at how the Superman/Lois relationship progressed over the next few decades,
and if you don’t mind, I’m going to outsource it.
You see, there’s this three-volume book series called The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes, which was written by
Michael L. Fleisher in the late 1970s. Each volume is an encyclopedic listing of every person, place or thing in the
adventures of a DC Comics hero. Volume 1: Batman and Volume 2: Wonder Woman were published in 1976, and the
third volume, based on Superman’s adventures, was published in 1978 as The Great Superman Book, as part of the
extensive merchandise campaign leading up to the movie release.
These days, of course, the idea of a fan-written encyclopedic comic book reference work is commonplace, thanks to
Wikipedia, DC Database, Superman Wiki and so on, but doing it in print in the 1970s was a bold and exciting move.
Fleisher had access to the entire DC corporate library, and he spent seven years with an assistant, an enormous stack
of comics and a zillion index cards, tabulating everything that had ever happened in the first three decades of DC
superhero comics.
It’s fantastic. I have the reprint book that DC Comics published in 2007 as The Original Encyclopedia of Comic Book
Heroes, Volume 3: Superman, and it’s more than 500 pages long and full of crazy. It includes detailed coverage of
every issue of Action Comics, Superman and World’s Finest from 1938 to 1965, including a huge section on
Superman’s costume, powers, secret identity, equipment, vulnerabilities and his relationship with Lois Lane.
The book is mostly just a factual, encyclopedic account of Superman comics as they are on the page — except for
the section on Superman’s relationship with Lois, which suddenly busts out into a suprisingly pointed critique of
both characters’ psychology and behavior.
Fleisher’s starting point is Freudian psychology, specifically the Oedipus complex, which I do not find convincing. But
taking that angle leads him into a deep analysis of the comics, which he knew intimately, and he comes up with a
meticulously well-referenced interpretation of this long-standing and complex relationship.
I think this section is extraordinary, and I want all of you to see it, so I’m going to post a big chunk of it here, and I
hope you find it interesting too. Take it away, Mr. Fleisher…
The sudden violent loss of his mother while he was still an infant has left Superman with a deep reservoir of
unconscious hostility toward women. Like many orphaned children, he saw the death of his mother as a personal
desertion. He loved and needed his mother, and yet she left him. It was a shattering rejection, one that continues to
exert its influence over his entire emotional life. Unconsciously, Superman hates his mother for having abandoned
him, and hates himself for having been unworthy of her lasting love.
The persona of Clark Kent is Superman’s unsuccessful attempt to resolve his need for intimacy and closeness. Only
as Clark Kent is Superman truly human, even if Clark Kent’s brand of humanity is really little more than a caricature
consisting mainly of foibles.
Because the inner Superman sees himself as Clark Kent rather than as the omnipotent hero idolized by the public, it
is as Clark Kent that Superman yearns to be loved. That is why Superman pursues Lois Lane as Clark Kent and
remains cool toward her as Superman. Superman desperately wants Lois Lane to fall in love with Clark Kent,
because, unconsciously, he feels that Clark Kent is the real Superman.
Of course, the catch is that, despite his achievements as a journalist, Clark Kent is cowardly and undesirable.
Inevitably, Lois rejects him in favor of the far more glamorous Superman. Since Superman created the Clark Kent
persona, he must bear the responsibility, albeit on an unconscious level, for the qualities of personality that Clark
Kent exhibits. Since Superman created the personality that Lois continually rejects, Superman also bears the
responsibility for these rejections.
By pursuing Lois Lane as Clark Kent — and not as Superman — Superman assures himself of being rejected while at
the same time protecting Lois from the evil, destructive creature he knows he really is. Superman’s most persistent
rationalization for his unwillingness to become emotionally involved with women is his fear that they will become
the targets of gangland retribution. Because this fear is not entirely without its rational basis, it serves to validate
Superman’s internal conviction that his love is destructive and thus to reinforce his neurotic determination not to
allow himself to become vulnerable to a woman.
For both Clark Kent and Superman, women are a source of anxiety, confusion, hostility, and bewilderment. “Females
are a puzzle,” muses Clark in January 1940.[1] In July-August 1943, when Kent is forced to attend a fashion show
featuring lovely models in revealing evening gowns, he becomes noticeably embarrassed and ill at ease.[2]
“Women!” exclaims Clark Kent bewilderedly in September-October 1945. “No man can figure them out… not even a
Superman!”[3] Clark repeats this sentiment in March-April 1948. “Whew!” he muses. “Whoever understands a
woman is a better man than Superman!”[4]
Almost from the moment of their first encounter, Lois Lane is in love with Superman. In the words of Superman #61,
“Everyone knows that the one love of Lois Lane’s life is… Superman!”[5]
In an effort to lure Superman into matrimony, Lois has tried virtually every ploy imaginable, from dyeing her hair to
alter her appearance,[6] to feigning interest in other men,[7] to contriving elaborate scenarios calculated to enable
her to impress Superman with her skills as a wife and homemaker.[8]
All Lois’ stratagems, however, have ended in failure. Although Superman does display a certain amount of sexual
interest in Lois in the very early texts,[9] he invariably frustrates her either by fleeing the scene as she attempts to
express her love for him or by dampening her ardor with a show of apparent indifference.[10]
Whatever his behavior toward Lois, however, the texts make it abundantly clear that Superman does love her. He is
jealous of her occasional involvements with other men[11] and heartbroken when she actually marries one of them.
[12] World’s Finest Comics #36 describes Lois Lane as “the one person for whom [Superman] cares most”.[13]
Yet because Superman refuses to respond to her in a normal, healthy fashion, Lois finds her love for Superman
constantly frustrated. And so, like a girl at the beach who finds that the only way she can arouse the attention of the
handsome lifeguard is by swimming out into deep water and pretending to be drowning, Lois recklessly plunges into
danger as her only means of getting Superman to display an interest in her.
Because Superman harbors a great deal of unconscious hostility toward women, he often expresses hostility toward
Lois Lane through other means than outright rejection. Lois Lane is in love with Superman, and therefore extremely
jealous of his attentions to other women,[14] yet despite Lois’ jealousy Superman often devises elaborate ruses —
for the ostensible purpose of apprehending criminals — in which he causes Lois anguish and heartache by
pretending to have fallen in love with another woman.[15] Since Superman, with all his mighty super-powers, could
presumably devise other means for achieving his stated objectives, these ruses which so upset Lois can only be
viewed as unconscious attempts to hurt her.
Lois, for her part, seethes with unconscious resentment toward Superman for titillating and then rejecting her and
for trifling with her feelings. She expresses this resentment in many ways.
On one occasion, Lois fakes her own death in an explosion, telling herself that she is doing Superman a favor by
ensuring that the underworld will no longer be able to use her as a hostage against him. Lois’ underlying motive,
however, is clearly to lash out at Superman by making him feel anguished and guilt-ridden by her “death”.[16] On
another occasion, after Superman has been temporarily transformed into an infant with the mind of an adult, Lois
deliberately tries to humiliate him in public in an effort to wreak what she herself candidly refers to as her “revenge
on Superman” for his past treatment of her.[17]
Consciously, Superman tells himself that he would like to win Lois in his Clark Kent identity so that he could feel
confident she truly loved him for himself, and not for his fame and super-powers. But Lois is plainly bedazzled by
Superman’s fame and powers. In his contemplative moments, Clark realizes that Lois loves Superman not for his
personal qualities, but for the aura of glamour that surrounds his super-heroic feats.
Indeed, by selecting, as the foremost object of his affections, a woman dazzled by his fame and blind to his personal
qualities, Superman serves to confirm his worst suspicions about women and to fuel his unconscious hatred of
them. In point of fact, however, Superman’s real reasons for pursuing Lois as Clark have nothing to do with his
conscious desire to find a mate who will love him for himself. This is amply demonstrated by at least two texts in
which Lois, in a rare change of mind, pursues Clark with matrimony in mind, only to have him devise new excuses for
rejecting her.[18]
By making Clark as unattractive as possible, Superman ensures that Lois will always reject him. Over and above the
need to appear timid in order to protect the secret of his dual identity, he literally searches for opportunities to
“convince Lois [he’s] yellow clear thru [sic]”[19] and to “sabotage Clark Kent in Lois’ estimation.”[20] Invariably, this
behavior arouses the disdain and contempt of the very woman Kent claims he is trying to attract.
All in all, Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane is an exercise in frustration for both parties. Its gratifications are
neurotic and wholly unconscious. The relationship denies Lois Lane the married life she claims to seek, while
denying Superman the joys of ordinary life that he claims to envy. “If I could be married some day,” muses Clark Kent
poignantly in October 1964. “What a thrill it would be to fly my bride across the threshold into my Fortress of
Solitude! Our own home… quiet evenings together… maybe a super-baby to increase our joy… but it’s all
impossible!”[21]
Superman 1.39: Chasing Lois
Now, according to the opening credits, the lead characters of Superman: The Movie are Superman’s dad, then the
villain, and then Superman, the villain’s sidekick, Superman’s boss, Superman’s foster father, the leader of the
Science Council on Krypton, and Lois Lane, which in my opinion is burying… well, the lead.
Personally, I think that the main characters of a romantic comedy are the people who are involved in the romance
and the comedy, but, you know, I’m old-fashioned that way.
We talked last week about the epic journey to find a guy who could play Superman, which took eighteen months
and involved so many people that they ran out of actors and started doing screen tests with dentists.
The process for casting Lois didn’t take as long, because at a certain point you’re either making a movie or you’re
not. The search started in late February, once Christopher Reeve was cast in the title role, and went until late April,
when Margot Kidder got the part.
Now, the book The Making of Superman: The Movie begins this story with the following statement, and I see no
reason why I shouldn’t follow the tradition:
Before long, there was a steady stream of stars flying both ways across the Atlantic, and screen tests were scheduled
at Shepperton with very few hours allowed for jet lag. Barbra Streisand was considered and the idea immediately
abandoned, since everyone agreed that she was wrong for the part — also, it was doubtful that someone of her
superstar status would have submitted to the formality of the screen test Donner insisted upon.
I’m not sure why you need to know that Barbra Streisand came up momentarily in conversation and was then
crossed off the list because it wasn’t a good idea, but The Making of seems to think it was important, and I suppose
every story has to start somewhere.
In the screen tests, the prospective Loises performed two scenes with Chris: the balcony interview, ending with
Superman’s invitation to fly, and the hotel room scene from Superman II, where Lois tricks Clark into admitting that
he’s Superman. (As it turned out, when Michael Thau constructed The Richard Donner Cut of Superman II in 2006,
he used Margot Kidder’s screen test to represent the original concept of the scene.)
The hotel room is actually kind of a tough scene to pull off, because a lot of it involves criticizing and/or making fun
of Clark, which ultimately is not the point of the scene. If you haven’t seen the Donner Cut, the situation is that Lois
and Clark are undercover in a crooked newlyweds’ hotel in Niagara Falls, and he’s come in just as she’s getting out of
the shower and putting on makeup.
He’s frustrated, because he would like her to see him as a potential romantic partner, and she provides him with a
full-body critique: he slouches all the time, his clothes are dull, his bow tie looks like a letter opener. He complains
that he’s tired of being compared with Superman, saying, “maybe I just can’t stand the competition anymore.” She
replies, “And just maybe you’ve been the competition, all along.”
He asks what she means, and she ticks off a number of questions: why did Superman suddenly turn up at Niagara
Falls, why is he never around when Superman appears, and where did Clark go when Superman showed up today?
He keeps on lying and distracting, until she pulls a stunt that makes him admit the truth.
It’s a perilous scene, because it’s possible for the actress to come off as mean — criticizing his looks and his posture,
and then interrogating him as he stammers and lies. Superman1978.com has a clip of Susan Blakely’s screen test
doing this part of the scene, and it seems like she’s angry at him.
“Well, Clark,” she says, “When Superman appeared, I looked over at that hot dog stand, and you weren’t there. As a
matter of fact, you were nowhere to be seen.” She delivers the line like it’s an accusation, as if she’s his wife,
suspecting that he’s sneaking off to have an affair.
One of the front-runners was Stockard Channing, who was about to become famous as Rizzo in the other big 1978
movie, Grease. You can see some of her screen test on YouTube, and she’s very funny, but she’s also very aware of
how funny she is.
Clark says, “In spite of the unreality of all this, you know, posing as newlyweds for the sake of a newspaper story?
Well, you know, in spite of myself, actually, I’m kind of starting to feel like one, in a way.”
“A newlywed?” she says, and then turns to look at him. “You?” And then she smirks.
It’s a great smirk, a very strong comedy smirk, but her performance makes the scene about her. He’s the straight
man, and she gets the laughs. But at the end of the day, this scene is about getting him to admit that he’s a thunder
god, and she doesn’t leave him any room to breathe.
Kidder says all of these lines playfully, and for the lines that could sound harsh — the bowtie that looks like a letter
opener, “A newlywed? You?” — she says them a little absent-mindedly, as if they just slipped out.
For the interrogation part of the scene, she jumbles up the words a little bit, so it doesn’t sound like a rehearsed
cross-examination. “And why is it always, when I’m with you, until Superman appears, and then you seem to
disappear — very conveniently, it seems to me!” Clark says he went for hot dogs, and she responds, “Uh huh, and
when Superman appeared, I looked over at that hot dog stand, and you were gone, you weren’t there! Nowhere!”
It’s a ridiculous situation, obviously, asking your co-worker if he turned into an archangel while he was standing on
line for hot dogs, but she makes it sounds natural. And she wins, and she’s Lois.
Lesley Ann Warren was the other top choice, and if Margot hadn’t come along then she would have been Lois. From
the little bit of the balcony scene that I’ve seen from her screen test, it seems like she’s overplaying it, smiling really
broadly and getting very excited, basically broadcasting on all frequencies that this is a thrilling experience.
In Kidder’s test, again, she underplays this. She’s amazed, and somewhat awed, but she’s not jumping around. She
just really likes this boy, and he’s offered to take her out for a drive.
So basically, if Barbra Streisand is going to be a snob about this, then forget her; Margot Kidder is the correct choice.
The thing that really appealed to Richard Donner was that she was clumsy. In a 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview,
he explained, “I’d seen Margot Kidder in a TV series called Nichols. She was charming and very funny. When I met
her in the casting office, she tripped coming in, and I just fell in love with her. It was perfect.”
Donner has talked a lot about Kidder’s endearing flaws; she’s beautiful and smart and funny, and she’s not perfect,
and that’s an important part of his vision for Lois.
In the Making of book, Kidder said, “I think that most of what I bring to the role of Lois is myself. I’m manic and I’m
overambitious and I’m often frantic and disorganized. I always think I’m being highly efficient when actually I’m not.
And that seems to be a part of what Dick Donner wants. The calm side of me belongs in another movie.”
And here’s another Donner quote from 2016: “Let me tell you a funny thing about Margot. When we were shooting,
her makeup man comes to me and says: ‘We have a little problem. Margot scratched her eye putting her contacts
in.’ I said, ‘Do it without your contacts.’ That day she was wonderful, because she was wide-eyed, with no depth
perception. She walked into a desk — and she was the girl I wanted her to be. She said, ‘But I can’t see!’ There was a
law after that: Every morning people had to come to me and make sure she didn’t have her contacts in. It just made
her wonderful.”
Donner highlights this “amazing-but-flawed” interpretation of Lois right away at the beginning of her first scene,
when she asks Jimmy Olsen how to spell “bloodletting” and “massacre”. She’s writing hard-nosed front-page stories,
but she’s bad at spelling, and everyone around her becomes her spell-checker. That clumsy, frantic quality makes her
Lois very human, and it makes the audience feel protective towards her, and fall in love with her.
Superman is obviously an idealized figure, specifically constructed to be the best of everything that a man should be.
Lois is not the female counterpart of that concept; she’s terrific, but not an unreachable ideal. Even in the early
years, when she was haughty and dismissive of Clark, she wasn’t presented as actually being superior to his reporter
persona.
Lois in the comics is a bundle of contradictions. She’s an ambitious reporter who fights hard to get a byline on every
important story, but she becomes a dreamy romantic when Superman is around. She’s pretty but not stunning, she’s
intelligent but can’t see through Clark’s disguise, she’s independent and headstrong but invariably gets into life-
threatening trouble that requires Superman’s intervention to survive.
In the excerpt from The Great Superman Book that I quoted yesterday, Michael L. Fleisher observes all of these
contradictions as they play out in the comics. He says that Lois loves Superman, but she would do anything to
discover his secret identity and announce it to the world — so she must subconsciously despise him, and lash out in
retribution for the many ways that his on-again/off-again attention has hurt her.
But it’s also possible to see those contradictions in a more empathetic way, which I think is what Donner is doing by
hiring Kidder, and taking her contacts out. Lois contradicts herself and sometimes sabotages her own goals, because
she’s human, and that’s a thing that humans do. We want a lot of things that we can’t have, we take the things that
we do have for granted, and we act against our own interests, because we’re emotional and impulsive and
sometimes short-sighted. We bump into desks all the time.
And, as Fleisher also points out in devastating detail, Lois brings out all of the contradictions and indecision in
Superman’s psychology, as well. He wants her to fall in love with Clark Kent, but also goes to great lengths to make
himself unattractive to her. He relishes the moments when he can dazzle her as Superman and earn her praise and
adoration, but then he rejects her in ways that make her visibly unhappy.
Superman can run really fast and jump really high; he can fell mighty oak trees and call down fire from the heavens;
he is the biggest and strongest and best at everything — but he can’t figure out how he feels, or what he wants. Lois
exposes Superman’s only real flaw, the one that isn’t just a pretense that he uses to protect his secret identity. He
has all of the powers that he could possibly wish for, except for his emotional life, which is a mess — because he
loves and hates and worships and disparages and pines for the complex, flawed and fascinating woman that he can’t
stop thinking about.
That’s the Lois that Donner wants to present in this movie, a character who is so deeply human that she can turn a
superpowered extraterrestrial into a human, as well. I don’t think he could have made a better choice than Margot
Kidder. He fell in love as soon as she tripped through the door, and so do we, and so does the secret king of the sky.
Superman 1.40: Everyone Looks Like Lois
Well, you know what they say: there are two sides to every story, and vice versa. The other day, I told you about the
narrative pressures in the early days that encouraged the writers of the Superman comic books and radio show to
change the characterization of Lois Lane, gradually making her more friendly towards Clark so that the two of them
could get involved in a wider variety of stories.
But that change in Superman’s universe caused an equal and opposite reaction — creating a flip side, parallel
version of Lois from the upside down, who gradually turned darker and meaner, until she became Superman’s first
recurring supervillain. It’s time to break the silence about the year of evil Lois clones.
As you know, Lois premiered in June 1938’s Action Comics #1 as the Daily Planet’s sob sister: a strong-willed,
attractive figure of fascination and desire, who captured the heart of mild-mannered Clark Kent and never let go.
She was the only real supporting character in the comic, in the first couple years — there was also a Daily Planet
editor named George Taylor, but he hardly ever got up from his desk. Lois was the one who walked the earth, driving
plot points and causing chaos.
But even then, there were signs that things were not what they seemed. In issue #3 (August 1938), Superman
crashes a party hosted by a corrupt millionaire who owns a coal mine — and one of the guests is a nameless woman
who looks just like Lois. To prove that the mine is unsafe, Superman tricks the guests into bringing the party down to
the mine, where he can demonstrate that the safety devices aren’t up to code by deliberately causing a cave-in and
risking everyone’s lives.
I know that sounds like a weird thing for Superman to do, but at the beginning, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were still
figuring out how Superman stories were supposed to work.
And so the wealthy descended into the underworld, all one percent of them, for a terrifying experience that they did
not specifically deserve. This Lois lookalike went down with the rest of them, but we never saw her come up again.
For all I know, she may still be down there — one of the Tethered, yearning to return to the surface world. That
would actually explain quite a bit.
A month later, in issue #4 (September 1938), we find another woman who looks like Lois — Mary, the girlfriend of
football player Tommy Burke, who jilts him for a tennis player, until Superman steals Burke’s identity and starts
winning football games for him, at which point Mary jilts the tennis champion and goes back to Burke. Like I said,
they really weren’t sure how to write Superman stories.
That’s the last we saw of the Lois lookalikes for a while, but things were changing in Action Comics, as they started
to get a handle on what kinds of stories they could tell. I’m going to leave Lois out of this for just a minute, because
you need to meet somebody else.
A year into the book, in issue #13 (June 1939), Siegel and Shuster created a character that would ultimately send the
Superman story in an entirely new direction. That’s when they introduced the Ultra-Humanite, Superman’s first
recurring supervillain, a balding mad scientist and crime lord who planned to dominate the world.
He looks familiar, but this isn’t Lex Luthor — he’s a different guy, who operates a crime ring from a deserted sawmill
and sets up a protection racket for cab drivers. The scheme doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but forget about that
for now.
For our purposes today, the important thing is that the Ultra-Humanite returns a month later, in issue #14 (July
1939), with a weird excuse for how he survived the obviously fatal plane crash at the end of the previous issue.
And that’s the moment when the Lois lookalikes return. Right now, it’s just a one-panel cameo with an unnamed
office worker who reacts to the sight of Superman looking in at an upper story window — but she is a herald of
strange events to follow.
Because the Ultra-Humanite returns again in #17 (October 1939), and suddenly there are even more women who
look like Lois than ever before.
The story begins with a ship that mysteriously catches fire, during a raging storm. Superman has to swim out to the
ship and save the passengers — which includes our first sighting of a Save My Baby lady.
Obviously, you know the trope of the Save My Baby lady — she’s the irresponsible mother who leaves her infant
child alone to fend for themselves, in the middle of a blazing inferno. I don’t really have time to get into it right now,
but we’ll see more of these reckless parents in the future.
For now, the important thing is that the shipboard Save My Baby lady looks like Lois Lane, and so does an unrelated
telephone operator that we see later in the story.
Now, you can call it a coincidence if you like, but this is the Ultra-Humanite’s third appearance in the book, and as he
grows in strength, the world is increasingly filled with these mysterious alternate Loises.
Now, so far, the Loises have been simple bystanders — but just a month later, in issue #18 (November 1939), we find
a Lois who isn’t as innocent as she seems. The story begins with a Lois pleading for help on a treacherous mountain
road in the middle of the night. She claims that her car went over the guardrail and plunged to a messy death on the
rocks below, although why she wasn’t in it at the time I don’t quite know.
But it turns out this transparent lie is just a ruse, anyway; she’s a crook, who knocks out the driver with a vial of
sleep-gas and steals his car, driving him to a nearby notorious roadhouse.
It turns out this Lois is named Trixie, and she’s part of another evil scheme. The unconscious guy is Senator Hastings,
and Trixie’s gang fakes some compromising photos of him, in order to blackmail him.
This issue is the first time that we see a fake Lois appearing in the same story as the real Lois, and the transition
couldn’t be more jarring. We see the above panel of Trixie and the gang at the bottom of page 2, and the next panel
at the top of page 3 shows Clark and Lois leaving the Daily Planet offices.
Obviously, we don’t actually see Lois and her doppleganger in the same panel, because that would look silly. They
don’t do that for another few months.
Issue #19 (December 1939) takes a step forward in the plot to fill the world with Lois clones, and at this point, I
really have to wonder if Joe Shuster only knew how to draw one woman.
In this story, Clark visits the public library, where the librarian looks like Lois — and in the next panel, we see the
nurse of an elderly library patron, and she also looks like Lois.
And guess what, a couple panels later, we find out that the elderly man in the wheelchair is actually — surprise! —
the Ultra-Humanite!
This time, the villain is trying to spread a Purple Plague through Metropolis, sowing chaos and death, but Superman
helps to develop a cure and then tracks down the demon in his lair. Ultra tries to use an electric death ray on the
hero, but it explodes…
And the Ultra-Humanite dies once more, on panel this time. That should be the end of this Lois-cloning wave of
terror, but no, it gets even crazier.
On to issue #20 (January 1940), which is the fourth issue in a row to feature a Lois lookalike. This time, she’s
glamorous movie star Dolores Winters, who Clark meets on vacation, when he’s touring a Hollywood film studio.
Clark is a magnet for trouble, as we all know, even when he’s three thousand miles away from Metropolis. During
the film shoot, a man up in the lighting rig pulls a gun and tries to shoot Dolores; luckily, Superman spots the guy
just in time with his telescopic vision, and he pulls on a rope that knocks the assassin to the floor before he gets a
chance to take a shot.
Dolores is grateful, and she agrees to his request for an interview next evening — but when he shows up at her
mansion, he finds that she’s changed her mind, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.
Apparently, Dolores has changed her mind about a lot of things, because the next thing you know, she’s announced
that she’s quitting the movie business.
And you’re not going to believe this. She throws a going-away party for all of her Hollywood friends on her yacht the
next night, and once she’s got everybody on board, she pulls a gun on them and tells them they’re going to stay on
the boat.
They think it’s a joke at first, so she shoots one of her guests and then pilots the boat out into the open ocean,
beyond the reach of the authorities.
SHIPLOAD OF CELEBRITIES UNEXPECTEDLY VANISHES says the headline, and once that shipload is far enough away,
Dolores broadcasts a message that startles the world.
“Attention, world!” she says. “Dolores Winters broadcasting from the Sea-Serpent! On board my vessel I hold captive
some of the wealthiest people alive. And if their relatives wish to see them again, they’ll have to pay plenty!”
The public is shocked by this strange turn of events, but honestly, didn’t we always know that Hollywood actresses
would destroy us, in the end? This is why we need to fix the Golden Globes, once and for all.
Superman finally catches up with the crime wave, and when he comes face-to-face with Dolores, he realizes the
terrible truth.
“Those evil blazing eyes…” he gasps. “There’s only one person on this earth who could possess them! ULTRA!”
Yes, for real! This isn’t glamorous movie star Dolores Winters — it’s the Ultra-Humanite, who survived last issue’s
death-ray explosion, and you’ll never guess how.
“You are indeed perceptive, Superman!” the faux-Dolores says. “You thought you had killed me in our last
encounter, didn’t you? But look — as you can see, I’m very much alive!”
Superman objects that he saw the Ultra-Humanite die, but the mad movie star continues: “My assistants, finding my
body, revived me via adrenalin. However, it was clear that my recovery could be only temporary.”
And then comes one of the all-time great moments in comic book history.
“And so,” the villain announces, “following my instructions, they kidnapped Dolores Winters yesterday, and placed
my mighty brain in her young vital body!”
So that is a thing that actually happened in 1940. The brain of Superman’s first arch-enemy was transplanted into
another body, and the choice they made, out of literally any possible person in the world, was glamorous movie star
Dolores Winters.
I mean, to be fair, Dolores had clearly stolen this body from Lois Lane in the first place, so somebody else might as
well move in. This is what happens, when you scatter Loises across the landscape.
There is no acknowledgement in the comic that switching genders is an unusual thing for a supervillain to do; they
don’t discuss it at all. As far as Action Comics is concerned, the Ultra-Humanite coming out as transgender is just
another day in Superman’s increasingly lunatic life.
Dolores evades capture, as supervillains so often do, and Clark wonders what’s next. “Did Ultra escape?” he thinks.
“If so, will he continue his evil career?” Clark is still referring to her as “he”, because this was decades before the
pronoun wars began. They hadn’t come up with the word “deadnaming” in 1940, and they wouldn’t have known
what to do with it if they had it.
That gets corrected in the next issue — we’re at issue #21 (February 1940) now — after the captions have gone to
some sensitivity training sessions.
“In a distant spot,” says the narrator, “Ultra, who had miraculously survived her last encounter with Superman, reads
the article with interest.” It’s quite progressive, really, and a real step forward in comic book inclusion.
Once again, she’s got an over-complicated plan, which involves kidnapping a scientist who’s developing an atomic
bomb using beakers and test tubes. She uses it to build a disintegrator ray, which she fires out of a plane at various
buildings in Metropolis, in order to squeeze the city for a two million dollar ransom payment. At one point, in the
middle of the story, she suddenly announces that she wants the crown jewels, although nobody ever asks her the
crown jewels of what.
Her hideout is in a mysterious glass-domed city built inside an extinct volcano on the outskirts of Metropolis, and if
you want me to explain that, then I’m afraid that I just can’t. It’s only been a year and a half, and already Action
Comics has moved beyond the realm of human understanding.
This would all be very strange under any circumstances, but the thing that takes it over the edge is the fact that this
is clearly Lois Lane. During this period, Superman has a grand total of two recurring co-stars — his love interest and
his arch-enemy — and for some reason, nobody notices that they look exactly alike.
It all ends happily, of course. Superman breaks down some doors and beats up some dudes, and eventually the
Ultra-Humanite throws herself out of a window and escapes into the crater of the volcano. Superman closes the
story by throwing huge boulders into the volcano until it erupts, destroying the hidden city and finally bringing the
Ultra-Humanite’s story to a dramatic end.
We have now had five issues in a row — #17 to #21 — featuring a variety of characters that look like Lois, including
two criminals, so it would be utterly insane for them to introduce another character who looks like Lois, and put her
in the same panel with the genuine article.
But that is exactly what they do in the very next issue, because it’s Golden Age Superman and they do not live by
your rules.
This is issue #22 (March 1940), and Lois and Clark have booked passage on the S.S. Baronta, which is taking them
across the Atlantic to the war-torn nation of Galonia. On the boat, they spot Lita Laverne, a “famous foreign actress”,
who looks like guess who.
And once again, someone tries to take a shot at the Lois-looking actress, and Clark manages to distract the would-be
assassin, who falls into the water and is never seen again. That gives Clark an opportunity to try to book an
interview, which she declines. It’s possible that by this point Action Comics is being procedurally generated, using a
fairly simple algorithm.
Things get a little confusing. There are several times in the first five pages when Clark appears with one of the
lookalikes in one panel, and the other in the next panel, and you need to pay attention to keep track of which one
you’re currently looking at, wondering all the while if one of them will turn out to be the Ultra-Humanite.
And here is the Replicant v Replicant showdown that we’ve all been waiting for, with Clark appearing in the same
panel as both Loises, who are dressed almost identically. Over the next two pages, the only way that you can tell
them apart is by paying attention to the color of their dresses; Lois is in the green outfit, and Lita in the brown.
Except for the panel where Lita’s dress is colored blue, causing a glitch in the Matrix that finally brings the whole
enterprise tumbling to the ground.
That is the end of the amazing year of multiple Loises; this appears to be the moment when they realized that
maybe Action Comics needs to start seeing other women.
It’s eight months later, in issue #30 (November 1940), when they finally learn how to draw somebody else. From this
point on, there’s only one Lois Lane, and thank goodness, it’s the one we like best.
Although it’s possible that the Ultra-Humanite pulled one last caper, fooling Superman and everyone else in the
world. Everybody agrees that Ultra-Dolores died in that erupting volcano, but we never saw her body, and she could
have made her way back to Metropolis, disposed of Lois, and took her place in the chronicles.
I mean, that’s not likely, but if you recall from the other day, Lois’ attitude toward Clark did change quite a bit over
the course of 1940. Has the Ultra-Humanite been playing the long game all these years, biding her time and waiting
for her moment to strike?
Superman 1.41: Levitate Me
“Oh, hi Clark!” Lois says absently, mostly paying attention to the newspaper she’s reading. “How’d you like your first
day on the job?”
“Well, um,” Clark begins, which does not bode well for his efforts to keep her attention. “Frankly, you know, the
hours were a bit longer than I expected.”
This is hard to swallow, considering all the time he spent standing around in the Fortress of Solitude, listening to his
dad give lectures about immortality and the human heart. Dude’s had nothing but long hours for the last twelve
years; he should be used to them by now.
Now, I know that I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last couple weeks on side quests — the behind-the-
scenes story, what’s happening in the comics, digging into the Golden Age backstories — and we haven’t made a lot
of progress watching the actual movie. “Danny is stalling,” the whisper flies round the clubs, and odds on me
reaching the end credits are adjusted downward. So let’s go ahead and talk about the film, and if we really pull
together on this, I think we can get somewhere.
The last time we were in 1978, if I cast my mind back, we were looking at the first Daily Planet sequence, which
introduced hard-driving newshound Lois Lane, cub photographer Jimmy Olsen, grouchy editor-in-chief Perry White,
and the secretly-identified Clark Kent. This is Clark’s first chance to try on his new bumbling-reporter disguise,
breaking into the news business dressed up like a regular earthbound human being.
He’s trying not to attract too much attention, so people won’t recognize that he’s actually an invader from outer
space, and the sequence we’re looking at now is a demonstration of how well that strategy is working. Things are a
lot more fast-paced now that we’re in Metropolis, and the film is going to establish pretty much everything we need
to know about how the Clark Kent costume works in a little over a minute.
The scene opens with Clark and Lois getting off the elevator at the end of the day, and Lois is talking with one of the
all-time New York chatterboxes in full flow.
“Yeah, so it was fantastic,” says the elevator lady. “I met this really great guy, you know? Yeah, we had a fabulous
weekend, I met him at this dude ranch, you know, we were riding and everything, oh yeah, I’ve been since I was
seven years old, oh, I’ve got to mail these letters, I’ll see you, okay!”
And then she’s gone from our lives, this spirit of the city, and as she goes she bumps into Clark, who’s been standing
behind them, casting adoring glances at the woman he can’t stop looking at.
It usually takes practice to not notice a guy who’s six foot four and built like an armoire, especially when he’s been
standing right behind you in a packed elevator, but Lois and the elevator lady have both managed it on their very
first try. It’s only now that Lois clocks that Clark is back there, taking up an outsize portion of New York real estate.
Her “How’d you like your first day” is half-hearted at best, so it’s just as well that Clark’s answer is audio wallpaper.
He does the “long hours” bit, and then he recites the list of main characters and gushes about how great it’s been,
meeting them all.
As Clark and Lois pass by, the camera lingers on an enormous model of the globe, set into the floor. And that’s pretty
much the film’s priorities, for the rest of the movie: there’s Lois and Clark, and then there’s the rest of the world.
This sequence was filmed on location in the Daily News Building on East 42nd Street in New York — that’s where the
New York Daily News was published, and it doubles as the Daily Planet’s headquarters in the film. They used the
exterior of the building as well, when Lois and Clark go out through the revolving door.
Having the globe in the lobby was serendipitous on a couple levels: for one, it actually makes more sense for the
lobby of a newspaper called the Daily Planet than it does for the actual Daily News.
It also serves as foreshadowing for Clark’s trip around the planet at the end of the film, to save the woman who he is
currently having a hard time making small talk with.
The poor guy is clearly desperate to turn that fizzy-soda accident they had upstairs into a meet-cute, but Lois only
pays attention to him once in this scene, and it’s to disparage him for saying the word “swell”.
Then he demonstrates how clumsy he is by getting stuck in the revolving door, which takes Lois’ active participation
to resolve. Throughout the movie, Clark and Lois are frequently separated by glass — getting stuck in the door,
looking out the train window as a child, staring through the car windshield at the end of the film — and the most
persistent barrier between them is that pair of dorky glasses that he wears, which prevents her from noticing the
superman inside. She could see through those transparent bits of glass and recognize the fabulous guy that he really
is, but she’s just not paying attention.
As a final humiliation at the end of the scene, Lois greets real-life arts critic Rex Reed, and when she tries to
introduce Clark, she can’t quite remember his name. And then she walks away, heading for a dude ranch, and
leaving him behind.
Superman 1.42: Another Sunny Day in Comedy New York
In an article about the filming of Superman: The Movie published in August 1977, Time Magazine reported, “One
thing Superman does not have — so far as anyone with plain old 20-20 can see, anyway — is many laughs. Director
Donner, convinced that it was campiness that brought down King Kong, is avoiding even the possibility of untoward
giggles.” Which just goes to show how wrong a magazine can be.
Because for the last five minutes, starting from our arrival in a Metropolis taxicab, the characters have been doing
nonstop screwball comedy shtick, up to and including getting stuck in a revolving door.
Extricating themselves from the architecture, Lois and Clark emerge into a sunny musical comedy New York, where
everyone is quiet and well-dressed, and the traffic noise limits itself to a couple of respectful honks when nobody
has any important dialogue to say.
And then there’s the picturesque fruit vendor, who I love in a way that I will never be able to fully express. He is the
movie’s sole representative of Metropolis street life, parked outside the Daily Planet building. A few minutes ago,
when Clark walked into the building, the fruit vendor kept up a lively patter for a full fifteen seconds: “Fresh fruit!
Hey, baby, how’s it goin’? Hey, fresh fruit and vegetables, they’re so fresh they’re gonna dance in your salad! Fresh
fruit and vegetables, get ’em while they’re hot!” Now, as Lois and Clark leave the building, the vendor single-
handedly apprehends a thief who’s trying to make off with an apple without paying for it.
I mean, in the next scene, Superman comes face-to-face with a guy who should be charged with aggravated assault
and attempted murder, and he’s going to let the guy get away, but the fruit vendor makes a citizen’s arrest, right on
the spot. Turns out there’s more than one hero in this town.
One thing that Richard Donner is good at is creating focus around the thing that he wants you to pay attention to,
and dialing out other distractions. When the Kents found a baby in an extraterrestrial mystery box, it was in a field
so remote that you could see clear to the horizon in every direction; when Jor-El’s magic justice wand lit up and
went BLING!, everybody in the scene had to stop and look at it.
Right now, he’s presenting a Metropolis afternoon that’s appropriately bustling in the background, but nobody’s
being noisy, and there isn’t any visual clutter that would pull focus from the lead characters.
Setting that tone is important, because it’s leading up to a theatrical sarcasm crime spree, and you need to be in the
right mood for that kind of thing.
And all of a sudden, thanks to a well-chosen backdrop, Clark and Lois are entirely alone in the world, easy pickings
for a daytime street rat with a loaded gun looking for spare change.
In the 1970s, people used to think that this kind of thing happened all the time in New York, that you couldn’t walk
down the street without being trapped in a web of crime. In reality, New Yorkers are far too self-absorbed to fall into
this type of situation; if someone tries to attract your attention, you just keep walking and pretend that they don’t
exist, which, in a certain way of looking at things, they don’t.
It must be even harder these days for late afternoon street criminals to make a meaningful connection with their
victims, because everybody’s looking at their phone all the time. They must get awfully hungry, the poor things.
Facing a lawbreaker for the first time in his career, Superman emits nothing but screwball comedy stammering. “Oh,
excuse me,” he says to Lois, as he backs away from the man with the gun. “Please don’t shoot me with that, sir,” he
says. “You could hurt somebody with that thing.” And then he turns and says “Sorry” to Lois for jostling her again,
which is utterly adorable.
Now, my question is: Did we ever have little forty-year-old turtleneck criminals like this, making a whole production
number out of stealing some lady’s purse? I feel like this guy has other options for making a dishonest living, like
working for an ad agency, or something in publishing.
You can tell that the mugger is on our side, entertainment-wise, because he’s willing to stand there and wait
patiently for Clark to do a little real-time character-building. Moving the gun to the side with a respectful finger — a
move that the mugger quietly puts up with — Clark says, “Just a minute, mister! Now, I realize, of course, that times
are tough for some these days, but this isn’t the answer. You can’t solve society’s problems with a gun.”
Meanwhile, Lois, for the fourth time today, takes a hard look at this new cryptid she’s discovered, and tries to figure
out what has recently landed in her life.
And then — screw you, Time Magazine — the mugger gets a little comedy moment himself.
“You know something, buddy, you’re right,” the guy admits. “I’m going to turn over a new leaf.” And he bestows
upon them a beatific smile.
Clark takes a moment to enjoy his victory, before the mugger points the gun directly in his face and says, “— right
after I rip off this lady’s purse.”
This leads to one of the great moments in Superman fiction, a perfectly-timed combination of action-adventure and
romantic comedy. Clark, who’s fully committed to his new mild-mannered disguise, stammers to Lois that she should
give the guy her purse.
Then Lois — a reckless screwball heroine who exists to make life interesting for the hero — pointedly drops the
purse, and then tries to deliver a feisty kick to the mugger’s face when he bends down to take it.
There’s an excited dramatic sting, and the world slows down so that we can see the felon pull the trigger —
— and Superman catches the speeding bullet with his bare hand, before it strikes the cowering Lois.
You don’t get these very often, just a perfectly-constructed scene. A second of unexpected fear, resolved with a
comic surprise that serves as Clark’s first act of superheroism and moves the romantic plot forward a step.
The mugger flees the scene, not sure what he’s just witnessed, and Lois is suddenly worried about the guy that she
couldn’t remember the name of, just a minute ago. This is the point when John Williams uncorks the Love theme for
the first time, introducing the melody on solo bassoon as Clark and Lois share their first fleeting moment of
tenderness.
This is how it’s going to work, if anybody else ever figures out how to make a good superhero movie, which should
kick in sometime around 2014, circa Guardians of the Galaxy. You surround the superhero action with a romantic
comedy structure, with multi-layered character beats.
It is incredibly difficult to get this right, and in this case, it repays the audience for all the time that we spent
watching the forty-five minute prologue. As we get further along in the superhero movie chronology, we’re going to
look back at this scene, and wonder why nobody else can get it as right as this. There are some dark stretches
coming up, once we get past Superman: The Movie. Enjoy this perfect moment while you can.
Superman 1.43: The Training
And then, for about four minutes, it becomes a cop movie.
As we’ve been going through Superman: The Movie, I’ve been tracking the film’s swift pivots in tone, as it transforms
itself from sci-fi space opera to tragic teen drama to screwball comedy, with a detour into the psychedelic
mindscapes of the Fortress of Solitude. The film is essentially a montage of different styles, and once we get to
Metropolis, that process doesn’t stop.
People talk about the Krypton / Smallville / Metropolis sections as if that explains everything, but Richard Donner
keeps on juxtaposing different styles through the entire movie. This moment is a perfect example, because over the
next four minutes, the film is going to walk us through a gradual transition that takes us from the last scene’s classic
romantic comedy meet-shoot and leads us down into the depths of the underworld, and the brutal murder of a
central figure in the sequence.
Naturally, this dark ritual of summoning begins with a quaint musical comedy street-sweeper, who shouts, “Hi, Otis!”
Yesterday, I talked about how Donner cleared the screen of clutter and contradiction when Clark and Lois stepped
out of the Daily Planet building into a sunny Metropolis afternoon. On Clark Kent’s side of the street, everyone was
well-dressed and polite, traffic noise was kept to a minimum, and there were no visual distractions to get in the way
of the audience focusing on the characters’ interactions.
This sequence does the opposite of that, in a way that indicates to the audience that they shouldn’t be feeling
comfortable anymore. The street looks grimy in this scene; we see trash cans, and there’s a guy sweeping up rubbish
in the gutter. The signs on the stores are more aggressive, and the guys aren’t all wearing suit jackets, like they were
a few minutes ago.
Also, stuff keeps getting in the way. People cross right in front of the camera, even when a character is speaking. A
car passes by, while one of the cops is pointing at Otis across the street. In the shot pictured above, the camera is
positioned behind the red dome light on the police car, which obscures our view of Otis’ progress down the
sidewalk.
The music cue is giving us conflicting feedback, as well. This scene is the introduction of the final major motif in John
Williams’ soundtrack: a march known as the Villains motif. The track mainly involves a nervous-sounding string
section making an insistent four-four beat that cycles through various stages of agitation. Over that, a cheerful tuba
plays a sprightly melody line, in keeping with Otis’ jaunty straw hat and slightly waddling gait.
The cue bridges this moment of transition between comedy and something more sinister, starting with the chirpy
tuba line that fades after four bars, until all you hear is the quickened heartbeat-pulse of the strings section. (See? I
can write about the music. It’s easy; you just say things.)
So that brings us to the plainclothesmen of the moment, sitting in their car which as far as I can tell does not actually
have a door on the passenger side. Spotting Otis, the driver cop directs his partner’s attention to the public enemy
across the way. The partner, Harry, is pretending that he’s leaning on something, but then the driver motions him to
hop in, and Harry just walks through the empty space and sits down in the seat, looking expectant and making no
move to shut the car door, which does not exist. I don’t really have a point to make about that, it’s just that I noticed
it and now I can’t think about anything else, and I want to pass that burden on to you.
Since I’m writing a post that will involve these two guys fairly heavily, I would like to be able to refer to them both by
name, rather than Harry and driver cop. Unfortunately, the movie has decided not to help me in that regard. In the
credits, they’re listed as Officer #1 and Officer #2. In the dialogue, driver cop calls his partner “Harry”, and Harry calls
driver cop something that sounds like “Ah-miss” the first time, and “Ar-miss” the second time. I gather that “Ah-
miss” is the way a guy with a Metropolis accent says “Ar-miss”, but “Ar-miss” isn’t a name, as far as I know. If you’re
thinking that the name might be Amos, then it’s definitely not. I don’t know what it is. I suppose it doesn’t really
matter, one way or another.
Anyway, the cops get excited when they see Otis, who they recognize right away. “Look what we got,” says driver
cop, pointing across the street. “Let’s take him.”
“Wait a minute,” Harry says, and then he says, “Maybe he’ll lead us to the big man, himself.” I don’t know why he
starts with “wait a minute,” when he clearly means “awesome, I agree that we should take him,” but that’s what he
says.
I also don’t know why they’d want to drive a car through the busy traffic of midday midtown Metropolis to follow a
guy, when they could easily keep pace with him on foot, especially because once they arrive at Grand Central
Station, which is where he’s going, they’ll have to park the car somewhere, and they don’t have a hope of finding a
space near the terminal, so they’ll have to park in a garage, which will take forever and cost them the 1978
equivalent of thirty-five bucks.
But the driver says, “Lex Luthor?” and Harry says, “You got it, Ah-miss,” and then he sits down in the passenger seat
of the car that they shouldn’t be driving, and doesn’t close the door that isn’t there.
Inside the terminal, Otis walks by a blind newsvendor, who’s standing with his seeing-eye dog and shouting “Hey,
what do ya read?” which is Metropolis newsvendor talk.
Otis and the newsman greet each other by name, and Otis picks up a copy of the Daily Planet, and drops a coin into
the jar. Then he tries to take a pretzel without paying for it, but the dog can sense funny business, and barks at him
until he turns around and pays for the pretzel too.
It’s an economical little bit of character-building, which lets us know that Otis is a petty criminal who steals from the
blind, and he’s also a hapless comedy nitwit who’s easily foiled.
The thing that strikes me is that this must be his regular daily routine, because everyone along the way knows him
by name. So if he’s hoping not to be followed, which he’s going to half-heartedly indicate a minute from now by
holding the newspaper next to his face for a second, then I don’t know why he takes a regular daytime route to his
boss’ secret lair, where even a blind guy can recognize him.
But I’ll stop nitpicking at this point, because none of that matters; the point is that Otis is connected to Lex Luthor,
who’s actively wanted by the police, and Grand Central Station is the departure point where the movie’s going to
start running on a different track.
We’re almost an hour into the movie, and so far we haven’t had a real antagonist, unless you count the exploding
science council, or Brad from the football team. Superman has lost several parents, due to more or less natural
causes, but otherwise, he’s had a pretty smooth ride to Metropolis and a job in print journalism.
But now, the movie is going to lead this pair of redshirts down to the gates of Hell, to find out what curiosity does to
cats.
As I said, Otis is recognizable at some distance, and holding a newspaper up to his face when a couple uniformed
cops go by is not really the cloak of invisibility that he’s hoping for. But there are lots of people around, and if you’re
going to shake off a tail then it might as well be at Grand Central Station, where there’s lots of distraction and noise.
Otis has clearly been marked as a comedy character, but the detectives trailing him are not; they walk with purpose,
and manage to follow him down to a train platform. These are the first people that we’ve seen in Metropolis who
aren’t wisecracking nonstop, and this descent into the dark spaces indicates that something serious is going on.
Otis walks through the train doors and out onto the track, leading us into a gloomy and dangerous space. The music
faded out a little while ago, and now all we hear is the unsettling sound of a running train, as heard in a setting
where we know people aren’t supposed to go.
The transition in tone still doesn’t seem to apply to Otis, who playfully tries to balance as he walks along the rail, but
there’s a point where even a cheerful person in the wrong context can seem threatening.
Harry is still taking things seriously, and he’s competent enough to figure out the winding path that Otis takes
through the trackway. He calls for backup on track 22, and continues to follow.
But it turns out that on his own turf, Otis can be competent too, in his limited way. The cops have followed him into
his home territory, where he’s under the protection of a higher power.
While a passing train obscures the trailing cop’s view, a secret mechanism moves the section of wall behind Otis’
perch — the sudden, unexpected intrusion of a James Bond trope, which tells us that there’s another style of movie
that we’re now able to access.
Otis trips lightly through the portal, casually flicking a switch that closes the secret door, and leaving the rest of the
world on the outside of this new, hazardous space.
When the train has passed by, Harry realizes that Otis has disappeared through a secret passage that’s helpfully
marked MAN HOLE, so you can tell where the men are going.
Harry’s excited — “So that’s it!” he grins — because he’s still under the impression that this story is about him.
But then there’s a well-deserved tension sting, as we suddenly see Otis from another angle, viewed on a big monitor
that dominates a room filled with smaller screens. If that door-opening trick was a James Bond device, then this is
clearly the spider at the center of the web, who’s been constructing a space laser out of radioactive diamonds while
the rest of us have been messing around, topside.
With the Bond villain’s usual disdain for his underlings, a voice growls, “It’s amazing that brain can generate enough
power to keep those legs moving.”
Then we see him tap on a button in his bank of controls…
And the view on the monitor screen changes, to show poor Harry, approaching the secret portal.
And then we cut back to the subway tunnel — with the cop in precisely the same pose and shot from precisely the
same angle as the view on the villain’s monitor screen.
This is an unbelievable display of narrative power, especially for a guy who we haven’t been introduced to yet. This
villain is actually taking over for the director, seizing control of Donner’s ability to switch from one shot to another.
He’s placed all the cameras, and he’s editing the film on the fly, while it’s happening.
With that kind of power at his command, is it any wonder that this villain can put a swift and violent end to Harry
and his partner? The cops carried us this far — down below the ground, where the scary people dwell — and now
they’re no longer necessary. The cop movie has given way to the James Bond film, which is apparently happening on
the other side of that secret door.
When backup finally arrives, it’s too late. Harry has been eliminated from the film, and we’re no longer responsible
for paying attention to him. The deceased doesn’t even matter enough to leave some blood spatter that ought to be
coating the landscape, after a train kill.
So that’s a “rest in pieces” for our four-minute friend. Officer Harry is survived by his hat, and a grieving partner
whose name I have not yet figured out.
Superman 1.44: The Man Behind the Curtain
He’s had henchmen. He’s had cronies. He’s had dupes and hostages and occasional team-ups, and according to the
comics, there’s a whole planet out there populated by knuckleheads who think he’s a hero. But he’s never had a
sidekick before; it’s just not a thing that Lex Luthor does.
He doesn’t really have a sense of humor either, or a collection of wigs, or any kind of compelling backstory or
motivation.
So this, right here? This is not a Lex Luthor that we’ve seen before. This is something new.
Yesterday, we looked at the four-minute cop movie sequence that led us from the sunny streets of Metropolis down
into the underworld, a dark place where a merciless villain lurked behind a perplexing bank of controls and screens,
pulling fatal practical jokes on a representative sample of normal civilized humanity.
The spider at the center of the web was all-powerful, taking personal ownership of the cinematography, and editing
the movie from the inside. Lex Luthor, the calculating Bond villain, was clearly in control of something vast and
unknown.
And then the first thing that we see is his sidekick, who looks at him with disgust and spits out a one-word diagnosis:
“Sick.”

So it turns out that the man behind the curtain isn’t exactly the great and powerful wizard that we thought he was,
and it’s not immediately clear what he is instead.
“Sick, Miss Teschmacher?” he complains, getting up out of the chair and stalking through a door into what appears
to be a train station lobby that’s been converted into about six other things at the same time. “Sick, when I’m mere
days from executing the crime of the century?”
There’s some kind of mad scientist equipment strewn about the set, and a comfortable leather accent chair, and
some filing cabinets, and I don’t know, a billiards cue? Whatever this is, there’s a lot of it. Miss Teschmacher strikes a
pose against one of the computer banks — she strikes a lot of ornamental poses, it seems to be her entire job
description — and he waves her away from it impatiently.
“How do you choose to congratulate the greatest criminal mind of our time?” he continues. “Huh? Do you tell me
that I’m brilliant? Oh, no no no, that would be too obvious, I grant you. Charismatic? Fiendishly gifted!”
“Try twisted,” she says, opening up a drawer in the filing cabinet, and once again he impatiently shoos her away
from it.
So what do you call this, when it’s at home? The immediate thought, observing a pretty young woman being bossed
around by a guy in a suit, is that she’s some kind of secretary, but he apparently won’t let her near the office
equipment, and she’s dressed like a burlesque magician’s assistant from the planet Cartier. The second thought is
wife and/or mistress, but he calls her “Miss Teschmacher,” and he doesn’t seem to show any sexual interest in her,
here or at any point in the movie.
She’s just here because she’s the most interesting thing that anybody could think of putting next to Lex Luthor. The
same principle applies to everything on the set. If you wanted to, you could make the argument that the entire film
industry was assembled in order to put something interesting next to Lex Luthor.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so for now, I just want to focus on how unexpected he is. This doesn’t look like the Lex
Luthor that we thought we’d see. The immediate discrepancy is that he has hair, but that’s a side detail which isn’t
that important. Even if you somehow got through life without ever seeing a picture of Superman’s arch-enemy, you
still wouldn’t expect him to look like this.
The greatest criminal mind of our time is wearing a brown pinstripe suit with a salmon-colored shirt and a
completely impossible psychedelic floral ascot; he’s got a pinky ring, and a dead flower in his lapel, and a brown
spotted pocket square that is clearly desperate to escape from his pocket.
For the first part of the scene, Lex scribbles occasional notes on a battered clipboard — notes which seem to be on
the subject of how much he hates his co-workers, because he only does it when someone is annoying him — and in
a minute, he’s going to open a safe on the other side of the room, put the clipboard inside it, and then close the safe
door without locking it.
“Tell me something, Lex,” the vamp says impertinently, “why do so many people have to die, for the crime of the
century?”
“Why?” Lex responds, because he is constitutionally incapable of answer a question with anything but a series of
distractions. “You ask why? Why does the phone always ring when you’re in the bathtub?”
He switches off the lights, and struts over to another section of his bespoke, overstuffed set. “Why is the most
brilliantly diabolical leader of our time surrounding himself with total nincompoops?”
That’s when Otis makes his entrance, with a jolly, “I’m back, Mister Luthor!”
“Yes, I was just talking about you,” Lex says with an irritated frown, and makes another notation on his mysterious
clipboard.
Then he says, “You were followed again,” and his henchman whirls around and executes a perfect comedy pratfall,
knocking over a lamp in an animated display of confusion and alarm. “In spite of those catlike reflexes,” Lex
observes.
This is Luthor’s world, a tangle of wit and brilliance and self-destructive impulses. He knows that these people will
annoy him, but he keeps them around and feeds them cues. He comes up with what is actually a clever lunatic
scheme, but then he invites an extraterrestrial archangel directly into his lair, to brag about it. Luthor makes entirely
no sense, and he is a joy on every level.
The movie version of Lex Luthor is one of those mythopoetic trickster figures like Reynard the Fox, Bugs Bunny and
Dr. Julia Hoffman, who exist in order to shake things up and make life interesting for everyone else. He collects
equipment and ornaments like a magpie. He employs henchpeople who don’t do anything useful, and aggravate him
beyond endurance on a minute-by-minute basis. He claims to be the most brilliantly diabolical leader of our time,
but he hides underground in a secret cave and shows no evidence of having ever successfully completed anything,
criminal or otherwise. He appears to be both extravagantly rich and totally broke.
Honestly, if he’s anything in particular, then he’s Alexander Salkind, financier and executive producer of Superman:
The Movie, who made blockbuster movies as the central feature of a slapdash money-laundering scheme, and
surrounded himself with shady nincompoops. Salkind was eccentric and confusing and thoroughly untrustworthy;
he lived in his own world of shell companies and Swiss bank accounts, and just before this movie was released, he
literally had to flee the continent of Europe, and go hide out in Mexico until his lawyers threw up enough magic
smoke to exhaust everyone until they agreed to a cash settlement, which he did not pay.
I don’t know for sure that Alexander Luthor keeps seven simultaneous passports, but like Alexander Salkind, his key
advantage is his unparalleled ability to dazzle and surprise. He is an agent of pure exasperating chaos, and therefore
the perfect antagonist for the first blockbuster superhero film. The whole point of superhero movies is to show the
audience something that we’ve never seen before, and this Lex Luthor delivers beyond any reasonable expectation.
Superman 1.45: Hair Today
Rick didn’t say “Play it again, Sam,” and Kirk never said “Beam me up, Scotty.” Darth Vader said “No, I am your
father,” and Brody said “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Do you feel lucky, punk? Houston, we have a problem. I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. Top of the world, Ma!
Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?
A lot of the phrases that we pick up from pop culture as famous movie quotes are actually slight misquotes, often
making them a little shorter and simpler, because on the whole people are not that good at remembering dialogue.
Exact wording fades quickly, and so do plot points and character relationships.
But we’re great at remembering a striking visual, and most of the things that we consider “iconic” are compelling
images, like Claudette Colbert showing her legs in It Happened One Night, or Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs in
Basic Instinct, or a steam vent blowing up Marilyn Monroe’s skirt to reveal her legs in The Seven Year Itch. A lot of
them involve women’s legs, for some reason.
So when Superman: The Movie introduces the new version of Lex Luthor that we talked about yesterday, there are a
lot of alterations to the comic book character that for the most part audiences don’t notice. The movie version of
Luthor has sidekicks and a sense of humor, which has never really happened before, and he presents himself as an
eccentric businessman, rather than a mad scientist — but for movie audiences, those are details that they don’t
know about.
The one thing that people do notice is that Lex Luthor is supposed to be bald, because we remember interesting
visuals. The details of his characterization don’t really stick in the mind, but even people who’ve never read a
Superman comic in their life know that Luthor doesn’t have any hair.
But when Luthor was first introduced, in April 1940’s Action Comics #23, the original design for the villain sported a
messy thatch of orange hair. In fact, he was the only person in his organization who wasn’t bald.
The story of how Luthor lost his hair after his first handful of appearances is a nice demonstration of the process of
natural selection of story concepts in long-running serialized narrative, and that’s a thing that I’m into, so today I’m
going to explain how that change happened, and why the explanation that you’ll find on the internet is obviously
entirely wrong.
The real story begins about a year before Luthor was introduced, with the original chrome dome criminal — the
Ultra-Humanite, Superman’s first arch-enemy.
I talked about the Ultra-Humanite last week, and his weird connection to the army of evil Lois Lane clones that
plagued Superman comics in 1939. Ultra is introduced in Action Comics #13 as the head of a gang of taxicab
racketeers, and he brags that he’s a genius who runs a vast ring of evil enterprises. Then he lures Superman to a
sawmill and ties him to a piece of wood that’s slowly approaching a huge buzzsaw, like they did in old silent films.
The Ultra-Humanite was Siegel and Shuster’s first draft of using a demented genius as a recurring villain, and it took
a few issues to figure out the mad science angle. He was clearly designed to be a recurring foe for Superman; they
brought him back right away in issue #14, and again in #17.
His fourth appearance in issue #19 is when he starts fooling around with death rays and rocketships, hitting a vein of
productive plot ideas that Luthor is destined to inherit. Unfortunately for Ultra, he’s killed when his science gun
blows up in his face, teaching him no lessons at all.
Then, in a deeply lunatic plot twist, the Ultra-Humanite shows up again in the next issue wearing a new stolen body
after a successful last-minute brain transplant, and Ultra’s hand-picked new body belongs to glamorous movie star
Dolores Winters. There’s no stated rationale for this out-of-left-field choice; it’s just a thing that happens in a
Superman comic, and it’s up to us to assimilate it into our understanding of the Ultra-Humanite.
It doesn’t last, of course; nothing truly beautiful ever does. After one more appearance in issue #21, Ultra-Dolores
ends up throwing herself into an active volcano, and that’s the last we see of the Ultra-Humanite until the 1970s.
So that particular shooting star burned itself out after six issues, but Siegel and Shuster recognize that they’re onto
something hot, and just a couple months later, they introduce another mad inventor supervillain.
It’s Action Comics #23 (April 1940) when we’re introduced to the criminal mastermind Luthor, who’s trying to
foment war between the European states of Galonia and Toran. He thinks that if everybody gets dragged into a war,
then he can dominate all of the weakened nations of the world, which is hair-brained but not particularly
interesting, compared to his later activities.
His big trick in this debut story is that he can project his face onto a cave wall from a distant location and have
conversations with people, which is pretty good, and the projection can shoot out green death rays from its eyes to
slice bungling henchmen in half, which must cost a fortune but is totally worth it.
In this first story, Luthor’s got a floating headquarters located in what looks like a secret city suspended in the
stratosphere, held aloft by a giant dirigible. This is also very cool, although obviously it will meet the same fate of
every single huge floating ship in every comic book and every superhero movie that ever has or ever will be made.
They never learn, with the helicarriers.
Naturally, Superman can’t help but bust through the wall of one of the stone buildings suspended from the dirigible,
as part of his continuing war on architecture. There are three things that Golden Age Superman loves the most, and
they’re rescuing Lois, smashing through walls and punching dudes in the face, so this panel is basically the perfect
expression of what the Golden Age has to offer.
When Superman comes face to face with Luthor for the first time, not counting the death-ray incident, his question
is, “What sort of creature are you?”
“Just an ordinary man,” Luthor replies, “but with th’ brain of a super-genius! With scientific miracles at my fingertips,
I’m preparing to make myself supreme master of th’ world!”
And this is what Superman has become, now and forever more. He started out in Action Comics #1 saving an
innocent woman from the electric chair and punching an abusive husband, and then he went on to tackle corrupt
politicians, gambling racketeers, drunk drivers and urban blight. But as of now, in 1940, Superman fights inflatable
geniuses, and his adventures will become more and more oriented to science-fiction themes.
Luthor tries to use his death ray on Superman, but obviously it doesn’t work; our hero breaks free and demolishes
the dirigible, killing everybody on board as well as whatever population down below is about to receive a couple
tons of mad science falling on their heads. Just imagine being on the receiving end of a plummeting delivery of
burning dirigible fragments. That kind of thing could rearrange your whole outlook.
But never mind that, the important thing is that Superman has saved the country of Galonia from participating in a
war that probably would have killed fewer citizens than the flaming holocaust that just dropped from the sky. And,
as Superman says, “That’s th’ end of Luthor!” so everything turned out okay.
Except guess what, Luthor isn’t dead, obviously; you can’t solve a problem like Luthor with one crashed dirigible.
Almost immediately, they published Superman #4 (Spring 1940), with two more stories featuring Luthor.
In the first one, Metropolis is damaged by a newly invented earthquake machine, which “ran wild” during an Army
test that I’m not sure what they were hoping to accomplish. While Superman’s looking into it, Luthor drops a missile
on him, in order to attract his attention and challenge him to a series of escalating dares.
He’s still doing the face projection gimmick, this time sending his face to appear on the trunk of a tree. He thinks this
makes him look cool, and he’s not entirely wrong.
So the fight begins, with Luthor testing Superman’s speed, invulnerability, jumping abilities and resistance to
poisonous gas. Superman wins, obviously, but while he’s participating in Luthor’s pissing contest, the villain’s
henchmen steal the earthquake machine.
After a lengthy to-do, Superman finds Luthor’s hideout in Satan’s Canyon, and bypasses the security system through
the tried-and-true method of punching some wolves in the face.
Once again, our hero’s Pavlovian response to the sight of a stone building is to knock it down, which destroys the
machine and maybe Luthor, too.
But of course Luthor survived; they need him in the next story. This time, oil wells have stopped flowing all over the
world, and Superman rushes to investigate. The caption reads “Changing into his Superman costume, the reporter
races toward Oklahoma with the agility of a startled antelope!” which isn’t particularly germane to our discussion
but I wanted to tell you about it anyway.
On the way, Superman is attacked by a remote-control rocket — as startled antelopes so often are — and he grabs it
and messes around with it. While he’s playing with it, the image of Luthor’s face is projected onto the rocket, in
order to present a fairly toothless threat that does not achieve anything in particular.
They mess around with earthquakes and oil wells for a few pages, but the story doesn’t really start until Superman
and Lois discover a glass-enclosed underwater city of ancient, weird design that pops up out of nowhere.
This is always a good idea. I don’t think there’s ever been a story about ancient submerged glass-enclosed cities that
didn’t have some kind of goofy entertainment potential, and yes, I am including “The Underwater Menace” from
Doctor Who, because that story is hilarious and shut up.
So here it is, Luthor’s first material value-add. We’d already seen rockets and ray guns from the Ultra-Humanite, and
so far, Luthor’s only innovation has been projecting his face onto trees, which is fine but it’s not exactly a rocket-sled
to adventure.
But now we get it: Luthor is the kind of guy who breeds giant prehistoric monsters in ancient submerged glass-
enclosed cities.
Because you can’t back down from this, can you? You can’t have Luthor set up an arena fight between Superman
and a fucking dinosaur, and then have a story about a gambling racket in Metropolis. We have now taken a
meaningful step away from normal human civilization as we know it, and once you get on this track, the only thing
to do is keep on one-upping the previous story, for as long as you can stand it.
Thanks to Luthor, this is now a comic book about a superhero who has boxing matches with dinosaurs. That is what
he brings to the table.
Now, when you get to that level of crazy, you need to start considering the character’s brand identity.
Luthor, as an arch-villain, is now capable of whipping up lunatic spectacles halfway through a boring issue, which
means that he is a story-productive asset that needs attention and care. And unfortunately, there’s one drawback to
giving Luthor a permanent place in the Superman mythos, which is that he looks like crap.
This whole time, Luthor has been dressed in shapeless, single-color robes that don’t make him look like anything in
particular. The artists haven’t really invested in any identifiable facial features, so his only hook is a mess of orange
hair, which is not going to result in an iconic character, no matter how many dinosaurs he has.
Audiences can easily forget names and dialogue and plot points, but we’re much better with compelling visuals.
Luthor needs a visual hook.
And he gets it six months later, in the comic strip. This is from a story called “Pawns of the Master”, which starts in
October 1940 and is mostly a pedestrian story about a crime wave and a gang of crooks. The story develops in the
ordinary way, but then suddenly in November, Superman finds the gang’s boss — and it’s Luthor, “a sinister ultra-
scientist!”
That word is really all the explanation that you need, to answer the question: Why did Luthor lose his hair? It’s
because he needed a more compelling character design, so they made him look like the Ultra-Humanite. It’s really
that simple.
They don’t actually do that much with Luthor in this story. He only appears in the last seven strips, which go like this:
Strip #1: “So, Superman — our paths cross once again!”
Strip #2: “I’m well prepared for him!”
Strip #3: “I was playing with you, like a cat with a mouse!”
Strip #4: “Superman has met his match!”
Strip #5: “Follow out your orders!”
Strip #6: “You reckoned without the scientific might of Luthor!”
Strip #7: “I’ve failed again!”
And then he doesn’t appear in the comic strip again for years. If the change in Luthor’s design was accidental, as
everybody thinks it was, then this would have been a tiny blip that was easily forgotten, as opposed to what it
actually was, which is an intentional, permanent change.
So now it’s time for another round of my favorite game, Everybody Is Wrong Except Me.
The stupid thing that people believe is that penciller Les Nowak was drawing Luthor in the strip, and when he
wanted a reference for how the character looked, he saw this specific panel from Superman #4, and thought that
Luthor was the bald one.
That explanation is obviously not true. They’ve been using Luthor as Superman’s recurring arch-enemy for six
months at this point; the whole reason why he appears in the comic strip is because the character is popular. There’s
no way that the person pencilling the Superman comic strip wouldn’t be able to get ahold of anyone who knows
what the new popular character looks like.
Besides, this is just one panel out of the thirty-eight panels picturing Luthor in Superman #4, an issue where he
appears in the first two stories. Even if Nowak needed to look at that issue for reference, why would he get
sidetracked by this panel? The first panel in the comic strip sequence shows Luthor’s face appearing on the wall in
front of Superman. If Nowak needed a reference, then he would have looked at the four panels in the book when
Luthor projects his face onto a tree and a plummeting rocket, as seen above, and he would know that the character
has hair.
I get that “somebody made a mistake” is good material for a clickbait headline, but this was not a mistake. It was a
decision.
And here’s where I have the receipts.
This picture is a panel from Action Comics #14, the Ultra-Humanite’s second appearance, where a bald villain
imprisons Superman in a crystal coffin that obviously he busts out of in a hot second.
And this is a panel from that seven-day sequence from the comic strip, which shows Superman contained in an
identical crystal box. If Nowak used anything from the comics for a reference, then it was Action #14, and the Ultra-
Humanite.
And that’s why — when they brought Luthor back to the comic, in fall 1941 — he was still growing monsters on a
jungle island, but he was bald, and he stayed bald. The Ultra-Humanite was already gone and forgotten by then, and
anyway, in the last couple appearances, Ultra looked like a female movie star.
Luthor was free to appropriate Ultra’s character design if he wanted it, and that change obviously worked, because
decades later, people in the theater who have never read a Superman comic are looking at Gene Hackman on the
screen, and whispering to the person next to them, “Isn’t Lex Luthor supposed to be bald?”
He is, and he was, until his jungle island explodes, as it inevitably does. “The end of Luthor!” Superman predicts, but
he’s wrong; Luthor is eternal. He might have more hair this time, and fewer dinosaurs, but yeah, it’s the same guy.
Superman 1.46: Criminal Minds
Now, where was I? Oh, right, Lex Luthor. Last week, I talked about how striking Luthor’s entrance into the movie is —
and it needs to be striking, because we’re already an hour into the movie and he’s competing for our attention with
a lot of other stuff.
This first visit to the lair lasts about three minutes, and then there’s another fifteen minutes of Superman material —
the whole helicopter sequence, and Superman doing his first batch of heroic deeds. Then Lex gets a second scene
which lasts less than two minutes, and then there’s another fifteen minutes, full of Superman and Lois’ first date.
Luthor’s scheme doesn’t actually begin until more than an hour and a half into the movie.
The fact that he makes an impression at all says a lot about the level of energy that Gene Hackman brings to the
role. His Luthor is a bundle of contradictions, especially in his relationship with his subordinates. He says that he
longs to be idolized and congratulated, but Miss Teschmacher insults him most of the time, and the sidekick who
idolizes him also irritates the hell out of him. Personally, I think he does this to himself on purpose, just for the
pleasure of having someone to sneer at.
It’s kind of a miracle that Hackman’s even in the film, really. He was a serious, dramatic actor with Academy Award
nominations for Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970), and a Best Actor Oscar for The
French Connection (1971), a crime thriller about a driven cop trying to bust an international heroin smuggling ring.
His only role that was even close to this one was a four-minute cameo in the 1974 Mel Brooks film Young
Frankenstein, as a blind priest who pours soup into the monster’s lap.
Also, Hackman took the role in July 1976, when Luthor was the worst thing in the script besides the Telly Savalas
cameo. This was before Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz got involved in the project and rewrote the script; in
the version that Hackman signed on for, Luthor chewed on Kleenex tissues through the whole movie.
The story is that Hackman really wanted to be in a movie with Marlon Brando, and he signed shortly after Brando
accepted the role of Jor-El. The fact that he wouldn’t share any scenes with Brando didn’t seem to matter; he just
wanted to be in the same movie. This story has been told so many times that it seems like we have no choice but to
believe it, but it’s an odd thing for a grown-up Oscar-winning actor to do. Still, I guess movie stars are historically just
about as eccentric as subterranean supervillains.
As I said on Friday, the one thing that everyone knows about Lex Luthor is that he doesn’t have any hair — a visual
hook that makes the character memorable, and instantly recognizable. Richard Donner’s plan was to stay as true to
the cultural conception of Superman as possible, and he wanted Luthor to be bald in the film, but Hackman refused.
The solution that Donner came up with was for the vain Luthor to hide his baldness under a series of wigs. In every
scene, Hackman’s hair is done differently — curled in different ways, sometimes dyed — to indicate that the
character’s hair isn’t real. In the film’s second Luthor sequence, he’s wearing a bathing cap when he’s swimming in
the pool, and we see Otis tending to the boss’ wig collection.
There was also a problem with Hackman’s mustache, which required some lateral thinking. This is the anecdote, as
Donner tells it in the 2006 book I’ll Be in My Trailer: The Creative Wars Between Directors and Actors:
“I said to Gene Hackman at our initial meeting in Los Angeles for Superman, ‘Look, Lex Luthor is bald and a skull cap
is a pain in the ass and it’s going to be hot. Whould you consider shaving your head for the picture?’ He said, ‘No, I’m
not shaving my head and I’m not going to wear a skull cap.’ And I said, ‘But Lex Luthor is bald.’ He said, ‘That’s your
problem.’ So I said, ‘The mustache? You’d shave your mustache, wouldn’t you? At least that?’ He said, ‘No, the
mustache stays.’ And that was kind of it. ‘Good luck. Nice meeting you.’
“Two months later I was over in London when he arrived. I had figured out what to do with the hair: we would
present him as a bald guy who wore wigs. On Gene’s first day of shooting I asked the makeup man Stuart Freeborn,
one of the really great makeup men, ‘Stuart, does he still have a mustache?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Come on down to
my office and bring your mustache kit.’
“Stuart came down, and I said, ‘I want you to put the best mustache on me you can possibly do. I don’t want to see
the lace and I don’t want to see the glue.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, just do it.
“Okay, so he did it. And then he left and I went up to makeup. Gene was there and I said, ‘The wig idea for the hair is
going to work.’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s a good idea.’ ‘Do you like your wardrobe?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be great.’ I
said, ‘Gene, the mustache — it’s got to go.’ He said, ‘No, the mustache stays.’ I said, ‘Look, we’re getting by with the
hair and everything, but we’ll never get by with the mustache.’
“I said, ‘Come on. You shave yours off and I’ll shave mine off.’ First he said no. Then he looked at me and said,
‘Alright, but you do it right now.’ I said, ‘While you’re sitting there, let Stuart take yours off first.’
“I said, ‘Stuart, take off Mr. Hackman’s mustache.’ Stuart started to shake. He knew now what was going down, and
it wasn’t going to be pretty. And he shaves off Gene’s mustache. He said, ‘Okay, sit down. You’re next.’ I said, ‘I don’t
have to,’ and I peeled the fake mustache off.”
Now, the thing that I don’t know is how they got Hackman to put on the skullcap for the jail sequence used in
Superman II. They were filming the two movies at the same time, and the jail scenes were the last that Hackman
shot, with Superman bringing the villains to prison for the end of the first movie, and Luthor and Otis’ jailbreak for
the second movie.
I haven’t found any stories about why Hackman agreed to play this sequence bald, but maybe they appealed to his
sense of verisimilitude. I don’t think prisons let the inmates curate a personal collection of wigs, so it wouldn’t really
have made sense for the character to keep his hair.
It’s also possible that he was just worn down by then. Hackman started filming in May 1977 with the Fortress of
Solitude scenes from Superman II, and by the time they got to the jail, it was mid-October. Hackman was getting
frustrated with the process, as the shoot got more complicated and Donner had to split his time between different
units, so at that point, maybe you just put on the skullcap and get through the scenes.
Another of the film’s Lex Luthor innovations is to give him a specific motivation and backstory, which he’d never
really had before. I wrote last week about Luthor’s introduction in 1940, and back then, he was just a demented
genius who wanted to dominate the entire world, in whatever way he could manage it. That was pretty standard for
villains in pulp fiction and movie serials, who didn’t need a reason to go and do villainous things; they were plot
generators, and they didn’t have to be three-dimensional characters.
But 1978 Luthor has a specific goal, which he explains to his staff for what must be the thousandth time.
Luthor: At last, it’s official. Thanks to the generous help of the United States government, we are about to be
involved in the greatest real estate swindle of all time.
Eve: Lex, what is this obsession with real estate? All the time: land, land, land!
Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, when I was six years old, my father said to me —
Eve: “Get out!”
Luthor: (chuckles) Before that. He said, ‘Son, stocks may rise and fall. Utilities and transportation systems may
collapse. People are no damn good. But they will always need land, and they will pay through the nose to get it.’
Remember, my father said:
Otis: (following along) Land.
Luthor: Right.
So that’s brand new — a relationship with Luthor’s father, which is sketched out economically over a few sentences.
In the script at this point, Luthor actually mentioned him by name:
EVE
Then your father must have been sick too.
LUTHOR
(sad nod)
Arnold “Buster” Luthor.
The most inept check forger of his day.
A pity he didn’t see how,
from such humble beginnings,
I created an empire…
The “inept check forger” line was cut in the movie, because you don’t really need it. Luthor quoting his father, and
acknowledging the “get out” interruption, tells us where Luthor is coming from, and how he grew into the
frustrated, complicated criminal genius that he is.
We’re not going to see this crew for another fifteen minutes, but this three-minute scene is enough to establish a
memorable, interesting trio of villains that we’ll look forward to seeing again, after the helicopter and the car chase.
Superman 1.47: Lair Life
The chilly splendor of the Fortress of Solitude interior, the glass-lined maze of the Daily Planet newsroom, the
unbelievably well-landscaped jungle of Lois Lane’s balcony — Superman: The Movie is full of enormous art
installations for the characters to live, work and fight in. But the most spectacular of all is Lex Luthor’s lair, two
hundred feet below Park Avenue.
Overstuffed and shabby chic, this subterranean museum of crime is the perfect hideout for a villain who’s trying to
convince the audience that he’s important, in a hurry. Luthor enters the film with a messy murder that immediately
establishes his villainous credentials, but after that, he spends a lot of the movie just hanging around downstairs.
Superman gets to fly around catching crooks and saving the day, while the villain sits in the basement, reading back
issues of National Geographic. If he’s going to get any respect from the audience, then that needs to be a damn
impressive basement.
And oh, look at this. This set is so big and complicated that it’s hard to keep it all in your head at one time. It seems
to refresh itself every time we see it, showing us new angles and attractions. It is grand, and it is central to
understanding the very complicated villain who has just entered our lives.
In fact, it’s based on New York’s Grand Central Terminal, a Beaux-Arts landmark built in the first decade of the 20th
century.
The terminal features wide-mouthed archways and staircases with big chunky balustrades, and classy typeset
signage.
In the introduction to this first villains sequence, Otis walks through the real Grand Central Terminal on his way
downstairs to the lair, preparing the audience for the fantasy space that we’re about to enter. Otis hops between
train cars and along the tracks to a secret portal, and then goes down a ladder to what we’re supposed to imagine is
a forgotten area of the station.
So today I just want to pay attention to this magnificent set, which deserves close inspection. As we move through,
we’ll see seven distinct spaces in the set: the control room, the map room, the study, the pool, the sun patio, the
bedroom, and the ticket windows area.
The control room is the first area that we see, and it’s full of magic TV screens that show anything that Luthor wants
to look at, like a wizard’s scrying pool. That ability gives Luthor some evil sorceror powers that establish his foresight
and cunning, and there’s an immediate visual joke of seeing a main screen surrounded by displays on mismatched,
scavenged television sets.
Still, there’s not much to see here in this dark, windowless space, and Luthor spends most of his time here either
bored or frustrated. This is the standard spy-movie villain set, which he finds awkward and confining.
But then they exit into the map room, and things get a lot more interesting in a hurry. I’m not really sure what to call
this area — a lobby? a rotunda? It doesn’t seem to be anything in particular.
This is when we discover that Lex has converted an abandoned part of Grand Central Terminal into his private
headquarters. We see lots of archways, with some of them blocked up, implying that Luthor somehow walled off a
part of the station that people weren’t using anymore. The arch that leads to the control room is marked “To Lower
Level – Baggage Delivery”, but the door that Lex and Eve emerge through is a sci-fi metal door that slides up and
down, sporting a radioactive hazard symbol that suggests this is a mad science lab.
The room is ringed by blocked-off archways, festooned with mysterious black electronic equipment that continues
the Bond-villain control room theme. But there’s also a comfy leather chair with matching ottoman in the
foreground, next to a side table with a couple of bottles, which indicates that this is also a private, homey space — a
piece of public property that Lex has claimed as his own.
The most important feature of the room is the inlaid floor showing a map of the United States, with lines indicating
the train routes accessible from the station.
The legend around the circumference says Metropolis & Transcontinental Railroad – Linking the Peoples of America,
a gorgeous detail that represents Luthor’s continent-spanning plan. His scheme stretches from Metropolis on the
east coast to California on the west, via long-range ballistic missile, and this is the place where Luthor connects the
dots for Superman.
Exiting the map room, Luthor and Eve walk into the study, which is the part of the set that gets the most use. This is
where he schemes and plots, and that’s basically his entire job description, so it’s the most detailed area of the set.
In the actual Grand Central train station, the spaces feel appropriately functional; you don’t imagine that you’re
walking through someone’s house. But when Lex treats one of these areas as if it’s his living room and fills it with
furniture and art, the vaulted ceilings and stone pillars become the skeleton of a mansion. He’s essentially squatting
in the basement of a bus station, which sounds pathetic, but the grand scale of the rooms and the run-down
opulence of the furniture elevate this space above the ordinary.
There are a couple of big statues in another part of the set that look like they might have been part of the train
station, but everything else that’s here is clearly scavenged. There’s a piano, for one thing, and on top of the piano
there’s a blizzard of black-and-white photos in little frames. Over on the credenza parked behind the couch, there’s a
big black inkwell that’s made in the shape of a crouching devil. Lex is clearly a pack rat, sneaking ornaments and
treasures from the surface world, and carrying them downstairs to build his nest.
Across from the piano, there’s another couch with a fancy side table and more objets d’art, and there are two doors
set into the wall. One of them is the steel door that leads from the trackway into the lair, which Otis uses when he
enters the lair. That’s also the door that Superman busts his way through rather than knock and ask to be let in,
because as we’ve seen, when Superman has feelings to express, he tends to say it with doors.
Next to that, there’s a corrugated steel garage door, where Lex keeps his “babies” — a set of ferocious animals of
uncertain species who live in a special pit for dangling people over. You won’t see this in the regular movie; it only
appears in the Extended TV cut, which we’ll talk about tomorrow.
But the really eye-catching part of this area is the enormous set of bookshelves built into the back wall, where
Luthor keeps all of his reference material. This is one of the more fantastic elements of the set. You shouldn’t think
for too long about how they could have built this in an abandoned part of the train station, and stocked it with all
these books, with nobody noticing all of the material being carried through Grand Central and across live railway
tracks, en route to a secret area that nobody knows about. The idea doesn’t stand up to verisimilitude-level scrutiny.
But nobody thinks about it, because this is mostly metaphorical. This is the physical manifestation of Lex’s restless
intellect, demonstrating the storehouse of factual information that he can draw on, when he’s devising his lunatic
schemes.
So, yeah, the pool — another utterly fantastic amenity that acts as the setting for a major plot point, later on.
There’s a grand staircase sweeping down from the study, leading to a blocked-off area labeled “To Bar and
Restaurant”. Lex has blocked all of the passages and built himself a swimming pool here, where he can get some
exercise without having to go outside and get caught by the prowling policemen.
Again, this room’s tenuous connection to reality is not very important. It’s another expression of Lex’s questing
intelligence, looking at this space, and finding unconventional ways to turn a crumbling ruin into a palace.
Overlooking the pool, there’s an absolutely crazy beach patio area: an empty space transformed into a sunny beach,
decked out with palm trees, furniture and even a beach ball. There are screens in all of the archways projecting
images of a tropical beach, and in the brief time that we see this area, there’s Hawaiian music playing.
Before I started writing this post, I never really understood why this is part of the set; it seemed like random
eccentricity to me. But now that I’m spending time thinking about the living quarters, I get it — these people spend
a lot of time hiding underground, and they need a big sun lamp to keep from turning into pale, bedraggled ghosts.
They need to sunbathe regularly, so they turned this area into their own version of a beach.
It’s possible that everybody else caught this the first time, and I’m just slow, but that’s my personal eureka moment
for the day.
Okay, we’re almost done. Lex and Eve’s private quarters are up another set of stairs. We only see this for about 20
seconds, when Lex gets out of the pool and shouts for Otis to bring him his robe. It’s a tantalizing little peek at the
bedroom, which is overflowing with various items of what I presume is everybody’s wardrobe. We see Otis fussing
with Lex’s wigs, which is a clue for the audience that yes, Lex Luthor is bald, just like you think he should be.
Finally, there’s departures and arrivals, which we only see glimpses of in the film. In this first lair sequence, you can
see some of it around the corner and a bit more later, when Lex walks Superman over to the pool, and when he
stands on the balustrade and talks to Superman.
You can’t really see it enough to understand what’s happening over there, but luckily, CapedWonder.com has a
composite photo that gives us a much clearer view:
The wall has a row of ticket windows…
with a big departures and arrivals board that’s rotted away.
Flanking the crumbling information board, there are posters for the U.S. Navy, the Barnum & Bailey circus and U.S.
Bonds.
On the landing, in front of the boarded-up ticket windows, there’s a line of pinball machines and a pool table, so this
must be the lair’s entertainment area. (You can get a much closer look on CapedWonder, where there’s a high-res
picture, and lots of other behind-the-scenes shots.) And I’m sure there are other interesting things scattered around
that we don’t get close enough to see.
So obviously, I’m in love with this set, which is why I’ve written a long post just looking around and pointing at
things. Partly, it’s the level of craftsmanship that went into it, taking a completely imaginary space that could have
been a few dark rooms, and turning it into a palace.
But the most important thing is that the set tells a story about Lex Luthor — who he is, and what he’s been doing all
this time, before we meet him. It shows how clever he is, taking a public space and repurposing it for his own needs,
and how little regard he has for the public that it was originally built for. It demonstrates the scale of his ambitions,
laid out in marble and wood and brass.
Importantly, it also shows us that he can be playful, filling the space with whimsical curios and setting up a make-
believe beach. The movie wants us to enjoy spending time with Lex, so that we look forward to seeing him again. He
enters the film by murdering a policeman, and by the end, he comes close to slaughtering several million people —
but there’s all that time in the middle when he makes us laugh, and strange as it may seem, we like him, and we
want to see more of him.
Superman 1.48: Feed the Babies
Now, if it were entirely up to me, I’d probably stop writing about this Lex Luthor scene at some point, rather than
natter on endlessly about it, but I can’t help it; there are larger market forces at play.
Richard Donner ended this scene with Luthor and his sidekick Otis saying in unison, “What more could anyone ask?”
But, as it turned out, people did want to ask for more — specifically, the Salkinds, who wanted more money from
television sales. TV networks wanted to air Superman, and they were happy to have as much of it as possible, to fill
up programming time and justify more commercial breaks. They were willing to pay by the minute, so the Salkinds
prepared what’s now called the Extended Cut, taking a 143-minute movie and stretching it out to 188 minutes.
Most of the extra material is just useless filler — slightly longer scenes, extra reaction shots, second-unit footage —
all the stuff that was properly cut out the first time, and adds nothing to the experience except making things take
longer. But there are a handful of actual deleted scenes, like Krypton’s tinfoil science cop, who exploded before
accomplishing anything.
There’s also another two minutes of this introductory Luthor scene, which aren’t necessary but offer several items of
interest. If you don’t mind, I’m going to give you the whole scene, and then we can discuss it.
Luthor: It’s a pity that he didn’t see from such humble beginnings how I’ve created this empire.
Eve: An empire? This?
Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, how many girls do you know who have a Park Avenue address like this one?
Eve: Park Avenue address? Two hundred feet below?
Luthor: Do you realize what people are shelling out up there, for a few miserable rooms off a common elevator?
Luthor and Otis (in unison): What more could anyone ask?
Eve: Sunshine? A night on the town, instead of under it?
(There are sinister growls from the other side of the room. Otis takes a couple casual steps in the opposite
direction.)
Luthor (quietly): Otis…
Otis: Yes?
Luthor: Did you feed the babies?
(More terrifying growls and snarls.)
Otis: N-not today, Mr. Luthor. (He takes another step away.)
Luthor: Otis… feed the babies.
Otis: Mr. Luthor, please.
Luthor (raising his voice): Otis!
(Eve gasps. Lex waits impatiently as Otis cracks his knuckles, and walks to the steel door. Luthor crosses to the
piano.)
Luthor (to Eve): Relax.
(Otis presses a button that raises the corrugated steel door. He holds his nose as the opening reveals a purple,
steaming pit. More growls from the pit. Otis enters the room, balancing on a thin platform. He waves his hat at the
creatures below as they snarl at him.)
(Leaning against the piano, Eve grimaces. Lex sits down and begins to play some soothing dinner music.)
(Standing on the platform, Otis manipulates a chain that lowers a huge raw side of beef down from the ceiling. The
monsters hungrily devour the meal. Lex pays no attention.)
(Finally, Otis hauls on the chain and pulls up the bones, stripped of flesh.)
Otis (calling to Lex): The babies were hungry, Mr. Luthor!
Eve (turning to Lex): You are sick. You are really sick.
Eve: You would take a diaper pin to cut a baby’s throat. You’d fix the brakes on your own grandmother’s wheelchair.
(Lex smiles, taking this as a compliment.)
Eve: I don’t know. Just explain one thing to me, Lex… (She reaches out a hand across the piano.) Why do I love you
so much?
Luthor (grinning): Because life with me is never dull. (He lightly touches her hand.)
(Encouraged, she walks around the piano to stand behind him.)
Eve: No. No, it’s never dull, Lex. (She puts her arms around him.) Because you are the pits. You are really the pits.
(She starts to cuddle and stroke him. He gets turned off by the affection, and starts scanning the newspaper.)
Luthor: Later.
So that’s the scene. Now, it’s pretty clear why this was cut from the film; it’s not funny. The scene in the theatrical
cut is a three-minute high-energy comedy routine with Lex at the center of the action, as the sidekicks feed him
straight lines to react to.
But all of a sudden, Lex goes quiet, and starts playing the piano. For more than a minute, he only says one word. I
suppose the idea is to show that Lex is mercurial, and can shift moods on a dime, but that’s not a characteristic that
makes the movie more interesting, so it needs to go.
And then there’s the babies. I can see what they’re trying to do — he’s a Bond villain, so he needs an over-the-top
hazard in his lair that he can throw people into — but it’s only funny intellectually. There’s no moment in that
minute-long routine where an audience would actually laugh; you realize from the start that Otis will be throwing
meat at monsters, and it plays out exactly as you would expect. You might smile at the funny faces that Otis makes,
or the sight of the carcass’ skeleton returning to view, but that’s about it.
Now, this introduction of the babies is supposed to pay off at the end of the movie, in another deleted Extended Cut
scene that I actually think is worthwhile. Furious at Eve for betraying him, Lex dangles her over the pit, and intends
to drop her to a messy death — but at the last moment, Superman appears, saving Eve and taking the other two
miscreants into custody. It’s a nice moment that wraps up Eve’s storyline, so I wish they’d been able to use it — but
to do that, they’d need to keep the “feed the babies” scene as well, and it’s not worth it.
The other item of interest is that this is the only time in the film where it’s explicit that there’s a romantic connection
between Lex and Eve. She spends the rest of the movie criticizing him relentlessly, and a moment of actual affection
makes her presence in the lair more explicable. It’s also interesting to see how uncomfortable Lex is with that
expression of affection, which explains why he insists on calling her “Miss Teschmacher” all the time. It also
resonates nicely with the mention of his unhappy relationship with his father; Lex has clearly cut himself off from
normal human relationships.
So that’s interesting, but it requires Lex to sit still and look uncomfortable, which slows down the movie and isn’t
funny. Overall, it’s nice to see this scene as an example of the good decisions they made in the editing room, but
including it in a version of the film that they actually showed to people is kind of a mean trick.
And with that, I believe that I’ve finally said everything that I have to say about this sequence, and we are excused.
Superman 1.49: The Look of Luthor
For the last week, we’ve been looking at the new version of Lex Luthor that was invented for Superman: The Movie
— a down-at-the-heels art thief, inventor and real estate magnate, lurking underneath Metropolis’ Grand Central
Terminal in a lair made out of other people’s property. The movie Luthor doesn’t need death rays; he’s got sarcasm,
and National Geographic, and the ability to reprogram ballistic missiles. He’s sophisticated and urbane, and he plays
the piano. He wouldn’t dream of putting on a silly costume, and trying to punch Superman in the face.
So that puts him at odds with the trend of modern thought at DC Comics in the mid-to-late 70s, where they’d spent
the last several years turning Luthor into a cartoon character.
Lex was a consistent recurring villain in the comics, reliably turning up a few times a year from his debut in 1940 all
the way up through the 70s. After his initial red-hair-and-robes days, Luthor didn’t really have a signature look —
sometimes he wore a business suit, a scientist’s white coat, a button-down shirt with a tie, or (often) a prison
jumpsuit. The bald head was his visual signature, and from the neck down, he could do what he liked.
But by 1974, the Superman team at DC decided that they weren’t having fun anymore with public enemy number
one just sitting behind control panels and pressing buttons. They wanted a more active, go-getting Lex Luthor, who
could dress up in a silly costume and trade punches with his super-foe.
So they debuted Luthor’s new look in Superman #282 (Nov 1974), in a story called “Lex Luthor: Super Scalp-Hunter!”
The new costume was a vision in purple and green that caught the eye and refused to let go, with a sprightly popped
collar that gave Luthor something of an elfin look, and a tight shirt that revealed that he’d spent his prison time
mostly in the gym. This Luthor isn’t satisfied just lurking in his lair all day; he wants to go out and give the populace
an eyeful.
Luthor’s look might be new, but the colors weren’t; there was a long tradition of green and purple comic book
villains. Two early Batman villains — the Joker and the Riddler — both wore these colors, and in the 60s, Spider-
Man’s rogues gallery consisted almost entirely of villains who wore green, purple or both, including the Green
Goblin, Mysterio, the Sandman, the Lizard, Electro, the Vulture and Doctor Octopus.
The idea behind this color scheme is that heroes dress in bright primary colors — red and blue for Spider-Man, and
red, blue and yellow for Superman — so their enemies should dress in sinister secondary colors. That’s how you tell
them apart.
The Superman comics were using secondary colors for Brainiac (green and purple) and Mister Mxyzptlk (orange and
purple), so when it was time to create a supersuit for Luthor, the obvious choice was to follow that trend.
The point of the new suit was to get Luthor up from the basement and out into the sunshine, where he could use his
inventions to pose a physical threat to Superman. He could fly, using the standard rocket-boots attachments that
everyone else in comic books wore, and he had a bunch of mad science features.
For one thing, he had a pain-inducing glove on his right hand and a laser-knife glove on his left hand, which are
always helpful, plus a gravity-caster that made Superman so heavy that they both ended up plunging through the
earth, all the way down to the fiery molten core, where the hero had to save the villain and bring him back topside
to go to prison again.
The filmmakers had a very different idea about what to do with Lex Luthor, but the people working on the comics at
the time didn’t have much interest in tying in with the movie. These days, Marvel and DC always put the characters
from the latest movie onto the comic book racks — I’m writing this post a week after the Eternals premiere, and
Marvel’s just published issue #7 of their new Eternals comic, and they’re also making a big deal about Doctor
Strange, just ahead of his appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home and his own Multiverse of Madness film, six
months from now.
But with a hugely successful movie featuring Superman and Lex Luthor just over the horizon, DC didn’t bother to put
Luthor in a single comic in all of 1978. His most recent appearance was a team-up with Brainiac in the November
1977 Superman Spectacular, and we wouldn’t see him in the comics again until the end of 1979.
Still, in the battle for the hearts and minds of America’s youth, the green and purple Luthor clearly won. Mego
produced two tie-in toy lines — a 12-inch action figure set, and 4-inch plastic “Pocket Heroes” — which included
Superman, Jor-El, General Zod and Lex Luthor, and naturally they used the more visually exciting version from the
comics. Nobody would want to buy a Luthor toy with a toupee and a brown suit.
Fortunately, it didn’t occur to anybody in 1978 to ask the producers to use a more toy-friendly design for the villain;
the filmmakers were allowed to go their own way, without worrying about the impact on toy sales. Of course, this
happy state of affairs wouldn’t last — by the 1990s, the people making the Batman films were toy designers first,
and movie producers very much second.
Luthor made his Saturday morning cartoons debut in 1978 as well, leading the Legion of Doom in the TV series
Challenge of the Superfriends. The purple and green outfit was perfect for the cartoon, giving Lex an easily
identifiable, child-friendly visual hook.
In 1979, there was an episode of Challenge of the Superfriends called “Lex Luthor Strikes Back”, which was directly
inspired by the movie. In this episode, Lex’s lair is built below a Metropolis subway line, and the backgrounds have
many of the features from the movie’s lair, including archways, stone pillars, a huge bookcase, ticket windows, a
desk and some Beaux-Arts flourishes on the walls.
Lex has a bumbling assistant named Orville in this episode, who addresses his boss with the same “Mister Luth-OR”
cadence as Ned Beatty in the film, and there’s a Lois Lane as well, with a vaguely Margot Kidder-ish look. But even in
this homage to the movie, Luthor stays in the colorful outfit, as the kids expect him to.
Business suit Lex would ultimately carry the day, starting with Superman’s post-Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot in
1986, but that costume doesn’t look much like the rundown con artist of the movie either. While Gene Hackman’s
version of Lex seems perfect for the movies, it turns out to be an exception, rath
Superman 1.51: The Long Walk
At the end of a hectic day at the newsroom, Clark asks Lois if she’d like to go to dinner. Lois says that she can’t,
because she’s going to the airport to interview the President, end of scene.
That’s a simple bit of dialogue that the characters could deliver at their desks in about thirty seconds. Instead,
Richard Donner turns this moment into a screwball comedy masterpiece, using a single tracking shot with dozens of
extras bustling around the crowded newsroom.
Everybody pays attention to the helicopter rescue scene, which is coming up next, but in my opinion, you can’t beat
this walk-and-talk scene, which does it backwards and in high heels.
A few weeks ago, when we arrived at the Daily Planet, I wrote about the influence of screwball comedy on this
section of the movie. To recap: screwball comedy is a film genre that was popular from around 1934 to 1944,
characterized by fast-talking, independent heroines and mild-mannered, emasculated men, in a story that takes a
satirical view of social mores around courtship and marriage. There’s usually a secret identity involved, and often a
love triangle, so the genre is basically tailor-made for Clark, Lois and Superman.
Inspired by a less well-known but utterly brilliant 1944 screwball film, Preston Sturges’ The Miracle of Morgan’s
Creek, Donner set up this newsroom scene as a two-minute shot, with the principals moving through the
complicated Planet set to demonstrate the way that Clark follows Lois around like a hapless, love-struck puppy.
Now, it was while Donner was filming these Daily Planet scenes that the Salkinds really started to worry about
whether he was the right guy for the job, because he did so many takes to produce a very small amount of useable
footage. The main unit on a feature film usually gets around three minutes of footage a day, and Donner was
averaging 40 seconds a day. It took him five weeks to complete what they’d expected would be a two-week shoot,
and I suspect that filming this scene contributed quite a bit to the producers’ frustration.
I tried to count how many extras there are in this scene, which is hard to do, because there’s a lot of movement, and
some individuals cross the screen several times. According to my count, there are at least forty people in the scene,
possibly more. Getting everybody to do the right thing, including the camera crew, must have taken forever to
rehearse and shoot.
To show you what I mean, I’m going to give you the whole scene. It begins with Perry hanging up the phone, and
walking out of his office.
Perry: Olsen!
Jimmy: Yeah?
Perry: Get this Loch Ness update right into composing.
(A reporter hands the phone to Perry.)
Perry: (taking the phone) Yeah?
(Jimmy turns to the seated reporter.)
Jimmy: Did you see the fight last night?
(The reporter looks up, and starts talking with Jimmy.)
Perry: No, that’s it, Ross. Put it to bed.
Jimmy: He had a broken jaw —
Perry: Right.
(Perry hangs up the phone, and sees Jimmy, still chatting.)
Perry: What are you standing around here for?
Jimmy: I’m not, Ch-
(Perry puts up his hand in front of Jimmy’s face. Jimmy sighs.)
Jimmy: I wasn’t gonna say it.
Perry: Go!
(Jimmy goes. Perry walks around the desks to look at the article that Lois is typing.)
Perry: Ah, the sex maniac profile!
Lois: Right! Look — nine to five, it’s a Pulitzer prize winner. What do you bet?
Perry: There’s no z in brassiere.
(Perry walks back to his office. On his way, he calls back to Clark.)
Perry: Hey, nice job on that nudist scandal, Kent.
Clark: Oh, gosh, thanks, Mr. White.
(Lois stands up, taking her typed article and her purse. Seeing that she’s leaving, Clark gets up, with his briefcase.)
Clark: Uh —
Lois: Oh, hi Clark. Good night.
(She grabs a hanging garment bag from the coatrack.)
Clark: Uh, here, let me, uh — carry that for you.
Lois: Oh, thanks a lot.
(The camera moves behind a pillar, momentarily obscuring them from view.)
(By the time the camera passes the pillar, Lois is already out of sight. Clark grabs his hat.)
Clark: Uh… Lois?
(The camera pulls back, as several Planet staffers hurry by…)
(…and Clark realizes that Lois has already walked away.)
Clark: Have y– have you got a minute?
(He tries to catch up to her, through the crowd of busy newsroom staff.)
Clark: Uh — excuse me, please —
Clark: Uh, Lois?
(She rounds a corner, past some desks. She’s walking through at a brisk pace, but everyone seems to be getting in
Clark’s way.)
Clark: — excuse me —
(The camera pulls back, as Lois puts some papers on a secretary’s desk.)
Lois: And these two go to the addresses on the envelope, okay?
(She keeps walking.)
Clark (to the secretary): Good night.
(Clark catches up to Lois.)
Clark: Lois, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to have a little dinner with me tonight.
Lois (not looking up): Oh, gosh, Clark, I’m sorry, I’m booked.
Clark: Oh.
Lois: Yeah, Air Force One’s landing at the airport, and this kid’s going to be there to make sure that you-know-
Lois: — good night! —
Lois: -who answers a few questions that he’d rather duck.
(He smiles, admiring her.)
Clark: My goodness, don’t you ever let up?
Lois: What for? Hmm?
Lois: I mean, I’ve seen how the other half lives. My sister, for instance —
(She counts on her fingers.)
Lois: — three kids, two cats, and one mortgage.
Lois: Yeucchh! I would go bananas in a week!
(She heads toward the ladies room.)
Clark: Well, uh, can I, uh, take you to the airport?
Lois: Not unless you can fly!
(They chuckle. He takes a step towards her, as she takes the garment bag from him.)
Lois: Uh, Clark…
Clark: Hmm?
(She directs his attention to the door.)
Lois: Ladies?
Clark: Sorry…
Lois: I have to change my clothes —
(He turns around, embarrassed. She takes the garment bag.)
Lois: Thank you!
(He turns back, as she closes the door.)
Lois: Bye!
Clark: Well, hey, Lois, maybe we could —
(The door slams in his face. He looks down, and realizes that his coat is stuck in the door.)
Clark: Hmmm.
(He tries to pull it out, but it won’t budge. He gives a tentative little rap on the door.)
Clark: Uh, Lois?
(Lois suddenly opens the door, freeing his coat, and hands him an envelope.)
Lois: Would you be a pet and mail that for me? Thanks.
Clark: Oh, sure, uh…
(The door slams again.)
Clark: G’night.
(He sighs, and puts on his hat.)
(As he turns the corner, he hears an elevator bell.)
(He sees people walking into the elevator.)
Clark: Oh, uh — going down, please? Going down?
(The people getting into the elevator ignore him. The door closes in his face.)
Clark: Uh…
(Another elevator door opens, and Clark approaches it hopefully.)
Clark: Going down?
Man (pointing at the lights above the door): Going up, up, up!
(The door closes. Turning, Clark greets two reporters walking past him.)
Clark: Good night!
(The reporters ignore him. Clark is left alone in the hallway. He realizes that he needs to push the button to call the
elevator, and presses the down button. He waits patiently for the next elevator.)
So there you have it, a perfect screwball comedy scene. And that’s all one take! I can’t imagine what they had to do,
in order to get all those people to do the right thing at the right time.
Just having Lois shut the door on Clark’s coat must have taken practice, because he’s turning as she’s closing it. That
move alone could screw up the take, and by then they’re a minute and forty seconds into the shot, and they’d have
to reset the whole thing, including all the people that Clark needs to bump into.
The point of the scene is to reinforce the idea that Lois is capable and determined, while Clark is hapless and put-
upon — a contrast that’s expressed in tiny, careful brushstrokes. She can stride through the newsroom confident and
unimpeded, hardly even paying attention to where she’s going, but for Clark, it’s an obstacle course. When she says
good night to somebody, they smile and wave back, while his good nights are completely ignored. People don’t even
hold the elevator for him. This is important, because it sets up the next sequence with the helicopter rescue, where
their positions are reversed.
And it’s romantic, too. I can’t get over the way that he smiles at her, when she says that she’s going to interview the
President, and explains why she doesn’t want to live like her sister. She’s blowing him off, and the look on his face is
all about how much he adores this fascinating woman.
Now, I mentioned earlier that the scene was inspired by a similar walk-and-talk in Preston Sturges’ 1944 screwball
comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and since you probably haven’t seen it, I’m going to do you a favor and give
you that scene, too.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek appears to be specifically constructed to violate the Hays Code in a way that the
censors can’t figure out or do anything to stop it. It’s a comedy about having sex out of wedlock that doesn’t actually
include anybody having sex out of wedlock, or even discussing it directly.
The story concerns Trudy Kockenlocker, a headstrong young woman with an eye for the soldier boys, who are about
to leave town and fight in World War II. There’s a dance coming up on the soldiers’ last night before shipping out,
and she’s determined to go. Her father refuses to let her go to the dance, so she calls her lovestruck childhood
friend Norval, and invites him out to go to the movies instead. Norval can’t go to the dance, because he’s not a
soldier: he tried to enlist, but he’s classified as 4-F because he sees “the spots” when he’s nervous.
That’s the setup for the following scene, which is performed in one single tracking shot that lasts for more than
three minutes.
Trudy: It was certainly very sweet of you to come and get me right away, Norval.
Norval: Oh, the pleasure’s all mine, Trudy. Except to get into the army, I can’t hardly think of anything that gives me
as much pleasure as taking you out.
Trudy: That’s certainly very nice to hear. You certainly helped me out by taking me out tonight, I mean, after I’m all
dressed up like a horse and everything.
Norval: Oh, the pleasure’s all mine, Trudy, not that you look anything like a horse. Ha ha! Maybe I should have worn
my tuxedo.
Trudy: Thank you, Norval. You certainly helped me out!
Norval: Any time.
Trudy: You really mean that, Norval?
Norval: Really mean what, Trudy?
Trudy: You’d help me out any time?
Norval: Why, Trudy, that’s almost all I live for, except maybe getting into the army, I can’t think of anything that
makes me more happy than helping you out. I almost wish you’d be in a lot of trouble sometimes, so I could prove it
to you.
(They turn the corner, and keep walking.)
Trudy: You can prove it tonight.
Norval: Huh?
Trudy: I am in a lot of trouble, Norval. They didn’t call off that military dance. Poppa just called it off as far as I was
concerned.
Norval: Oh, he did. Well, he probably had pretty good reasons, then. That’s what parents are for, to listen to their
advice. That’s why I always miss losing my parents so much.
Trudy: I know, Norval, but he didn’t have a good reason, he’s just old-fashioned! The soldiers aren’t like they used to
be, when he was a soldier, you know, all in France and like that.
Norval: Oh, aren’t they?
Trudy: Of course they’re not! They’re fine, clean young boys from good homes —
(She stops, dramatically.)
Trudy: — and we can’t send them off, maybe to be killed in rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air, without
anybody to say goodbye to them, can we?
(He takes her arm, and starts walking again.)
Norval: They’ve probably got their families.
Trudy: Well, even if they have, they ought to have girls, and dancing, and how about those who haven’t got any
families? How about the orphans? Who says goodbye to them? You oughta know about them!
Norval: The superintendent probably comes down from the asylum, for old times’ sake.
Trudy: Norval, I think you’re perfectly heartless! I just hope you get into the army someday, and the last thing that
happens to you — the last thing you get before you sail away — the last thing you have to treasure before fighting
beneath foreign skies is a kiss from the superintendent!
Norval: Well, what do you want me to say?
Trudy: I want you to say, “Trudy, it’s your bounden duty to say goodbye to our boys. To dance with them, to give
them something to remember, something to fight for! I won’t take no for an answer! So I’ll drop you off at the
church basement, take in a movie, then pick you up and take you home like a chivalrous gentleman, so you won’t get
in wrong with poppa!” That’s what I want you to say.
Norval: I won’t say it.
Trudy: Oh, please, Norval.
Norval: I won’t do it! I won’t sit through three features all by myself!
Trudy: Couldn’t you sleep through a couple of them?
Norval: Suppose you get caught. Where does that put me with your father?
Trudy: Why should I get caught? Anyway, I’m not doing anything wrong!
Norval: Well, the whole idea sounds very cheezy to me, Trudy!
Norval: I’m not trying to be d-d-disagreeable, but if you want me as a kind of a false front, a kind of a decoy, I might
just as well take you home right now, and say goodbye to you.
(She starts to cry.)
Norval: Doesn’t cut any ice with me. Go ahead, cry. Cry all you like. I’ve seen you cry before. (She sobs.) Oh, stop it,
will ya?
Trudy: I’m not crying for me, I’m just thinking of those poor boys, going away like poor little orphans.
Norval: Well, you’re not the only dame in town, are you?
Trudy: That’s right, insult me!
Norval: I’m not insulting you, Trudy, I — oh, where will I meet you?
Trudy: Doesn’t matter, now that you’ve spoiled everything.
Norval (hopefully): Doesn’t it?
Trudy: What time is the third feature over?
Norval (resigned): About 1:10, if my seat holds out.
Trudy: All right, I’ll pick you up at 1:10.
Norval: Pick me up? What do you mean, pick me up?
Trudy: Don’t you think I oughta take your car? The boys mightn’t have any.
Norval: Take my car! First, you get me out under false pretenses, which you never had the slightest intention of ever
—
(She starts to cry again.)
Norval: Then you want me to sit through three features, all by myself, and now you want to take my car in the
bargain, for a bunch of – of – of all the confounded nerve I ever, I —
(She sobs.)
Norval: All right. All right! Here. (He gives her the keys.) The car’s in front of my house. Is there anything else you
want? How about my gas card, my money, my watch? Maybe one of the boys could use it! (He shakes his head.)
What a war.
(He turns around, and walks into the movie theater without her. She squares her shoulders, and walks back the way
they came, to get his car.)
So that’s a remarkable scene, and later on in the picture, they do another lengthy walk-and-talk where Trudy gives
Norval the horrifying news that while she was at the dance, she got drunk and married one of the soldiers, who she
can’t remember and doesn’t know his name, and now she’s pregnant, and her father’s going to think that it’s
Norval’s baby.
That’s the kind of thing that happens when you let screwball comedy into your life, and that, against all odds, is the
kind of energy that Richard Donner wanted in Superman. And then the characters go outside, and he drops a
helicopter on them.
Tomorrow:
1.52: Clap Your Hands.
Footnotes:
The take that they use in Superman actually does have one mistake, right at the end, but they used it anyway,
because nobody notices it unless you’re going line by line through the scene and taking screenshots, which normal
people don’t do. As you can see in the screenshot below, the guy who walks by as Clark turns the corner to get the
elevator looks up at the camera for a second, to make sure that he’s got his cue.
Also, you should watch The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek; it’s one of my favorite movies, and it’s vastly under-
appreciated. You can rent it on YouTube, and you will not regret it.er than a turning point.
Superman 1.52: Clap Your Hands
“Her light is growing faint,” Peter says, “and if it goes out, that means she is dead! She says…” Dramatic pause. “She
thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies!”
The children in the audience stir, surprised, as Peter Pan turns to implore them from across the footlights. Their
attention isn’t enough, all of a sudden. “Do you believe in fairies?” he asks them. “Say quick that you believe! If you
believe, clap your hands!”
They clap, of course. What else could they do? J.M. Barrie has constructed a dramatic trap that snaps shut on every
kid in the theater: if Tinker Bell dies, then you personally are an asshole.
Which brings us to Superman’s helicopter rescue, a formal Ritual of Summoning disguised as an action sequence.
We are currently at minute sixty-seven in this movie about Superman, and so far we haven’t seen him do anything,
except talk to his dad and get turned down for a dinner date. We have waited, semi-patiently, through Krypton’s
destruction and leaving the farm and building the Fortress and getting a job, all the way up to Clark getting his coat
stuck in the ladies’ room door, and it’s still not enough to get Superman on the screen. They want us to clap, too.
So this sequence is all about setting up a situation that makes us desperately long for Superman to come along and
put an end to it. And then it keeps going for another forty-five seconds, deliberately dragging out the suspense
beyond human endurance in order to build anticipation and desire.
It begins with what appears to be an unnecessarily long explanation of what a helicopter is and what we want to use
it for, as ground control informs Daily Planet Copter 1 that Miss Lane is taking a quick ride to Metropolis Airport to
meet Air Force One. It’s a hurry flight, ground says. The copter says roger, and ground rattles off some statistics re:
the gusting and the altimeter. Ground is always going on about stuff like that.
We see Lois crossing the landing pad in a stylish yellow outfit, which means that everything’s ready, on this end.
And dang it, the helicopter still hasn’t landed; there’s another five shots before it touches down. I thought this was a
hurry flight.
As Lois hustles to board the copter, we see a shot of an angry cable fastened to the ground, twanging ominously.
This is the villain of the sequence, this schmuck of a cable, which must have some kind of grudge against Lois. I don’t
know what you have to do to piss off a cable so bad that it tries to murder you, but maybe it hates traditional news
outlets, and once all the reporters are dead, it plans to start its own cable news network. Thank you, I’m here all
week.
Unsuspecting, Lois boards the helicopter, and to close the door, a jumpsuited assistant has to shove with his full
weight on it, twice. I don’t know where the Daily Planet gets its news choppers from, but maybe it should spend a
little less money on the branded jumpsuits and a little more on helicopter doors that close properly. You think you
can get by with discount helicopter doors, but you’re going to regret it, two or three Darwin Awards from now.
And then the helicopter just takes off, without doing crosscheck and all-call or anything. But I should stop criticizing
the helicopter service; it’s blaming the victim.
You can tell whose fault this is, because they keep cutting to shots of the cable, cursing and spluttering and writing
furious manifestos. There’s nothing you can do when you run up against a cable like this, except tend to the
wounded and write apologetic telegrams to the victims’ families.
So I suppose it’s inevitable that something snaps, and the cable lashes out at the helicopter, disrupting its rotational
stability and throwing everything off-kilter. I don’t know enough about helicopter science to explain to you how this
situation leads to an immediate failure state, but shit goes wrong immediately and it does not get any better from
here.
There are a lot of quick shots from inside the helicopter, as the pilot grabs at his controls and struggles to do
something meaningful.
We cut back and forth from the pilot’s face to his hands to Lois, as she comes to grips with the escalating aviation
emergency.
Then there’s a very upsetting shot from a weird angle high above the helipad, where we see the helicopter spinning
unsteadily in worrying circles, and the cowardly ground crew running for cover.
The first really scary moment is when the tail of the helicopter smashes through the little waiting room area, taking
out a stretch of plate glass windows and endangering the Coke machine.
The helicopter spins wildly toward the edge of the building, and catches on a railing, which stops it short, resulting in
a shower of electric sparks, and then a bunch of things happen very quickly.
This is when the pilot bangs his head and loses consciousness, and no longer takes an active part in the proceedings.
Again, I don’t want to be too judgmental with the personnel, but I prefer it when the pilot stays awake for the entire
crisis.
Then the helicopter catches on fire somehow; I’m not sure what the logic is around that. This is very upsetting for
the Lois and pilot-shaped crash test dummies that are understandably subbing in for the movie stars, for the
duration of this shot.
The copter gives another hair-raising twitch, and Lois slides toward the door —
— and the door swings open —
And there’s the first money shot of the sequence, a vertiginous straight-down look at the Metropolis street, as
viewed from a position that nobody should be viewing it from.
So now we’ve established the terrifying peril that Lois is in. Our hearts are racing, and we know that the only way
she’s going to get out of this alive is for Superman to swoop in and save the day.
There is now a full two minutes until Superman swoops in and saves the day.
At this point, there’s a shot of Lois’ yellow hat falling out of the helicopter down to the street below. That hat is
going to hit the pavement in front of Clark seventy seconds from now. I looked up the rate of speed for a yellow
cloche hat in freefall, and if it takes 70 seconds to reach the street, then the building must be 14.9 miles tall, or
5,630 stories. That’s a long way to go, for a little hat. It’s no wonder it was so hard for Clark to catch an elevator in
the last scene; a fifteen mile vertical commute is no joke.
This is when the rest of New York gets involved, gathering together in a tightly-packed group and anxiously
bystanding. It’s not easy to get New Yorkers to look up, and it’s even harder to get them to recognize that the
burning helicopter has nowhere to fall except directly onto them. New Yorkers in superhero movies are
tremendously blasé about their own personal safety; just wait until the second movie, when they continue to order
dinner right next to an eight-minute taxicab throwing contest.
Determined to fight her way out of this, Lois unbuckles her seatbelt and tries climbing over the unconscious pilot to
some kind of safety. This turns out not to be the right answer, but it is seriously badass, and if you didn’t already like
Lois to the fullest possible extent, then you’d have to admire her now.
Then we see a couple of entirely thrilling upshots of the helicopter teetering on the edge of the roof.
We’ll get into the “how’d they do that” tomorrow, but this shot is essentially adding an extra building on top of the
actual building, for maximum peril.
Then there are a bunch of shots of the chaos which is breaking out at street level; it’s absolute mayhem down here.
Several police cars show up, as the cops try to keep order.
And I don’t know what kind of day you’re having, but if you need something to cheer you up, then I recommend
looking at this shot of a skinny cop with weirdly long arms who’s running like Phoebe from Friends. It only lasts for
three seconds, but it is gorgeous, and it gets better the more times you watch it.
Meanwhile, the upshots are getting increasingly dire. If they keep going like this, then pretty soon the
cinematographer will be working from a prone position, next stop underground.
But the movie is successfully amplifying the anxiety by adding an extra audience on top of the existing audience,
who are even more worried about this than you are.
This goes on approximately forever. John Williams is providing a score that at this point is basically just overlapping
tension stings.
The situation upstairs continues to degrade, as Lois learns how few things there are in a helicopter cockpit that you
can grab onto in an emergency, up to and including the pilot.
And then she falls all the way out of the helicopter and just dangles, clutching onto the seatbelt which is surprisingly
sturdy, for this helicopter. The rest of the chopper is falling to pieces and sporadically catching fire, but Lois clings to
that seatbelt for way longer than you’d imagine.
So here we are, sixty seconds deep into a fight for life scenario, and we know that the only way out of this is for
Superman to finally emerge from behind the eyewear and take charge of things.
And that’s when Clark strolls out of the Daily Planet building and finds a hat on the ground, and we are still a minute
away from seeing Superman catch Lois.
By this point, all of us — the horrified crowd that includes the audience, the onlookers and possibly even the people
in the next theater over — are absolutely certain that what we need most in life is for this guy to take off his clothes
and make with the flying.
Yes, it might look silly for a grown man to wear a primary-colors supersuit. It might not be realistic that a guy can
jump into the air and catch a falling reporter. We don’t care.
“Say quick if you believe!” Peter says, and we clap our hands, summoning the superhero into our lives. We believe.
Superman 1.53: The Heights
Let’s face it, transportation in Metropolis is fraught with peril. Just seven minutes ago, a detective was pushed in
front of a train, and now there’s a busted helicopter dangling precariously over the edge of a tall building. Elsewhere
in Metropolis tonight, there’s going to be a car chase and a shootout on a boat, and Air Force One is going to be one
engine short when it lands in Metropolis Airport. Honestly, you can’t even walk down the street in Metropolis
without getting mugged. It seems like if you want to go anywhere in this town, you need to have Superman
specifically move you from one spot to another. Otherwise, it’s probably best if you just stay put.
But let’s focus on the current crisis, which is Lois and the helicopter. As I talked about yesterday, this helicopter
rescue scene is a very complex sequence with lots of exciting action shots, and it took twelve months to complete,
using just about every method of special effects available except rubber monsters. So today I want to take a look at
the helicopter that can’t fly, the rooftop that isn’t a rooftop, and the building that’s only about two-thirds of the
building.
Like I said, it’s complex, so I’m going to tell you what I know based on what I’ve read, watched and listened to, and
there is a very good chance that I’m going to be wrong about something. If a knowledgeable person feels like
checking my work and correcting me in the comments, then I would be happy and grateful to hear about it.
But enough with the caveats. The sequence starts on the rooftop helipad of the Daily Planet building, which Richard
Donner says in the DVD commentary was filmed in New York, on the roof of the U.S. Post Office building on
Lexington Avenue.
They built this cute little hutch for the waiting room partly out of balsa wood, for reasons that will become clear
pretty soon.
The helicopter doesn’t actually fly; it’s being operated with cables hanging from an enormous crane. Colin Chilvers
wrote about this sequence in his 2021 book Believing a Man Can Fly: Memories of a Life in Special Effects and Film,
and he explains that the effects team bought a helicopter that wasn’t being used anymore because it had been in a
crash, and refurbished it to fit their needs.
They took the heavy motor out, because it wasn’t going to fly on its own; they just needed a little car motor that
could power the blades. And it turns out they didn’t need full-sized blades, because when they looked at footage of
helicopters in flight, the blades were mostly just a blur.
So for this part of the filming, they could get by with blades that were a third of the size — that made the helicopter
lighter, and also made it safer for people on the set. Later on in the sequence, when the helicopter is stationary on
the edge of the roof, they put the full-sized blades back on.
So the helicopter isn’t actually flying in circles here, it’s being swung around by the crane.
At this point, the little waiting room is destroyed, which is okay because it’s made out of balsa wood and breakaway
glass, and it doesn’t have feelings.
A lot of the sequence takes place here on the edge of the roof, and there are three different versions of this set.
There’s a 10-foot-high version, which they use for all the shots with Lois in them; it’s filmed to look like it’s high up,
but it’s not actually that far from the ground. There’s also a 60-foot version, which they use for the shots of the
helicopter dropping in free fall. Finally, there’s a miniature version made for a wide shot that’s coming up.
So I believe this is now the 10-foot high roof’s edge, with the stationary helicopter using the full-sized blades. The
sparks and fire are practical pyrotechnics.
Then there’s the front projection, which is used a lot in this sequence. Front projection is an in-camera effects
technique that projects pre-filmed footage over both the actors and a super-reflective background screen, and then
that image is reflected back into the camera.
In these shots, they’re using front projection to position Lois against footage filmed from high above a New York
street.
For the most part, the sidewalk scenes are from location filming that they did in New York in July 1977, outside the
Daily News Building on 42nd Street.
When the crowd looks up, this wide shot of the helicopter is a miniature.
And this is the 10-foot-high set again. Margot Kidder’s stunt double was Wendy Leech, and I would assume that all
the shots that don’t show Lois’ face are probably shots of Leech.
Then there are a couple shots of people on the sidewalk looking up at the building, seeing the helicopter on the
roof. These may be the most complex shots in the sequence.
This part of the shot is an image of the building, filmed in New York.
This part is a matte painting, which is combined with the real image…
… to make the building look taller.
Then there’s a little model of the helicopter which moves down the matte painting, and later a model of Superman
carrying Lois and the helicopter back up. This is all combined using front projection with actors who are turned away
from the camera.
They do the same thing in a different shot, from an even lower angle…
where the real building is used as a base…
combined with a matte painting and a model of the helicopter…
and used as front projection that they stack some people in front of. This time, it’s at such a dizzying perspective that
it makes the building look impossibly tall.
Back at the roof set, there’s a shot of Lois holding on to the seatbelt as she falls out of the helicopter. I’m assuming
that this is the stunt double, but this seems too big to be the 10-foot high set. I’m not sure about this one.
Lois looking down is from the 10-foot set…
and her feet dangling over the street is front projection again.
Then there’s an extra scary angle of Lois, still hanging. There’s a hydraulic rig that’s shaking the helicopter.
At this point, Clark finally leaves the building, and finds Lois’ hat on the sidewalk. He looks up, and sees the
miniature shot from earlier.
I think all the footage of Clark running around and changing clothes is on location, although if someone told me that
part of it was in the studio I would believe them.
Then there’s an unfortunate moment with a Black pimp, who admires Jim and his bad outfit; this is a ridiculous and
harmful stereotype, but it is not, in and of itself, a special effect.
Superman gets some altitude in this shot — apparently white men can jump, after all —
and he speeds upwards in another shot. This is obviously wire work, but I’m not sure if it was filmed on location or
with front-projection footage.
There’s more front-projection peril for Lois…
and then there are three shots of Lois in free fall. This first one is on the 10-foot set…
but the other shots are Wendy Leech, falling from the 60-foot set.
Then there are a bunch of wires and front projection shots in a row…
with Superman flying up from the street…
and catching Lois against the front of the building. This is still Wendy Leech as Lois, and stunt double Vic Armstrong
as Superman.
The helicopter drop at this point is using the 60-foot set…
with the helicopter being lowered by a crane…
including this dramatic shot of the helicopter heading straight for the viewer.
Everything after that is pretty obvious — Superman, Lois and the copter are all on wires, moving up against front
projection. Stunt doubles Armstrong and Leech are in this shot.
In the final effects shot of the sequence, we see people on the streets of New York who are all exceptionally well-
dressed and cheerful. Obviously, this is impossible, so I suspect that this crowd is computer-generated.
Superman 1.54: The Stupid Question
I got sidetracked yesterday talking about the special effects in the helicopter rescue sequence, which means I’ve left
dangling reporter Lois Lane up there hanging on for dear life, approximately two feet south of safety.
I hate to leave her up there with nothing but a seatbelt, a camera crew and some front projection for company, but
there are pressing matters that I need to attend to here on the ground, so she’s going to have to hang tight for today.
I’m pretty sure she’ll be okay. The location filming for these Metropolis street scenes was completed in July ’77, and
they didn’t start shooting the hanging-off-the-roof scenes until October, so technically we have three months before
it even becomes an issue.
The thing that we need to discuss today is Clark Kent finally tearing off the guise and garb, revealing the supersuit
and taking charge of the situation. It’s the moment that we’ve been waiting for — some city-stunning from the
caped wonder, at last — and the only thing between us and it is a button-down shirt.
Now, at this point some people might ask where he puts the Clark Kent clothes when he changes into Superman.
They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but then a question like that comes along, and you start to
wonder if there might be a couple exceptions.
The scene begins with a metafictional sight gag that always gets a laugh. Clark realizes that someone up on the roof
needs assistance, and he looks around for a place to change his clothes. He spots a pay phone on the corner, and
gives it the once-over. He sees that it’s not a phone booth, just a little hutch with three half-walls, and he takes a
second to register that before moving on.
This is a reference to one of those elements that make up the collective cultural concept of “Superman”, which was
assembled unconsciously over several decades by the American public, mixing together all of the most memorable
and story-productive concepts from all of the different kinds of Superman stories. Naturally, there’s stuff from the
comic books in there, but there are also pieces that originated in the radio show, the comic strip and the TV show,
held together and reinforced by parodies like the Bugs Bunny cartoon.
The popular idea that Clark changes his clothes in a phone booth originated in the 1941 Fleischer Studios cartoons.
Up until then, the audience never watched him change his clothes in real time — the comic book and comic strip did
the switch off-panel, and on the radio show, he could change from Clark to Superman in the middle of a sentence,
just by dropping his voice at the end of “This looks like a job… for Superman.”
But the cartoons could show the moment of transformation — or as much of it as they could manage, without
actually showing him naked — and the staging choices that the Fleischers made in the early cartoons would
resonate down through the ages.
In the first cartoon, The Mad Scientist, Clark slips off to the Daily Planet stockroom to get changed…
And the second cartoon, The Mechanical Monsters, used the phone booth. In the cartoon, Clark and Lois are
covering an exhibition of rare gems at a Metropolis museum, when a huge robot stomps in and starts helping itself
to the jewelry. Everyone evacuates the museum, and Clark dashes to a phone booth to call the Daily Planet and
report the scoop.
Finishing his call and exiting the booth, Clark sees the robot flying away, and decides it’s a job for Superman, so he
ducks back into the booth, and emerges in his uniform.
This moment wasn’t necessarily supposed to represent Superman’s regular practice; it just happened to be an
appropriate place to stage the scene for this particular story. But the Fleischer cartoons were a big success, and
there were more people who saw the cartoons than read the comic. As far as the public was concerned, this was
how Clark changed his clothes.
The Fleischers used the telephone booth gag again in the fifth cartoon, The Bulleteers. In the other cartoons in the
series, he uses storage rooms and closets, and in some he just looks around and doesn’t see anybody, so he changes
wherever he happens to be standing.
The Mechanical Monsters is really the only one of these early cartoons to stage the transformation scene in a
particularly interesting way, so the telephone booth is the image that stuck with people. Two years later, Bugs Bunny
used a phone booth in his 1943 cartoon Super-Rabbit, and there you have it — a permanent fixture of the American
imagination.
In the early comics, Superman didn’t really do anything in particular with his clothes, because the comics were fast-
moving and a bit slapdash; most of the time he just changed off-panel, and that was that. The one time that Siegel
and Shuster made a big deal about it was in Action Comics #9, in a comedy sequence that basically instructed the
audience not to worry about it anymore.
The story’s called “Wanted: Superman”, and it’s so early in the Man of Steel’s career that the police are offering a
$5,000 reward for anyone who captures the violent lunatic who’s running around and destroying people’s homes.
They get a famous detective from Chicago to come to Metropolis — Captain “100%” Reilly, who always gets his man.
Clark hears that there’s a guy in the hospital who’s out on a ledge and planning to jump, so he ducks into an alley
and changes his clothes. He’s seen by a little shnook named Mortimer Snoop, who’s hoping to claim the five
thousand dollars.
Snoop reports his discovery to Captain Reilly, who comes out to the alleyway to inspect the clothes. He doesn’t find
any identification, so he decides to wait and see if Superman returns to collect them.
Snoop realizes that Reilly wants to chisel him out of the five thousand dollar reward, so they both wait around,
wishing the other one would leave. Superman spots them, and waits to see what happens.
Reilly pretends that he’s giving up so that Snoop will leave, and Snoop does the same, so they both walk around the
block in opposite directions.
By the time they both return, Superman’s picked up the clothes and taken them away, and Reilly and Snoop are both
furious at each other for losing him. And that’s the last time that Siegel and Shuster worried much about what
happens to Clark’s clothes, writing it off as a comedy premise that didn’t have much to offer in the more dramatic
adventure stories to come.
That’s not to say that it never comes up, but it’s usually treated with a vague handwave, like in this panel from
Superman #30 (Sept/Oct 1944), where Superman says, “Now to put on Clark Kent’s clothes, which I have hidden
under my cape!” This doesn’t seem to mean anything in particular.
It’s in the mid-1950s that the writers started worrying about the stupid question, and they came up with an
appropriately stupid answer. This panel is from a story in World’s Finest Comics #68 (Jan/Feb 1954) called “The
Menace from the Stars!” which is either a comics adaptation of the TV show episode “Panic in the Sky” (Dec 1953)
or it’s the other way around; they both came out at pretty much the same time, so maybe they’re adaptations of
each other.
In the story, Superman’s lost his memory after colliding with an asteroid that’s heading for Earth. He wakes up
outside a costume ball, and thinks that his supersuit is a costume. He looks around for identification, and thinks:
“Hmm — this pocket in the cape… why, there’s a suit in it! Odd… But why not try it on? Better than wandering
around in this get-up while waiting for my head to clear!”
So that is supposedly the answer, that the cape has a pouch in it where Superman is carrying around his civilian
clothes, which I find irritatingly prosaic. While our hero is flying around in the clear blue, rescuing damsels and
performing amazing feats, he’s got what is essentially a fanny-pack banging him in the butt, containing his glasses
and house keys. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Naturally, once you’ve started explaining something that shouldn’t be explained, you end up adding more details
that make it worse; it’s midi-chlorians all the way down. This panel is from Action Comics #252 (May 1959) where
the captions say, “Moments later, the shy reporter becomes Superman, Man of Steel! With one squeeze of his
mighty fingers, he compresses Clark Kent’s resilient clothing and special fibre shoes into a compact ball! The next
moment, Superman thrusts his compressed Clark Kent clothes into a secret pouch in the lining of his cape.”
And, I don’t know, am I the only person who finds this utterly depressing? Just thinking about Clark walking around
all day in special fibre shoes and a compressible wristwatch makes me want to cry. What kind of life is that?
By the 1970s, the concept got embroidered even further, with the compressed clothes shrinking down to wafer-size,
and in this story from Superman #296 (Feb 1976), he decides to store the “compressed little bundle” in his mouth.
The in-universe explanation for this strange behavior is that he’s going to meet Lois at karate class, where
presumably he’ll have to take off his clothes and put on a karate gi, so he can’t wear the costume under his Clark
clothes. But why he puts it in his mouth rather than his pocket like a normal lunatic is beyond me.
The story is about Superman temporarily losing his powers when he’s got his Clark Kent clothes on, and on his way
to the karate class, he gets knocked unconscious by a car and taken to the hospital. When he wakes up, he’s wearing
hospital clothes, and he needs to change into his Superman costume.
So I guess that’s why they decided to have him store the costume in his cheeks like a chipmunk, because he wakes
up without his pants. “Accident or not, I’ve got to get out of here,” he thinks, “because I’m sure whatever’s really
wrong with me is beyond the ability of medical science to cure! And my exit is in my mouth!”
Then the caption informs us, “It is the tiny compressed wafer of indestructible Superman costume that Clark takes
out of his mouth, to puff up to normal size on contact with the outside air.” The reference to “outside air” making
the costume grow to normal size makes me wonder if they’re trying to say that this isn’t an unusual case — that
Clark Kent walks around all the time with his costume rolled up into a wafer that he keeps in his mouth.
This is such a monstrous idea that I would classify it as a hate crime against literature. It suggests that Clark has a
saliva-soaked Superman costume that he spits out whenever he wants to change. “This looks like a job for
Superman,” thinks Clark Kent, expectorating his soggy costume into the palm of his hand. There isn’t a Crisis big
enough to wipe that out of continuity.
And so — given the opportunity to create the definitive version of this story, the #1 box-office sensation that will
embody the collective cultural concept of “Superman” forever and ever — Richard Donner gives us the right answer
to that very stupid question.
Clark Kent walks into a revolving door…
The door spins so fast that you can’t see him, like a magic portal…
and Superman walks out. Period.
Q: Where does Superman keep Clark Kent’s clothes when he changes into the costume?
A: It doesn’t matter. It’s magic.
This is how the trick works: The character wants to do something. The audience agrees. He does it. The audience is
happy.
That’s how “the Force” works in Star Wars, and wizards in Harry Potter, and the sonic screwdriver in Doctor Who. It’s
how boxing works in Rocky, and how shark hunting works in Jaws, and how driving works in The Fast and the
Furious. It works because the result that we get is more interesting than anything else could possibly be.
There’s nothing wrong with having a magic costume. People like magic, when the magic thing makes the story more
funny and sexy and thrilling. This is especially true when the alternative is that Superman keeps his shoes in his
mouth.
Later on in the film, they go ahead and put a period at the end of that sentence, by having Clark dive out the
window into free fall, and change into his Superman costume in midair. It’s cool. It’s romantic. It’s magic. Leave it
alone.
Superman 1.55: The Bad Outfit
It’s a moment of celebration — after all this time, with Lois Lane in terrible trouble, Superman emerges triumphantly
from the magic revolving door. The music explodes with pleasure: it’s SU-PER-MAN!
And then we see the only Black character in the movie with a speaking part: a criminal, who rents out women for
sex. “Say, Jim!” he cries, entering the frame with a hat and an amazed expression. “Whooo!”
Superman lifts a finger in response; our hero has no time to hobnob with the locals. “Excuse me,” he says, and
moves on to something more important: a white woman, in trouble.
It’s a funny moment, I’m not going to pretend that it’s not. “Say, Jim! That’s a bad out-fit!” is a funny thing to say to
Superman, the first time you see his costume, and it’s delivered in a funny way. It’s intended as an expression of joy
— a representative of Metropolis street life, appreciating the arrival of an impossible creature.
It’s a moment in this film that people really like, although it strikes me that maybe it’s a moment that white people
really like, and that Black people aren’t necessarily as wild about.
The “incredibly garish BLACK PIMP” — which is how the character is described in the shooting script — was a
recognizable comedy caricature of the 1970s. The Black pimp character is ridiculously overdressed for an urban
street, in mismatched colorful clothes that humorously mimic the fashions of wealthy white people.
The stereotype was so well-known, in fact, that the character on the screen doesn’t even have to be “incredibly
garish” to make the point. He can just be a Black man in shirtsleeves, a couple chains and a hat, and people will
automatically get that he’s a pimp, because why would they put a Black guy on the screen if he wasn’t?
So it makes me think about the Black kids in the audience in 1978, and literally the only Black person in all of
Metropolis that’s worth paying attention to is a pimp. This is verisimilitude, the movie says. This is truth, justice and
the American way.
White people get to be heroes and reporters and evil geniuses. There are white detectives, and cheerleaders, and
pilots, and policemen, and newscasters. When somebody on the street says “Gee” or “What’s that?” or “Oh,
Superman!” it’s always a white person. White people are in charge of the army and the missile tests — and even in
outer space, on a planet millions of years more advanced than our own, it’s still white people in charge, which I find
unbelievably depressing.
There are Black kids in the audience, and the only Black person in the movie with a speaking part is a pimp. Thinking
about that makes me want to just make Black Panther movies and nothing else, and that will be American cinema
from now on.
The actor’s name is Bo Rucker, and in 2011, he was interviewed by author Marc Tyler Nobleman for his blog,
Noblemania. The interview is very sweet, and also a little awkward. Rucker is clearly unsure what to make of
Nobleman’s interest in him, for a one-line part that he played more than thirty years ago.
“At the time I think I was doing an off-Broadway play,” Rucker says. “I was playing Bigger Thomas in Native Son. I was
knocking down commercials. I used to do a lot of commercials — McDonald’s, shaving. The money’s very good in
commercials. You get paid for two to three years for one commercial.”
Here’s what he has to say about the character:
Nobleman: Any anecdotes about filming STM?
Rucker: The funniest part is people see you’ve got on this pimp uniform and people see you and actually think
you’re a pimp! There’s always a lot of people watching. People asked me if I was smoking dope.
Nobleman: The casting people told you in advance that the role was a pimp?
Rucker: I didn’t know it was a pimp till I got there. I mean, I was excited to get it. They could have given me a rabbi
and I would’ve played him. (laughs) I’m a student of life.
Nobleman: When they said it was a pimp, what was your reaction?
Rucker: The casting director gives you a script to read to see what you can do with it. I thought there was something
very funny about the line. I liked the way the line sounded. It was easy money.
Nobleman: The fact that they cast you as a pimp didn’t bother you?
Rucker: No, it didn’t. Morgan Freeman was nominated for an Oscar for playing a pimp! In a movie with Christopher
Reeve. And Terence Howard in Hustle and Flow. It could be a person negative to society, but [that can be a good]
role.
So that’s good to know; he felt good about the role, and being in the film. They talk a bit about what he was doing at
the time of the interview — he was a personal trainer, and he was writing something — and when Nobleman asks
how he feels about Superman fans being interested in him, Rucker says, “It’s hard to fathom that. That’s mind-
blowing if that’s true.”
I’m going to be honest with you, and admit that I don’t really know where I’m going with this post. I keep writing
things, and then deleting them. I would like to have something interesting to say, without a) making it about me, b)
pretending like I can speak for other people, or c) self-congratulatory virtue-signaling, and I am literally already doing
all three of those things in this sentence.
It’s a funny line, but it’s also an unfortunate and damaging stereotype, and it makes me cringe. There are dozens of
places in the film where they could have cast a Black person to play the part, and they didn’t. It’s possible that they
didn’t even think about it.
This is a problem, in this movie and in American culture, and I don’t currently have a smart thing to say about it right
now. But I have a feeling that this is not going to be my only opportunity in the entire history of superhero movies to
reflect on this, and I want to put a marker here, if only for myself, to say: Pay attention to this. Don’t forget about it.
This is going to come up again.
Superman 1.56: The Catch
It’s impossible, of course. Falling object LL descending distance d at velocity v for a given time t, being met by rising
object S at acceleration a, with v equal to a times t, and d equal to one-half a times t squared, would result in falling
object LL rapidly disassembling into her component parts, some on rising object S and quite a bit on the ground g,
making a terrible mess and putting the kibosh on the romance like you wouldn’t believe.
So overall I think it’s best if we stress the fiction more than the science here, and focus on the matter at hand. A
handsome man from beyond the stars has suddenly appeared directly under Lois, sweeping aside the laws of physics
for her immediate benefit.
“Easy, miss,” he assures her. “I’ve got you.”
Her surprised squeak of a response — “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” — is one of the great moments in American
cinema, partly because her comic timing and the crack in her voice are utterly perfect, but also because she’s
expressing the surprise and anxiety of a person who suddenly finds herself starring in a different movie than the one
that she thought she was in.
It’s easy to imagine this scene going wrong; all you’d need is for Lois to be grateful rather than horrified. “Oh, thank
goodness,” she would say, “I thought I was falling to my death, but here you are and you’ve saved me, hurrah!” And
then she’d wave to the crowd like a homecoming queen, instantly comfortable with the idea that gravity is
backwards.
What Lois is actually expressing is more along the lines of, “Holy shit, what’s happening? What the fuck are you, and
what are you doing to me?” I mean, obviously she’s pleased that she’s moving away from the ground rather than
smacking directly into it, but she’s fallen into the clutches of a monster from outer space, and that’s going to take a
minute to get used to.
But John Williams and his orchestra understand what’s happening, even if Lois doesn’t. They’ve been alternating
between urgent danger trills from the string section and rising he’s coming, he’s coming excitement over in the brass
area, but as soon as she falls into the hero’s arms, the woodwinds take over, with a sudden heart-melting burst of
the Love theme.
Meanwhile, the people on the ground are attempting to get their heads around this. “I can’t believe it, I just cannot
believe it,” says a newscaster into her mic. “He got her.” They’ve accepted the creature as a “he”, at least, which
must be difficult to discern at this distance.
And then the helicopter busts loose from its perch and falls toward the crowd below, which is probably something
that the crowd should have been budgeting for from the start. I know that superhero movie New Yorkers are the
model of blasé, but even inveterate bystanders should have been able to see this one coming.
Really, their only hope is that another entirely magical creature shoots up from a side street — say, Jim, they might
say, that is an even worse out-fit — to take care of the impending tragedy.
But the vision in primary colors reaches out a casual arm and plucks the helicopter from its descent, turning the
disaster into a street party. The last time we saw him do anything super was when he petulantly kicked a football
and then ran home really fast from school, but this is what he was born for.
As soon as his hand hits the helicopter, the music erupts — transitioning immediately from danger trills into a full-
throated rendition of the Superman March.
The crowd below bursts into ecstatic cheers, instantly accommodating an extraterrestrial superhero into their
worldview. There’s no hesitation down here at ground level, because this isn’t meant to be a group that’s external to
the audience in the theater. They’re our representatives, and they understand exactly what’s happening and how
exciting it is.
This is the first time in the movie when the Superman March is really appropriate, a triumphant public moment as
he gets a standing ovation from basically all of Manhattan. We don’t see him, as the filmmakers feared that we
would, as a ridiculous cartoon character. He is Superman, and the ritual of summoning is complete.
On the way up, he tries to look in her eyes and establish a meaningful connection; he’s been hoping that something
like this would happen for days.
Her response is to blink at him, and give the ground another worried look. Metropolis may have accepted this
creature as established fact, but Lois Lane needs more information before she commits to a conclusion.
The March comes to a thrilling final flourish as Superman flies them all back into place, and the music ends as soon
as the helicopter hits the landing pad.
“Gentlemen,” our hero says to the dazzled ground crew, “this man needs help.” Somebody else needs to take care of
the unconscious pilot; Superman has more important things to do.
And we suddenly find that everything else has gone quiet. The cheering crowd, the ostentatious victory march — it’s
all faded away into quiet, and comfort. This isn’t a public event anymore. After all of that excitement, the only thing
that matters now is her, and him, and the beating of her heart.
Superman 1.57: A Man Can Fly
So here’s a scene that we didn’t see in Superman: The Movie, straight from the shooting script:
The eagle bursts through a white cloud bank up once more into the clean blue air. After a short moment SUPERMAN
does likewise, trailing the bird.
For a few moments we are privileged to witness this real beauty and poetry of flying as the eagle and SUPERMAN
chase each other through the air doing banks, loops, and dives, swooping closely together like two beautiful fighter
planes in tight formation.
The unspoken ceremony over, they silently acknowledge each other, then head off in different directions.
Obviously, that scene didn’t happen, because who has the time to choreograph eagles, but the interesting thing is
that it made the cut all the way up to the shooting script. That says to me that they really didn’t know how hard it
was going to be just getting Superman to fly in a credible way, without having to do a fucking raptor ballet on top of
it.
We’ve been talking about the helicopter rescue scene for a while, and now we’ve reached the point where we first
see Superman soaring over the city, taking a triumphant night flight to celebrate his first successful feat of
superheroics. He leaves Lois safe and sound on the roofop helicopter pad, and then executes a fancy loop-the-loop
over the lights of Metropolis, just to show the audience that yes, we’ve figured out how to make this work.
Through the entire production, Richard Donner said that the most important thing that they needed to get right was
the flying. Flying is the thing that sets Superman apart from ordinary humans, and it’s the character’s main visual
hook — the man in the blue suit flying across the sky, his red cape flapping in the breeze. If the audience doesn’t
believe that he’s flying, then you might as well give up and not make a Superman movie.
When they started shooting, one of the first things that Donner did was set up a “flying unit” — a team that would
concentrate exclusively on developing techniques to get Christopher Reeve soaring through the air.
There are two kinds of flying shots in the movie. One of them is the takeoffs and landings, where he needs to
interact with people and sets in the same shot — saying goodbye to Lois and zooming into the sky, bringing the cat
down from the tree.
The techniques that they used for these shots are fairly easy to describe in general terms: they’re using wires,
attached to a flying harness. If they’re on location, the cables are attached to a crane; in the studio, they’re attached
to some similar piece of equipment that I don’t know the name of.
As I said, easy to describe, but difficult to actually do. Reeve liked to do as much of this himself as he could, as
opposed to using doubles and stuntmen, but it was a lot of hours hanging in the air. Every shot needed to be set up
and shot individually, and if you could see the wires, or the cape didn’t look right, or Reeve happened to move the
wrong way, then they had to go back and do it again.
So it was hard on Reeve, who had to stay in the air, trying to hold a particular position for who knows how long. But
at least these problems were fairly well understood, and didn’t require mastering a whole new technology.
The other kind of flying shot involves Superman mid-flight, zooming along past cityscapes and mountains and the
Statue of Liberty, moving in and out of the frame and changing direction.
This was mostly accomplished using front projection, which I talked about a bit last week — projecting an image
over the actors and onto a highly reflective background screen, which bounces back to the camera as a single image.
This is a picture of a flying test with stand-ins, when they were developing the technique. For these shots, the actors
aren’t swinging around the set — they’re stationary, attached to a rig that holds them in the right place.
All of the “motion” that happens in the shot — Superman moving across the screen, changing direction — is actually
done by the camera, moving around the actors.
Some front projection shots are pretty straightforward, like this shot of Lois looking down during the helicopter
scene. They’re using a piece of film that’s shot from a particular angle, without moving the camera. The cars on the
street are moving, Lois’ legs are moving, but as far as the camera is concerned, it’s a static shot.
The most difficult shots were scenes like this, where the camera is moving around Superman, while the background
image is also moving. Donner told American Cinematographer that these kinds of shots were essential:
“To put Superman up in the air at a one-dimensional angle and keep him like that would have been an easy answer
to the problem — but not an adequate answer for me, because it wasn’t the ultimate. It was what I had seen before,
or what had been done before… but I wanted a more convincing illusion of reality.
“Star Wars and Close Encounters enjoyed a tremendous advantage over our Superman project… They had the
advantage of dealing with inanimate objects — space machines — that they could fly from place to place… The
spaceships came onto the screen with a great deal of noise and light. Sitting in the theater, you were shaken right
out of your seat. It was magnificent!
“But Superman does not make any noise or emit any light when he flies. This meant that there was a danger that his
flying could seem uninteresting — especially if we simply had him going left-to-right, right-to-left, up or down. As we
have actually filmed him, however, he twirls, he loops, he spirals — he flies!”
To do all of those moves, they had to invent new machines. Here’s lighting cameraman Denys Coop, from the same
magazine:
“It became necessary to create a piece of front projection machinery which is completely mobile. Mobile in every
sense — with tracks and cranes, panning, tilting, zooming, every single movement — because we have been faced
with having a virtually stationary person and we have had to make him travel. So we have had to be thinking in
reverse all the time — moving the camera, creating the illusion that you are following, in fact, a person who is doing
the movement.”
So that’s great, but then they had to figure out how to synch up the camera movements with the background image.
They spent months working on that, and then they found Zoran Perisic, who had worked as a special effects
cameraman on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perisic had developed a system called “Zoptics” — a front-projection camera
rig that moved and resized the background image, based on the camera’s movements and changes in focus.
To see why this is important, imagine that you’re filming the real Superman, with the hero flying in the foreground
and the skyline of New York behind him. If you zoom in to focus on Superman’s face, the image of Superman gets
bigger — but the skyline doesn’t change size, because it’s off in the distance.
Using front projection in the studio, the screen showing the skyline is right behind Reeve, so if the camera zooms in
to Reeve’s face, you would also see the skyline getting bigger — which would make it look like you’re zooming in on
a photo.
Using the Zoptic system, the camera could zoom in on Reeve, and the filmed background image would be reduced at
the same rate. This created the illusion that Superman was actually flying towards us, against the background of a
New York skyline that stays the same size.
They had to be thoughtful when they were filming the background “plates”, with the cameramen working very
closely with the director and art director, to make sure that they got the angles and the movements that would
support the shot that they wanted to construct.
In some cases, when they didn’t have enough coverage for the shot they wanted, they had to build models, with
traffic moving around on the streets and bridges. (I have no idea if the above picture is one of those shots; I can’t
figure out which ones aren’t real.)
They also had to figure out the lighting effects. Lighting is incredibly important when you’re matching up two
images; if you don’t get the lighting right, then it looks fake. Superman had Geoffrey Unsworth doing the lighting,
and he was a genius, so he could do subtle things like this night-flight shot.
In this shot, Superman is flying over the river, with a collection of skyscrapers off to his right. He’s in shadow as he
enters the shot…
but as he comes closer to the skyscrapers in the second picture, there’s some light reflected on his face.
This gets dimmer again, when he turns away from the light source.
Figuring out subtle stuff like that means they had to pay a crazy amount of attention to the details, and redo
everything a dozen times. The flying unit would figure out a technique that made a particular shot better, and
Donner would say, great, let’s redo all the shots that we filmed before, and use this new technique.
One of the great mysteries about the Superman sequels is why the flying effects got worse rather than better, and
the answer is the lighting. Without Donner and Unsworth around to obsess over it, the producers decided to
economize on lighting, with disastrous results.
This shot is from Supergirl, which was made six years after Superman. They didn’t light her properly, so it looks like
Supergirl and the horses have different lighting sources, which means they’re not anywhere near each other.
In Superman IV, they were also trying to use chromakey (aka bluescreen), and if you get the lighting wrong with
chromakey, then you get a little blue line around the actors, as seen on Dark Shadows in the sixties and Doctor Who
in the seventies. Superman IV was made in 1987, when there was absolutely no excuse for this.
Meanwhile, in 1978, they had to figure out the cape, too. Here’s Donner complaining about it in Cinefantastique:
“That cape was a bitch. I guess you just can’t anticipate everything. We spent months getting our first flying shot,
and then we looked at it and something wasn’t right. It was the cape; it didn’t move right.
“So we had to build all kinds of gimmicks and little things to go under the cape. We tried electronic movements,
bottled air, everything. And finally Les Bowie came up with the idea of wiring the cape inside like an umbrella, which
we could control with little gears to give a feeling of flight. But even that was good only from certain angles. Other
times we had to add air and stuff.
“We had about fifty capes in different weights and sizes for different lenses and perspective changes. It was endless.”
And the rest of it, apparently, was in Reeve’s eyes. Here’s Donner, in American Cinematographer:
“Being a pilot in private life, when Chris starts to feel the act of flying, he flies like nobody else could ever fly. When
he is up there, that kid is flying! I mean, he can feel the thermals, he can feel the movement, he can feel the
exhilaration. He’s phenomenal. His hand movements, his attitudes of anger flying around in hot pursuit, how he
shifts his body movements — it’s just brilliant!”
And naturally, Reeve agrees. This is from Starlog:
“The flying is done with me, maybe 30 feet off the floor, looking at an English crew reading the racing forms and
drinking tea. I’m just looking at a vast sea of blackness, 45 bored technicians and a few very funny-looking camera
machines. I enjoyed the physicality of Superman’s flying, but a year of the same thing day after day was not easy.
There was a time, six or seven months, when I didn’t speak a line. It was just interior mental work on the ‘A Stage
Airline’. Fly us.”
And then I guess you start training the eagle, if you want to, but honestly, at this point it’s probably more trouble
than it’s worth.
Superman 1.58: The Alternative
Superman is up in the air at last, and now — at the late date of 70 minutes into a 140-minute experience — we
might say that Superman: The Movie has finally begun. He’s rocketed skyward, a danger to sneak thieves and drug
smugglers, and a friend in need to cats and kings.
As we discussed yesterday, the film’s special effects crew finally figured out how to produce credible shots of the
action ace soaring through the sky, which is great, but it involved a great deal of wear and tear on the harnesses, the
front projection equipment and the lead actor. It’s too bad that the Superman crew didn’t realize that there was an
alternative, which was proposed in Action Comics in spring 1978, on behalf of a British toy company.
This sad story begins, as so many sad stories do, with Batman.
Back in 1966, ABC-TV put together a little program called Batman, a half-hour of silly thrills that was kind of a parody
of Batman comic books and movie serials, but was also in some ways a faithful adaptation of what Batman comics
were like in the ’60s. You and I are destined to unpick that contradiction at some point in the future, but for now, the
important things to note are that a) the Batman show was a hit, and b) it gave a lot of screen time to the Batmobile,
the caped crusader’s crime-crushing car.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, Corgi Toys — a British concern that specialized in die-cast toy vehicles — released
a set of three Bat-vehicles: a Batmobile, a Batboat and a Batcopter. This went along with the other action-hero cars
in their line, which included James Bond’s Aston-Martin, the Thrush-Buster from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and
Steed’s Bentley from The Avengers (not the one you’re thinking of).
Corgi re-released the Bat toys in 1976, which is around the time they started hearing that there was going to be a
big-budget Superman movie coming out in 1978. The company wanted to make a Superman set as well, but there
was a problem: unlike Batman, Superman doesn’t have any branded vehicles, because he doesn’t need them.
Superman can fly.
Marvel Comics had the same problem in 1974, when Stan Lee was trying to get toy companies to produce Marvel
toys. Spider-Man was their most popular character, but he didn’t have accessories, and he definitely didn’t need a
car. Spider-Man swings around on webs and doesn’t need transport, but Stan said give Spider-Man a car, and they
gave Spider-Man a car.
It didn’t last. The Spider-Mobile premiered in Amazing Spider-Man #130 (March 1974), where they mess around
with it for six pages, and then Spider-Man parks it somewhere and forgets about it. A year later, he takes the car out
for another spin, which lasts four pages, and ends with Mysterio tricking him into driving the Spider-Mobile into the
Hudson River, where it stays.
Faced with this merchandising dilemma in 1978, DC introduced the amazing Supermobile, a Superman-driven flying
car which delivered a powerful punch with its extensible metal fists.
That was all it did, actually; the toy only had one feature. If you pressed the red jet exhaust at the back, the two fists
would strike out, and then you either broke them or you pushed them back into their original position, and that was
the limit of the Supermobile’s entertainment potential. I suppose it was more of a cerebral toy, for philosophical
children who were satisfied with die-cast cars that didn’t have wheels.
If you needed more play value than that, you could buy the other toys in the set, which included a Daily Planet news
truck, a Superman van, a police car, and — most exciting of all — the Daily Planet news chopper, which you could
use to re-enact the exciting Lois Lane helicopter rescue.
To justify this low-impact merchandising blitz, Action Comics invested in a complex four-issue storyline featuring the
Supermobile, which I will now tell you everything about.
The story begins in Action Comics #480 (Feb 1978), with a villain so dangerous that he’s already punched you in the
face by the time you get to the bottom of page 1. You hardly have time to take your coat off.
Superman is on-duty at the Justice League Satellite, an orbiting headquarters located 22,000 miles up, which is
convenient for Superman and I don’t think anybody else. A satellite is a weird choice for a superteam’s
headquarters, especially if the team includes ground-bound heroes like Green Arrow and Aquaman. I suppose they
could hitch a ride on SpaceX, assuming that Bruce Wayne is pals with Elon Musk, but any commute that involves a
countdown is kind of a headache.
Anyway, Superman’s bored, waiting around for somebody to do something interesting on the entire planet Earth,
when suddenly a huge fist pops him in the face and now he’s fighting somebody!
This is Amazo, an enormous, partially nude dude who happens to be the Justice League’s mightiest foe. Amazo is an
android who was created in 1960 by the mad inventor Professor Ivo, and he’s utilized the awesome power of
“somehow” to scoop up all the powers of the Justice League, somehow.
He’s terribly dangerous, but everyone thought that he’d been permanently deactivated, so they’ve been keeping
him in an ultra-reinforced display cocoon, downstairs in the satellite’s pointless JLA Museum. There are so many
design problems inherent in this scenario that it’s hard to pick one to focus on, but I guess the main concern is that
you shouldn’t put dangerous people on display, deactivated or not. It’s not like the JLA Museum needs a new
exhibit, in order to attract more tourists. What is the matter with superteams?
Anyway, Amazo is a mechanized organism designed only for smacking around Superman, so he snaps into it right
away. This isn’t one of those situations where a villain sits around for years, developing a master plan. Amazo is
unexpectedly awake, therefore he starts whaling on the first superchump he can get his massive mitts on.
They take the fight outside, punching a distressing hole through the satellite wall, and Amazo continues to dominate
the encounter, protecting himself with Green Lantern’s ring aura and then heating up a huge meteorite and hurling
it at Superman, resulting in this actually rather spectacular panel.
Then we hear from the mad Professor Ivo, currently serving time in a small college campus in northern New
England.
“For years I’ve been dreading this day,” he thinks, looking to the stars. “But now it’s finally happened — the
miniature alarm I implanted in my brain is ringing wildly! Nowhere on the face of the Earth will I be safe!”
Now, I know that neither of us has the time to delve into the intricacies of every single panel of this dumb comic
book, but I would like to take a moment to appreciate “the miniature alarm I implanted in my brain”.
I mean, who does that, and how, and why? I understand that you’d want to be notified in the event of your terrifying
homegrown supermonster being reactivated, but why would you put the alarm in your brain, of all places? I can’t
see the dude’s entire ensemble from this vantage point, but I assume he has pockets. I suppose this is all part of the
deal, when you become a mad scientist; you can’t help but mad science your way out of any problem that arises.
Amazo is able to knock Superman all the way out of orbit and into the sea like a chump, which obviously Superman
is a little curious to know how he did it. So he wings his way to the Fortress of Solitude, where, I’m happy to observe,
some of the crazy Silver Age Fortress stuff is still around in 1978, including Superman’s exhausting giant diary, which
is carved in Kryptonese on unnecessarily large sheets of metal, for the benefit of no one.
Naturally, the second that Superman gets home, he uses his own inexhaustible supply of somehow to instantly
understand the bonkers premise of this story. It turns out that billions of years ago in a distant galaxy, a gargantuan
red sun went nova, sending out a wave of red radiation, whatever that is, which has spent countless eons traveling
through space and has just reached Earth, ta dah.
The red radiation reactivated Amazo somehow, and it’s also weakened Superman somehow, and he realizes,
somehow, that within twelve hours, he’ll have no superpowers at all. Three cheers for somehow, the all-weather
story stuffer.
So then every goddamn superhero on the entire planet decides to hang out in the damaged Justice League satellite
all at the same time, which I don’t care if you’re collectively worried about Superman, it’s a bizarre thing to go and
do. How do you all have time to go to space?
As soon as they’re all gathered in the same location like a bunch of numbskulls, Amazo appears on their viewscreen
and tells them that he’s used a combination of Superman’s super-will power and Green Lantern’s power beam to
wish them all into the cornfield, instantly and silently propelling the satellite into another dimensional plane from
which there is no escape, which sucks. I didn’t even know that Superman had super-will power.
Back on earth, Clark goes outside and runs into the mad Professor Ivo, who explains that “I have now totally
rehabilitated myself!” which is usually not up to the criminal to evaluate. Ivo knows that he’s in trouble, thanks to
the miniature a. that he implanted in his b., which on its own is a reason to be skeptical about the auto-
rehabilitation.
But it turns out that Professor Ivo is correct — he really is in trouble — although with a guy like Ivo that’s probably
always the case. This example involves Amazo the enormous android tracking down his taxicab and peeling off the
roof with an abrasive SCRUNNCHH! as seen above.
Amazo grabs Professor Ivo and carries him away — apparently, he’s mad at his creator for creating him; I’m not sure
why — and Clark needs to turn into Superman in order to take care of the problem.
He doesn’t want the bystanders in Metropolis to see him change from Clark into Superman, so what does he do? I’ll
tell you what. He uses his heat vision to make the taxicab explode.
Seriously! That’s what Superman does today. In order to protect his precious secret identity, he ignites an explosion
in the middle of a bustling Metropolis street, and then he just leaves the car there for somebody else to clean up. I
keep telling people that Superman is a dangerous monster from outer space, but nobody listens, and look what
happens.
Now, at this point, you’re probably wondering how the hell this is supposed to move units of a British die-cast car
with retractable fists and no wheels, and you’re right, they’re taking the long way around. This is the cliffhanger at
the end of issue #480, and it’s in #481 that things start heating up, die-cast-wise.
Amazo has a hate-on for both Superman and Professor Ivo that defies all reason, so at the start of #481, he lines
them up on the street, and then brings down his fists in a mighty KRASSSHHHHH of a death blow.
But instead of being pulverized into dust, Superman and Ivo suddenly find themselves in the Fortress of Solitude’s
teleportation cube, ta dah! Superman managed to teleport them both out of the way, just before Amazo could crush
them…
by using the automatic teleport-activator, which he was keeping in his mouth. Superman, you need to hear this: stop
storing your equipment in your mouth. It’s unhygienic and nobody is impressed.
By this point, Superman has lost his powers, so he needs to stash Ivo somewhere safe, and then figure out how to
defeat Amazo, preferably using equipment that’s not coated with saliva. He’s brought Ivo to his secret hideout,
where he opens up an even more secret door.
He says, “All I’ve got going for me are my wits and — THIS!” and somewhere in England, a die-cast toy manufacturer
pricks up its ears.
Once Ivo’s stored away, Superman writes another diary entry so that he can recap everything that happened in the
last issue, and then — Amazo!
“I vibrated into the Fortress via super-speed — as the Flash would,” says the android, “to avoid setting off your
alarms!” Everything this clown does, he has to explain whose powers he’s using.
But hooray, it turns out the Fortress’ interplanetary zoo is still online, and Superman manages to break free, thanks
to the timely intervention of his pet Titanian Flying Snake, which must be nice to have around on lonely evenings in
the Arctic.
Amazo makes short work of the snake, using Elongated Man’s stretching-powers and Black Canary’s sonic whammy
— it’s always something with this guy — and then he looks around to see where Superman might have gone…
And then — CRASHHHHH! — it’s here, the amazing die-cast sensation!
“What an outlandish contraption, Kryptonian!” the android chuckles. “Have you dignified it with a name?”
“How does Supermobile grab you?” Superman says, to the merry ring of the miniature alarm I implanted in my
brain, for just such an occasion.
Superman 1.59: The Alternative, part 2
I believe that I left you yesterday teetering on a knife’s edge, wondering how Action Comics ever got away with
spending four months in 1978 justifying the production of a frankly disappointing die-cast toy. As you’ll recall, Corgi,
one of the finest names in the British die-cast novelties market, wanted to make a Superman-themed companion
piece to its successful line of Batman toys. The caped crusader had an easily merchandisable Batmobile, Batboat and
Batcopter, so Superman was going to get a Supermobile, whether he needed it or not, which he didn’t.
Showing a ready willingness to bend to the needs of die-cast commerce, Action Comics produced a four-issue toy
commercial, starting with issue #480 in February 1978. That first installment set up the premise of the storyline: A
wave of red-sun radiation that has washed over the Earth, causing several problems.
First, it’s reactivated the deactivated Amazo, an enormous terrifying android who has all the powers of the Justice
League and never lets you forget it. Now Amazo is hunting down his mad scientist creator, Professor Ivo, for reasons
that are not entirely clear. Second problem: The red-sun radiation has dimmed Superman’s powers, leaving him
vulnerable and helpless. Problem number three is that Amazo has tricked all of the other superheroes into gathering
on the Justice League satellite, which he’s propelled into another dimensional plane.
As of the middle of the second issue, Amazo has tracked the weakening Superman to his Fortress of Solitude, where
the action ace has concealed Professor Ivo, and the only way that Superman can fight the android is to jump into his
souped-up Supermobile hot rod, and show the boys and girls at home all of its exciting action features.
As we rejoin the story, Superman has just introduced Amazo and the rest of us to the amazing die-cast Supermobile
by driving it directly into Amazo’s face, which is the only way he knows how to behave.
Amazo is trying to rope Superman’s new ride by using a duplicate of Wonder Woman’s magic lasso — did I mention
that Amazo has all of the powers of the Justice League? — and he dares to laugh at this outlandish contraption.
Superman says, “Now for a demonstration…”
“… to show you what the SMB can do! For starters, there’s instantaneous vertical acceleration!” And there we are,
rocketing through the roof instantaneously, with Amazo clinging on to his little string.
So the first item on the agenda, obviously, is coming to terms with the cute pet name, the SMB. This apparently
stands for Super Mo Bile, so already there’s one strike against the concept.
“You dare toy with me, Superman?” the android growls, battling a toy. “You possess even more impudence than I
gave you credit for!” Supervillains are always pissed off when they encounter impudence; they just don’t seem to
care for it, for some reason.
Reaching into his bag of tricks, Amazo uses Green Lantern’s power-beam to hurl dangerous imaginary objects in
Superman’s direction. “I knew I could count on you for a power-beam attack sooner or later,” Superman explains —
this whole battle is just the two of them aggressively explaining things to each other — “That’s why the SMB is
equipped with special sensors that instantly activate a yellow aura!” There’s an asterisk at the end of that line, with a
helpful caption that reminds the reader that Green Lantern’s power-beam has no effect on anything colored yellow.
That’s how you know how exciting this comic-book battle is; you need at least two explanations for everything that
happens. I don’t really know what a yellow aura is, or how you’d activate one, although technically I guess that’s my
problem rather than Superman’s.
Okay, what else? Well, the SMB is also equipped with every single one of Superman’s ocular powers, including heat
vision, x-ray vision, telescopic vision, microscopic vision and night vision, so if you ever wanted to examine
something microscopic while you’re driving a car then the Supermobile is basically your only option.
Meanwhile, the Justice League dummies are left standing on the sidelines, watching the whole thing on TV through
the make-believe barrier that traps them in another dimension that Amazo told them they were in.
Clearly, the Supermobile is the biggest and coolest and most exciting thing ever, so at a certain point you can’t blame
Amazo from just going ahead and humping it like a dog. I mean, he’s only human, or at least human-shaped. Down,
boy.
But Superman knows how to handle bossy androids who get fresh with the machinery; he activates the robotic
hands, which curve upwards and KLO-PPP Amazo with all the might and fury of the Man of Steel’s super-strength.
These fists are the only actual play feature on the toy, and they don’t work like this. What actually happens is that
you press a button at the back of the toy, and the fists pop out straight ahead with a little click. Then you either push
them carefully back into place, or — inevitably — they break off and get lost or swallowed, at which point you need
another toy.
So this is false advertising, and it sets a bad precedent for the superhero toy tie-ins of the future, if anybody still
feels like making any.
And then just a couple panels later, Amazo says, “So! Your Supermobile is equipped for land-travel as well as sea and
air!” which is also not true; the toy doesn’t have any wheels, which takes land-travel out of the equation. My class
action suit is shaping up nicely so far.
Anyway, that round of the fight ends in a draw, so Amazo vows to kill one of Superman’s supporting cast, and that’s
the cliffhanger that leads into the third issue of the story. This is April now, issue #482, and obviously they have to
begin by reintroducing the goddamn toy all over again.
Live from the WGBS news set, Lana Lang enthuses: “Able to zoom over tall buildings with a single thrust!” (Yikes.)
“More powerful than a Metrack train! Far faster than the SST!”
This is followed by a panel of local yokels, exclaiming:
“Look! Up in the sky!”
“I never saw a plane like that!”
“Where’ve you been, lady? That’s no plane — it’s the one and only SUPERMOBILE!”
So this is about as transparent of a hard sell as Corgi could have hoped for. I can’t imagine that DC got that much
money from the toy license, that it justified cheapening themselves to this extent.
“Earlier today,” Lana continues, breathlessly, “Superman began patrolling Metropolis in the incredible Supermobile
— or, as the headline writers have dubbed it — the SMB!” I’m sure they did.
But the American child isn’t interested in testimonials; we need to see the thing in action, fighting crime. So we get a
sequence in which Superman notices some suspicious activity at the U.S. Armory, and his response is to pilot the
Supermobile — KRASSSHHHH — straight through the wall of a heavily-fortified government installation. This is yet
another example of Superman’s incessant war on architecture that somebody really needs to sit down and discuss
with him.
“You hear that?” says one of the chatty terrorists making themselves at home in the armory. “We are not alone
anymore! Someone approaches!” You know, right at this moment, Richard Donner is in England, explaining to the
crew about verisimilitude for the hundredth time, and just look at what they’re doing in the comics.
The terrorists narrate the entire encounter, which involves science that I’m not going to trouble you with. Basically,
they’re stealing a gun that shoots goop at people, and while Supermobile is hovering in front of them, they try
shooting goop at it.
And then we get the following:
“Utterly incredible! Superman huffs and puffs into that tube — and super air-jets emerge to blow out the flames!”
“That car does everything but sprout a pair of arms!”
“–Gasp!– Now it does grow arms!”
“Is there no limit to Superman’s ingenuity?”
Seriously, this toy is like an inch and a half long, and it doesn’t do anything. It’s astounding how much energy they’re
putting into this.
Finally, our hero manages to track down Amazo, who’s threatening Lois in a random alleyway, and Superman’s idea
of how to make the approach is to smash through yet another brick wall. I swear, it’s amazing that any structure in
Metropolis is still standing.
And here’s where the story starts to stretch credulity a bit. Clark picks Lois up in the Supermobile, and then Amazo
delivers a drop-kick so powerful that the machine flies all the way out of Earth’s gravitational field and through
“some sort of hyper-space barrier” which transports them to somewhere else in the solar system.
Powerfully, desperately, Superman puts his feet up on the dashboard and strains his awesome might to the absolute
limit. “Got to exert my flying power in the opposite direction,” he explains. “Use my body as a human brake to slow
us down! It’s the only chance Lois has to pull out of this alive!”
So that’s your challenge for the day, figuring out what Superman thinks he’s trying to do. You’re inside the car, dude.
All you’re doing is pushing on the dashboard. How is this helping?
And then, unexpectedly, there’s a page that’s actually quite effective. Superman makes landfall on an undiscovered
asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, where there’s a breathable atmosphere and plants somehow, but then they slow
down and give him a moment to care for Lois.
This is like a little preview of what DC Comics are going to be like in the mid-80s, once British people start writing
them. It’s not brilliant or anything, but it’s strikingly different from the nonstop jabbering on every other page. I
don’t think there’s anything else like it in 1978 Superman comics, and it happens in the middle of a slap-happy hard-
sell toy commercial.
So here’s the big dramatic climax, with Superman and Lois cowering as Amazo demands to know where Professor
Ivo is… and then there’s a little squeaky voice from inside Superman’s cape, crying: “Stop! This madness has gone on
long enough!”
And look who it is, it’s little Professor Ivo, the miniature mastermind who’s been hiding out in a pocket in
Superman’s cape this whole time. “I must, Superman!” he squeaks, adorably. “I have no right to endanger your life
or Miss Lane’s any longer!”
Amazo brings the professor back to full size using Black Canary’s sonic whammy or whatever, but just when
everything seems lost, Superman makes a sudden spring, and WHAMMM, he gives Amazo a blow that clobbers him
all the way into the asteroid.
Everyone’s shocked, but it turns out that Superman’s got his powers back, ta dah, because it wasn’t a hyperspace
pocket that they traveled through — it was the time-barrier! which is a thing that happens in Superman comics.
They’ve actually traveled five days into the future, when the wave of red-sun radition has passed by, and I can’t
believe I’m explaining this as if it’s a sensible plot development.
Anyway, now that Superman’s powers are restored, he can just load the humans into the Supermobile and ferry
them back to Earth, problem solved.
Amazo isn’t defeated, unfortunately, and there’s a whole fourth issue devoted to more Superman/Amazo battle
scenes, but this is essentially the end of the Supermobile material. At the beginning of the next issue, Superman
parks the SMB on the roof of the Galaxy Building, and then he forgets all about it.
The Supermobile actually sticks around for a couple of months — Superman uses it again in June’s Superman #324
to clean up some Kryptonite, and he’s still piloting the thing in the following issue. Then it disappears for a year and
a half, and the next and last time that we see it, it’s in Super Friends #27 (Dec 1979). After that, it passes into
nostalgia.
So that went great, as far as Corgi was concerned. They sold so many toys that in 1979, they released a City of
Metropolis playset for the five Superman cars. They also added Wonder Woman and Shazam cars to the line, and I
don’t think those characters needed cars either.
In 1984, Kenner Toys came out with its own Supermobile toy, which wasn’t exactly the same as the original, but was
clearly informed by the previous design. This toy didn’t have fists that popped out of the front, but it did have a
“Krypton Action Ram”, a feature which I have utterly failed to learn anything about.
So this skirmish in the ancient war between Art and Commerce is pretty much a clear win for Commerce, as usual.
Still, it could have been worse; Corgi’s other 1978 Superman toy was a plastic Superman Hopper, so we could have
ended up with a story about Superman bouncing around on his SMH. Maybe I should just get back to the movie.
Superman 1.60: Stop the Steal
Let the city-stunning commence! Now that Superman has rescued Lois from a plummeting helicopter, he’s finally let
off the chain and allowed to spend six minutes hopping around performing one heroic feat after another, piling up
wins.
And just to mess with us, this thrilling sequence begins with Superman doing something that I’m not 100% sure he’s
supposed to be able to do.
I mean, nobody ever said that he can’t stand horizontally on the side of a skyscraper and make smart remarks at cat
burglars; it’s his movie, and he can do what he likes. But Superman isn’t really known for walking up walls; that’s
more in Spider-Man’s line, or maybe the Batman TV show. From what we’ve seen of Superman, his hobby is crashing
through walls, not standing on them.
But what the hell; it’s a kick-ass visual, and it formally announces that if we have limited expectations about what
Superman can and can’t do, we need to rethink that. By the end of the film, Superman is going to do some wild
things we never thought he could do, so this is an opportune moment for broadening his scope.
The interesting thing about this scene is how confident Kal-El is about his place in the world. We’ve seen him hiding
behind the Clark Kent identity, both as a teenager and an adult, holding back so that he doesn’t upset the natives.
But now he’s finally allowed himself to be seen in public as the fascinating creature that he is, and he has no doubts
and no regrets.
After a while, on the Superman TV show, all of the characters started to treat him casually, like a co-worker. “Oh,
Superman, I’m glad you’re here,” the superintendent of police might say to the glowing, radioactive archangel that’s
manifested in his office, holding a blazing sword. “We’ve got a mystery on our hands, and you’re just the one to help
us figure it out.” People can get used to anything, I guess, and once you accept Superman as a fact, then he becomes
another inhabitant of your world.
In the movie, he’s just revealed himself to the public, and people haven’t had time to panic or build bomb shelters
yet. But as far as he’s concerned, he knows exactly what his relationship is to the city, and he’s just going to be
patient until the rest of Metropolis catches up with him.
That includes the audience, and right now, we’re not sure what his plans are for this cat burglar that he’s playing cat-
and-mouse games with. The burglar lets go of his clamps, startled by the impossible thing that’s appeared in front of
him, and he takes a tragic tumble backwards, toward the unforgiving street below. It’s possible that Superman might
actually let the guy hit the pavement — we’ve just met this version of Clark, and we don’t know how he works yet.
But the movie is letting us know how we’re supposed to feel, by giving Superman some playful quips. When the
burglar first sees him, Superman greets him with, “Hi there. Something wrong with the elevator?” And as the crook
plunges towards his messy death on the rocks below, Superman gives him a cheery “Going down!” as he passes by,
en route to his merciful catch.
Just seven minutes ago, we saw hapless Clark Kent perplexed by the elevators in the Daily Planet office, forgotten
and left behind by colleagues who hardly noticed he was there. But now, he has complete mastery over the
situation. He has become the elevator.
What really sells this sequence is the glimpse of a guy’s office, with Superman standing on the windows behind him,
ready to catch the plummeting burglar. This is Superman becoming part of the life of the city, entirely at home in
Metropolis.
This isn’t really a behind-the-scenes post, but I have to talk about how they did this scene, because it’s adorable. We
see Superman standing at a ninety-degree angle on the window, catching the burglar and then falling backwards out
of sight.
The secret is that Christopher Reeve is actually standing on a glass floor, and the office set was built sideways. The
guy in the office is stuntman George Leech, who’s strapped to his chair, looking down at the studio floor. All of the
props have been fastened to the wall, the papers and the trash can and the phones and everything. It’s another
show-off moment that we wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t there, but this movie believes in value-adds.
His act of mercy complete, Superman carries the dazed burglar down safely to the sidewalk. Now, if I understand
how this works, the burglar is now desperately in love with Superman, and he’ll spend a lot of his time looking
wistfully up into the sky, wishing he had a balcony.
And Superman delivers the crook to a nearby policeman with a handshake and a quip, completely secure in his place
in the law and order of things. Oh, Superman, I’m glad you’re here, the city doesn’t say — at least, not yet. We don’t
know him yet, but he knows us, and for now, that’s enough.
Superman 1.61: Thrill of the Chase
I’m just going to come right out and say it — it’s not a compelling car chase.
The crooks’ car turns around a corner, then does a hairpin turn, and then goes down an alleyway to the docks. The
police are two yards behind them the entire time.
People shoot off guns throughout the scene, constantly and pointlessly. People in both cars shoot and shoot and
shoot, to no apparent effect, except to blow out the crooks’ back window, which doesn’t seem to make a difference.
There’s one shot where it looks like the officer driving the car is just shooting straight up into the air.
The scene doesn’t seem to feature either the crooks or the cops; neither of them are giving us much in the way of
reaction shots. The only one that we see is the guy driving with a ski mask, who flinches when the back window is
shot out.
We don’t see anyone on the street reacting to this event, either; this section of Metropolis appears to be zoned for
car chases only. The police car careens straight through two different breakable obstacles — the second one
involving tanks of live fish, which have been left unattended and very much in the way — and the cops keep on
going, unperturbed.
When the crooks’ car screeches to a halt, the film is obviously sped up to make it look like it’s happening faster.
Everybody keeps shooting at each other, bang bang bangity-bang, and nobody even gets wounded.
The cops appear to be armed with handguns, but they’ve got an endlessly refreshing supply of bullets; they point
and shoot, again and again. I tried to count the number of bangs that are definitely produced by the two cops with
one handgun apiece, and my total was around thirty-five.
Four guys get out of the car, but then there appear to be six guys — when four of them get into the boat, there are
still two guys left on the dock. The two on the dock give up immediately, for reasons that aren’t clear. It’s hard to see
exactly what happens…
because the guy in the foreground moves toward the camera and puts his entire crotch onto the screen.
But it doesn’t matter. The fact that this is a not-compelling cops and robbers sequence is kind of the point.
Superman: The Movie keeps trying out different genres — space opera, screwball comedy, James Bond, heist movie
— and then Superman shows up, disrupting the proposed style and taking charge of the movie again. This could
have been a pivotal scene in another movie, but for Superman it’s hardly worth spending time on.
He’s suddenly on the boat, this amazing new phenomenon, and he takes care of the situation in a heartbeat. A guy
sneaks up behind him and conks him on the head with a crowbar, he turns and makes a quip…
And then the boat is sitting in the middle of a Metropolis street, the bad guys already captured, tied up and read
their Miranda rights. We didn’t need to see the rest of that scene, because this is nothing for Superman. He’s been
doing heroic stuff for four minutes, and already it’s routine.
And what do the cops feel, as they watch him disappear into the sky? Do they understand that their genre is
wounded? With superheroes and sci-fi laser battles arriving at the multiplex, films about mindlessly driving around
behind people and shooting off guns aren’t going to be interesting anymore. Superman can solve their problems
without breaking a sweat.
“Mooney,” the cop says, en route to the bar, “the first bottle’s on me. Let me get my hat.” And the abyss gazes back.
Superman 1.62: Catching the Cat
Time Magazine — August 1, 1977:
“Even with the crane and wires, flying is not easy. Christopher Reeve, 24, who plays Superman, has to make a dozen
or so passes 50 ft. in the air before he bags his cat, made suitably cooperative by the taxidermist. Every once in a
while Superman is brought down for an adjustment of his ailerons. He has 25 different costumes and perhaps six
different kinds of capes—for standing, sitting, flying and coming in for a landing. He is now wearing his flying cape,
which is stretched out with wires so that it appears to billow in the wind.
“The changes made, he goes back into the air, accompanied by cheers from local residents who are hanging out of
windows. “Hey, Supraman, why cantcha get the cat?” someone shouts in that rich blend of gravel and adenoids
known as Brooklynese. “Thattaboy, Supraman!” yells another when he actually touches the dusty beast.”
So we’re done now, right? For cuteness? Just the idea that there was a moment in the world when Christopher
Reeve in full regalia was swinging around on a wire all night, while people yelled “Hey, Supraman, why cantcha get
the cat?” at him. That is all I need, in this heartless universe. That happened.
They really did have trouble getting the cat-catching on film, just one of a couple of minor disasters in the New York
location shooting in July 1977. They got a lot of great footage in just a few weeks, including — in shooting order —
Daily Planet lobby and exterior, for Clark’s first day
Sidewalk scenes leading up to the mugging
Detectives following Otis on the street, and in Grand Central Station
Detective getting killed by a train
Clark on the sidewalk and Lois falling outside the Daily News Building, for a scene that was planned for the beginning
of Superman II
Clark and the crowd reacting to the helicopter crash outside the Daily News Building
The crooks’ boat left outside the police station on Wall Street
The car chase at Fulton Fish Market
The helicopter takeoff on the roof of the US Post Office Building on Lexington Ave
Superman handing off the cat burglar to the policeman outside the Solow Building
And then that darn cat, for two nights, ending in rain and disappointment and failure.
There were some minor setbacks during the shoot. The crowd of spectators and reporters outside the Daily News
Building on the first day was kind of intense to deal with. At Grand Central Station, they had to set all the clocks to
7:10 to preserve continuity, which caused some commuter chaos. Shooting the car chase turned out to be a long
series of sad compromises.
But the biggest problem was the night that they shot all the crowd scenes for the helicopter rescue — July 13th —
when New York had a complete and devastating blackout, which led to looting and arson and all kinds of crazy.
It was very hot that night — it’s New York, it’s hot in the summertime — and an approaching cold front caused a
lightning strike at 9:38pm which hit one of ConEd’s key transmission lines, and the entire city lost power for at least
12 hours.
Superman filming actually continued just fine, for a while. They were mostly running their lights off of generators,
although Lighting Cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth was worried that maybe they were responsible for the blackout
somehow. So they kept on looking up and being worried about Lois, while the rest of the city descended into chaos.
The late 70s wasn’t a great time for New York; they were broke and everyone was pissed off. So an all-city blackout
was just the thing that people were hoping for, so they could go outside and do some serious damage to their own
neighborhoods.
Brooklyn was the worst, especially in Crown Heights and Bushwick. In Brooklyn, there were people tying ropes
around the grates protecting storefronts and attaching them to their cars, pulling the grates away with the car, and
then looting the stores. That gives you a sense of how wild it was that night in Brooklyn; people had the time to
premeditate at that level.
There were more than 1,000 fires set throughout the city. More than 3,500 people were arrested. Thousands of
people were trapped in the subways, and needed to be evacuated. And meanwhile, on East 42nd Street in midtown
Manhattan, crowds of people were screaming and then cheering, per request, to demonstrate how they were
feeling about a fictional helicopter crash that they weren’t even filming that night.
After an hour or so, the production started hearing reports of the looting and fires, so they wrapped early, and sent
the cast and crew back to their hotels. I don’t know what happened to all the extras; I hope everybody got home
okay.
And then, a week later: the struggle to get Frisky out of that tree.
This was an important scene for Richard Donner, who wanted to show Superman’s sincere desire to help everybody
that he possibly can. The previous scenes in this sequence involve catching a jewel thief and apprehending
smugglers, and in the cat scene, we see Superman helping out on a small-scale, personal level. It’s not just
earthquakes and plane crashes for him; he’ll even help a little girl get her cat out of a tree, if he’s able to.
Now, that sounds simple, compared to faking a helicopter crash, but to make the scene work, Superman’s approach
needs to be especially graceful. The vibe is that he’s just passing by, notices the problem, and then casually swings
down to take care of it. There’s a very specific tone that they were going for, which had to be worked out in aerial
choreography for maximum style points.
And they just couldn’t get it. The crane had to swing Reeve over to the tree with the right arc so that it looked casual
but didn’t crash into the tree, and at the right speed in order to grab the cat, plus the cape had to billow in the right
way. They were even using a live cat on the first night, which must have been harrowing for everyone.
Here’s how Reeve describes the day, in his 1999 autobiography, Still Me:
My flight path took me past the seventh-story windows of an apartment building. I was wearing street clothes and
the flying harness with my hair done Superman style as I flew over and over again past the same windows. At
around five o’clock a kid of about seven pulled up the window in his room and called out, “Hey, Superman, how ya
doing?”
About an hour later we were still rehearsing, and now I was in full costume. As I flew past him again, he called out,
“Hey, Superman, my mom says come on in, we’re having spaghetti!” I thanked him but said I still had work to do. At
about eight I was still rehearsing the shot (one of our problems was that the cat was getting restless), when my
young friend opened the window and said, “Hey, Superman, take care, I gotta do my homework.”
Finally, we started to film the scene. Take after take this kid would look up from his desk and wave as I floated by,
trying to catch the elusive white cat. At eleven o’clock we were still shooting. (By this time the cat had been replaced
by a dummy.) The window opened one last time. “So, Superman, I gotta go to bed. I’ll see ya!” I guess from his point
of view it was just a normal day in Metropolis.
They had to come back the next night, and it rained, on and off, so they kept setting up and then stopping and then
setting up again. They finally wrapped at 4:30am, and the only useable footage that they ended up with from the
entire two nights was one shot: Reeve coming down towards the tree, with the New York skyline in the background.
(It’s the second screenshot from the top, on this post.) It lasts for a little over two seconds.
The rest of the footage was shot in January, outside Pinewood Studios, with some administration buildings dressed
as a row of Brooklyn brownstones, with American cars on the street.
In the Director’s Cut commentary, Tom Mankiewicz says that most of the footage was shot at Pinewood, but Donner
misremembers it, and claims that everything in the scene was Brooklyn Heights — according to Donner, the only
thing they shot at Pinewood was the shot of picking up the cat. This is obviously not true, and you can tell by looking
at the little puffs of vapor that come out every time the two characters speak. That is January in England, not July in
Brooklyn.
But nobody’s looking at the puffs of breath. We’re looking at the muscles bulging out of his suit, and his
devastatingly handsome grin, and the rock-solid awesomeness of Chris Reeve at his peak of perfection. Of course
everybody ran outside, to break windows and set fires. What else were they expecting us to do?
Superman 1.63: Human History, and How to Not Interfere With It
Now, I thought Superman said that flying was the safest way to travel, but here we are six minutes later, and Air
Force One is approaching Metropolis International one engine short. And it was the best one, too; this is the one
where if you lose it, everybody just gives up and doesn’t want to fly in an airplane anymore.
Now, you know me, I don’t like to be a stickler about these things, but in my opinion, saving the President of the
United States from an imminent air disaster is pretty much the textbook example of interfering with human history,
and Jor-El specifically said that Superman wasn’t supposed to do that.
But when you think about it — and I’ve spent the last 13 weeks of my life doing nothing else — the very existence of
an extraterrestrial man-monster in primary color pajamas flying around and stunning cities is already going to
interfere with human history in a fairly pronounced way, even if he confines his activities exclusively to getting cats
out of trees. If Jor-El really cared about the natural course of human history, he would have aimed his slingshot at
some other planet that didn’t have so many humans on it. You can’t help but bump into human history on Earth; it’s
all over the place.
The real question is, how do you write eight decades of serialized narrative about an obviously history-warping main
character, and still pretend that the characters live in a fictional world that’s anything like our own?
Now, you and I know that you don’t actually have to keep a fictional world in lockstep with ours; it’s a story, and you
can do whatever you want. Watchmen and Miracleman — two 1980s comic book series written by Alan Moore,
which offer skeptical and satirical takes on superhero stories — both take place in worlds where the existence of
extrahuman characters drastically changes human history, and not necessarily for the better.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has recently made a big step in this area as well, establishing an ongoing continuity
where half of all living creatures in the universe disappeared as of Avengers: Infinity War, and then reappeared five
years later in Avengers: Endgame. According to the MCU’s Phase Four projects like Eternals and The Falcon and the
Winter Soldier, this period in history is called “the Blip”, and it’s resulted in major changes to the geopolitical status
quo, except for most of the time when it seems like everything in America is basically the same.
But back in the days before Alan Moore changed how superhero comics work — remind me to tell you about that,
one of these days — the creators of Superman comics and TV shows and movies tried to behave like Superman
stories took place in a world that we would recognize. This was an unworkable idea, as it turns out, and they found
that out almost immediately.
You see, Superman was invented in June 1938, and it only took a couple of years until human history got tired of
being interfered with, and started interfering back.
Siegel and Shuster created Superman as the best and the fastest and the greatest at everything, in a series of tall
tales that followed the Paul Bunyan model, making the hero increasingly powerful by consistently one-upping the
previous story. The very nature of a Superman story is that he can perform any feat and solve every problem; that’s
the guy that America fell in love with. So when real-life dictator supervillains Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin invaded
Poland in August 1939 and kicked off a European war, Americans started fantasizing about Superman going overseas
and taking care of the problem.
In February 1940, the editors of the weekly picture-magazine Look asked DC Comics to produce a two-page story
called “How Superman Would Win the War”, dragging the year-and-a-half-old superhero into grown-up, real-world
conflict.
It went great. Superman enters the theatre of war at full gallop, which was the only way he did anything back then.
“Keep firing! Ach!” say the German soldiers in their underground fortifications. “That inhuman creature has got to
be stopped!” But Superman can’t be stopped by artillery shells; the only thing that slows him down is when he
notices there’s a wall that he hasn’t knocked his way through yet.
He twists some cannons into pretzels and tears the top off some concrete fortifications, then tells the French forces
“Come and get ’em!” which they apparently do. Then he jumps into the air and punches a German plane in the face
— “Himmel!” says the pilot, adorably, “Vos is diss?” — and by the end of page 1, Superman’s crashed through the
ceiling of Hitler’s retreat.
Superman picks up Hitler by the neck and says, “I’d like to land a strictly non-Aryan sock on your jaw, but there’s no
time for that!” This is how Superman used to behave, back in 1940. Not a patient man.
“Don’t fire!” the Germans cry. “He’s holding the Fuehrer hostage!” This just encourages Superman, who heads
straight for Moscow, to pick up another playmate.
Holding his captives by the scruff of the neck, Superman whisks them away: “Next stop — Geneva, Switzerland!” I
don’t know if he reads them their Miranda rights or not; Superman is just a law unto himself at this point.
One panel later, he breaks in on a meeting of the League of Nations, declaring, “I’ve brought before you the two
power-mad scoundrels responsible for Europe’s present ills. What is your judgment?”
And look how grumpy the scoundrels are! They’re having a terrible day. Superman just stands back and grins as the
League of Nations pronounces them guilty, which I’m not sure is a thing that the League of Nations ever did. But if
you put a gavel in front of somebody, then it’s pretty much a guarantee that they’ll start delivering sentences on
whoever’s in their line of sight.
And that is the end of that, as far as Look magazine is concerned. Case closed. They don’t bother to put any kind of
framing around the story that calls it an “imaginary story” or anything, so as far as I know, this is how World War II
actually ended, in the DC universe.
But that was in February 1940, when Americans could still view Nazi aggression from a distance. When Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and America entered the war, readers expected to see Superman actually
pitch in and do something about it. In that early rush of recruitment, American men who didn’t enlist were suddenly
second-class cowards; obviously, Superman wouldn’t shirk his patriotic duty to defend America from the Axis.
The problem, for the Superman creators, was that they weren’t sure where to go with that story. As they’d proven in
1940, Superman vs the Axis was a two-page story — he’d hurtle right to the top, collar the dictators and generals,
and everything would be over in a minute. And then what?
So they came up with an idea that was presented in the newspaper comic strip in February 1942: Clark Kent tries to
enlist, but the recruiting office rejects him.
In the strip, Clark shows up at the recruiting office, strips down to reveal his massive physique, and passes all the
physical exams with ease. Then the caption says, “When the eye tests arrive, he permits his thoughts to wander,
visualizing what he’ll soon be doing to America’s foes…” and we see him absently reading from the eye chart, while
dreaming of giving a German a painful poke in the ass with his bayonet.
In the next panel, Clark laughs, “Ha! Ha! For a second I imagined you’d just said I was rejected.”
“That’s right, young man!” the examiner replies. “The army doesn’t want you. Good day!”
Stunned, Clark asks why he’s been rejected, and the examiner tells him, “You’re physically superb — except that
you’re obviously blind as a bat. When I asked you to read the eye chart aloud, you muffed every line!”
Then the caption explains: “Glancing at the wall, Clark discovers the answer — in his preoccupied state he had
inadvertently glanced through the wall by means of his X-ray vision, and read the lettering on an eye chart in the
adjoining room!”
It’s a cute trick, which establishes that Clark’s patriotic heart is in the right place, but allows him to stay in
Metropolis, where he belongs. Then there’s a panel that explains what he’s going to be doing for the next three
years, in the comic books, the comic strip and the radio show:
“The United States Army, Navy and Marines are capable of smashing their foes without the aid of a Superman! Hm-
mm. Perhaps I could be of more use to my country working right here at home, battling the saboteurs and fifth
columnists who will undoubtedly attempt to wreck our production of vital war materials!”
So that’s why Superman didn’t just go and grab Hirohito by the shirt collar and end the war; it’s because he had too
much respect for the American armed services, and he didn’t want to step on their toes. Focusing on foiling the
sneaky counterplots of German and Japanese spies, he could spend the war happily pursuing side quests without
the responsibility of making any visible progress in the North African campaign.
He gets started right away, too: he sends a letter signed Superman to Congress explaining his plans, and he hasn’t
even dropped it in the mail slot before an early version of Jimmy Olsen brings him a teletype with the stop-press
news that there’s a fire raging at a munitions factory near Washington, D.C.
“I’ll bet those slinky Japs or Nazis know plenty about this!” Jimmy declares, and he’s right; the boy knows his slinky
Nazis. Superman rushes to the site at super-speed and puts out the fire, and then finds that the foreman is one of
those saboteuring fifth columnists. “For the destruction of the United States!” the foreman yells, and throws a hand
grenade, which Superman catches and that takes care of the whole problem.
While he’s in D.C., Superman decides that he’s got something to say to Congress, so he asks them to call a special
joint session, which they immediately do.
“Gentlemen,” the speaker announces, “I have the rare honor of presenting to you one of our country’s foremost
citizens — a typical, clean-cut American — Superman!” I don’t know how typical Superman is supposed to be,
exactly.
The Axis leaders respond to this development in an incredible panel that shows caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini and
Hirohito getting very upset.
“Superman!” Hitler shouts. “Speaking to Congress! Ach! He can’t do that to me!!”
Mussolini adds, “I’d stab him in the back as is my usual custom, but I know the knife would break!!”
And then Hirohito jumps in with a bit of impenetrable fake Japanese, strangling himself and shouting, “Why do I
always guess wrong?” I don’t know what that refers to exactly, but it was probably funny in 1942.
Superman takes a deep breath and then embarks on a demonstration of his super-speechmaker powers, emitting
words at a fantastic rate for two days without stopping.
“During the last several years a wave of evil has been sweeping across the world,” he says, “it has been known as
fascism but in reality it is a repetition of conditions that prevailed during medieval times when feudal lords sought to
wax powerful by crushing the privileges of the vast masses of their fellow human beings.” I bet it is.
“This modern plague has crushed one peace loving nation after another,” he continues. “Austria, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, France. It has warred against Ethiopia, China… and now it menaces the stronghold of democracy —
our beloved America!”
It goes on and on; I won’t trouble you with the whole thing. He name-checks all the Allied countries and commits
himself to aiding in the downfall of the fascist vultures, and then he declares that he’s going to fight “our most
insidious foes… the hidden maggots — the traitors, the fifth columnists, the potential quislings who will do all in
their power to halt our production of war materials.” You’ve got to figure that’s going to create a stir in the quisling
community.
He also says, “I will be on the alert for the old totalitarian trick of creating disunity by spreading race hatreds,” which
is great although I don’t suppose it applies to Japanese-Americans, who he starts beating up almost immediately.
Now, this plan doesn’t apply to the comic book covers, where Superman takes a more active role — crushing Nazi
cannons, punching Japanese U-boats in the face, catching artillery shells in mid-air. You know, Superman stuff. But
these are individual acts of patriotic high spirits, rather than a strategy.
This panel is more Superman’s style during the war, wrecking a safe to discover the secret plans of the subversive
“101% Americanism Society”.
“Here’s potential dynamite!” says one of the federal G-men who are apparently working with Superman. “According
to this document, the brains of the Society is none other than Major Jonathan Ramsey!”
Superman — caught in mid-stride, having a lengthy conversation while rushing around the room — cries, “Ramsey?
But he’s a World War I hero, respected by all!!”
Another G-man replies, “Which just goes to prove there may be quislings even in high places!” See what I mean,
about the quislings?
So that’s how Superman didn’t win the war; he mostly just talked about how great America’s fighting men were, and
then left them to it. Apparently, it worked, because we won the war anyway.
Now, obviously World War II wasn’t the only armed conflict that Superman had to avoid in the ensuing years; there’s
also the Vietnam War, which he tried to monkey with in one very strange 1969 issue that I would like to tell you
everything about.
Superman 1.64: Human History, and How to Not Interfere With It, part 2
I was talking yesterday about human history, and so far I’m only up to World War II, so I’m afraid there’s quite a bit
left.
In Superman: The Movie, Jor-El tells Superman that he must not interfere with human history, which may have
seemed like a good idea in the abstract but is pretty hard to achieve, especially for a guy who can fly and blow things
up with his eyes. That kind of thing tends to make a noticeable dent in the arc of history, one way or another.
Superman first encountered this problem just a few years after he was created, when everybody expected him to go
and fight on the front lines of World War II, which — given the inherently unstoppable nature of his character —
would have led to a limited set of story options.
As we saw in the excerpts from WW2-era Superman comics yesterday, the common American understanding of the
war was that there were three or four bad people in the world — Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and maybe Stalin — and
if we could apprehend those individuals and bring them to an international tribunal for justice, the war would be
over and everything would be fine. It was basically a battle with a handful of powerful supervillains, and that kind of
thing is right up Superman’s street; he could just leap over to Europe and head east, collecting dictators as he went
along.
So let’s say that Superman gets his hands on Hitler, and serves him a hot slice of comeuppance. Then what?
It’s not actually a problem if Hitler is defeated in the comics and not in real life, because comics are fictional and
nobody expects them to be literally true. The problem is that there’s nowhere else to go with that story. Long-
running serialized narrative needs a constant supply of interesting plot points to pursue, and if Superman readers
are interested in reading war stories, then you can’t have your main character go and stop the war on page three.
So the creative solution for the comic books, comic strip and radio show was to send Superman out on endless side
quests, hunting saboteurs, fifth columnists and Axis-flavored superfoes. That provided him with a constant supply of
people to unmask and punch in the face, without the burden of having to make progress in the overall World War II
storyline, which they didn’t have any control over.
That strategy was clearly the correct one, and that’s why we still have a Superman. The Golden Age of Comics in the
1940s was full of stars-and-stripes heroes fighting the Axis directly — Captain Flag, Captain Freedom, Miss America,
Miss Victory, the Star-Spangled Kid, U.S. Jones, the American Eagle, and the daring duo of Yank & Doodle — and
when the war ended, there was nowhere else for them to go. The patriotic characters that survived were Superman
and Captain America, and even the Captain had to spend some time in the freezer.
But things got more complicated for Superman in the 1960s, as you can see in this letter published in the Metropolis
Mailbag page in Action Comics #338 (June 1966).
Dear Editor: I’m one of Superman’s greatest fans. But there’s one thing about him that bugs me. If he’s so super-
powerful, why doesn’t he use his abilities to give our armed forces a hand and end the war in Viet Nam? — Peter
Tarsch, St. James, Winnipeg, Canada
Now, the obvious answer to this question is that Superman is fictional and superheroes aren’t real, but the guy
comes from Winnipeg and I don’t know what their school curriculum was like. Here’s the editor’s reply:
Superman figures the U.S. is good enough to win this conflict without his help! Besides, warfare involves killing,
which is strictly against his moral code. — Ed.
That first sentence is straight out of the World War II playbook, when Superman gave regular pep talks about how
the American troops could handle things. The second sentence is more of an innovation, and as we’ll see, a
troubling one.
A few years later, the Metropolis Mailbag got a direct request from the troops, which was printed in Superman #214
(March 1969):
I never read any comic mags until I arrived in Viet Nam. It seems that Superman outsells Playboy over here. How
about a story for my unit (173rd) where Superman comes to Nam and helps bring this war to a close? I’m presently
in the 91st Evacuation Hospital in Tuy Hoa, with a gunshot wound in my right leg. So I’ll have plenty of time to look
for your story. — Cpl. Thomas F. Dorf, Tuy Hoa, Viet Nam
This time, the editor’s answer was not a profile in courage.
It takes a while for a story to be written and processed. By the time we could get a tale of Superman in Viet Nam,
something may break that will end the war for real. At least, we hope so! — Ed.
As it turned out, there were another six years before the Fall of Saigon, so they didn’t really need to worry about
how topical the subject was going to be. But strangely, just two months later, they actually did run a story that did
exactly what Cpl. Dorf asked for.
The story is called “The Soldier of Steel”, and it was published in Superman #216 in May 1969.
The cover shows Superman on the front lines, surrounded by the dead and wounded, as he faces down an
enormous figure looming out of the fog. Taking off an army uniform, he thinks: “My orders are to destroy that G.I.
giant! The only way to save our platoon is to break my code against killing!” So we’ll see how that goes.
The story begins with teen rebel Johnny Morely, an American G.I. stationed in Anytown, Vietnam, losing his
goddamned mind. As he breaks from formation and runs off in no particular direction, there’s a little chorus of
comrades who discuss the situation. We’re going to see a lot of that technique in this story — a little intel from the
band of brothers, chattering away whenever the action gets heavy.
“Johnny! Johnny — come back!”
“The poor kid’s flippin’!”
“Yeah — he broke under the shelling!”
So this is a very different direction than the glib “America can handle this without Superman’s help” concept. As
we’ll see, this story is very confused about what it wants to say, and it’s interesting that it opens with a graphic
depiction of the mental suffering of an American soldier.
And then it gets weird.
“From the sinister jungle erupts a gigantic figure,” says the caption, “its immense features distorted in diabolical
fury!” And here he is, the G.I. giant, picking up a tank and trying to figure out what he’s going to do with it.
The shocked soldiers exclaim:
“That character’s a king-size colossus!”
“He’s dressed like one of us… but he’s fighting for the Cong!”
“Yeah… King Cong, that’s him! Look at him pick up that tank like it was a sardine can!”
“Where’s Superman? He should be out here with us — clobberin’ this man-mountain!”
So that’s an earnest little spray of DC dialogue that establishes how this is going to play out, tone-wise. “Look at him
pick up that tank like it was a sardine can!” is not a sentence that occurs in nature. In the next panel, they try to
shoot the monster, but find that he’s invulnerable: “Our shots are rattlin’ off him like popcorn!” That’s how
everybody talks.
Even during an action shot, the characters get to hang in midair and have a conversation:
“This human batterin’ ram could only be stopped by Superman!”
“What’s Supie doin’ now that’s more important than to keep us bein’ clobbered?”
“Write to your congressman! Tell him Superman’s forgotten about us!”
The soldiers in this comic sound like Huey, Dewey and Louie; they always have the same opinions about everything.
They also use the word “clobbering” twice on the same page, which is apparently the DC-approved term for “killing”.
And then, get a load of this. When the clobbering is complete, the giant stomps off through the jungle to
reconnoiter with his trainer: Dr. Han, a Vietnamese dragon lady.
If you’re not familiar, “dragon lady” is a regrettable Asian stereotype that I hope by now has passed from the earth.
The dragon lady is a powerful, manipulative woman who uses a combination of fierce intelligence, sex appeal and
ruthlessness in order to seduce and then destroy her enemies. Dragon ladies were all over the place in mid-20th
century adventure fiction. The term was coined in 1934 for Milt Caniff’s newspaper strip Terry and the Pirates, which
everybody says is very important if you’re interested in the history of comic strips, but somehow I’ve never gotten
around to it.
It’s all part of the Yellow Peril, a racist ideology that played a distressingly large role in the development of late 19th
and early 20th century adventure fiction. Fu Manchu is the best-remembered Yellow Peril villain, and unfortunate
analogues show up all over the place, including stuff that I like: Flash Gordon (Ming the Merciless), Doctor Who (the
Celestial Toymaker and Weng-Chiang), Iron Man (the Mandarin) and Batman (Ra’s al Ghul).
The basic idea in Yellow Peril fiction is that Asian people are supposed to be short, cowardly, physically weak, and
essentially identical — and in order to make up for these physical shortcomings, they’re born connivers. They lie,
they make complicated plots, and there are tons of them, so they can overwhelm the physically superior white
heroes through sheer numbers. Asian people in Yellow Peril fiction are basically reptilian, with claw-like fingernails
and sharp, poisonous fangs.
The common words to describe Yellow Peril characters have lots of hissing S sounds, like sneaky, scheming, sinister
and inscrutable. We’ve already seen the word “sinister” pop up in this story; stay tuned for a couple more from the
list.
And hey, here’s one now: “Like a gigantic Samson being ensnared by a scheming Delilah,” says the caption, “the G.I.
giant receives his reward.”
The reward is a kiss from the dragon lady, obviously; she’s managed to drug the shell-shocked Johnny and turn him
into her monstrous hypnotized love slave. “You will attack the Americans again and again, until you drive them back
into the sea — to sink like stones!” she says. That’s dragon ladies for you.
But it looks like Corporal Dorf’s Metropolis Mailbag query got rerouted to the desk of Clark (Superman) Kent, who
reads it with X-ray vision rather than opening it like a normal person. “I don’t have to open the letters to read their
contents!” he humblebrags. “My X-ray vision tells me they’re all the same… complaints against Superman for not
helping the troops in Vietnam!”
The caption describes this as “a rising tide of G.I. mail”, which makes me wonder how many letters the DC offices
actually received.
Clark decides to do something about it, so he goes to Perry with a story idea: “I’d like to go to Vietnam — mingle
with the troops in the front lines — find out about their beef with Superman! Not as a reporter… as a fellow soldier!
But I don’t like killing, so I’ll go as a medic!”
Perry thinks that this is a great idea, but I have my doubts. Does the Army actually take requests like this? It sounds
to me like they’re playing a practical joke on soldiers, inserting random people into their unit under false pretenses. I
can’t imagine that’s good for morale; it’s no wonder we’re having a tough time with the war.
I wrote yesterday about the 1941 comic strip storyline that established why Clark (Superman) Kent stayed home in
Metropolis, rather than enlisting in the Army: he did well in the physical, but flunked the eye exam, because he
accidentally used his X-ray vision to read the eyechart from the exam room next door.
This story has a similar sequence, which they play for laughs. It begins with the doctor shocked to hear Clark’s
“super-heatbeat” through his stethoscope, and Clark has to use his “super-ventriloquistic powers” to convince the
doctor that what he heard was thunder outside.
And then they do a riff on the eye exam scene, which I think is probably an intentional callback. Clark reads a string
of letters off the eyechart, and the doctor says, “I’ll have to disqualify you! You’re almost blind!” — a paraphrase of
what the doctor told him in 1941. The gag in this version is that he was reading the tiny “Printed by the Acme Press”
line at the bottom of the chart, because Superman is a smartass.
So it’s next stop Saigon, as a disguised Superman travels to the front lines on a transport plane with his new unit.
Down below, “pitiless enemy eyes” are watching the American plane approach, so we’re really just going full-on
Yellow Peril today. “The unwary Yankees do not know we have hidden anti-aircraft guns here!” says the scheming
Vietnamese soldier below, and then lets loose with a charge that blows a hole in Clark’s plane.
What happens next is extremely complex. A soldier falls out of the plane, and Clark thinks, “I can’t let him die! I must
take the chance that no one will see me using my suction breath in this confusion!”
He takes the chance, and guess what, it works. “What luck!” the rescued soldier says. “An updraft must’ve yanked
me back inside!” which is so bizarrely slap-happy that I can barely believe it. You’re on a plane that’s currently
crashing. Why would you consider yourself lucky in this moment? How would an updraft do that? For that matter,
how does “suction breath” work? So many questions.
But the most curious part of that sequence is the line “I can’t let him die!” which opens up a whole line of thought.
This is a war. People are using weapons, and soldiers die. There are other soldiers dying all over the place. When
Clark says “I can’t let him die,” what he means is that he can’t let the one soldier die who happens to be in front of
him, right now.
When you think about this, it demonstrates how arbitrary Superman’s moral code is. At any given moment, there
are countless numbers of innocent people who could use his help all over the world, and he helps the ones that
catch his eye. The people on the plane that got shot down yesterday had to deal with it themselves, but this guy is
standing in front of him, so all of a sudden it’s a moral imperative to help him.
I know, I’m being cynical, but Vietnam does that to people. I may have pissed off Superman; in this panel, he’s giving
me the stink-eye like you wouldn’t believe. Clark managed to jump out, turn into Superman and catch the plane
before it hit the ground, and I’m not being very appreciative.
The soldiers jump out, guns blazing, and there’s another snatch of dialogue from a faceless foursome.
“Look! It’s Superman!”
“Who said he wouldn’t come out here to help us?”
“A lot of good that’ll do — now!”
“Yeah! We’ll be cold meat on the table for those guns before we can dig foxholes for cover!”
I don’t know what to do with these little barbershop quartets that spring up throughout the book; they seem so
cheerful, even when they’re about to be clobbered.
To help out, Superman digs them a trench at superspeed, and then protects them by playing catch with the
incoming artillery fire. There’s another happy chorus, including a couple of baseball references that I don’t entirely
understand.
“Wow! Look at Supie snarin’ those TNT Texas Leaguers!”
“He could teach baseball bigs a few things about fielding!”
“This is better than any U.S.O. show he could put on!”
And I don’t know, maybe that’s exactly what soldiers sound like on the front lines. I can’t prove that they don’t.
Now, the key to Superman’s intervention plan is that he’ll touch machines and objects, but not people. This is what
he does: “Instantly, Superman leaps at the tanks, and with super-karate blows, cleaves them open like bursting
cans.”
Super-karate blows.
You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Superman practice his super-karate before; I wonder why that’s coming up
now. He’s certainly turning those tanks into chop suey; it must be one of those ancient Chinese secrets.
Once he’s taken care of the tanks, the cheerful soldiers cry:
“C’mon, guys! Let’s back Superman up!”
“Thanks for mindin’ the store while we got organized, pal!”
“We’ll take care of these new customers!”
“They’re comin’ on like it was a fire sale!”
“If it’s scorched goods they want… we’ll give ’em plenty!”
And then they go and shoot a bunch of dudes, which makes me wonder about this amazing moral code that
Superman’s got. He says that he won’t kill — I guess those tanks he’s been cleaving were all radio-controlled — but
he’s certaintly facilitating the killing that’s happening just off-panel.
Then the caption says “meanwhile, in the inscrutable jungle,” because of course it fucking does. The giant has gotten
tired of clobbering things and returns to Dr. Han, who watches him transform back into his ordinary shape.
“The secret jungle herbs I gave him when he was captured alter the density of his body,” says the scientist, “and
create an aura that changes the size of his costume, too! He is sometimes a cowardly soldier — and sometimes a
raging giant, doing my bidding!” Good to know.
Confused, Johnny runs off into the jungle, and Dr. Han sneers, “He’ll return to his his unit now… to burst forth like a
booby trap, when the herbs make him grow again! Then he will destroy his own comrades!” This is all extremely
wily.
Johnny returns to his unit, apparently recovered from his shell shock; now he’s all smiles. He quickly befriends Clark,
and invites him on a field trip: “All the guys are visiting orphanages, taking gifts of K-rations and candy! I’d sure like
you to come with me!”
Now, I don’t know enough about the Vietnam War to know if this is a reference to something that American troops
actually did; I know about the massacres, but not the candy distribution programs. Presumably, these kids are
orphans because American troops killed their parents, so I’m not sure why they look so happy, but I guess everyone
likes candy.
At the orphanage, Clark finds Lois, who’s also managed to book an investigative jungle vacation, and she’s been
helping the children the only way she knows how, which is to obsess over Superman. “Just look at the picture of
Superman I helped the kids paint!” she says. “Isn’t it darling? Their one wish is to meet him!” Well, maybe not their
one wish — I bet having their parents alive is on that list — but Superman is probably in the top two.
“Maybe Superman come here Easter?” a little orange-faced orphan says, inscrutably. “We pray for him every day!”
Weird.
Then the scheming Vietnamese start attacking the orphanage for some reason, so Clark changes clothes and catches
all the bombs, throwing them back at the enemy mortars.
“Aieeeee — the Devil is on the side of the Yankees!” says the Vietcong rep. “We will never be able to capture the
orphanage — with Superman there!” I don’t know why the Vietcong are trying to capture an orphanage with mortar
shells; they just are. They’re really struggling to come up with ways to make Superman into the good guy.
There’s also a side plot about Lois collapsing from jungle fever, which I don’t want to talk about. “Miss Lois very
sick!” the children say. “She fall down!” Jesus Christ.
Okay, are you ready for this to get even more perplexing? Here we go. Superman’s flying around the battle zone
when he hears an urgent appeal over the radio: “General Morely calling all units! If you see Superman — notify him
to come to my headquarters immediately! It’s urgent!”
So that brings up the confusing question of Superman’s relationship with the armed forces. He’s not here as a part of
the military; he’s a vigilante, a rogue agent acting on his own. In 1941, he didn’t try to enlist in the army as
Superman; he presented himself at the recruiting office as Clark Kent. But here he is, showing up on request, saying,
“I got here as fast as I could, General!”
And the General just goes straight into giving him instructions: “You’re needed to destroy a new enemy weapon,
Superman… a berserk giant who runs amok against our troops!” He was doing that anyway.
Then General Morely looks at combat photos of the giant with a magnifying glass, and discovers: “H-he’s wearing my
West Point ring! The one I gave to — to — Great heaven! There’s no mistaking it! King Cong is… my own son!”
There’s your big plot twist: the General’s son is little Johnny Morely, the shell-shock kid, who’s under the intermittent
control of Dr. Han. The General considers the situation, and issues the following statement: “I don’t know what has
turned him into a monster! But he is a threat to countless American lives! My — my order still stands! Destroy him
— before he can do any more harm!” I don’t know why Superman is taking orders, but he seems to agree.
Then it’s back to Dr. Han, who activates Johnny’s jungle herbs by kissing him. “Holy mackerel! Has this Viet dish
flipped for me?” thinks Johnny. And then he turns into a monster.
So here’s an interesting fact about the war: American tanks have people inside them, who are concerned about
being beaten to death by the super-powered monster bent on their destruction. That’s just a fact that I know about
American tanks.
Okay, we’re almost done. Superman flies out to battle, and a soldier shouts happily, “Now our own ‘secret weapon’
is gonna clobber King Cong!”
But before they can get down to serious clobbering, General Morely shouts to the monster, “Johnny! Stop! What’s
happened to you?” And Johnny recognizes him, obviously, because that’s how fiction works.
Superman takes the opportunity to hurl Johnny off into the distance, where he can turn back into a person and get
his life together.
And once again, we see our hero messing around with tanks, which saves the day without killing anybody,
apparently.
But then Johnny comes running out of the jungle — his mind once more his own — and he just starts blazing away
happily at the Vietcong troops.
“Superman!” cries General Morely, father of the year. “Help my son… before the Vietcong fire cuts him to pieces!”
“No, general!” Superman responds. “Give him a chance to fight back his own fears, or he’ll always be a coward!”
So that’s morally incoherent, on a drastic scale. Superman says that he doesn’t want to kill, but he specifically holds
himself back from stopping the slaughter of the Vietcong, because he wants Johnny to grow up and become a
proper gun-toting, Cong-murdering soldier. I don’t know how you get your head around that.
But here’s the happy finish — Dr. Han and the surviving Vietcong are taken away as prisoners, and Johnny gives the
fiendish doctor a sarcastic smooch on the cheek as she passes by. “Say, I remember you now,” he mocks. “Thanks for
making me super, so I could clobber your Cong buddies!” I guess we’re still calling it clobbering.
More happy endings: Lois recovers from her jungle fever, Johnny’s heroism has wiped out the jungle drug’s effects,
and now Johnny knows how to conquer his fears and kill the VC. Everything’s working out!
And here’s the big finish: Superman putting on a show for the troops, creating a merry-go-round of happy
Vietnamese orphans singing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” with a puff of his super-breath, because it’s Easter, and I
don’t know. Maybe Jor-El was right, about the human history. It’s probably better if we just leave it where it is, and
go find something else to interfere with.
Superman 1.65: You’re Doing It Wrong
And he flies, soaring across the sky on wings made of wax and feathers and cables and front projection. He catches a
reporter, a helicopter, a burglar, a boat, a cat and a very important airplane all in a row, and deposits each one
exactly where it’s supposed to be, as the crowd cheers. He is here, and he is magnificent.
And then he goes home and gets yelled at by his dad, which I for one find intolerable.
I’ve written before about the various versions of Superman: The Movie, including the bloated Extended Cut with an
extra 45 minutes of mostly worthless footage, and the more restrained Director’s Cut released in 2000, which only
added 8 minutes of mostly worthless footage.
We’ve reviewed a few of these correctly-deleted scenes, including Lois’ parents on the train and the “feed the
babies” scene in Lex’s lair. Now we get to a scene that made it into the Director’s Cut, which I think would have been
the worst sequence in the movie: the apology scene.
It comes right after all the exciting rescue sequences, when the audience is just coming down from the burst of
thrilling superhero action. The march dies down, and we see the Fortress of Solitude from across the Arctic
wastelands. There’s a pause, and then Jor-El’s echoey voice: “You… enjoyed it.”
And then we see Superman, standing to attention like a naughty schoolboy behind the crystal control lectern.
Superman: I don’t know what to say, father. I… I’m afraid I just got carried away.
Jor-El: I anticipated this, my son.
Superman: You couldn’t have!
(He scoffs, smiling at the recollection.)
Superman: You couldn’t have imagined…
(Then he collects himself, and looks down, ashamed.)
Jor-El: … how good it felt?
(Superman nods.)
Jor-El: You are revealed to the world. Very well. So be it. But you still must keep your secret identity.
Superman: Why?
Jor-El: The reasons are two. First, you cannot serve humanity twenty-eight hours a day —
(Superman smiles.)
Superman: Twenty-four.
Jor-El: — or twenty-four, as it is in Earth time. Your help would be called for endlessly, even for those tasks that
human beings could solve themselves. It is their habit to abuse their resources in such a way.
Superman: And secondly?
Jor-El: Second… your enemies will discover their only way to hurt you — by hurting the people you care for.
Superman: (nods) Thank you, father.
Jor-El: Lastly… do not punish yourself for your feelings of vanity. Simply learn to control them. It is an affliction
common to all, even on Krypton. Our destruction could have been avoided but for the vanity of some who consider
us… indestructible.
Jor-El: If it were not for vanity, why… at this very moment… I could embrace you in my arms.
Jor-El: My son…
(Superman raises his arms, as if to embrace the mental projection of his father.)
(The projection of Jor-El fades.)
(Awkwardly, Superman puts his arms down.)
So: I can see the appeal of more Superman/Jor-El interaction. Brando is always fun to look at and listen to, and the
father and son having a conversation about their feelings is, in the abstract, difficult to resist.
But this is the wrong time for it, and the wrong tone. As the audience, we have just been enjoying ourselves
tremendously, watching Superman slip the surly bonds and rescue everybody in his line of sight. And now we have
to see him hauled into the principal’s office, for a lecture.
It’s the “sorry, father” and “thank you, father” stuff that bugs me, really. Superman spent a ridiculously long time in
Arctic grad school getting trained up, and he’s just on the verge of going out with girls. After a very long prologue,
he’s finally grown up, and I don’t like seeing him acting like a little kid. Keeping his secret identity should be his own
grown-up choice, not just something that he’s being told to do.
Now, the “twenty-eight / twenty-four” moment when Superman corrects Jor-El is very cute, and if this was a more
grown-up conversation, then it might have been worth saving. But as it is, I think it’s a downer, and not worth being
in the Director’s Cut. It turns out the best version of the film is the one released to theaters, as is often the case,
thank goodness.
Superman 1.66: So Below
“… Some sort of fantastic hoax,” says the man on the TV, and he’s right; as hoaxes go, this one is terrific. An angelic
figure from beyond the stars has appeared in the night sky, righting wrongs and gathering up loose housepets. “Your
guess is as good as anybody’s,” the man on the TV continues. “True or false, miracle or fraud?”
“Miss Teschmacher!” shouts the man in the swimming pool. “Turn it off!” He’s something of a miracle or fraud
himself, and he’s not used to competition.
As above, so below: tonight, the secret king of the sky is revealed to an awestruck city, while the emperor of the
underworld stews in his cavern, doing the backstroke.
You couldn’t ask for a stronger contrast: Superman soars through the air in full view of the public, and his archenemy
lurks in his hole, underground and underwater.
It’s nighttime in the world above, but down here, it’s an artificial afternoon on the Costa del Lex. Cut off from the
surface world — as much by choice as by circumstance — Lex Luthor and his hangers-on amuse themselves with
tanning sessions under stolen sunlamps.
They have a world of their own devising, a tiny empire of heaven or hell, as they choose to construct it. Down here,
they play out their little Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-meets-The Book of Genesis domestic drama, starring Eve, the
serpent and their idiot child.
The only thing that penetrates is the daily drumbeat of the journalists, bringing bulletins from above in the form of
newspapers and TV news broadcasts. Typically, Luthor appreciates new information — it all adds up, as he
continually expands the galactic scope of his schemes — but tonight, it’s delivering truths that he doesn’t want to
hear.
As usual, Eve wants more knowledge from the serpent — that’s basically her job, just requesting one apple after
another. “What’s the story on this guy?” she asks. “Do you think he’s the genuine article?”
And look, down in the water: it’s a crook, it’s a shark, it’s Lex Luthor, who grumbles, “If he is, he’s not from this
world!” Eve asks why, and he announces, “Because if any human being were going to perpetrate such a fantastic
hoax, it would have been me!”
And that is the point, really; that’s why he’s unilaterally declared war on the sun. Lex is jealous.
It’s not about the money, for Lex; it’s about quieting that voice in his head that tells him that he hasn’t achieved
enough. He is the greatest criminal mind of our time, and he’s going to prove it, through the medium of mass
murder and property damage. Nobody can stand in the way of him showing the world how brilliant he is.
And then along comes this impossible amateur that Lex has never heard of before, amazing everyone with his gifts.
Lex was planning to occupy a major portion of the world’s collective mindshare, once his plan went into effect, and
Superman has stolen it from him, effortlessly.
“It all fits somehow,” Lex declares, “his coming here to Metropolis, and at this particular time. There’s kind of a cruel
justice in that. I mean, to commit the crime of the century, a man would just naturally want to face the challenge of
the century!”
That’s what he needs right now, in order to soothe his wounded ego — to take this civilization-changing discovery of
extraterrestrial life, and make it part of Lex’s own story. In his version of the world, the handsome sky-god is just an
obstacle that Lex can overcome, as part of his ascension from skulking underdweller to universally-admired emperor
of the West Coast.
As Lex emerges from the water to be dressed in his royal colors of green and purple, Otis suggests that maybe
Superman is just passing through town.
“Passing through?” Lex says. “Not on your life — which I would gladly sacrifice, by the way, for the opportunity of
destroying everything that he represents.”
It’s kind of too early for Superman to represent much of anything, as far as the world is concerned; we’re still trying
to figure out the “miracle or fraud” thing. But Lex is talking about what Superman represents for him — an ego-
destroying spectacle of a man that’s even more amazing and accomplished than Lex himself.
From now on, Lex’s lifelong motivations have shifted. It’s not just about power and money and applause anymore;
it’s about crushing the fantastic creature that threatens his self-concept. This ought to go well.
Superman 1.67: The Gauntlet
Hey gang, it’s time for another round of What Did Mankiewicz Do, the fascinating behind-the-scenes game where
we look at old drafts of the Superman: The Movie script, and figure out how script doctor and creative consultant
Tom Mankiewicz solved its many glaring problems.
So far, we’ve seen how Mankiewicz made the Kents more appealing, took the corny sci-fi cliches out of the
Jor-El/Lara scene, and made Lex Luthor stop chewing Kleenex all the time. Now we’ve arrived at the largest and
most important structural change that Mankiewicz made to the script: taking three Lex Luthor/Superman
confrontations spaced out through the second half of the film, and compressing them down into just one climactic
face-off between the hero and the villain.
Now, you would think that having the hero and the villain only share one scene together in the whole movie would
be a bad idea, but that’s because you haven’t seen the volcano sequence yet. In this movie, it was the right call.
Allow me to explain.
Fair warning: this is about to get very nerdy, very fast.
There are essentially five versions of the Superman script as we know it:
Puzo script: The first version of the script was written by Godfather writer Mario Puzo. It was long and unfilmable,
and it’s not online, so I don’t know much about it.
Newman/Benton script: The team of David Newman and Robert Benton cut Puzo’s script to a more reasonable
length, with Newman’s wife Leslie assisting on their final draft.
Mankiewicz shooting script: When Richard Donner came on board as director, he didn’t like the Newman/Benton
script, and he hired Tom Mankiewicz to rewrite it. The draft that’s available online is called the “shooting script”,
although there are significant differences between this script and what they actually shot.
What they actually shot: The fourth version is what they filmed, as seen in the movie, plus “deleted scenes” from
the longer cuts.
Theatrical release: The final version is what they actually released, minus the deleted scenes.
What we’re about to dig into is the big structural change from having three Superman/Luthor sequences
(Newman/Benton script) to two Superman/Luthor scenes (Mankiewicz shooting script) and then down to one big
climactic confrontation (what they shot, and theatrical release).
I’m bringing this up right now, because this is the point in the film where the different versions branch off —
following Superman’s amazing night of helping people, and Lex grumbling in his lair about the challenge that
Superman poses.
At this point, in both the Newman/Benton script and the Mankiewicz shooting script, Superman receives a “dog
whistle” message from Luthor, introducing himself. The message is similar in both scripts; here’s the Mankiewicz
version:
LUTHOR’S VOICE:
This is the voice of Lex Luthor.
I have a challenge for this…
unidentified flying object.
This bogus blue buffoon.
There is an abandoned warehouse
at the corner of Fifth and Main.
Somewhere inside that warehouse
is a pellet filled with
a propane lithium compound.
At precisely twelve noon, it will drop
into a beaker of acid.
Within a matter of seconds, a poison gas
will be released that will annihilate everyone
within a forty block radius…
Horrified, Superman flies to the warehouse, where he’s tested by several dangerous traps. Luthor and crew are
watching him through their monitors, to see if they can discover any weakness. This is the Gauntlet.
As soon as Superman opens the warehouse door, there’s an explosion that doesn’t stop him. He goes into the first
room, and he’s shot by machine guns. In the second room, he’s surrounded by flames. In the third room, he’s frozen
by an ice machine. He walks easily through all of these traps, untouched.
The fourth room has the pellet suspended over the beaker of acid, surrounded by an electric fence. Superman
bursts through the fence, grabs the pellet and swallows it, drinking the beaker of acid as a chaser.
In the Newman/Benton script, that’s the entire sequence — Luthor is watching for weaknesses, but Superman
doesn’t have any.
In the shooting script, Mankiewicz adds another obstacle between the ice room and the electricity/acid room: an
extra room with four doors, made of lead. Superman tries to use his X-ray vision to figure out which room has the
pellet and acid, and he hesitates before just ripping all four doors open. This is the point of the Gauntlet scene in
Mankiewicz’s script — Luthor is looking for weaknesses, and he finds one: Superman can’t see through lead.
This whole sequence was revised between the shooting script and the filming. They did film a Gauntlet, but it’s just a
hallway leading to Luthor’s lair, and not specifically a test of Superman’s powers.
To show you how the structure of the movie changed over time, here’s the complete breakdown for the
Newman/Benton script, the Mankiewicz script, and what they actually filmed:
Newman/Benton script:
Confrontation #1: Luthor uses the dog whistle at this point in the movie, leading Superman to a warehouse and the
Gauntlet. They don’t identify a weakness.
The balcony interview scene. No mention of lead, and Superman and Lois don’t fly together.
Luthor finds out about Kryptonite.
Luthor and crew go to Addis Ababa to get the Kryptonite meteorite.
Confrontation #2: Luthor attracts Superman’s attention by making it look like a volcano is erupting. In fact, Luthor
and his crew are hiding inside the crater. Luthor uses Kryptonite to disable Superman. Then the volcano actually
starts erupting, and Luthor and Otis run away. Eve stays behind to help Superman escape.
Superman hunts for Luthor in Metropolis, but can’t find him.
Luthor and crew mess with the missile convoy, to get the rocket codes.
Confrontation #3: Luthor attracts Superman’s attention by throwing Eve out of a plane. Then he explains his plans,
and Superman goes to chase the missiles.
Summary: In the Newman/Benton script, there are three confrontations. The dog whistle is used once, to bring
Superman to the Gauntlet for confrontation #1. Luthor uses Kryptonite during confrontation #2, in the volcano.
There’s no mention of lead.
Mankiewicz shooting script:
Confrontation #1: Luthor uses the dog whistle, leading Superman to a warehouse and the Gauntlet. There’s a room
with four lead doors, which confuses Superman. This is how Luthor learns about Superman’s inability to see through
lead.
The balcony interview scene. Superman and Lois fly together.
Luthor finds out about Kryptonite, and goes to Addis Ababa (off-screen) to collect it.
Luthor and crew mess with the missile convoy.
Confrontation #2: Luthor uses the dog whistle again, leading Superman directly to his lair. He explains his plans, and
then uses a lead box to hide the Kryptonite that disables Superman. Eve helps Superman escape, and he goes to
chase the missiles.
Summary: In the shooting script, there are two Confrontations, and the dog whistle is used both times. Luthor learns
about Superman’s lead weakness during the Gauntlet, and uses that information in Confrontation #2, to surprise
him with the Kryptonite.
What they actually filmed:
In the film, we go straight from Luthor grumbling about Superman’s “challenge” to…
The balcony scene with Lois, where he mentions his weakness to lead.
Lois publishes the information about lead in her Daily Planet article, and Luthor reads about it.
Luthor finds out about Kryptonite, and goes to Addis Ababa (off-screen) to get some.
Luthor and crew mess with the missile convoy.
Confrontation #1: Luthor uses the dog whistle, leading Superman directly to his lair. There’s a modified version of
the Gauntlet in the hallway leading to the lair. Then Luthor explains the plan, and uses a lead box with Kryptonite to
disable Superman. Eve helps Superman escape, and he goes to chase the missiles.
Summary: They’ve simplified the Luthor storyline to give them just one climactic confrontation. This allows them to
only use the dog whistle once. Lois publishes the info about lead, and now Superman walks through the Gauntlet to
get to Luthor’s lair.
The theatrical release: This is the same as what they filmed, but taking the Gauntlet scene out. Superman responds
to the dog whistle, and goes straight into Luthor’s lair. The Gauntlet scene is restored in the Director’s Cut and
Extended Cut.
Now, I can understand why Newman/Benton had the volcano sequence — they wanted a big spectacle for the
middle of the movie, and Superman disabled by Kryptonite inside an erupting volcano is an exciting idea.
But it’s also a silly James Bond idea that doesn’t make sense. Superman thinks that the volcano is erupting, but
that’s just a gag that Luthor came up with to lure Superman to the extinct volcano crater. Then, while they’re
standing there, the volcano starts erupting for no reason at all. Here’s how that part of the scene goes:
LUTHOR
In a way, it’s a pity
you won’t be around to see
my next production —
(his hand traces it, like a giant movie title)
— ‘The Crime of the Century!’
Well, it’d be above your head anyway.
So y’see, Superman, there’s nothing shameful
about losing to me. It was a battle of titans.
The best against me —
A fit of coughing seizes as a cloud of smoke drifts across his face — through it, in a rage:
LUTHOR
Smoke?? Again with the —
As a cloud passes, a strange, suspicious look comes into his eyes.
LUTHOR
… smoke… rumbling…
EFFECTS: The RUMBLING is indeed INCREASING, and now lava slowly begins to bubble up in the pit. LUTHOR looks
at it and nods, his suspicions confirmed.
LUTHOR
… lava…
And LEX LUTHOR turns and runs like a comet (PAN OVER) out of the crater to a tunnel entrance in the side of the
volcano (the way he got in). The tunnel is cut through the rock and leads to the outside.
This doesn’t make sense, and it’s dumb. So Mankiewicz cut the volcano sequence, and replaced it with a different
big mid-movie spectacle scene: Superman and Lois flying together.
But Mankiewicz’s shooting script also has a problem: the Gauntlet scene steps on the balcony interview scene.
Superman goes all the way through the Gauntlet to eat the pellet and drink the acid, Luthor has learned about
Superman’s weakness… and then Superman forgets about it, for a while.
As far as the audience is concerned, once Superman’s fought his way through the Gauntlet and stopped Luthor’s evil
plan to poison everyone, his #1 priority should be to find Luthor and stop him from doing more evil things.
Instead, in the shooting script, we go from the Gauntlet into Perry saying that he wants more information about
Superman, and the balcony interview scene. This would have been a jarring transition — instead of locating the
mass murderer, Superman goes on a date. I think the audience’s expectation that Superman should be looking for
Luthor would hang over the balcony scene, making it seem frivolous and inappropriate, rather than the most
romantic thing anybody has ever done.
The solution that they came up with during filming was to keep the Superman/Lois storyline and the
Superman/Luthor storyline completely separate. In the film, they do the balcony interview and the romantic flight
before Superman has even heard of Lex Luthor. The audience knows that Luthor is scheming, but Superman doesn’t,
so it’s okay for him to go on a date.
But once they make that change, they have to give Luthor another way to learn that Superman can’t see through
lead — so they cleverly folded that information into the balcony scene, and then everything worked.
They didn’t want to give up the Gauntlet completely, because it’s cool to see Superman walk through bullets, fire
and ice, so they put a scaled-down version into the hallway outside Luthor’s lair. But at that moment in the film, the
audience really wants to finally see Superman and Luthor together in a scene, and the Gauntlet was an unnecessary
speed bump keeping them apart. My guess is that Donner wanted to keep the Gauntlet, but editor Stuart Baird cut
it — which is why it pops up in the Director’s Cut, twenty years later.
So now we’ve been through fire, ice, gunfire and exploding volcanos, and we can get back to the movie already in
progress — except there’s another bit of time travel that I want to do first. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, in the
past.
Superman 1.69: The Chief
“Now, look!” Perry shouts, slamming down a copy of somebody else’s newspaper on his desk. “The Post: It Flies!”
He drops another: “The News: Look Ma, No Wires!” And another: “The Times: Blue Bomb Buzzes Metropolis!” I
don’t know how he has time to do all this extra reading; doesn’t he have a paper of his own to put out?
Then he picks up today’s Daily Planet, with the long-admired banner: Caped Wonder Stuns City. This headline is way
better than the other three, so I’m not sure why he’s upset about it.
“We’re sitting on top of the story of the century here!” he barks. “I want the name of this flying whatchamacallit to
go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs, franks and beans, death and taxes, politics and corruption!” And then
he keeps on snapping at his terrified reporters, in a scene that’s supposed to be funny but isn’t, because Jackie
Cooper is terrible.
Part of the problem here is that this isn’t really Perry’s job. In all of the previous versions of Superman, he hardly
needs to ask; Superman stories just start piling up on the editor’s desk before he even knows that Superman exists.
Really, this behavior is more the purview of J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle, who’s always demanding
that camera-clicker Peter Parker bring him more photos of Spider-Man. Those are the two heroes that get the most
press coverage in comic books, Superman and Spider-Man, because they have secret identities that work for the
paper.
I wonder what all the other superheroes do, when they want some earned media? I don’t think DC’s Metropolis is as
chock full of caped wonders as Marvel’s New York City is, but still, there must be dozens of masked vigilantes who
never make the front page at all. I guess it’s who you know.
But they had to figure out something for Perry to do in the movie, and that’s why this scene exists. He’s one of the
Famous Four characters that you always need to have, if you’re making a legitimate Superman story: Clark Kent, Lois
Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White. All of the other characters who have attached themselves to the franchise are
optional: Supergirl, Lana Lang, Beppo the Super-Monkey, even Lex Luthor. But if you don’t have Clark, Lois, Jimmy
and Perry, people will expect an explanation.
The funny thing about Perry’s inclusion in the Famous Four is that it has very little to do with the comic books. Perry
White as we know him was invented and developed for the 1940s radio show, and his place in the mythos was
solidified when he was part of the regular cast of the 1950s TV show. The Perry who appeared in the comics in the
1940s was usually just a three-panel guest cameo from the radio show; you didn’t even see his face a lot of the time.
When Superman was first introduced in Action Comics in June 1938, there were three recurring characters: two
reporters named Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and an unnamed editor who gave them assignments. The editor didn’t
need a name, because he wasn’t really a character; he was a plot function.
At the beginning of a story, somebody needed to gesture towards the door and tell Clark to investigate something,
which he would then go and do. The story isn’t about the editor; it’s about the thing that the editor is pointing at.
They finally gave the man a name, George Taylor, in Superman #2 (Fall 1939), mostly out of pity; they still didn’t give
him anything to do.
Meanwhile, on the radio, they gave the editor a new name and a set of authentic characteristics right from the start,
because they can’t just have Julian Noa come into the studio and do the auditory equivalent of three panels. They’re
paying the man; he needs to earn it.
He shows up in the second episode of the radio show, which aired on February 14, 1940. You can listen to the
episode on YouTube; the part that I’m going to excerpt here starts at 6:18.
This is what Perry White sounds like:
Miss Smith: Excuse me, Mr. White. That young man’s still waiting.
Perry: What young man — oh, the one who wants a job? Well, let him wait! Who have we got that’s free?
Miss Smith: McCann’s on the coast, Grayson’s down in Virginia, most of the day men are full up.
Perry: I knew it, confound, it’s always the way! Something breaks, and nobody to handle it!
Miss Smith: What is it, Mr. White?
Perry: Railroads! Sabotage! I didn’t believe it, but there may be something in it after all! If there is —
Miss Smith: Yes, sir?
Perry: If there is, Miss Smith, it’ll be the biggest story since Lindbergh! And me, shorthanded. Ohh, what’s the use?
Miss Smith: Yes, sir. Uh — about that man…
Perry: Aw, send him in. Send him in!
Miss Smith: Yes, sir. Come in, Mr. Kent.
Clark: Thank you.
Perry: You wanted to see me? Close that door!
Clark: Yes, sir. My name is Kent. Clark Kent.
Perry: What can I do for you, Mr. Kent?
Clark: Well, Mr. White, you can give me work, I hope.
Perry: Work? On the paper?
Clark: Yes, sir. I’d like to be a reporter.
Perry: Ohhh, you’d like to be a reporter! What papers have you worked on?
Clark: Well, none, sir, but —
Perry: Oh, you haven’t! But you think you’d be a whiz! Huh. Well, I’m afraid I can’t use you, Kent.
Clark: You mean you haven’t any openings?
Perry: Not for greenhorns! I’m sorry if I’m blunt.
Clark: But — Mr. White, even if I am a greenhorn, suppose I brought you a good story.
Perry: And where would you get it? I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Kent —
Clark: A really good story?
Perry: Such as?
Clark: Such as the complete inside on the man called the Wolf, and the Western Railroad?
Perry: Wh- what’s that?
Clark: You heard me, do you want that story?
The scene rattles on and on — it’s the radio, all they do is talk — but you get the idea. It’s a complete personality,
right away — impatient and irascible, but passionate about getting a great story, and if something sounds
interesting, he’ll jump at it. He’s also a chatterbox, just opening his mouth and filling the world with words. That
character can populate a radio show for as long as you like.
Here’s another little bit, later in the scene, after Perry’s had a mysterious phone call from an unnamed man, warning
about an upcoming railway accident for the Silver Clipper. When Perry hangs up the phone, Clark mentions the
Clipper as well.
Perry: Look here! You couldn’t hear that phone. What is this? How do you know who called me?
Clark: As I was saying, Mr. White: suppose I brought you a good story — the story of the Silver Clipper, and the Wolf!
Perry: I take chances, Kent. I’m going to take a chance on you!
Clark: Thank you, Mr. White.
Perry: It’s two thousand miles. You’ll have to hop a plane.
Clark: I’ll get there, Mr. White, in spite of the weather.
Perry: Lord… I hadn’t noticed the weather. Well, get to the airport anyway!
That’s demonstrating another helpful characteristic — Perry is impulsive, and takes chances — which is great,
because it’s story-productive. You want a character in this role who can move the plot along, and Perry suddenly
making the decision to take Kent on means that the story can move forward.
He’s a great character; that’s all there is to it. In the early days, Perry’s actually on the show more often than Lois is.
It just goes to show how little interest Siegel and Shuster had in developing a supporting cast, in the early days.
There’s room in Action Comics for another main character, which was obvious to everybody except the people who
were making Action Comics.
Now, the question that people have about this is: why did the radio show invent the name Perry White, instead of
using George Taylor, from the comics?
There are two answers, neither of them flattering for G. Taylor. The first answer is that “George” is just about the
least interesting name that a character could have, and “Taylor” isn’t far behind. “Perry” is a much more distinctive
first name, and obviously the combo of “Perry White” has some kind of magic in it, because here we are eight
decades later, and everybody knows it, including people who have never read a Superman comic.
The second answer is that the people making the radio show probably didn’t even know that there was an editor
character, much less that he had a name, which they only invented in the comics a few months before the radio
show debuted.
The radio show was a big hit, and the name “Perry White” found its way into the comics nine months later, in
Superman #7 (Nov 1940). But even here, all they use is his last name — “Got a good assignment for us, White?” —
and he has none of the charm. They don’t use his first name yet; he’s just “White” for another seven months. The
poor guy doesn’t even get to turn around and show his face.
And if you’re thinking, well, he’s just the editor, what else can he do? then the radio show has the answer.
In February 1941, they do a story called “The Dragon’s Teeth”, which opens with Clark and Perry driving through
Chinatown to visit Dr. Chi Wan, a collector of Asian art. Here’s how the story begins:
Clark: Isn’t it a little strange that Dr. Wan didn’t tell you why he wanted to see you, Mr. White?
Perry: Not if you know Orientals, Kent. They don’t say much over the telephone. It’s an instrument of the Devil, and
they don’t trust it.
Clark: Well, but surely, Dr. Wan doesn’t feel that way. Wasn’t he educated here, in the United States?
Perry: Yes, but the Chinese have certain inborn superstitions that even education won’t eradicate. Once an Oriental,
always an Oriental.
Okay, so maybe that’s not the best example, but he’s actually involved in the story, is my point. At the end of the
episode, Perry drinks a cup of poisoned tea, which makes for an exciting cliffhanger, and they could be doing that
kind of thing in the comic, too.
It is honestly baffling to me how long it takes for Jerry Siegel to understand that having more main characters means
that you can tell more kinds of stories. Jimmy Olsen was introduced on the radio show in April 1940 as a fourth main
character, and he was so successful that they spent most of 1941 trying to add a fifth, which didn’t take. But in the
comics, it’s just Clark and Lois in every issue, with Perry sitting behind a desk and facing the other way.
But in that same issue, in the third story, Perry White actually gets up from behind his desk and leaves his office for
the very first time.
The story concerns an evil genius from another dimension who shouts rhyming couplets, and makes buildings
disappear.
For example:
“Heed not Superman, he can’t administer successful opposition to Mister Sinister!”
as well as
“You cannot touch me, it is true! And so in parting — pooey on you!!”
It’s a weird story.
Clark writes an editorial criticizing Mister Sinister, which ticks the villain off for some reason that I can’t quite figure. I
mean, the guy is appearing in the sky and announcing his name and exactly what he’s planning to do in rhyming
couplets, but for some reason, he doesn’t want the publicity of being named in a newspaper story.
But this finally gets Perry up out of his chair and down to the printing presses, where he swears, “I’ll show that
supernatural hoodlum he can’t dictate the policy of my paper!”
And then the mysterious voice booms with another warning:
“Stop the presses right away! And if you don’t, you’ll rue this day!”
Clark shouts in response,
“We’ve heard your warning, here’s the answer: We’ll print that story despite you, Mister!”
“Why, Clark — you’re a poet!” says Lois, which might be the least convincing line of dialogue that anyone ever says
in a Superman comic. That is not a good poem. We have discovered Superman’s secret weakness.
In reply, Mister Sinister uses whatever wackadoodle power he possesses to teleport the Daily Planet building into his
dimension, which is apparently a barren country with a purplish sky, except in the panels where it isn’t, which is
most of them.
The villain is a bald, yellow alien with big ears, which, fine, I guess it’s a dimension with bald yellow people, although
his henchmen appear to be regular human thugs with rifles, so I don’t know what’s going on.
“Wh-what manner of strange country is this?” Clark asks. “Where have you taken us?”
The villain declares, “I’ve merely transported you to another dimension: the fourth, to be exact!” which is a very silly
line, and I guess he’s not speaking in rhyme anymore.
Lois observes that he’s “conquered the dimensions,” whatever that means, and he says, “Exactly. And thus I find it a
simple matter to snatch buildings into this unknown dimension — and return them only for profit!” Which reminds
me, I didn’t tell you before that when the other buildings were stolen, Mister Sinister asked for $100,000 ransom to
send them back. I don’t know what he wants the money for, especially if he lives in a barren, purplish country in
another dimension, but there’s a lot that I don’t understand about this story.
But Perry, I’m supposed to be talking about Perry. When Mister Sinister asks the trio to go along with his ludicrous
scheme, Perry’s the one who stands up and says, “I refuse!” which is nice, although it doesn’t get them anywhere.
They just get bundled off to separate places for torture, so that Clark has a chance to break away and put on his
Superman outfit. Lois and Perry are tied to stakes and left outdoors, where they’re attacked by a weird shadow
monster of the dimensional-world, whatever that’s supposed to be. The monster doesn’t speak in rhyme, either.
Unfortunately, that about does it for Perry’s participation in the story; once Superman shows up, everybody else
fades into the background. He takes care of the creature somehow, and then he gets shot with a ray that doesn’t do
anything except kill time for a few panels, and Superman and Mister Sinister dive into a mysterious aura that takes
them through the dimensions of length, width and thickness, and then back to the fourth dimension. That is what
happens in Superman comics.
So eventually Mister Sinister just tries to bury Superman in henchmen, and he goes back into rhyming mode.
“The laugh’s on you! I’ll beat you yet! I’m the toughest opponent you’ve ever met!”
And he follows with, “Not bad for a frustrated poet, eh?”
“So that’s why you want to rule the world,” Superman observes, as he wrestles with a tangle of green-suited mugs,
“to compensate for your failure as a poet!”
It’s page 13 and time to end the story, so Superman finishes up with his usual punch to the face, and a final poem:
“You think you’re tough. I say you’re not! Since you want proof, here is a sock!”
I’m serious about rhyming being a real problem area for Superman. He’s supposed to be a good writer, too; it’s
weird that he’s so bad at this. You have to imagine that it leaves him open for some kind of poetry-based attack.
Offhand, I can’t think of any other poetry-themed superfoes, but I bet Batman has one; that kind of thing has
Batman written all over it.
Superman 1.70: The Other Balcony Scene
But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is Central Park West, and Juliet is the sun.
So here we are, at the start of the other important balcony scene in Western literature: Lois Lane’s date with a space
ape.
Now, as a blockbuster action-adventure movie, Superman needs to create moments of tension and anxiety for the
audience, and this, I believe, is the scariest thing in the movie: Lois knows that Superman is going to drop by her
place at eight pm, and she has no idea what to wear.
I mean, is this an interview, or a date, or just a fly-by, or what? Is this dinner? What does “Hopefully – a friend”
mean? How do you prepare for this event?
Now, this is a pivotal scene — not just for the movie, but for civilization in general — and Donner, Mankiewicz and
the actors took it very seriously. They actually filmed this scene over the course of several months — some in
October 1977, some in November, and a third shoot in January ’78. They did the extra filming because they weren’t
sure that they’d gotten the tone right, the first time.
There are a number of additional lines in the filmed scene that weren’t in the original script, and all of them point in
the same direction: making the scene more explicitly romantic.
Lois’ first line here is one of those additions. She looks at her watch, which shows it’s a few minutes past eight, and
she paces across her enormous garden terrace. She sighs, “Eight o’clock, he says. Eight o’clock, eight o’clock. Huh.
Some ‘friend’.” She walks over to a table, pours herself some wine, and slumps into the chair. “Story of my life.
Cinderella bites the dust.”
So right away, she’s signalling that this is a romantic fantasy for her, and “story of my life” says that she’s been
disappointed by guys before.
And then here he comes, the least disappointing guy of all time, arriving ringside with a graceful two-point landing
on the parapet.
Now, Richard Donner says that he cast Margot Kidder because she could be clumsy in an unexpectedly endearing
way, and he specifically told her makeup team not to let her put her contacts in, so that she would be wide-eyed and
just a bit off-balance.
This scene is where that really matters, where the ambitious, hard-headed reporter who’s comfortable writing about
murder and mayhem is transported into a princess fantasy that she is not prepared for. She smiles, she stammers,
she’s not sure where her arms and legs are supposed to go. This is her house, but she does not have the home field
advantage.
And then the first thing he does is apologize, which is hardly fair. He says, “Oh, I’m sorry, did you have plans this
evening?” as if it’s possible for anyone to have plans that are more important than hanging out with Superman.
She looks down at her blue Cinderella dress, and says, “Oh… oh, this old thing? No.”
“Well, listen, it’s no trouble at all for me to come back later,” he says, which is designed to make her panic and
essentially beg for him to stay, which she does.
“No, don’t move!” she cries, and takes a few hurried steps towards him, before catching herself, and realizing that
she’s not being especially cool right now. “Um…” she smiles. “Sure, you can move. Just…” — and here, there’s still a
little bit of panic in her eyes — “don’t fly away. All right?”
And he smiles — an eager, uncool little kid smile that says that he’s just as excited to be talking to her as she is to
him.
In the Making of book, Christopher Reeve talked about the upcoming filming of this scene: “Staying with the theme
of making him more human, take the scene we’ll do on Lois’ balcony, when Superman comes flying in. The script had
it that he was really there only to impress her — that’s what I got from the first script — that he’s sort of showing
off. Now I think it’s quite the other way around; he’s there because he’s got a crush on her.”
That’s why it’s okay for him to tease her, and make her say awkward things: because he doesn’t think he’s better
than her. He is legitimately thrilled that Lois Lane is looking at him like that. This is the best moment of both of their
lives.
He goes into what is obviously a prepared speech that he’s been working on for some time: “Sorry to drop in on you
like this, Miss Lane, but I’ve been thinking, you know, there must be a lot of questions about me that people in the
world would like to know the answers…”
And she says, “Of course, yes,” and spins around to grab her notebook — leaving him hanging in the middle of a
sentence — and now he feels like he’s chasing after her.
And then there’s the lung cancer moment, which is strangely intimate, for a surgeon general’s warning. Lois is
nervous, and starts lighting a cigarette, and Superman corrects her: “Uh, you really shouldn’t smoke, Miss Lane…”
She grins, “Don’t tell me. Lung cancer, right?” and then he does a medical exam, standing there on her balcony at
the beginning of their first date.
He sighs, “Well, not yet, thank goodness,” and that makes her look at the cigarette, and stab it out in the ashtray. It’s
a moment when he indicates that he cares about her on a personal level. You wouldn’t think examining somebody’s
lungs would be a romantic story point, but this is a brand new kind of event.
And just look at the man; he’s a dream. They’re lighting him specifically to accentuate all the good parts, which is all
of them. A lot of this scene is about the tactical implementation of Christopher Reeve’s body.
The start of the interview is one of the bits that was added to the scene while they were filming. In the script, Lois
says, “Let’s start with your vital statistics, okay? Age?”
In the movie, her first question is, “Are you married?” He flusters for a second, and says, “Uh, no. No, I’m not.”
Her immediate follow-up question is, “Do you have a girlfriend?” and then she just hangs there, with her heart
racing and her pencil poised.
And he says, “Uh, no, I don’t, but, uh, if I did, Miss Lane, you’d be the first to know about it.”
And then this happens:
And the world is full of flowers.
So when I said that they went back and reshot some of the scene to get the tone right, this is what they were doing:
making it a lot more explicit that they’re flirting. Yes, this is happening, this is what we’re doing right now, and yes, I
will love you for as long as I exist. That’s the tone.
She does the age question next, and then she says, “How big are you?… How tall are you?”
That’s an addition as well, and it actually came from a mistake that she made in rehearsal, which everyone thought
was funny and they made it part of the scene.
Lois’ question, “How much do you weigh?” and Superman’s answer, “About two-twenty-five,” was in the script,
although they wrote it as “One-ninety-five,” because nobody realized how big Christopher Reeve was going to get,
until it happened and there was nothing you could do about it.
Lois’ stunned and pleased reaction to that information is not in the script; that’s another bit of extra business they
came up with later. It’s very skillful how they made a scene for a children’s movie that’s as much about sex as this
one is, mostly through smirks and reaction shots.
Then she leans forward and asks the crucial question: “Do you… eat?” And it turns out that he does.
Superman 1.71: The Workout
“When it comes to muscles and body,” asks a random internet user on the social question-and-answer forum Quora,
“Reeve’s Superman looks nothing like Cavill’s. Why didn’t Reeve train for the part?”
That question was posed in February 2017, during the production of Henry Cavill’s third Superman film, Justice
League, and while the question is insulting to Reeve, you can forgive the inquisitor getting caught up in the
propaganda. By that time, Cavill and his workout routines had been featured in supermarket workout-porn mags at
least four times — Men’s Health in 2011, Muscle & Fitness in 2013, and Men’s Fitness in 2015 and 2016 — in an
ongoing series of public-service bulletins keeping America updated on the current status of his big-ass arms.
It’s basic Hollywood practice these days, to arrange for the latest superhero to show off his well-sculptured body for
the examination and approval of the grocery shopping public. Just in 2020, there were Men’s Health covers for
Sebastian Stan, Henry Cavill (again), Kumail Nanjiani and Jason Momoa, plus the superhero-adjacent Yahya Abdul-
Mateen, explaining how they developed the ridiculously inflated upper-body superiority that movie audiences have
come to expect.
And it’s true that Christopher Reeve’s Superman body is like a first draft, compared to the lavishly-trained muscle-
mountains of today. But Reeve’s transformation from stringbean to superhunk sparked just as much interest in 1977,
and formed a core part of the Superman: The Movie mythology.
Any discussion of how Christopher Reeve was cast for the film begins with Richard Donner thinking that he was too
skinny for the part. This is a picture of what he looked like at the time he was cast, onstage in the Circle Repertory
Company’s production of Corinne Jaecker’s My Life.
And looking at him from this angle, yeah, I can see what they’re talking about. He doesn’t look bad, obviously — I’d
feel incredibly blessed, to look as good as that — but I have to agree that he wouldn’t quite fill out a supersuit.
So once he was cast, in February 1977, he immediately went into training. They didn’t have celebrity workout
magazines like Men’s Health at the time, but descriptions of Reeve’s fitness routine were a crucial element in the
film’s pre-release marketing.
For example, the Los Angeles Times ran a feature article in July 1977 on the filming of Superman: The Movie, and it
began with four paragraphs on the care and feeding of Christopher Reeve:
Christopher Reeve already had two lunches, one hot and one cold, and downed the second of his four-a-day
multivitamin drinks. Now it was teatime and he was attacking a large plate of cakes with undisguised enthusiasm.
“It’s not greed,” he said, apologetically. “It’s just that if I miss a meal I lose weight — and that would be a disaster.”
Twenty-four years old and 6 foot 4, Christopher Reeve normally weighs in at 188 pounds. Which wasn’t nearly good
enough for his role as Superman in the $25 million or more epic now being filmed at Pinewood Studios outside
London. Whatever else Superman is, spindly he is not. So Reeve was led to the trough and the gym, and after several
months of eating four large meals a day and putting in hours of exercise at the Grosvenor House sports club and
pool, he built himself up to a very respectable 212 pounds.
And they were able to take out the false muscles from the blue body-stocking, emblazoned in red and gold with an
S, which he wears on his world-saving missions.
So clearly, the producers thought it was crucial that the press got the full story on Reeve’s diet. If the star of your
movie is sitting down for an interview with the LA Times, you don’t put a large plate of cakes in front of him by
accident. Reeve’s “undisguised enthusiasm” for his teatime treats may have been genuine, but the cakes were there
in order to communicate an important point, namely “spindly he is not.”
This was a full year before the movie was scheduled to come out, and producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind were
working full-time on assuring their investors that the movie was worth all of the millions that the Salkinds were still
asking for/redistributing from other people’s bank accounts. Their pitch was that this movie was going to be bigger
than anyone had ever seen before, and they had three pieces of evidence: Marlon Brando’s salary was the highest
anyone had ever been paid for anything, Richard Donner had brilliant people working full-time on the flying effects,
and Christopher Reeve was eating four meals a day, not counting snacks and protein drinks.
Another crucial part of the story that I’m amazed the LA Times didn’t bite on was that they’d hired British
bodybuilding champion David Prowse to train Reeve, and hoist him up to Superman standards.
According to legend, Prowse was hoping to be cast as Superman himself, and the job of training Reeve has been
widely described as a consolation prize. I don’t think that’s how casting actually works on movies — directors don’t
usually award runners-up with a job backstage — but it gives the story a little emotional hook that people like to
hear and repeat.
Another publicity-friendly hook was that Prowse was the man inside the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars, which I’m
sure the Salkinds were very excited about. Ilya liked anything that was connected to success, and he made sure that
everybody knew that one of the stars of the biggest blockbuster of the ’70s was now working on Superman.
Then they brought in a film crew to ogle Reeve during one of his workouts, resulting in a loving two-minute scene in
the Making of Superman TV special.
“I wore a big, bulky blue sweater,” he says, shirtlessly, “because I thought, oh my god, I’ve got to look stronger, you
know? I knew I was skinny, I’d been sitting around, hadn’t been exercising — I mean, I get out and play tennis and
stuff — but I don’t in any way do body stuff. So I got the biggest Shetland sweater I could find, up in my attic, and
went to this audition with it, and sat there, y’know, trying to look bigger.”
Then we get into the documentary evidence of his routine.
“The point is that when I started I was a stringbean, and Superman’s not a stringbean, so…”
“Already from the start I eat four times a day, I’m on a high meat diet, protein diet, vitamin pills, nothing like steroids
or anything like that.”
“But I mean, I get to eat as much of anything that I want, and it’s great, you know? The thing is that on this part
particularly, you have to start from the outside and work in. You can do all the interior work you want to do, and it’s
still not going to get you to Superman if you don’t have the physical strength to go with it.”
“The thing that happens is that the stronger I get — you know, I’m still not all that strong, but I’m getting there —
the stronger I get, the more it helps my mental attitude towards the part.”
And it helps our mental attitude, as well; I, for one, appreciate it enormously. You have no idea how this whole
subject perks up my outlook. Reeve definitely fills out the uniform, and when he tells a lovestruck Lois that he’s
made out of 225 pounds of supermeat, we believe him.
He wasn’t quite that big in real life, but he was big enough. The generally accepted figure is from that LA Times
interview in July ’77 — going from 188 to 212 pounds, a gain of 24 pounds of muscle mass.
David Prowse quoted those numbers in his 2005 autobiography Straight From the Force’s Mouth, but his recollection
drifted a bit after that. Larry Tye interviewed Prowse for the 2012 book Superman: The High-Flying History of
America’s Most Enduring Hero, and Prowse rounded the total up to “more than 30 pounds”, and increased Reeve’s
daily protein shake intake from four cans a day to six.
Then in a 2017 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Prowse claimed that he bulked Reeve up from 170 pounds to
212, which would be a gain of 42 pounds in six weeks. Unfortunately, Prowse is no longer with us; if he’d lived
another few years, who knows how big Reeve would have gotten?
The odd thing — and this will seem increasingly quaint, as we work through this history — is that we don’t actually
see much of his body in the movie. The only glimpse we get of Reeve out of uniform is the honeymoon shot in
Superman II, showing Clark and Lois snuggling in bed, which lasts for 12 seconds and you don’t see that much. He
doesn’t even wear a T-shirt in this movie; maintaining the difference between Superman and his secret identity
means that he goes from suit-and-tie to full superhero regalia, with no in-between steps.
All of those meals and workouts were just intended to fill out the suit, and give him enough strength to hang around
in flying rigs all day. Beyond that, the male gaze of the gay males had to move on to find other sources of
entertainment, which we did, and that’s why Henry Cavill exists.
In reality, the celebrity workout is not that interesting of a story: people who lift weights and follow strict diet
regimes get stronger and more muscular, especially if they’ve got a strong motivation, like starring in an upcoming
superhero movie. The basic protocol is pretty well understood, and there’s no particular reason why we should be
specifically interested in the Henry Cavill workout, the Chris Hemsworth workout or the Jason Momoa workout,
depending on who’s got a movie release coming up.
But when we go to a superhero movie, we want to believe that there’s actually something special about this person.
By training his body beyond the peak of perfection, the lead actor has traveled the Hero’s Journey — guided by a
wise sage who’s helped him to tap into his potential for greatness, he’s passed through a supernatural threshold into
a land of discovery, and returned to us with magical gifts and rock-hard abs. His powers may be fictional, but his
biceps are real, and that is all we require. He is larger than life, and we believe.
Superman 1.72: The Color of Underwear
In yesterday’s post on the workout, I talked about the process of transforming Christopher Reeve from stringbean to
superhero as a core part of the behind-the-scenes mythology of Superman: The Movie, which was widely discussed
during and after release.
Partly, the description of building Reeve’s body was another way for the Salkinds to secure more funding — a story
that they could tell potential investors in order to convince them that this was going to be a high-quality movie. It
was also a marketing tool, meant to assure the ticket-buyers that they’ll see a real Superman on the screen, not just
a guy in a padded suit.
This is an act of objectification, making Reeve’s musculature an object of discussion and concern. Reeve talks about
building his body as a way of mentally getting into the character, but for everybody else, it’s a mechanical process:
insert steak dinners and protein shakes, mix with barbells and squats, and out comes the result — 24 more pounds
of muscle mass.
So the workout is a story about Christopher Reeve as meat, with the happy ending being an increase and
redistribution of that meat into a shape that we like better. But the interesting thing is that nobody talks about
Margot Kidder that way, and here I was, thinking that women were usually more objectified than men.
I mean, obviously a large part of these casting decisions are based on the actress’ physical appearance: Kidder is a
beautiful, thin woman who’s in good shape, and she looks nice in a dress. But she’s not presented to us as a physical
object up for inspection, in the way that Reeve is. She wears skirts, but there aren’t shots specifically set up to focus
on her legs, the way that there are for Mariel Hemingway’s legs in Superman IV.
It’s Eve Teschmacher, the movie’s other major female character, who gets the objectification treatment. The first
costume that we see Eve wearing is comically revealing, with a hole in the top specifically designed to showcase her
cleavage in a manner that’s willfully eccentric, like the rest of the set dressing in Luthor’s lair. In another scene, she’s
lying under a sunlamp in a skimpy bathing suit, essentially laid out on a display case.
There’s also a scene coming up, during the missile convoy sequence, where there’s an entire comedy routine built
around Eve’s unconscious body splayed out suggestively on the ground, with a squad of soldiers bickering about who
gets to put their mouth on her.
Lois isn’t treated like that at all. She’s a screwball comedy heroine, whose power derives from her confidence, her
wit and the pace of her dialogue. In this balcony interview scene, she gets flighty and flustered, but that’s played as
a direct response to the enormous piece of extraterrestrial meat that just landed on her terrace. Superman doesn’t
ogle Lois that way; he looks her in the eyes, and adores her just for being Lois.
So Lois is definitely leading, in this will-they-won’t-they dance; she’s the one that initiates the discussions about
romance and sex. She starts the interview/first date by asking if he’s got a wife or a girlfriend, and then moves on to
“how big are you?” After that, her next question is “How much do you weigh?” which is basically a way of gauging
his recommended serving size.
And it’s Lois who makes the not-very-sub subtext even less sub, in the middle of quizzing him about his
superpowers. “What color underwear am I wearing?” she asks, focusing his attention on the matter at hand.
He hesitates, and there’s an adorable will-they-won’t-they moment where she thinks that she’s pushed too far, and
she apologizes. Naturally, the only possible response to that is for Superman to lean in even further on the flirting, to
show that he’s not embarrassed.
This is also the moment when Tom Mankiewicz skilfully deploys a plot point that needed a new home, after they
decided to cut the Gauntlet sequence. In the shooting script, the Gauntlet was the way that Lex Luthor learned that
Superman can’t see through lead, so when they cut that scene, Mankiewicz planted the information about
Superman’s weakness right here, so that Luthor could learn about it in tomorrow’s newspaper.
That was an extremely clever idea, because using the lead planter helps to set up an adorable moment of pure
screwball comedy dialogue.
Lois: What color underwear am I wearing?
Superman: (looks down) Hmm.
Lois: Oh, I’m sorry, I embarrassed you, didn’t I?
Superman: Oh, no!
Lois: I did…
Superman: No, no, no, not at all Miss Lane, it’s that — this planter must be made of lead.
Lois: Yes, it is. So?
Superman: Well, you see, I sort of have a problem seeing through lead.
Lois: Oh, that’s interesting! (writes in her notebook) Problem seeing through lead… Hm. Do you have a first name?
Superman: What do you mean, like, Ralph or something?
Lois: (pacing away from the planter) No, I mean, like, uh —
Superman: Pink!
Lois: (turns around) Huh?
Superman: (nods at her underwear area, and raises his eyebrows playfully) Pink.
(She looks down, understands what just happened, and blushes a little.)
Superman: I’m sorry, Miss Lane, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.
Lois shrugs and chuckles, and says, “No, you didn’t embarrass me,” and then he looks at her, and he is desperately,
helplessly in love with her.
A moment later, while she’s trying unsuccessfuly to spell Krypton, she slips in the question, “Do you like… pink?”
She’s looking down at her notebook as she says it, and she hesitates as she looks up, not sure how he’ll take it.
He looks her straight in the eyes — with the pure, honest, loving stare that only Superman is able to use — and says,
“I like pink very much, Lois.” And the music, which had been taking a break for the last few minutes, strikes up the
Love theme.
This moment is specifically structured as a reward for Lois’ boldness. If she had kept up the pretense that this was
just an interview, she wouldn’t have gotten a declaration of love like this. Through the scene, it is her expression of
desire that moves the story forward.
Superman — as an enormous, indestructible slab of steak dinners — couldn’t possibly be the one making the moves
here. The dynamic would be off-putting, clouding the scene with the lingering feeling that she could just be going
along with what he wants. Instead, she’s the one who poses the question, and all he needs to do is just be honest
about how he feels.
That’s how she earns a flight on First Date Airlines, a five-minute sex scene disguised as a blockbuster special-effects
spectacle.
Lois: Clark… said that you’re just a figment of somebody’s imagination. Like Peter Pan.
Superman: Clark, uh… who’s that, your boyfriend?
Lois: Clark? Oh, Clark! No, he’s nothing, he’s just a —
Superman: Peter Pan, huh?
Lois: Uh huh.
Superman: Peter Pan flew with children, Lois. In a fairy tale.
And with a knowing smile on both of their faces, they rise into the air, and put some distance between themselves
and a children’s movie.
Superman 1.73: The Takeoff
“Christopher felt very strongly about staying in character, all the time,” Margot Kidder says, in one of the DVD
featurettes. “I, on the other hand, got really bored during the flying scenes, because there were Chris and I strapped
together for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day. So I would hide books down my front, or try and tease Chris, and he’d
be going, ‘shut up!’ And we would bicker, and the poor crew would look away, and they’d go ‘action’, and suddenly
we’d be madly in love, and they’d go ‘cut’, and we’d go back to our bickering.
“And at one point, I remember Christopher said, ‘Don’t you stay in character?’ and I said, ‘Oh, Chris, for god’s sake,
I’ve been Lois Lane for a year now, and all we have to do is look left!'”
So this is what happens to you, I guess, when you spend fifteen weeks writing about the same movie: I’m watching
this incredibly romantic night flight sequence, and all I can think about is how much of a pain it was for them to
shoot.
This is the big moment in Superman: The Movie that everything hinges upon: the climax of Act 2, marking the break
point between the screwball-comedy romantic section of the movie and the more action-oriented Superman vs
Luthor section. If anything romantic is going to happen between Superman and Lois Lane, then it’s going to happen
right now.
It also happens to be one of the most technically challenging sequences. They spent a year trying to figure out how
to make Superman fly, and now they’ve got to do it again with two people, in various configurations.
This first shot of Lois and Superman rising into the air took many retakes, and they never did get it done to Richard
Donner’s satisfaction. There were too many things that could go wrong, with the two of them in separate harnesses
attached to cables. Donner eventually used a shot that he called a “desperation take”, because it was the best one
that they could manage.
During this sequence, the lovebirds take a tour through the sky of nighttime Metropolis — otherwise known as New
York City, obviously — which is very sweet, and much better than the description in the shooting script. Here’s how
the script describes this entire sequence:
EXT. SKY – NIGHT
SUPERMAN flies through the night sky holding LOIS, his swirling cape covering them. They look off as CAMERA PANS
DOWN: the gleaming lights of Metropolis grow smaller in the distance.
FLYING MONTAGE
A series of aerial POVS INTERCUT with flying reaction shots of SUPERMAN and LOIS as they circle the world, passing
through different time zones.
EXT. PARIS – NIGHT
The illuminated Place D’Etoile at night.
EXT. VATICAN – NIGHT
The illuminated St. Peter’s Square and Cathedral.
EXT. GIZA – EGYPT – DAY
The sun rises behind the Great pyramids.
EXT. AGRA – INDIA – DAY
A day view of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.
EXT. CHINA – DUSK
The sun sets behind the Great Wall of China.
EXT. METROPOLIS (NEW YORK) – NIGHT
The glittering lights of Metropolis loom up again.
EXT. SKY – ANGLE DOWN ON LOIS’ TERRACE – NIGHT
CAMERA ZOOMS DOWN on LOIS’ terrace from the sky.
EXT. LOIS’ TERRACE – NIGHT
SUPERMAN deposits LOIS gently on the terrace once again. She is absolutely struck dumb with wonder, stares at
him.
So that, I think, would probably have been terrible. It would have been like flying past a series of postcards, with the
focus of the scene being on acknowledging the different landmarks, rather than on Superman and Lois exploring the
sky together. In the finished scene, there is one famous landmark that they pay attention to, but the focus is on how
they move around the Statue of Liberty, rather than zipping from one thing to another.
This sequence is an important showcase for John Williams’ music: except for a couple of nervous squeals from Lois
at the beginning, there’s no dialogue or sound effects to get in the way of the orchestra. This is the Love theme in
full flow, a five-minute horizontal dance number where the music supplies the emotional background for Lois’
adventure in the air.
The piece is structured as a bed of strings and woodwinds, punctuated by stirring notes from the brass.The strings
and woodwinds convey warmth and comfort, the reassuring presence of Superman holding Lois, safe in his arms.
The brass comes in to say wow, look at that, as Lois gets more comfortable being in the air, and starts to enjoy
looking at the world from the air.
For these flying shots against a real background, they’re using front projection as an in-camera effect — projecting
film that they recorded in New York, and then shooting Lois and Superman against that background. They’re not
moving — they’re lying in one place, with the camera moving around them and lots of wind machines blowing
around his cape and her dress.
I think that this shot of their approach to the Statue of Liberty is probably the most impressive in the sequence: an
unbroken twelve-second shot where they appear to fly towards the camera, and then make a bank turn toward the
statue, moving away from the camera again. You might think that twelve seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but then
you look at all of the camera moves that they do in that shot, and you realize that twelve seconds is an eternity.
Doing those moves and keeping it all in sync with the footage that they shot from a helicopter eight months earlier is
an incredible special-effects achievement.
Using the Statue of Liberty as a focal point is quite beautiful, because the statue represents the United States
welcoming new citizens to our shores — they weren’t thinking about extraterrestrials at the time, but Kryptonians
are immigrants too. It also has a nice resonance with Superman’s ideal of “truth, justice and the American way,”
which you wouldn’t have if they’d used the Chrysler Building or some other monument to 20th-century commerce.
By the way, I’ve never really noticed before how grumpy the Statue of Liberty looks. I suppose she’s been standing
out there in all weather holding up her arm since the 1880s, and I can see how that could wear on her nerves after a
while.
Then there’s a little fluttery woodwind line, as they break through the clouds into the open sky. They’re in the studio
again for this shot, on harnesses carrying them up through a bank of smoke. You can see their shadows on the
cloudbank as they pass by the moon, which is actually a lamp that’s covered with white plastic and painted with the
moon’s pattern.
Then there’s the sequence where Lois gets more comfortable and tries to fly on her own, which I always find a bit
puzzling.
The scene suggests that Lois is perfectly safe in the air, as long as she keeps in physical contact with Superman. At
the start of this section, she’s nervous, just hanging on to one arm, but he grins at her and encourages her to let go
with one hand, and have the sensation of flying on her own.
She does that, and she has a marvelous time soaring through the air, but as she gets more and more comfortable, he
gives her more slack…
gradually letting her go until they’re just holding hands…
and then just holding on by their fingertips…
and it’s at this moment of perfect, united joy and delight…
that he fucking lets go, and she plunges into a terrifying free fall that lasts for ten seconds, which is quite long
enough to make her black out and probably die, or at least fuel a lifetime of nightmares every time she tries to go to
sleep.
Now, the puzzling thing about this sequence for me is not the weird physics of how his flight power works, and why
breaking physical contact suddenly snaps her back into the grip of gravity, because it’s magic, and it’s not trying to
be anything else.
I’m puzzled by the emotional story here. It just seems really irresponsible of him to let her out that far — which is
clearly his choice, not an accident. I guess you could say that having a passenger is a new experience for him, and he
doesn’t know what’s going to happen — there’s a reaction shot where he looks surprised, before hurrying down to
catch her again — but it makes me uncomfortable every time. It’s probably a metaphor for something.
Effects-wise, I don’t know how they accomplished this shot, with him flying down past the frame behind her, and
then appearing up from the bottom of the frame to gather her in his arms.
They might be using front projection for the first part of the shot, and then they hoist him up to make the catch, but
I’m not sure. It’s possible that they just dropped Margot Kidder out of an airplane with a GoPro, and waited for
Superman to come along and catch her.
Anyway, that moment of terror apparently makes Lois horny like you wouldn’t believe, so it all works out. That leads
into my least favorite musical number of all time, which we will discuss tomorrow.
Superman 1.74: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can you read my mind?
A: To be honest, I’d rather not, but if you insist, I don’t suppose there’s much I can do about it.
Yesterday, we were talking about Superman and Lois’ night flight through the sky, which is beautiful and puzzling,
and the closest we’re going to get in this movie to a real love scene. And now I’ve come to the spoken-word musical
number, which means I’m going to have to start getting more critical in a hurry.
I mean, do I have to say that this part of the scene gets a mixed reaction from audiences, or does everybody else just
hate this as much as I do? In my opinion, “Can You Read My Mind” is the worst part of the film, and it comes smack
in the middle of one of the best parts.
Now, I’m not coming at this as some square incel troll who can’t stand having girly stuff like dance numbers in the
middle of his he-man superhero movie. I love musical numbers more than I can express. My entire extended
childhood was and still is dominated by my love for The Muppet Show, which took hold of my consciousness as of
age 5 and permanently wired me to value funny, surprising and visually kinetic musical numbers wherever I can get
one.
And that very much includes my taste in superhero media. I love the musical numbers that pop up in Legion and The
Umbrella Academy, and I’ve watched Baby Groot’s brilliant dance number at the beginning of Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 2 more times than anything else produced by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you want to put some
song-and-dance into any given superhero film, I am here for it.
And yet, I hate “Can You Read My Mind” like I hate cancer and World War II. I think it’s likely that you do as well, so
let’s see if we can unpack what’s gone wrong here.
Well, the obvious place to start is the fact that it’s a spoken-word piece by Margot Kidder, rather than an actual
song. The lyrics, written to accompany John Williams’ love theme, express how Lois feels as she glides above the
clouds with her superdate, with a special focus on her low self-esteem, compared to the good-looking space
monster in the pilot’s seat.
The original idea was that they’d have ’70s pop star Toni Tennille sing the song, but director Richard Donner didn’t
like having somebody other than Margot Kidder expressing Lois’ inner thoughts.
Here’s the backstage story, as told by Kidder in the book that accompanied the Superman: The Music box set.
“Donner called and said, ‘Margot, you gotta do this song; can you sing?’ and I said, ‘No, not really.’ But he said, ‘Well,
I want you to go over to Johnny Williams’ house.’ So I go and John has Oscars and Grammys and Emmys on every
square inch of mantle or tabletop, all over the house, and he gave me these lyrics and I tried to sing, and his face just
fell. And he called Donner and said, ‘She can’t sing; she’s not going to sing this!’ But Donner just kept insisting, so I
took the music and practiced.
“A week later, they had me come into a little studio in Manhattan to record. So I sang my heart out, and I got louder
and I thought, ‘Oh, I must be doing great, nobody’s saying anything!’ And finally Donner came up and said, ‘Um,
sweetie… could you talk it?’ They brought Chris Reeve in so that I could talk it to him, to get the mood right. It was
one of the most mortifying experiences of my entire career! But I thought the final scene was beautiful.”
So what we have is Kidder taking song lyrics that weren’t designed to be normal human speech, and trying to say
them out loud, as naturally as she can. And it just doesn’t work as dialogue. The biggest stretch is probably the part
where she walks up and tells somebody, “Will you look at me, quivering, like a little girl, shivering,” which is a low
point in American cinema.
Because, let’s face it, the lyrics are not helpful. They’re all about how small and worthless Lois feels in this moment,
which is the opposite of what’s happening in the scene.
The point of this five-minute-long sequence is that Superman is sharing his power with Lois — allowing her to
experience something that nobody born on Earth ever has — and he’s doing it because he adores her, and thinks
that she’s the most special person he’s ever met. But the song lyrics dwell on how insignificant she thinks that she is.
Can you read my mind?
Do you know what it is you do to me?
Don’t know who you are
Just a friend from another star.
Here I am, like a kid out of school
Holding hands with a god, I’m a fool
Will you look at me, quivering,
Like a little girl, shivering,
You can see right through me.
Can you read my mind?
Can you picture the things I’m thinking of?
Wondering why you are
All of the wonderful things you are
You can fly, you belong to the sky
You and I could belong to each other.
If you need a friend, I’m the one to fly to
If you need to be loved, here I am.
Read my mind!
The narrative purpose of a musical number is to express the character’s feelings, in a way that they couldn’t express
through dialogue and action. In this case, the feelings that are being expressed are not appropriate for this moment
of satisfaction and triumph.
And it doesn’t even rhyme very well, which you’d think would be the bare minimum for inserting unnecessary song
lyrics into a scene that was perfectly fine before Toni Tennille came along. They rhyme “who you are” with “star” in
the first verse, and in the second verse, they use “why you are” and then can’t come up with any other rhyme than
“wonderful things you are”. I’m pretty sure they could have done something with the word “far”, if they’d bothered
to take the time.
When producer Michael Thau was putting together the 2000 Director’s Cut, he asked Donner if they could cut “Can
You Read My Mind”. Donner said no, which is just another reason why director’s cuts are not helpful. So we’re stuck
with this, I’m afraid. Luckily, this is the last example of a song being shoehorned inappropriately into a superhero
movie, so it’s nice that we’ve got it out of the way so soon.
Superman 1.75: The Other Stupid Question
He lied to her. He came all the way across a thousand galaxies, just to lie to her.
He gave her a false name. He insinuated his way into her life. He became a co-worker, a friend. She trusted him. She
confided in him. He was the person that knew her better than anyone else, the man who could see right through
her.
And he lied to her.
They traveled together. They solved mysteries together. They survived a thousand hair-raising adventures together,
one life-threatening, heart-stopping moment after another.
He used his super-ventriloquism, to make her think that he was in two places at once. He used his heat vision, to
destroy the telltale evidence that would have confirmed her suspicions. He created dreams and hoaxes and
imaginary stories, to confuse and distract her. He even invented a fucking robot duplicate of himself, specifically in
order to keep his secret from specifically her. She trusted him, and he lied to her, and he did it for decades. And he
thought it was funny.
So now, you want to ask why Lois Lane is so stupid that she never recognized the truth that Superman did everything
possible to conceal from her?
We’ve arrived at a tricky moment in Superman: The Movie — the end of Act 2, when the film stops being a romantic
comedy, and becomes an action-adventure story. For the last 46 minutes, since Clark’s arrival in Metropolis, the
movie has mostly been concerned with the Clark/Lois/Superman love triangle. Sure, there have been periodic
intrusions by Luthor and his gang, but they’ve been kept discreetly away from the main storyline — an undercurrent,
rather than a subplot.
Superman and Lois are just wrapping up the interview/love scene/musical number, a twelve-minute long sequence
where the world stops turning, and nothing matters besides watching these two kids fall in love — and once it’s
over, Superman and Lois don’t appear in a scene together for another 35 minutes. It’s the movie’s big structural flaw,
that it spends so much time building Lois up, and then leaves her out in the desert somewhere while the plot points
happen to other people.
This is our next-to-last chance to see Superman and Lois together, and it ends with something special — the man
transforming from Clark into Superman and back again, before our eyes.
And it’s wonderful, a clever one-take special-effects sequence that’s accomplished entirely through glasses, tone of
voice and posture. Clark straightens up, squares his shoulders, and calls out to Lois in a clear, strong voice that he
has something important to tell her — and then he loses his nerve, and shrinks back into the guise and garb of Clark
Kent, all sloping shoulders and nervous mannerisms.
People get a little over-excited about this scene — it’s acting, it’s not like Christopher Reeve invented the idea of
playing different characters — but it’s a nice moment that lends some credence to the premise that Lois might not
recognize that she’s about to go to dinner with the same guy that just flew off her balcony sixty seconds ago.
But that question — why doesn’t she recognize him? — is another one of those stupid questions, like “Where does
his cape go when he’s dressed up like Clark Kent?”, which is a part of the premise that you just need to accept in
order to enjoy having stories about Superman in your life.
The fact is that Siegel and Shuster set up this ludicrous premise with no interest whatever in whether it made logical
sense or not. They were producing a silly adventure comic about an extraterrestrial roughneck who laughed at
bullets and pulled planes out of the sky. Verisimilitude was not an issue.
America fell in love with this man and this woman almost instantly, before we even knew what we were falling in
love with. The audience didn’t expect superhero comics to make logical and emotional sense, because before this,
there were no superhero comics to have any expectations about. Lois hated Clark and loved Superman as of page
ten of Action Comics #1; it was an established fact before anybody even had time to wonder about it.
To the extent that anyone cared in the first few years, the double-identity problems were handled using the Where’s
Clark gambit, as seen in the above two panels, both from the same story in Superman #12.
The Where’s Clark gambit relies on the pace of the story being so frenetic that any skepticism is left in the gutters
between panels. Lois asks “Where’s Clark?” and Superman answers, “No time to answer questions!” or “I’ve already
attended to him!” And then in the next panel, he smashes his way through a door and starts breaking furniture, like
he always does. Nobody has time to wonder why Lois doesn’t recognize Clark, because Superman is punching
people, and then the story’s over.
By 1942, they realized that Lois almost seeing through Clark’s disguise was a story-productive idea, and they made a
huge deal about it in Superman #17, in a story called “Man or Superman?”
In this story, Clark gets careless, and phones in a story about an accident in the subway that Lois knows he couldn’t
possibly have known, unless he was Superman. The next day, she decides, “I’m going to find out once and for all if
Clark is Superman or not!” and then proceeds to plunge herself and Clark into a dangerous situation.
She basically barges right into a supervillain’s hideout and dares him to do something about it, and he does, putting
the two reporters into a crazy, over-complicated contraption involving a glass cage and a death pendulum. The only
way out is for Clark to turn into Superman without Lois noticing, which he accomplishes using super-speed to make
a temporary Clark Kent dummy out of a bunch of nearby rags.
The trick ultimately requires Lois to believe that Superman suddenly appeared in the room, saved her, and then
suddenly vanished, except the door is still locked and the room doesn’t have any windows. In other words, this is
exactly the proof that she’s looking for, because the only explanation for what happened is that Clark is Superman.
But she doesn’t see that somehow, and that’s how this is going to go, for the next several decades.
Naturally, you can’t pull stunts like that for more than a decade or two before people start thinking that it’s odd. By
the time they reached the Silver Age in the late 1950s to mid 60s, the Superman crew were regularly publishing
shock-covers that promised startling changes to the status quo.
This is my favorite example, from March 1966’s Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #63. On the cover, Superman
storms out of the stock room to startle Lois and Lana, tearing off his glasses and shouting, “I’ll tell you why I’ll never
marry you, Lana, or you, Lois! Who wants a wife so stupid she doesn’t realize I’m Superman when I take off my Clark
Kent glasses?”
“Could Superman’s ‘Clark Kent’ disguise fool you…” the cover blurb challenges, “all of the time… or even some of the
time? So how can he keep on fooling the world? Here is the story we have NEVER DARED PUBLISH BEFORE!”
Naturally, the story inside does not deliver on that promise in even the tiniest way. It’s a thoroughly wackadoodle
tale about an evil anti-Superman cult where everybody dresses up like glowing skeletons, and make detailed wax
figurines of Superman’s friends, just like every Silver Age story ever written, except more confusing.
To justify the cover, there’s a panel where Superman bursts out of the stock room and reveals his identity, which
goes nowhere.
“It’s typical of your hair-brained schemes!” Superman shouts, chastising Lois and Lana for stuff that isn’t their fault.
“You just don’t think — which is why I’ll never marry either of you! Who wants a wife so dumb she doesn’t realize
I’m Superman when I take off my Clark Kent glasses?”
“Nonsense!” Lana protests. “You know we’ve often suspected you’re really Clark!”
“Only because of the physical resemblance,” he retorts. “But appearances can be deceiving! You see, Kent isn’t
Superman… and neither am I!”
And then he whisks off both his glasses and his mask, and it’s actually Van Benson, who’s filling in temporarily as the
editor of the Daily Planet because Perry White has been temporarily appointed to the U.S. Senate.
Benson reveals that he’s not actually a newspaper editor — he’s a master of disguise, who’s currently working for
the FBI in order to infiltrate the anti-Superman skeleton cult. Everyone is so delighted by his Superman practical joke
that he spends the next couple pages showing off his disguise skills, making Lana look like Elizabeth Taylor in a
matter of seconds.
The whole thing is so screwy that everybody stops paying attention to the fact that Benson was just saying that
Superman and Clark are obviously the same person. The answer “No time to answer questions!” actually looks
pretty reasonable, compared to this.
But in 1978 — with an exciting live-action Superman movie about to hit the screens — the Superman comics finally
decided to come up with a stupid answer to this stupid question, revealing to the public how he actually tricks
people into not recognizing him as Clark Kent. But that’s a whole other story, and I’ve got a new superhero movie to
go and see.
So I’m going to leave you in suspense for the weekend, while I write about Spider-Man: No Way Home, and I’ll come
back on Monday to tell you all about the brilliant and entirely unsatisfying solution to this decades-old problem.
Superman 1.76: The Stupid Answer
So it turns out people aren’t tired of superhero movies after all, judging by the first weekend take for Spider-Man:
No Way Home, which earned more money in a four-day frame than any other movie that has ever been made
except for Avengers: Endgame. It looks like these films are going to be around for a while as a dominant pop cultural
force, and comic book readers know exactly what to expect.
When there’s a new movie that’s coming up based on a Marvel or DC property, that means it’s time to relaunch the
comic book, and have a new #1 out on the racks for people to pick up, read for two issues, and then decide that they
don’t like it as much as the movie. These days, the relaunch titles last for about 12 to 18 months, and then get
replaced by whatever’s coming next in the movie release schedule.
In 2021, we’ve seen relaunches for Shang-Chi (vol 2), Black Widow (vol 8), Eternals (vol 5), Suicide Squad (vol 7) and
Venom (vol 5), plus a new Hawkeye: Kate Bishop title to tie in with the Disney+ show. This is what comics are for
now, to support the movies and to occasionally come up with a new bit of intellectual property, like a Black Spider-
Man, a female Spider-Man, a Black female Iron Man, a Muslim Ms. Marvel, a bisexual Superman and a Black gay
Aquaman, all of them ready to be turned into cartoons, live-action TV shows and blockbuster movies, whenever
people get around to it.
But back in 1978, DC wasn’t really sure what they were supposed to do about the upcoming Superman movie,
except buy tickets, so their response was all over the place.
They started a new Superman team-up title called DC Comics Presents, and they launched a new “Mr. and Mrs.
Superman” back-up feature in the Superman book about a newlywed Lois and Clark, in an alternate universe. They
also wrote a four-issue story designed to sell diecast Supermobile toys, and they published a special Superman vs
Muhammad Ali comic.
On the other hand, in what seem like perverse anti-tie-ins, they didn’t publish any comics that feature Lex Luthor all
year, plus they reprinted the story “Kryptonite Nevermore!” from 1971, to make sure that readers were aware that
Superman wasn’t vulnerable to Kryptonite anymore. They also published a story called “The Super Sellout of
Metropolis!” which I interpret as a way of working through their ambivalent feelings about the movie.
And to cap off the year, just in time for the movie release, they published a story called “The Master Mesmerizer of
Metropolis!” which offered a full and unnecessary explanation for why nobody recognizes Superman, when he’s in
the guise and garb.
This is Superman #330, cover-dated December 1978, and you can tell it’s going to be exciting because Superman and
Lana are already having a DEFCON 2 level argument and the story hasn’t even started yet.
Superman is pointing directly at the Clark glasses perched on his furious face, and screaming in two-tone perplexity:
“Lana — NOW do you believe I’m CLARK KENT?” which is exactly the behavior that he’s been trying to avoid for the
last forty years.
“Of course not!” Lana slings back at him. “What kind of idiot do you take me for?” He’s taking her for some kind of
idiot. They’re both posing in a kind of crouching tiger battle stance, and they each have a prop, which they’re
indicating to each other in quite an urgent way. Hers is a framed picture. “THIS is what Clark looks like!”
“Revealed at last —” it says, in a jagged caption explosion taking place uncomfortably close to Superman’s below-
the-belt area, “the startling SECRET of how Superman fools the world with his Clark Kent identity!”
The story starts with Superman having a dream that all of his friends recognized him all at once. And it’s right here,
three hundred and thirty issues into his crime-fighting career, that Superman realizes that his life doesn’t make any
sense.
“Is my Clark Kent disguise really that bad?” he asks himself. “Even if I do change my voice slightly when I pose as
Clark… can my dual identity really be that easy to see through?!”
He brushes aside his forelock and puts on his glasses, and thinks: “Hmm — now that I stop to think about it… that’s
the dumbest disguise I’ve ever seen!”
So that right there is a clear example of the cure being worse than the disease. I know that it’s silly that nobody
recognizes Superman with his glasses on; it’s just one of those things that you need to accept, if you want to enjoy
stories about Superman. You figure he must have arranged it, somehow. But it turns out that my acceptance of that
silly premise was based on the implicit assumption that the story and I were on the same side.
Superman suddenly realizing that it’s a dumb disguise means that the character has gone through the last four
decades without noticing the thing that every child in the world figured out ages ago. It’s like he walked out of the
bathroom in 1938 with his fly down, and he’s just getting around to zipping it up. How do we understand the basic
principles of Superman’s life better than Superman does?
And then he looks us straight in the eye and starts mansplaining it to us, like he’s doing us a favor. “Uh-unh!” he
thinks. “Superman wearing glasses is what I look like! But what else should I expect? Ordinary people start wearing
glasses, do their friends say, ‘Who are you?’ No — They say, ‘Oh… you got glasses!'”
Yes, Superman, thank you, I already know that; I was the one who said that to you, back when I was in second grade.
How are you just figuring this out?
Now, there is an actual historical reason why the dual identity is part of the comic’s premise, which is: Siegel and
Shuster didn’t care. In the early stories, Superman was just a big violent psychopath who crashed through your door,
picked you up with one hand and beat you to death with your own living room. There was no reason for anyone to
connect this unstoppable force of alien aggression with some random guy wearing glasses and a tie.
This isn’t a story about Superman putting on glasses, and people not recognizing him. It’s a story about Clark Kent
shedding his human form, and turning into a sharknado. You don’t look at the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
thundering in your direction, sowing devastation and despair, and wonder what they’d look like if they put on
glasses, and started working in your office. It’s just not a thing that you consider.
The problem started when they’d written so many stories about Superman and Lois that it started to feel routine. At
first, Superman was like a natural disaster that Lois was attracted to. He was the Tasmanian Devil, whirling in
through the front door, reducing every room in the house to splinters, and then barreling out the back door, and off
into the distance.
But after a while, Superman slowed down, and became a regular feature on the landscape, just another person for
the other characters to interact with. He was tamed, and domesticated.
And that’s the point where it started to be weird that nobody recognized him as Clark Kent — but by then, it was too
late. The dual identity was already established; it was a crucial part of the premise, and they couldn’t change it. It
just stopped making sense, that’s all.
Now, I’m not going to waste your time or mine, trying to be interested in the plot of this stupid comic book story. It
involves a supervillain with hypnotic powers, who hovers in the air and makes people do things that Superman
would prefer that they didn’t do. Superman decides that he’s going to inoculate the citizens of Metropolis from
being hypnotized by broadcasting to the entire city on a giant floating TV screen that magically appears in the sky,
and asking everybody to stare at his highly-polished belt buckle.
“You feel yourself getting sleepy!” he commands basically everyone. “Your eyelids are getting heavy… you can barely
keep your eyes open!” People used to trust authority figures a lot more than they do now.
His hypnotic command is to tell everybody to resist all other attempts at hypnosis until he defeats the Spellbinder, at
which point he’ll release everyone from their trance, and they’re free to go and get hypnotized again as much as
they want.
Once that’s all arranged, he goes to the wardrobe room and changes back into his Clark Kent clothes, which I guess
he usually does in a different way because all of a sudden there’s an irreparable security breach and everything is
over.
Except that it’s not. “Pardon my curiosity, Superman,” says an extremely polite Lana, “but why are you wearing those
glasses, and dressing up in that suit?”
“Whaat?!?” Superman thinks. I told you about the thinks. “Lana doesn’t recognize me as Clark Kent–?? That’s
insane!”
He tells her that he’s considering disguising himself as Clark to fool the Spellbinder, but Lana dismisses the idea. “I
admit there is a superficial resemblance,” she says, “but you’re too heavily-built… and you’re much too handsome!
No, forget it! You don’t really look like Clark at all!”
Once that’s over, Superman releases everybody from their anti-hypnosis post-hypnotic suggestion, so now they’re
vulnerable to regular hypnosis again, thank goodness; all is right with the world.
But now he gets to figure out the big secret, which is that people don’t see Clark Kent the way that he really is;
everybody sees him as a frail, older man with a receding hairline, even when they’re looking at photographs.
The explanation for this will not make you happy. In fact, if you’d like to bail right now, and skip ahead to tomorrow’s
post, then feel free; I don’t need to burden you with it, if you’ve got other things to worry about.
He shows Lana the sketch, and she agrees that that’s what Clark looks like.
“Then my theory must be correct!” he says, still in thinks. “Apparently, my power of super-hypnotism is always
working — at low power… even when I’m not willing it! It automatically projects my subconscious desire to be seen
as a weaker and frailer man than I really am!”
So that’s why Lana thought he was just Superman with glasses on, when she saw him earlier — she was under his
limited-time anti-hypnosis hypnosis, so she wasn’t receiving the regular everyday hypnosis that he’s been generating
for the last forty years without realizing it.
Now, at this point, I am actually still on board with this concept. I always figured it was some kind of magical space
monster pheromone that he emitted, which made people not question whether he was Clark, somewhere on the
spectrum between elven glamour and Doctor Who’s psychic paper. You know what I mean, one of those quiet shut
up don’t really think about it type magic spells where it works in the story as long as you don’t ask any further
questions.
But goddamn it, now they’ve got to go and drag out the midi-chlorians, and spoil everything. If you’re not familiar,
midi-chlorians are a species of intelligent microscopic organisms that live inside of people from Star Wars, and if you
have a high midi-chlorian count, then that makes you a Jedi and allows you to use the Force. Everybody understood
the Force perfectly well for the first twenty years of Star Wars, and then George Lucas made The Phantom Menace
and all of a sudden we needed a science-fiction word for it.
Well, Superman’s midi-chlorians are apparently his glasses. He explains to us in further thinks that when he was a
young boy, he discovered that he couldn’t use regular glasses, because his heat vision would melt the lenses.
So then we get some thinks within thinks, as the young Superman messes around with the wrecked rocket ship that
brought him to Earth.
“Like everything from Krypton, the rocket was indestructible — but it’s now in pieces, because the explosion of its
Kryptonian fuel — which ignited when the rocket crashed — was powerful enough to wreck it!”
And then this: “The plexiglass window in the rocket also shattered — coincidentally enough, into rounded pieces…
which will provide Clark with indestructible lenses!”
And then we come back to Clark, to bring us home: “Some unknown property of the Kryptonian plexiglass must
intensify the low-level hypnotic effect of my eyes! So when people look at Clark… what they see is the image of Clark
I try to project!”
There’s more. “And I couldn’t create a self-hypnotic block against the Spellbinder because I had my glasses on when I
tried… the same thing in the specs that intensifies my super-hypnotism must prevent it from working on me… which
is why I never see myself in a mirror the way others see me! Cameras must reproduce my eyes’ hypno-effect
perfectly — because people recognize Clark on TV and in pictures!”
That’s the moment, right there, that kills this whole idea for me — that his Kryptonian plexiglass voodoo still works
through photographs. I think I could have put up with it, if it wasn’t for that.
Then he starts explaining why it still works even during the periods when he’s temporarily lost his powers, but it’s
getting into tinfoil-hat level conspiracy theory, and I don’t think we should be encouraging him to get any deeper
into this line of thought. I wonder if that cop is still around, somewhere?
Superman 1.77: The Center Cannot Hold
Then they went to Canada, and things did not go well in Canada.
I know, these posts about the 1977 production are all variations of “things did not go well” — they didn’t go well in
May when they were shooting the Fortress of Solitude scenes, and they didn’t go well in June while they were
shooting the Daily Planet scenes. Things actually went okay during the New York location shooting in July, if you
didn’t count all the rioting and arson, which was pretty tame, for this production.
Overall, there were three big problems that the production had to deal with: first, everything that they wanted to do
was harder than they’d hoped it would be; second, the director wanted to make a great movie, and didn’t care how
much it cost; and third, the producers, who were quite at home with shady bookkeeping practices, discovered that
there was a whole other level of financial mismanagement that even they couldn’t keep up with.
So Alexander Salkind stayed in Europe, soothing investors and not paying bills, while Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler
traveled with the production, fretting, cutting crew salaries, and not paying all the other bills that Alex hadn’t gotten
around to not paying.
It rained in Canada. That’s apparently something that it does there, even when you don’t want it to.
The chapter in David Petrou’s book The Making of Superman: The Movie covering the Canada shoot is basically just
one weather report after another:
page 126: “By the time the crew was ready to shoot, the rains came — a mountain storm of frightening intensity,
complete with thunder and lightning… The next few days were also weather washouts.”
page 127: “After several days of bad weather, we managed to get through part of the initial missile sequence.”
page 136: “When we were almost ready to shoot, after hours of patient waiting, the dark clouds rolled in, the sun
disappeared, and the rains came.”
page 139: “Unfortunately, shooting did not progress this quickly, due in large part to the fact that so many key
people, Donner included, were still suffering from colds and flu picked up standing around in the rain.”
page 142: “After the unit settled in to finish up on the Kent farm, the weather again turned bad.”
page 144: “The weather was now blustery and bitter cold, and the day proved to be a total washout.”
page 145: “On top of that, the long-term weather forecast was bad.”
So that’s just money, washing away. Everybody needed to get paid, even if they couldn’t shoot anything for the day.
Larry Hagman, who played the Major in charge of the first missile convoy, has six lines in the movie, in a twenty-
eight second scene. He was on location for nearly two weeks. Then Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter had to wait
around for an extra week before they filmed the spaceship crash scene, because the wheat wasn’t tall enough yet.
That’s why they went to Canada, instead of Kansas: in August, they’ve already harvested the wheat in Kansas, but
the season ends later in Alberta. Also, it was supposed to be cheaper, and the weather was supposed to be
beautiful, but we live in a fallen world.
They had a lot to shoot in Alberta; practically everything in the Smallville sequence is outside. They filmed the Kents
finding Clark, the football field, running with the train, the farm scenes and the funeral scene, as well as the
sequence at the Danforth Missile Base. They also filmed the missile convoy sequences, including the remote-control
car crash.
But the changeable weather made everything take two to three times as long as it was supposed to. Even if they
managed to get some shots on one day, they’d have to wait around on the next day for the cloud pattern to match,
for continuity.
The producers continued to get twitchy. I’m actually surprised to see footage of Ilya and Pierre on location with
Donner; I thought Ilya and Donner weren’t speaking to each other by now.
At one point, Ilya informed the crew that they would only get half their salary for the location shoot, with the
balance to be paid when they were back in the UK. I don’t know what the crew’s reaction was to this
announcement, but one can only imagine. Another cost-cutting decision that got made at this point was to cancel
shooting the Niagara Falls sequence for Superman II, which they were planning to do while they were in Canada.
With no break in the bad weather, the producers wanted to give up and go back to Pinewood, which led to more
disagreements with Donner about compromising key sequences in the film. They decided to finish the farm scenes
with Clark saying goodbye to Martha at sunrise, and then they left the remaining shots to a Canadian second unit.
The production returned to Pinewood Studios in September, and they started filming the sequences in Luthor’s lair.
This is the point when Richard Lester, the on-deck director in case the Salkinds decided to fire Donner, made his one
substantial contribution to the production: suggesting that they hold off on filming any more Superman II material
until they shot everything that they needed to finish the first movie. Everybody agreed that this was a good idea,
because it meant they didn’t have to go back to fucking Canada to film the Niagara Falls scenes.
That being said, they did still have to film some Superman II material, so that they could use the sets that they’d
already built, and wrap on Gene Hackman, Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty. They shot the balloon sequence with
Luthor and Eve in mid-September, the Arctic scenes with Luthor and Eve in late September/early October, and the
prison scenes with Luthor and Otis in mid October.
By this point, Donner was shuttling back and forth between five different units at the same time, riding on a golf cart
that they’d leased so that he could get around on the studio lot faster. At one point, he was attending to main-unit
shooting with Hackman and Perrine in the Arctic, second-unit filming with Beatty, flying-unit work with Reeve, a
model unit doing the creation of the Fortress of Solitude, and another model unit outside, doing the bus crash on an
enormous model of the Golden Gate Bridge. They also had a unit in New York shooting background plates, the unit
they’d left behind in Canada, and if anybody had any time left over, they’d do some more of the helicopter rescue
sequence.
And then they decided to have a wrap party and send everybody home, despite the fact that the movie was not
even close to being finished.
The original shooting schedule said that they would wrap principal photography at the end of October, and the
Salkinds, in their infinite shadiness, decided that it would make their backers feel better if they pretended that they
were still on schedule. So most of the main unit got their two-week notice in mid-October, and the Salkinds told the
backers that all that was left was the special-effects work. This was not actually the case.
There were plenty of things still left to film, including parts of the balcony interview scene, the helicopter rescue
scene, and catching the cat. They still had to do the Air Force One sequence, the cat burglar climbing up the
building, the Superman-and-Lois flight sequences, the railroad track, the San Andreas Fault, the Hoover Dam, Lois
getting crushed inside the car, and a whole bunch of location shooting that needed to be done in New Mexico for
the end of the movie. This movie was going to keep on shooting for another year.
But, sure, if the Salkinds wanted to stop paying the crew and send them all home, then that’s what they were going
to do. They had a very nice “end of production reception” on October 28th, and then they shut down production at
Pinewood for a whole month, while Richard Donner went to New York to plead with the execs at Warner Bros. to
not let the Salkinds fire him. Things, in other words, were not going well.
Superman 1.78: The Reading Room
It’s one of the silliest party tricks in fiction. A contestant appears at the door of 221B Baker Street, and the great
detective observes, “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff,
that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I
can deduce nothing else.”
This appears to be a brilliant act of deduction, but Holmes waves it away. The client’s right hand is bigger than his
left hand, which is apparently a thing that happens when you do manual labor; he’s wearing a Freemason tiepin,
which is apparently a thing that you wear when you’re a Freemason; his shirt cuff is shiny, which is apparently a
thing that happens when you do a considerable amount of writing lately; and he’s wearing a T-shirt that says Spring
Break China 1891.
These are just sound effects, obviously, because it’s all a setup. Arthur Conan Doyle deliberately festoons these
chumps with splashes of mud from a specific area where the clay is a unique shade of ochre, just to impress us with
Sherlock’s amazing ability to deduce things from the clues that Doyle put there to be deducted upon. The author
already knows where the treasure is; all the character has to do is dig.
But Lex Luthor needs to head for higher ground, because he’s just suffered an extensive gutpunch to the ego, and he
needs to prove, to himself and to all of us, that he’s still an interesting character. It’s important to Lex to be famous
and admired, and now some goody two-shoes spaceman is grabbing all the headline space.
“It’s too good to be true!” Miss Teschmacher chirps, consulting the spicy and informative interview written up in the
Daily Planet. “He’s six foot four, has black hair, blue eyes, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and tells the truth!”
The thing that hurts, obviously, is that these are all qualities that Luthor doesn’t have, and in the narcissist zero-sum
game that he plays with every other living human, any compliment given to somebody else is an attack on him.
Reaching the top of the hill, Luthor delivers a brief sermon.
“Miss Teschmacher, some people can read War and Peace, and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story.
Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper, and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
It’s a great line, but it doesn’t land. He’s purposely surrounded himself with ding-dongs, and that has conversational
consequences.
In a willful act of ding-dongery, Otis eagerly grabs the ladder that Lex is standing on and moves it over to the other
side of the room, stranding his boss up in the rafters. This is uncomfortable for Luthor, because it’s another reminder
of his inadequacy: Superman can soar through the air at will, but Lex needs people to push ladders under him.
Once that’s settled, Lex makes with the Sherlock Holmes impression, and like Sherlock, it’s not actually based on
very much evidence.
“In the interview, he says that the planet Krypton exploded in 1948,” Lex sighs. “The ridiculous little freak. It took
three years in a rocket ship to get to Earth. Ergo…” There’s a little break for another moment to make fun of Otis,
and we never do find out ergo what.
“Now, think, people, think!” Luthor barks. “Deductive reasoning, that’s the name of the game.” It usually is.
“Fragments from the planet Krypton exploded, and went into outer space. It is reasonable to assume that some of
those particles of debris drifted to Earth.”
Eve gets very excited about the word “Meteorites!” and Luthor nods, “Jawohl.” I have no idea why he says that. I like
this scene a lot, but it is eccentric to the point of incoherence a lot of the time.
“And voila!” he smirks, ripping a page out of an old issue of National Geographic. It’s passed on to Otis and Eve with
supplementary voilas, and we see a guy in Addis Ababa holding a big green chunk of somebody else’s planet.
Correctly, Eve asks, “So what?” and that’s when we get the big deduction.
The vital plot point that follows does not make any logical sense. Lex is about to reach into hammerspace and pull
out some information that is not based on National Geographic, or anything at all. And we are expected to believe
what he says, and admire how clever he is.
That’s why he has this crazy-looking library area, stocked with information on who knows what. Sitting up on high
with the accumulated knowledge of the world arrayed behind him, he is in a position — visually, if not logically — to
deliver an astonishing insight.
“To us, they are just meteorites? Fair enough. But — the level of specific radioactivity is so high to anyone from the
planet Krypton, this substance is lethal!”
And then there is the symbolic awakening of the ding-dongs.
“Wait a minute, Mister Luth-or,” Otis attempts, “you mean fire and bullets can’t hurt this guy, but this stuff here —”
and then Eve joins in as well — “will kill him!”
Lex nods, and the pair of students emit little vocalizations for a while. Otis says “Oh!” and Eve says “Oh!” and then
Otis says “Ah!” and Eve says “Yeah!” and then Otis slaps his hand against the ladder and Eve says “Yeah!” again.
All of that noise is there to distract you from the fact that this conclusion came out of entirely nowhere. Lex sees a
picture of a guy with a green meteorite, and somehow knows that a) it came from Krypton in the first place, b) it has
a level of specific radioactivity, and c) that level of radioactivity will be harmful to Kryptonians, and nobody even
knew that Krypton existed before Lois published her interview this morning.
But Lex is acting like this is the obvious conclusion to draw, and Otis and Eve are indicating to the audience that this
is true and makes total sense.
Then they do the same routine over again, this time explaining that Luthor is going to hide the kryptonite in lead,
which was correctly planted in the previous scene and is actually clever. Eve does the same performative
appreciation of this part of the plan, which seals up the scene and encourages you to stop wondering how Lex
figured out it was kryptonite.
And we forgive the scene for this leap in logic, because everyone in the audience who’s lived in America for very
long is already aware that there’s a thing called kryptonite and it’s Superman’s only weakness, and we agree that it
would be more interesting to have a Superman movie with kryptonite in it. Movies don’t actually need logic; they
just need to set up situations where they give the audience what we want. We will accept any coincidence, last-
minute miracle or impossible act of deductive reasoning, as long as we agree that a given plot twist would make the
movie more interesting or emotionally satisfying.
So, sure, if going to Addis Ababa finally gets the villain up out of the basement and into the sunlight to go play tricks
on army men, then screw it; let’s get going. I’m not a Freemason and I haven’t been to China, but I have definitely
been doing a considerable amount of writing lately, and I could use something new to write about.
Superman 1.79: K-Rock
“Wish I could explain my strange reaction to that meteor!” Clark Kent wonders aloud. “Why do I get weak every time
I come within five feet of it? And Krypton… Why did I keep repeating that word, over and over again? Krypton…
What has the word Krypton to do with me? Sounds familiar, but I… just can’t place it! I must find out, because unless
I’m very much mistaken… Krypton is the key to this whole strange business!”
You see, back in the old days, little Kal-El didn’t arrive on the planet Earth with a crystal library full of ancient
knowledge and a hologram of his dad to explain how to use it; the kid just crashed, and it was up to the passing
motorists to figure everything out from scratch.
So in 1943, when the Adventures of Superman radio show decided that they wanted Superman to know where he
came from, they invented a meteor and called it Kryptonite, and then they put it in a drawer and forgot about it for
another two years.
Now, you and Lex Luthor and I are aware of how crucial the concept of Kryptonite is to the Superman story: it’s the
hero’s Achilles heel, the one weakness of a man who’s designed to be weakness-free. It’s a glowing green rock from
another galaxy that’s perfectly safe unless you happen to be a secret space angel, in which case it kills you. It comes
in a variety of sizes and price points, it can be crushed into a powder or turned into a gas, and sometimes there’s an
enormous gorilla that can shoot it out of his eyes. And once you get tired of the green stuff, you can switch to the
red version, which does something completely different.
It is, in short, one of the most story-productive gimmicks that you could possibly introduce, and the amazing thing it
is how long it took to catch on, once they’d thought of it.
The radio story was called “The Meteor of Krypton”, and it kicked off in June 1943. A flaming meteor flashes across
the heavens and lands in a farm outside Metropolis, and — knowing that Daily Planet readers are hungry for nothing
but flaming meteor stories — Clark Kent goes out to have a look at it. When he approaches the thing, Clark gets
dizzy and loses all of his strength, collapsing in a heap and moaning a mysterious word: Krypton.
You see, back in the early days, we knew where Superman came from, but he didn’t. The comic book, comic strip
and radio show all began with some version of the Krypton origin story, but little Kal skipped town when he was a
baby, so the name of the planet was a complete mystery to him. It’s not amazingly clear why a chunk of rock would
broadcast that knowledge into his brain, but maybe it’s just trying to be gneiss.
The meteor is taken into custody and given to Dr. John Whistler, the head of the astrophysical division of the
Metropolis Museum. Superman visits the doctor, who obligingly unboxes the Kryptonite for him. Superman gets
disoriented, and then has a vision of his origin story on Krypton.
Then they do a reprise of the Jor-El/Krypton story, and Superman asks Dr. Whistler to put the meteor away again,
and that is pretty much the end of that story. Superman wants to destroy the rock, but the doctor wants to keep it,
for sentimental reasons. So the doctor promises that he’ll keep it locked up, in a vault that nobody will open until his
death.
And then they don’t do anything with it, until 1945.
That’s a weird thing to do, because they’ve just invented an incredible story generator and put it in a drawer, with an
obvious “In Case You Need a Story Idea, Break Glass” sign on it, and instead of using it, they just talk about Nazi spy
rings for another two years.
In Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, Glen Weldon has an explanation for this: War Department censorship.
“During the war, Superman radio scripts were submitted to the U.S. War Department for review. Discussion of
radioactive elements was a sensitive issue, and the government let the show’s producers know it. Kryptonite
wouldn’t make another appearance until September 1945.”
It sounds like a crazy idea, these days — the War Department didn’t have anything better to do than vet children’s
radio scripts? — but there really was a U.S. Office of Censorship established in 1941, to make sure that radio
broadcasts, newspapers and newsreels didn’t report any information that could be of value to the enemy. They
didn’t even allow weather broadcasts from 1942 to 1943, because they were afraid that predictions of fog or storms
could be used as cover for an enemy attack. The Adventures of Superman featured a lot of stories about German
and Japanese spies, saboteurs and inventors, so it’s plausible that the military would keep an eye on their scripts.
But the radio producers were clearly eager to get Kryptonite onto the show, because they reintroduced it as soon as
the war was over. VJ-Day was August 14th, 1945, and the official surrender document that ended World War II was
signed on September 2nd. Three weeks after that, on September 24th, Dr. Whistler died, and Adventures of
Superman opened the mystery box again.
And it turns out that Kryptonite really was the most story-productive element they could think of, because at this
point they embarked on the longest story arc that the show ever produced — 77 episodes in a row, from late
September all the way to early January. The show usually featured stories that lasted two or three weeks; this was a
saga.
Just like in the movie, the radio story starts with Lois publishing information that she shouldn’t be publishing. Clark
learns that Dr. Whistler has died, and he explains to Lois and Perry that Whistler’s meteor is the only substance that
can harm Superman. This explanation involves another reprise of Jor-El warning the science council and sending his
baby off in a rocket, which I guess now they’re going to do every couple of years whether they need it or not.
Without Clark knowing about it, Lois publishes a story about Superman being in danger, which attracts the attention
of the Scarlet Widow, a mobster who decides to steal the chunk of Kryptonite from the museum. Once she’s got her
hands on it, she calls four villains from previous radio stories, and sells each of them a chunk of the meteor, for a
million dollars apiece.
One of the chunks gets liquefied by a Nazi spy, Der Teufel, who injects it into a young man, turning him into a super-
powered Atom Man. He’s able to attack Superman with kryptonite lightning shooting out of his fingers, and once
Superman defeats him, there’s still another three chunks out there. The whole thing gets so crazy that Superman
has to call in Batman and Robin to help him, and even then, they only manage to track down three of the four pieces
by the end of the story in January.
This storyline was a huge success, and when Columbia Pictures made its two Superman serials, they adapted
elements from the radio show stories, rather than the comic books.
In the 1948 serial, at the end of the third episode, Professor Leeds from the Metropolis Museum finds a meteor, and
Clark goes to the museum to get a look at it. When the Professor opens the mystery box to reveal the glowing rock,
Clark gets dizzy and falls down. Clark is forced to reveal that he’s Superman, and asks the professor to destroy the
rock. The professor agrees to keep the Kryptonite for just a few days and run tests on it, and then dump it in the
ocean.
In place of the Scarlet Widow, who was an ugly old woman on the radio, the serial introduces the Spider Lady, a
ravishing blonde with an enormous electrical web in her office, who wears a black evening gown and mask, even
when she’s just hanging around at home with her henchmen. She’s tipped off about the existence of Kryptonite, and
she sends her employees to steal it from the museum.
To be honest, there isn’t that much Kryptonite action in the serial, which mostly concerns itself with the standard
sci-fi adventure serial tropes of the day: a powerful ray gun that needs to be stolen and assembled by a mysterious
gang leader, who sends out her thugs to steal stuff and kidnap people. There’s a lot of gangsters driving cars, and the
hero rescuing people who are tied up in dangerous places.
It’s not until the final chapter, episode 15, that they really use the Kryptonite to immobilize Superman. One of the
Spider Lady’s goons flashes it at him and then brings Superman back to headquarters, where he instantly recovers
and defeats everyone.
So Kryptonite has now been used successfully in two different mediums — on the radio show in 1943, 1945 and
1947, and in the 1948 serial — and it still took until 1949 for them to introduce it in the comics.
And once again, the first use they had for Kryptonite was to let Superman know where he comes from. The story is
called “Superman Returns to Krypton!” and it appeared in Superman #61, November/December 1949.
Considering how consequential the introduction of Kryptonite is, the story starts in a bizarrely small-scale way.
There’s a fake swami fortune-teller in Metropolis bilking rich society dames, and when Superman confronts the con
artist, he suddenly feels weak, and collapses. He discovers that the gem in the swami’s turban is a strange meteorite
found by a rock prospector in the west.
And then — using the unstoppable power of somehow — Superman races off at cosmic velocity, explaining to us,
“Starting from where the meteorites landed… and traveling backward in time, I’ll chart the meteorites’ course… back
to their origin!” So that’s a thing that Superman can do.
He follows the time trail all the way back to Krypton, a planet that he’s never heard of before, and he watches his
entire origin story.
“Now I understand why I’m different from Earthmen!” Superman announces. “I’m not really from Earth at all — I’m
from another planet — the planet Jor-El called Krypton!!” with two exclamation points and everything. Finally, he’s
learned where he comes from, which we didn’t realize was even a problem until he brought it up. We’d known
about Krypton for ages.
Once he deduces that it’s the gem in the swami’s turban that’s been causing problems for him, he returns to his own
time and takes care of it by using his super-breath to blow the turban into the sea, and that’s the end of that.
But only a couple months later, in Action Comics #141 (Feb 1950), they bring it back, with a weird page-long
introduction that claims that Superman and his enemies have known about Kryptonite for a while.
They show a panel that’s meant to be a flashback, with two old men in hats finding Superman lying around with a
chunk of K.
“A strange meteor, Professor!” says one of the men. “Possibly a remnant of the exploded planet Krypton!”
“Quick!” the professor replies. “Superman’s fainted! This stuff must give off some strange radiation that overcomes
him!”
Then the narrator says, “So the deadly element received the name of Kryptonite, and although the enemies of
Superman frequently sought it afterwards, there appeared to be not another fragment on Earth. But now, the genius
of Luthor has succeeded in creating — synthetic Kryptonite!”
This is the comic book writers finally admitting that the radio show was right, and Kryptonite is a good idea. It’s a
bold move, to retcon a story that only appeared two months ago, using a fake flashback to cover their tracks.
Once they introduced Kryptonite into the comics, they immediately started using it a lot. That first story was in
Nov/Dec 1949, and then it appears in three stories in 1950, five stories in 1951 and six stories in 1952. Naturally, that
kind of thing can get out of hand, which it definitely did.
Superman 1.80: The Silver Age of Kryptonite
So, yesterday I was telling you about how Superman comics caught on to the magical story-generation powers of
Kryptonite, the only substance in the world that can weaken Superman, apart from all the other ones. The idea of
Kryptonite originated in the Adventures of Superman radio show in 1943, and in 1945 they used it for a huge,
complicated story arc that lasted for more than three months. The comic books didn’t inroduce Kryptonite until
1949, but as soon as they caught on to it, they started using it several times a year, to do all sorts of things.
The substance was supposed to be rare, but pretty soon, it was everywhere. In fact, there are two different stories
published in 1952 alone that featured bald, bespectacled scientists creating synthetic Kryptonite in their labs.
Apparently, any bald guy with poor vision could whip up a batch of anti-Superman juice any time they wanted it,
which was often.
But it was in the Silver Age — that magical period from 1958 to 1969, when everything in Superman comics was
exaggerated and absurd — that they really delved into Kryptonite’s full potential as a plot point factory. By this time,
people had been writing 13-page stories about Superman every month for twenty years, and they weren’t allowed
to change anything of consequence about the characters, so they were desperate for new gimmicks that they could
use to keep up with the demand.
So they came up with the idea of using new varieties of Kryptonite, starting in December 1958 with Adventure
Comics #255. The story was called “The Splitting of Superboy!”, and it featured another one of those asshole aliens
that come to Earth every once in a while just to mess things up and then run away.
He gets into an argument with Clark about whether he’s also Superboy, so the alien gets a weird device and starts
messing with it.
“On the red planet Mars we have a form of Red Kryptonite!” he explains. “But fear not, it doesn’t affect you like
Green Kryptonite, the one element that can destroy you!” He must have been reading some back issues.
He turns his Red K device on a nearby caterpillar, and says, “Watch as the Red Kryptonite radiations strike that
caterpillar! It instantly splits into its other form as a butterfly while its original form also remains!” That’s interesting,
I guess, but I don’t know why you’d bother to create a machine that duplicates caterpillars. I feel like we already
have as many caterpillars as we need.
And then, in a classic example of asshole alien behavior, Kozz makes Superboy fix his spaceship and then just flies
away, without telling him how to reunite the two halves of his personality.
And that’s all there is to it; at that point, you have a crazy story about a depowered Clark Kent, who lives in
Superboy’s house and hates him like poison. Naturally, the new Clark turns evil and tries to destroy Superboy with
Kryptonite and robots, and then the extra Clark dies in an explosion, just before the Kents come home.
They don’t say anything about how Superboy manages to dispose of a corpse that looks like Clark Kent, but he’s a
superhero; there’s probably a service that cleans up all the bodies of villains who fall into their own evil traps.
That little journey to the unknown seemed promising, so a few months later, they introduced Red Kryptonite in the
Superman title with a different origin. In “Superman versus the Futuremen”, the Red K does a number of unpleasant
things to Superman: first, it makes him lose control of his powers, so when he tries to fly, he slams into a brick wall
and demolishes it. But Superman is always flying through brick walls, so nobody notices the difference. Then he
loses his powers completely, and the Futuremen take him off to the far-off future world of 2000 AD.
The writers hadn’t really figured out what to do with Red K — in this story, it’s like Green Kryptonite, but a little
more versatile. That’s not enough, to create the revolution that they need to power another decade of stories.
They finally figured it out in December 1959, with “The Revenge of Luthor!” in Action Comics #259, and — just like
they did with regular Kryptonite a decade earlier — they came up with a new explanation, and then pretended it
was that way the whole time.
This story begins with Superman noticing a meteor that’s about to hit an airplane, and rushing to catch it — and
then realizing that he’s holding Red Kryptonite.
The narrator explains: “Red Kryptonite — the dread substance that was formed many years ago when fragments of
the destroyed planet Krypton, converted to Green Kryptonite by nuclear fission, passed through a strange cosmic
cloud…” See above for what a strange cosmic cloud looks like, as seen in the vacuum of outer space.
And then they give us the pitch: “Green Kryptonite can kill Superman! Red Kryptonite does weird, unpredictable
things to the Man of Steel…”
So, there you are: it’s not from Mars and it’s not from the future; it’s just a different way of cooking Kryptonite, and
it gives the writers a free ticket to whatever wacky situation they feel like presenting that month.
In this story, the Red Kryptonite pulls Superboy out of the past, so that Superman and Superboy both exist at the
same time. “The Red Kryptonite meteor collision!” Superman moans. “That’s what did it! That crazy, unpredictable
Red Kryptonite!”
But that’s not all; the Red K collision also made Superboy really stupid and Superman really grouchy, so that by page
8, the two of them are at each other’s throats. Then Luthor manages to kidnap them, and forces Superman and
Superboy to battle to the death. I forget how it all came out.
And at that point, all bets are off. A month later, in Adventure Comics #268 (Jan 1960), there’s apparently so much
Red Kryptonite around that a random kid happens to be holding some when he decides to feed it to the world’s
biggest ostrich.

There are dozens of crazy Kryptonite stories in the Silver Age, so I’m going to show you just a few examples.
In “The Untold Story of Red Kryptonite!” (Superman #139, Aug 1960), Red K makes Superman’s hair, beard and
fingernails grow uncontrollably…
and in “The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite!” (Action Comics #275, April 1961), Brainiac hits Superman with a
combination of Red and Green Kryptonite, which gives Superman a third eye in the back of his head.
“Many scientists believe this gland is a remnant of a third eye early man once had in back of his head to warn him of
danger behind,” says a caption from the editor, which I cannot justify or explain.
In 1960, they also invented Blue Kryptonite, which only hurt Bizarros…
and White Kryptonite, which destroys plants.
In December 1961, Action Comics #283 was an “All Red Kryptonite Issue!” which featured stories of Superman and
Supergirl showing multiple effects from a powerful Red K exposure.
In Superman’s story, “The Red Kryptonite Menace!” Superman was able to magically summon anybody that he
wanted to interact with, including Sherlock Holmes.
And later in the same story, the Red K had “a delayed second effect!” which made him breathe fire every time he
opened his mouth.
In the second story — “The Six Red K Perils of Supergirl!” — Supergirl goes and messes with some Red K meteors,
which are apparently everywhere, and the unpredictable substance makes her super-fat, and she has to disguise
herself as a hot-air balloon so that her new boyfriend doesn’t notice. They seriously could do anything they wanted
to, using this stuff.
Okay, what else? A month later, in “The Babe of Steel!” (Action Comics #284, Jan 1962), Superman deliberately
exposes himself to Red Kryptonite in order to turn himself into a toddler…
And in “The Invasion of the Super-Ants!” (Action Comics #296, Jan 1963), he turns himself into an ant, and becomes
the leader of a squad of giant ant invaders from outer space.
Geez, there are so many good ones. Just in August 1963, there are two amazing Red Kryptonite stories. In Action
Comics #303, it’s “The Monster from Krypton!” where Red K turns Superman into a giant Kryptonian dragon-
monster.
And in Superman #163, it’s “The Goofy Superman!” where it makes Clark act like he’s crazy, resulting in a lengthy
stay in a mental institution.
And oh, if I had more time, I’d love to tell you about “The Rainbow Faces of Superman!” (Action Comics #317, Oct
1964), where exposure to Red Kryptonite makes his face into a mood ring for the day.
But it couldn’t last, of course; nothing truly beautiful ever does. By the end of the 60s, they’d used Red K so often —
not to mention Gold K, Jewel K, Anti-K, Magno-K and Yellow K, which doesn’t exist — that it was inevitable there’d
be a backlash.
So in 1971, there was a story called “Kryptonite Nevermore!” which freed Superman from the burden of Kryptonite
forever, sort of. And I’ll come back and tell you all about that on Monday, at which point I’ll be done with Kryptonite
and I’ll get back to the movie, probably.
Superman 1.81: Nevermore
So, in the Superman movie — and yes, I am still talking about the movie — Lex Luthor has just deduced that
Kryptonite will kill Superman, and he’s heading to Addis Ababa for an off-screen meteorite shopping trip. But the
movie was out of date — according to the Superman comics of 1978, Kryptonite didn’t exist anymore.
The folks at DC Comics may have been excited about the upcoming Superman film, but there was a quiet war going
on between the comics and the movie, battling to see which version of the story would take hold of the popular
imagination. As it turned out, the movie won by a wide margin, and to explain why, all I need to do is show you what
they tried to do with Kryptonite in the early ’70s.
We’ve talked before about the Silver Age of comics, which lasted from 1958 to 1969, and the Bronze Age that
followed from 1970 to 1984. For Superman, the Silver Age was dominated by editor Mort Weisinger, who developed
a specific kid-friendly aesthetic that valued eye-catching covers and silly plot twists. Weisinger was in charge of all of
the Superman titles, from Superman and Action Comics to Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane, and they all
shared a story-productive continuity that relied heavily on weird gimmicks, like Red Kryptonite and the Fortress of
Solitude’s wax museum.
When Weisinger retired from comics in 1970, the Superman titles were split among various editors. The most
ambitious was Julius Schwartz, who edited Superman and World’s Finest Comics. Schwartz wanted to establish a
new, updated take on the character, and he recruited a writer named Denny O’Neil to write it. O’Neil had recently
written a well-received revamp of Batman, which excised all the campy elements from the Batman TV show and
brought the character back to his Detective Comics roots.
Schwartz wanted a similar retooling of the Superman story, and they got started right away with some major
changes to the status quo. In the new continuity, Clark and Lois left the Daily Planet to become news reporters for
WGBS-TV, Kryptonite was abolished, and — most importantly — Superman’s powers were scaled back.
O’Neil explained his goal of making Superman less powerful in a 2006 interview:
“A guy who makes the entire Greek pantheon look like a bunch of first-graders, as Superman eventually did… what
are you going to put against him? It was established at one time that he could search every room in Metropolis
within a second — how are you going to hide from that guy? His X-ray vision won’t penetrate lead, but he’s smart
enough to know that if he’s flying over something, and there’s a lead roof, he probably figures out that’s where the
bad guy’s hiding.
“So you had a lot of stories that I thought weren’t terribly dramatic and violated the essential appeal of the
character. To give myself the possibility of giving Superman stories with real conflict I decided to scale him back to a
reasonable scale of super-powers.”
This new approach kicked off in January 1971 with Superman #233, with a bold cover picturing Superman bursting
through his Kryptonite chains, with a line at the top announcing “The Amazing NEW Adventures of Superman”.
There’s a huge “NUMBER 1” at top right, to give the impression that this is the first issue of a new series.
The cover shouts “KRYPTONITE NEVERMORE!” and that’s the first order of business for this updated take on the
character.
The story begins with Superman out in the desert, helping a crackpot scientist named Professor Bolden with his
crackpot experiment to create a “Kryptonite engine” that would generate cheap electricity for everyone. Apparently
by this point, people have located so much Kryptonite that they’re trying to figure out what to do with it all.
Obviously, as soon as Bolden pulls the switch, it goes instantly out of control and Superman needs to shut the
experiment down. I don’t know why we keep putting crackpot scientists like this in charge of essential projects with
no safety protocols; it never goes well. Apparently, the idea that an energy system powered by radioactive rocks
from outer space might be dangerous only occurred to them now.
Superman’s trying to put a lead lid on the exploding Kryptonite, but it gets the better of him. “The blast snatched the
shield from my grasp,” narrates the tumbling Superman. “I took a face full of K… could be fatal…”
Superman lies unconscious in the sand as a crowd gathers around him. For some reason, the bystanders are saying,
“Doctor, you’ve got to do something for him!” They think that Professor Bolden might help, even though his life’s
work just exploded and he’s probably not that kind of doctor anyway.
Superman manages to get to his feet, and then one of Bolden’s knucklehead assistants comes running up with a
chunk of radioactive material in his hand.
But, ta-dah! It turns out that the explosion turned all of their Kryptonite into iron, so it doesn’t affect Superman
anymore. This is bad news for anyone who was banking on cheap Kryptonite-powered electricity; it looks like they’ll
have to switch back to nuclear and hope for the best.
Somehow, the explosion of this Kryptonite experiment caused a “freak chain reaction” which affects all of the
Kryptonite on Earth, turning it into harmless iron and leaving Superman free from all K-related worries.
Just to prove the point, Superman runs into a guy who waves a chunk of Kryptonite at him, and Superman takes it
and eats it. “All in all, a nice little snack!” he grins, which makes you wonder what else he’s been eating all this time.
Now, obviously, you’re saying, I thought Denny O’Neil wanted to make Superman less powerful, not more. But don’t
worry, he’s got a complicated plan to depower the hero in a peculiar, drawn-out way that takes ten months to
accomplish.
This new story arc concerns a weird doppleganger creature who was created in the impression that Superman left in
the desert when the Kryptonite exploded. At the end of the issue, this creature slowly comes to life, steps out of the
sand, and stumbles off toward its terrible destiny. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, then welcome
to the club.
This silent “sand Superman” starts flying around, crossing paths with Superman a couple times an issue for the next
several months. Whenever it comes close, Superman starts to feel weak and dizzy, like his power is being drained
away.
After several months of weird teases, the concept really comes together in issue #237, and unsurprisingly, nothing
about it makes sense.
This issue begins with yet another failed science project, this time an “experimental rocket plane”, whatever that’s
supposed to be. There’s a guy in it, and it’s been flying above the atmosphere, and that is all the information that we
are ever going to get about the rocket plane.
Superman grabs the thing before it smashes into a mountain and deposits it onto the ground, but the astronaut
inside isn’t very happy to see him.
“I warn you — I’ll kill you before I’ll leave this ship!” the pilot shouts, and he shoots Superman with the space gun
that I guess he’s carrying just in case he gets mugged in the upper atmosphere. Apparently there’s a “stand your
ground” law in space.
And then Superman gasps as he takes off the guy’s helmet, and discovers that, ick, he’s mutated into a green puffy-
faced monster.
Afraid that he may be infected with a disease from outer space, Superman launches into the sky, in order to clean
himself off in the Van Allen radiation belt. “Ahh… feels good! Like cool water in July!” says Superman, so if O’Neil is
trying to make the character more relatable, then we’re currently five issues into his run and it’s not going very well.
And that’s when he hears a distress call from Lois, somehow transmitting from all the way in South America to this
random office in the WGBS building. He sees that Lois is on assignment, “getting a story on a horde of army ants
marching toward a populated valley!” And now the story is about that.
And he’d better hurry, because Lois and her pilot have been captured by South American banditos.
From the air, Superman sees that the horde of army ants are approaching Lois’ position, so he lands and tries to take
care of them — but two ants brush up against his boot, and the illness/radiation/whatever the hell is going on with
him today makes the ants grow to enormous size, and now this is a story about Superman fighting giant ants.
He decides that he’ll try an experiment where he’ll hit one ant with his left hand and the other ant with his right
hand, and he finds that the one that he hit with the left hand keeps growing, while the right-hand ant doesn’t. This
doesn’t mean anything in particular, as far as I can tell.
He flies into space with the giant ants, and tosses them away into the void, where they’ll probably invade some
space station or eat the moon or something. We don’t find out what happens to the ants.
What happens next is fairly complex. The sand creature shows up again, and Superman realizes that making contact
with his desert doppleganger sterilizes the space virus that’s making everybody green and puffy-faced, and if he gets
the creature to touch him all over, then he’ll be cured, and he can go and rescue Lois from being eaten by army ants.
I know, that doesn’t make any sense, but that is the lunatic plot contrivance that is being presented to us in this
comic book.
The action ace is weak and he can’t fly, but he can still leap over a mountain with a single bound, so he does that.
I’m sure at some point he’s going to be faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, but
there’s no time for that now, because he has to fight banditos.
“Eh? The American man of supers!” says the lead bandito, which is the best thing that happens in the entire comic
book.
But the important thing is measuring Superman’s power level. “I can actually feel the slugs bouncing off my chest,”
he explains, “and it’s an effort for me to bend his gun-barrel! Even an effort to kayo these bargain-rate thugs!”
So once he’s dealt with the banditos, the giant ants and the mutant space virus, it’s time for some one-on-one with
Sandy, who announces that he’s going to drain enough power from Superman until they’re at equal strength.
The sandman story doesn’t advance much in the next issue, and for the next four issues, Superman gets an assist
from Wonder Woman’s “oriental” wizard friend I-Ching, who tries to help banish the sand creature. And it just drags
on, endlessly.
Bottom line: It didn’t stick. The book was utterly obsessed with measuring Superman’s power level, constantly going
over what he could do and what he couldn’t. The sand creature stuck around for 10 issues until it was finally sent to
another dimension, and Superman’s power was officially measured at one-third of what he was before, which
doesn’t mean anything.
So Denny O’Neil left the book after ten months, and after a while, Superman just kind of drifted back to normal; he
did all the stuff that he used to be able to do, and nobody cared.
When people write about this period, they say that this “experiment” failed because there wasn’t a consistent
direction in all of the books. Julie Schwartz was only in charge of Superman and World’s Finest, and the editors in
charge of Action Comics and Jimmy Olsen didn’t bother to use the depowered Superman.
But the real problem was that the change didn’t make the stories more interesting. O’Neil was so intent on re-
establishing the hero’s power level that he forgot how to write coherent stories. The issue that I synopsized was all
over the place, mixing up space viruses and giant ants and banditos, and none of it made sense. Taking away
Kryptonite and reducing his powers didn’t expand the number of productive storylines; it just turned them off, and
then couldn’t think of anything compelling to replace them with.
And here’s the weird thing: in summer 1978, with a new blockbuster movie coming out that uses Kryptonite as a
major plot point, Action Comics decided to reprint the “Kryptonite Nevermore!” story as issue #485.
The cover advertised “the classic story that answers all your questions about the day the Man of Steel’s life was
changed!” but to be honest, it was hard to tell the difference. The four-issue Supermobile storyline from the spring
took Superman’s powers away using a wave of red-sun radiation, which has the same effect as Kryptonite anyway. In
fact, there are thirteen issues of Superman comics published in 1978 that took away Superman’s powers one way or
another, using magic, K-iron, Q-Energy, a satellite that blocks the sun’s rays, a giant super-ape with Kryptonite vision,
and even suntan lotion.
As we saw last week, the Silver Age comics definitely overused Kryptonite, but the Bronze Age comics’ attempts to
be more down-to-earth failed to make any lasting improvements.
When Richard Donner and the Salkinds produced a Superman movie, they didn’t bother to use any of the Bronze
Age ideas, like the destruction of Kryptonite or Clark being a newscaster. They reached back to the Golden and Silver
Age concepts: Clark, Lois, Jimmy and Perry working at the Daily Planet, with Lex Luthor, the Fortress of Solitude, Jor-
El, the Kents and Kryptonite. That’s the version of the story that broke the box office, and became the standard that
every other version is compared with. After that, it was up to the comics to catch up to the movies, and not the
other way around.
Superman 1.82: The Trickster
We’re currently four minutes into act 3 of Superman: The Movie — all of the mushy love stuff from act 2 is behind
us, and from here on, it’s all about the hero confronting and defeating the villain.
The missile convoy sequence is the first time we see Lex Luthor getting up out of his lair and actually doing villain
stuff, and it gives us the chance to see him in a new light. So far, we’ve seen Lex Luthor as a ranting mad scientist, a
Bond villain and a purple-suited cartoon superfiend, but in this sequence, he assumes his true role, as a mythopoetic
trickster figure.
Trickster figures appear in the mythology of many cultures around the world, including ours. The trickster is the
wascally wabbit who exists to disobey the rules of whatever situation you put him in, the double-dealing renegade
who uses cunning and creativity and funny voices to rewire the world.
We know the trickster by many names — Loki, Anansi, Reynard the Fox, Groucho Marx, Alexander Salkind. They’re
thieves and mischief-makers, who move the world forward through deceit and upset and surprise. That’s why Lex
got so excited when he learned about Superman; finally, he has a god to steal fire from.
The first thing that we see in this sequence is the world as it should be: an orderly procession to the Danforth Missile
Proving Grounds, as conducted by responsible adults.
“Motherbird to Missile Convoy,” says an official-sounding voice from a helicopter. “Everything looks good. See you at
base. Over and out.”
And then, coming from the other direction, on a collision course with civilization as we know it: the trickster’s car,
powered by chutzpah and operated by remote control.
At Luthor’s command, the car executes a really quite spectacular self-driving catastrophe, the kind of thing that
would give Ralph Nader a couple of juicy chapters for Unsafe at Any Speed II: The Wreckoning.
And then we see the honeypot trap that the trickster has set for the military convoy personnel, who all immediately
jump out of their vehicles to gather in a bunch around the accident scene, because recklessness is contagious.
Once the trickster has set the scene, disrupting and overthrowing the grown-up relationship between Motherbird
and Missile Convoy, there’s no more nonsense about a helicopter keeping watch over the cargo. There’s a pretty girl
on the road. Army is cancelled for the day.
This allows the trickster’s confederate, dressed in a decidedly non-stealthy outfit, to gain access to the missile and
poke at the buttons.
Now, if you’re ever tired of hearing somebody talk about Richard Donner’s “verisimilitude” approach to Superman:
The Movie, the easiest way to shut them down is to talk about the Major scene, which is pure 1978 sitcom.
The Major is played by Larry Hagman, who’d done a lot of different roles on TV and film, but at the time was best-
known for the 1965-1970 sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, and he’d done another couple sitcoms since.
He enters the scene with on-point comic timing, barking, “All right, get on the radio and get an ambulance down
here, I don’t want to hold this convoy up any more than I… have to…” And then he clocks the merchandise on
display.
Here’s the joke:
“She’s having trouble breathing, sir,” says the Sergeant. “What do you think?”
Major H. licks his lips. “Well, I suggest, um… vigorous chest massage, and if that doesn’t work, um… mouth to
mouth.”
The Sergeant enthusiastically says, “Yes, sir!” and is about to get started, when the Major pulls him up by his shirt
collar.
“Sergeant!” he announces. “I won’t have one of my men doing anything I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself.” Then
the Major gets prepared to do himself, and the visibly disappointed Sergeant has to go and call for the stupid
ambulance.
So: yes, this is sexist and ridiculous, which makes it perfectly at home for a 1978 sitcom. Grown men having an
exaggerated response to the physical presence of blonde bombshells was a primary source of comedy on Three’s
Company, WKRP in Cincinnati, Happy Days, The Love Boat and basically everything that I watched when I was a kid
except The Flintstones, and even they did it once in a while. I don’t know when this fell out of fashion, but I haven’t
watched sitcoms lately; for all I know, they’re still doing this.
But we’re in the trickster’s world, now; everyone involved in this exercise is under Lex’s spell, up to and including
Motherbird. Otis is pressing buttons and entering numbers that will permanently override all instructions and
controls that anybody else might enter, between now and whenever Lex decides to launch the missiles. This is
obviously a silly idea, and that’s why you want to put a guy in a red Hawaiian shirt in the middle of it, to distract the
audience from thinking about it. This is a surprisingly effective technique.
Then the trickster himself appears on the scene, sirens blaring. He steps out of the fake ambulance with a shy, eager-
to-please smile, and says, “Hi.” Then he puts on a concerned expression. “Somebody hurt?”
Now, they shot a lot more footage for this sequence, and in the Extended Cut that they sold to TV, you can see all of
it. After this, there’s another minute and ten seconds of Lex talking to the army men, the Major actually doing some
of the vigorous chest massage, Eve complaining about the Major’s breath, and Lex bending over Eve to let her know
that she’s done a good job.
If you watch that cut, you can see how smart they were to cut it right here. The extra material is just reiterating and
explaining the joke, doing callbacks to the thing that you thought was funny forty-five seconds ago.
We don’t need any more explanation of how this will play out, once the wascally wabbit shows up. That’s his magic.
At this point, the audience trusts him to take care of things on his own, and we’re ready to move on.
Superman 1.82: The Trickster
We’re currently four minutes into act 3 of Superman: The Movie — all of the mushy love stuff from act 2 is behind
us, and from here on, it’s all about the hero confronting and defeating the villain.
The missile convoy sequence is the first time we see Lex Luthor getting up out of his lair and actually doing villain
stuff, and it gives us the chance to see him in a new light. So far, we’ve seen Lex Luthor as a ranting mad scientist, a
Bond villain and a purple-suited cartoon superfiend, but in this sequence, he assumes his true role, as a mythopoetic
trickster figure.
Trickster figures appear in the mythology of many cultures around the world, including ours. The trickster is the
wascally wabbit who exists to disobey the rules of whatever situation you put him in, the double-dealing renegade
who uses cunning and creativity and funny voices to rewire the world.
We know the trickster by many names — Loki, Anansi, Reynard the Fox, Groucho Marx, Alexander Salkind. They’re
thieves and mischief-makers, who move the world forward through deceit and upset and surprise. That’s why Lex
got so excited when he learned about Superman; finally, he has a god to steal fire from.
The first thing that we see in this sequence is the world as it should be: an orderly procession to the Danforth Missile
Proving Grounds, as conducted by responsible adults.
“Motherbird to Missile Convoy,” says an official-sounding voice from a helicopter. “Everything looks good. See you at
base. Over and out.”
And then, coming from the other direction, on a collision course with civilization as we know it: the trickster’s car,
powered by chutzpah and operated by remote control.
At Luthor’s command, the car executes a really quite spectacular self-driving catastrophe, the kind of thing that
would give Ralph Nader a couple of juicy chapters for Unsafe at Any Speed II: The Wreckoning.
And then we see the honeypot trap that the trickster has set for the military convoy personnel, who all immediately
jump out of their vehicles to gather in a bunch around the accident scene, because recklessness is contagious.
Once the trickster has set the scene, disrupting and overthrowing the grown-up relationship between Motherbird
and Missile Convoy, there’s no more nonsense about a helicopter keeping watch over the cargo. There’s a pretty girl
on the road. Army is cancelled for the day.
This allows the trickster’s confederate, dressed in a decidedly non-stealthy outfit, to gain access to the missile and
poke at the buttons.
Now, if you’re ever tired of hearing somebody talk about Richard Donner’s “verisimilitude” approach to Superman:
The Movie, the easiest way to shut them down is to talk about the Major scene, which is pure 1978 sitcom.
The Major is played by Larry Hagman, who’d done a lot of different roles on TV and film, but at the time was best-
known for the 1965-1970 sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, and he’d done another couple sitcoms since.
He enters the scene with on-point comic timing, barking, “All right, get on the radio and get an ambulance down
here, I don’t want to hold this convoy up any more than I… have to…” And then he clocks the merchandise on
display.
Here’s the joke:
“She’s having trouble breathing, sir,” says the Sergeant. “What do you think?”
Major H. licks his lips. “Well, I suggest, um… vigorous chest massage, and if that doesn’t work, um… mouth to
mouth.”
The Sergeant enthusiastically says, “Yes, sir!” and is about to get started, when the Major pulls him up by his shirt
collar.
“Sergeant!” he announces. “I won’t have one of my men doing anything I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself.” Then
the Major gets prepared to do himself, and the visibly disappointed Sergeant has to go and call for the stupid
ambulance.
So: yes, this is sexist and ridiculous, which makes it perfectly at home for a 1978 sitcom. Grown men having an
exaggerated response to the physical presence of blonde bombshells was a primary source of comedy on Three’s
Company, WKRP in Cincinnati, Happy Days, The Love Boat and basically everything that I watched when I was a kid
except The Flintstones, and even they did it once in a while. I don’t know when this fell out of fashion, but I haven’t
watched sitcoms lately; for all I know, they’re still doing this.
But we’re in the trickster’s world, now; everyone involved in this exercise is under Lex’s spell, up to and including
Motherbird. Otis is pressing buttons and entering numbers that will permanently override all instructions and
controls that anybody else might enter, between now and whenever Lex decides to launch the missiles. This is
obviously a silly idea, and that’s why you want to put a guy in a red Hawaiian shirt in the middle of it, to distract the
audience from thinking about it. This is a surprisingly effective technique.
Then the trickster himself appears on the scene, sirens blaring. He steps out of the fake ambulance with a shy, eager-
to-please smile, and says, “Hi.” Then he puts on a concerned expression. “Somebody hurt?”
Now, they shot a lot more footage for this sequence, and in the Extended Cut that they sold to TV, you can see all of
it. After this, there’s another minute and ten seconds of Lex talking to the army men, the Major actually doing some
of the vigorous chest massage, Eve complaining about the Major’s breath, and Lex bending over Eve to let her know
that she’s done a good job.
If you watch that cut, you can see how smart they were to cut it right here. The extra material is just reiterating and
explaining the joke, doing callbacks to the thing that you thought was funny forty-five seconds ago.
We don’t need any more explanation of how this will play out, once the wascally wabbit shows up. That’s his magic.
At this point, the audience trusts him to take care of things on his own, and we’re ready to move on.
Superman 1.83: Superman’s Pal
And we take you now to scenic Hoover Dam, where perpetual cub reporter Jimmy Olsen is taking photographs of
Hoover Dam, which you’d figure has already been pretty comprehensively photographed. It’s not much of a scoop,
for a young man trying to make his way in the photojournalism racket, but he got a free airplane ride, and it’s just
nice to get out in the fresh air.
Storywise, there isn’t a lot of justification for depositing Jimmy on top of this particular explodable landmark, but
this is the part of the movie where they want to get as many peril monkeys on the board as they can. We’ve also got
Lois having a scenic conversation with a scenic Native American gentleman, en route to the explodable gas station.
The real question is why we even have a Jimmy Olsen in this movie in the first place, if he’s not going to be involved
in the plot in any way. This question also applies to Superman II, Superman III, Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest
for Peace. In fact, Jimmy Olsen is the only character to appear in all five of the Salkind Superman films, and he
doesn’t have a single discernible plot point in any of them.
This goes back to Siegel and Shuster’s basic disinterest in cultivating a supporting cast for Superman. In June 1938,
they created the unbeatable combination of Clark Kent and Lois Lane for Action Comics #1, and after that, they
figured they could get by with a revolving door of racketeers and mad scientists.
It was the 1940 radio show that generated the rest of the cast, because they had twelve minutes of radio time a day
to fill up, and Clark needed people to talk to. In the second episode, the show introduced the grouchy and crusading
editor-in-chief Perry White, and two months later, in April 1940, they introduced Jimmy Olsen.
Jimmy was a fourteen-year-old copy boy, who asked Clark for help when Jimmy’s mother, who owned a candy store,
was being hassled by thugs for protection money. As Superman, Clark cleaned up the protection racket and put
them out of business, earning Jimmy’s lifelong admiration and friendship.
The three steps to getting the audience to like a new character is to make a joke, make a friend, and make something
happen, and Jimmy scored right away. It was really his friendship with Clark that made him stand out — Clark and
Lois’ relationship was still fairly distant at that point, but Jimmy and Clark fell into a natural uncle-nephew
relationship that made both characters more appealing.
As soon as the protection racket story finished, Jimmy jumped straight into another adventure with Clark, tagging
along on a trip to investigate a series of mysterious airline crashes. Their plane was sabotaged and the pilot knocked
unconcious while they were flying to the airfield, and Jimmy got to fly the plane for a minute — an obvious moment
of wish-fulfillment for the kids at home. They reached the height of 1940s juvenile wish-fulfillment later on in the
year, when Jimmy went on a cowboy adventure and got adopted as a member of the Comanche tribe. The kid was
unstoppable.
Jimmy was introduced in the comic books at the end of 1941 in Superman #13, but the tone of the comic book was
much different, and the character didn’t fit in very well.
The radio show used a lot of kid-friendly adventure story material — cowboys, deserted islands and treasure hunts
— with lots of time for friendly conversations with Jimmy. But the Superman comics in the early 40s were more
frantic and frightening, and mostly involved Superman crashing through walls, punching people and running away,
as gangsters shot at him with machine guns.
They knew that Jimmy was popular on the radio show, so they tried to include him in a few stories, but the comic
was just too violent for a fourteen-year-old character to participate in. The above panel is from a 1944 issue of
World’s Finest, and Jimmy’s only contribution to the story is to bandage a reporter’s arm when he gets shot by a
sniper through the window of his Daily Planet office.
After that, the character basically disappeared from the comics completely. He was still an important character on
the radio show up through 1949, but as far as the comics were concerned, he didn’t exist.
It was actually the 1952 TV show that turned Jimmy Olsen into a permanent member of the Superman cast. As with
the radio show, the TV show needed a set number of main characters that the audience could focus on, and it was
helpful to have a young character that the kids could identify with. So they carried over the four main characters
from the radio show, and they cast Jack Larson as Jimmy, a good-looking kid with a permanent goofy grin.
The TV version of Jimmy was essentially the opposite of his radio characterization. On the radio, Jimmy was a
precocious kid, but on TV, he was a young adult ding-dong — a comic-relief archetype who catches on slow, and has
a childlike view of the world. Jimmy was a good all-purpose sidekick: he could tag along with Clark on adventures, or
participate in Lois’ schemes to unmask Superman. He could also be relied on to ask the right questions, so that
another character could explain a plot point to the slower-thinking members of the audience.
Now, I’m going to go ahead and admit that I have never been able to work up a lot of interest in the Superman TV
show. I never saw it when I was a kid, but I’ve been watching it on and off as I’ve been working on the blog, and it
just doesn’t make an impression on me, one way or the other. The only thing that sticks with me is that Jimmy is
cute. It seems like he should be annoying, as ding-dong characters often are, but he’s like a little puppy, and he’s fun
to watch.
And that’s what brought Jimmy Olsen back to the comics, this time for keeps. In the 1940s, the radio show and the
comic books were completely separate; the people working on them had no meaningful contact with each other.
But the TV show was produced by Whitney Ellsworth, an editorial director from DC Comics, and the two versions
were much more in synch. It was clear that Jimmy was popular during the TV show’s first season, and they gave him
a bigger role in season 2 — and a bigger role in the comics, at the same time.
Jimmy was reintroduced in the comics in a January 1954 story in Superman #86, “Jimmy Olsen… Editor!” In the story,
it’s “Boys’ Day” in Metropolis, and kids are allowed to take over important positions for the day: a boy mayor, a boy
police chief… and Jimmy Olsen is the boy editor-in-chief at the Daily Planet, where he manages to solve the biggest
mystery in Metropolis. This was produced to tie in with a TV episode called “Jimmy Olsen, Boy Editor”, which aired in
February 1954.
And by September 1954, Jimmy was popular enough to get his own comic spinoff, Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen. This
was a character who hadn’t been in the comic at all for ten years, and all of a sudden, he was more popular than
Lois Lane, who didn’t get her own spinoff book until 1958.
The reason why this worked is that Superman’s Pal brought Jimmy Olsen back to his wish-fulfillment roots, and
made him even more of a reader’s fantasy figure. In the radio show, Jimmy was Clark Kent’s sidekick, which meant
that he got to participate in lots of exciting adventures… but in the new comic, Jimmy was actually Superman’s best
friend, which is much cooler.
The above panel from issue #2 says it all. The narrator says that “cub reporter Jimmy Olsen often gets fresh proof
that he is Superman’s pal”, and we see Superman personally delivering a twisted-up handgun directly to Jimmy’s
desk at the Planet, for Jimmy to add to his obsessive Superman souvenir collection.
And even more exciting than that, Jimmy also had a secret Superman signal watch that he could use whenever he
was in trouble, which transmitted an ultrasonic sound that only Superman could hear. So he was free to be as
reckless as he wanted, knowing that an extraterrestrial space angel would show up whenever he needed a favor.
It got weird after a while, obviously, because everything got weird in the Silver Age, and Superman’s Pal became
known for temporarily transforming Jimmy in dozens of odd ways — he became a giant turtle man, a wolfman, a
human porcupine, a human octopus, a human flamethrower, a human Geiger counter, and a cosmic brain of the
future. There was old Jimmy, and fat Jimmy, and invisible Jimmy, and super-speed Jimmy. Sometimes he was a
stretchy superhero who called himself Elastic Lad, who became an honorary member of the Legion of Super-Heroes
in the far future, and sometimes he went into the bottle city of Kandor with Superman to become a caped crusader
team called Nightwing and Flamebird.
As peculiar as all of that became, it’s remarkable that they kept finding new things for Jimmy Olsen to do. The book
ran for 163 issues, finally wrapping up in March 1974, and even then, they continued doing Jimmy stories in the
Superman Family title.
So that’s why we’ve got this weird kid who pops up occasionally in Superman: The Movie to do something cute. He
actually gets more screen time than he was originally supposed to; he hardly has any lines in the shooting script,
outside of “Gosh, Miss Lane, how do you get all the great stories?” and “It’s over! You did it, Superman!” I think
Donner recognized that Marc McClure was adorable, and gave him more stuff to do.
But as cute as he is, the Jimmy Olsen of Superman: The Movie is clearly diminished. He’s not a sidekick, and he
doesn’t have a signal watch. He’s not even one of the major comic relief characters. This is a vestigial Jimmy Olsen,
who appears on the screen purely because people expected him to be in the movie somewhere.
And now he’s stranded on the Hoover Dam, taking pictures of things that don’t need their pictures taken, waiting for
a calamity to strike. It’s not much, compared to what he once was, but at least it’s something. Jimmy Olsen endures.
Superman 1.84: Overtime
So they actually did try shooting the eagle sequence, where Superman is messing around in the sky when he meets
one of those friendly midflight eagles that you don’t run into very often, and they loop and dive around each other
in close formation, illustrating the beauty and poetry of flight or whatever.
I figured they would have cut that sequence very early on as obviously impractical, considering how difficult it was
just to get the guy credibly off the ground in the first place, but the Making of book informs me:
“The flying unit was now working with some natural-born experts: a golden eagle, two Lanner falcons, and a Saker
falcon, which were being used to film a majestic sequence of Superman soaring through the sky with an eagle. The
Saker falcon was the one finally used and the scene went well; conditioned to fly toward the lights and then return
to its trainer’s arm, the bird performed beautifully.”
The amazing thing about that postcard from Pinewood is that they were still having open-casting aviary auditions in
February 1978, when it was way too late for them to be dicking around like that.
Now, the last time we talked about the production of Superman: The Movie, they’d just wrapped shooting in
October 1977 and sent everybody home, so the movie was all done except for all of the shooting that they
continued to do for another eleven months.
I mean, they had actually wrapped with all of the actors except for Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, but that’s
a pretty big “except for” if you’re talking about the two stars of the movie. There was still a long way to go, and it
was all the hard stuff: Superman and Lois flying, the Golden Gate Bridge disaster and crushing Lois in a car, plus they
still had to reshoot the goddamn cat in a tree scene.
Back in August, the producers looked all four Warner Brothers straight in the eye and promised they would deliver
the completed film by April 15th for a June release, but by October it was becoming increasingly clear that they
shouldn’t have been so specific about which April 15th. They still had 95 flying shots to complete, plus a ton of
model sequences and all the New Mexico location shooting, plus apparently they were still taking calls from falcon
trainers.
The Salkinds’ original estimate was that they would spend 20 million dollars shooting both Superman and its sequel.
By this point, it was clear that the tab was closer to $25-30 million just for the first film, not to mention another $15
million to complete the second film. That was more expensive than Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the
Third Kind put together, and the only thing that stood between the Salkinds and complete financial ruin was that
they were mostly spending other people’s money without their permission.
So they shut down the main production, and in November, Richard Donner left Pinewood Studios and went to Los
Angeles, to talk things over with Warner Bros. The Salkinds immediately went to their power move, which was to
not pay people for stuff, and that ground the production to a halt.
For one thing, the flying unit — which still had not produced a single acceptable flying shot — came to work one day
and found that the equipment they were using was all locked up, until the people who owned that equipment got
paid. One of the construction companies working on the studio lot had to threaten to bulldoze the Golden Gate
Bridge model in order to get their money.
Donner came back to Pinewood in November, and got things moving again. Here are some of the items that were
still on the agenda:
The world turning backwards
Most of the Golden Gate Bridge sequence
Lois dangling in the helicopter rescue scene
The model work from the helicopter rescue scene
The sidewalk spin
Reshoots of the gauntlet
The burglar falling into Superman’s arms
The missile chase scenes
The boat scenes for the car chase sequence
Catching the cat
Lois getting buried in the car
All the Hoover Dam model work
All the desert road scenes
The Air Force One scene
The averted train crash
Kal-El’s spaceship burning as it approaches Earth
Basically everything that involved flying
And despite the anguished cries of the Salkinds, if Donner didn’t think a shot looked good enough, they had to shoot
it again.
Warner Bros. was concerned, as naturally they would be. They’d seen 30 minutes of footage in October, which they
were very excited about, but it was increasingly clear that the shooting schedule was entirely fictional, and they
wanted to know what was going on.
So they sent a Warner Bros. exec, Charles Greenlaw, to go to Pinewood and figure things out. Here’s what Greenlaw
told Starlog:
“Let me put it this way. Superman: The Movie was a Salkind production and it was supposed to have been delivered
on a certain date, and it became obvious that the date would not be met. The president of Warner finally said to me,
‘Would you go over to England for a couple of months?’
“So I came over basically without portfolio or power to see if I could help. I discovered that while Donner had
brought a tremendous amount of inventiveness to the picture, he had been thrust into it blind and the crew was ill-
prepared and underfinanced.
“Let me give you an example. When I first came here, in December of 1977, there was the climactic desert road
sequence set up on Pinewood’s back lot. It consisted of two mounds of dirt piled up and a winding sort of road. The
opening in the ground required to let Lois’ car drop in needed pumps to keep the water out of it. It looked about as
much like New Mexico as this room does.
“The Salkinds were still putting up their own money at that time and they kept insisting that the scene be done here
[at Pinewood]. But it was gray and overcast, you could see your breath and the actors shivered no matter how much
clothing they had on. Finally I said, ‘There’s no way you can make this look like a desert. Let’s talk.’
“Then after a series of negotiations, Warner Brothers made a deal. We’d give extra money for a say in the
production. At that point I was given the responsibility of the head of production.”
So this is the period when Warner Bros. basically starts buying Superman: The Movie out from under the Salkinds.
Greenlaw continues:
“I’ve never had access to exactly how much money has been involved with this production from the beginning. The
only amount I know for sure is how much Warner has spent to supplement the picture. At about the three-quarter
point in filming, we agreed to put up eight million dollars. We’ll probably wind up spending more than that in the
long run.”
This was a tricky moment for the Salkinds, which left them with no good options. They needed to keep the
production moving, and Warners was offering them money. This may have been an entirely new experience for the
Salkinds, people actually giving them money on purpose.
On the other hand, taking the money meant giving Warner Bros. a bigger stake in the production, and a bigger share
of the profits, assuming the movie could ever actually be finished and released. That meant that all the money that
they’d invested in the production so far would get a smaller return. This quandary did not make them any better at
making decisions.
In February, Donner was quoted in Army Archerd’s column in Variety:
Superman director Dick Donner on the London longhorn allows, “I can probably deliver the picture for summer
release — but no one is saying ‘You must.'” Donner admitted, “Sure, we have problems — but we also have answers.
WB has told me if it takes a few more months to get it right, then take ’em. If optical effects come back after four
weeks and I think they can be better, we wait another four weeks. They are giving me the benefit of making it
better.”
Now, in the epic battle between Art and Commerce, I’m usually on the side of Art, especially when Commerce is
represented by the Salkinds. But when I read that quote, all I can think of is Alex and Ilya and Pierre banging their
heads on the table. A few more months? Another four weeks?
At this point in the production, it feels like Donner has entered some kind of altered state where he’s stopped
making a movie. Now he’s building a cathedral, which will be passed down to future generations to complete. In
other words, he’s writing Superheroes Every Day, and that’s not a healthy thing for a person to do.
So here’s the most insane passage in the Making of book, describing the state of production in March 1978:
“With so many crucial scenes yet to be shot, Donner decided to call a halt to the ‘trial and error’ tactics
characterizing much of the experimental effects work and simply concentrate on what shots were absolutely
necessary to the integrity of the film.”
Which again makes me a little more understanding about the Salkinds’ point of view. It’s March. They’ve been
shooting for a whole year. They were supposed to wrap production five months ago. And you’ve still been using
“trial and error” tactics?
So I assume that at this point, the falconry is finally off the table, and they decided to scratch the idea of additional
shooting on the glacial fields of fucking Finland. Those are the only two concessions to reality that I know about.
Warner Bros. officially pushed the release date from summer to Christmas, and Alex, Ilya and Pierre had a frantic
three-way conference call about all the money that they didn’t have. On this call, they made the executive decision
to immediately halt all shooting, except for the flying shots. They would assemble the movie from the existing
footage, and that was that.
But the Warner Bros. execs had drunk Richard Donner’s Kool-Aid for long enough to put the kibosh on the Salkinds’
plan. They had some more conference calls, and Warners ended up putting more money into the movie. That meant
that the Salkinds had even less say about what was going on, and the only thing they could do was stand by
helplessly, and watch Donner spend money.
In late March, Ilya got his own article in Variety, in which he said several things that were not strictly true. The article
said:
“With final budget for its two parts now estimated to exceed $50,000,000, Superman finally exists in rough cut form,
now awaiting optical wizardry to polish off its special effects in time for a 1,000-print worldwide break in December.”
Which is true, if you consider shooting the entire five-minute Superman/Lois flying sequence as “polishing off its
special effects.”
“Ilya Salkind, who coproduced the venture, confirmed that technical problems over the superhero’s flying exploits —
resolved only last month — prompted Warners to call off pre-bid summer dates and delay release until Christmas.
Net effect of the delay, he says, is welcome breathing space for round the clock technicians.”
Also a very specific spin on the situation. Ilya is not actually concerned about other people’s breathing space.
“Warners, which Salkind stressed has no money involved in Superman…”
Absolute lie.
“In exchange for distribution rights to the two Superman pics, Warners had to cough up what Salkind claims to be
‘the biggest guarantee ever demanded of a distributor.’ Unwilling to unveil the actual figure, he would only admit
that it exceeded $10,000,000.”
So far the only really honest thing in this article is that Ilya was unwilling to unveil the actual figures.
“Budget allocation weighs heavier on the first part, which Salkind says will come in at around $30,000,000 because it
bears the brunt of research, testing, false starts and other development costs. Part two, which now lies unassembled
in a London vault and is expected to appear a year following the first, is estimated to reach a final tally of
$20,000,000.”
I don’t even know what “now lies unassembled in a London vault” means, in Ilya’s mind.
“Though Salkind admits that early attempts at using three-dimensional holographic effects have been abandoned —
at least for part one — he promises a bevy of special effects ‘that we can afford to keep totally secret until the film
breaks.'”
I have read just about everything that there is to read about the production of Superman: The Movie, and this is the
only mention of “three-dimensional holographic effects” that I have ever seen. What could he possibly be referring
to? It makes me worry about Ilya, a bit. Should we call somebody?
And then Donner got another boost in late April, when a group of Warner Bros. execs came to Pinewood for a 4-
hour screening of the latest film footage. They absolutely loved it, and afterwards, WB chairman Ted Ashley sent a
telegram from Burbank:
“Dear Dick: I feel compelled to repeat what I said both in person and by telephone concerning Superman. The
picture is absolutely brilliant and so is the cast. I know how very hard all of them, yourself, and the crew, have
worked. All of that work will wind up on the screen not only to the delight of the audiences but to the deep
satisfaction of everybody who had a hand in making this great movie.”
As far as Donner was concerned, the war was over. He won and the Salkinds lost, and he was the King of Superman,
now and forever. In his mind, he was untouchable, and he could say and do anything he wanted, and it wouldn’t
make any difference. I mean, it’s not like the Salkinds could fire him, right?
Superman 1.85: An Oral History of Christopher Reeve Being a Dick During the Filming of Superman: The Movie
Jake Rossen: “By some accounts, Reeve’s abrupt entrance into celluloid fame brought with it some rather abrasive
coping mechanisms.”[1]
Christopher Reeve: “I’m not here to win a popularity contest. I’m not here to have fun. I’m here to put something on
the screen that’s going to entertain people later.”[2]
Christopher Reeve: “I was in a play Off-Broadway and my father came to see me. Afterwards, I took him out to
dinner and told him that I had been cast in Superman. He thought that was terrific, and immediately asked who was
going to play Ann. He thought I meant I was going to play Jack Tanner in Shaw’s Man and Superman, and that
moment was the beginning of a tense time.
“My family pretty much wrote me off — their attitude was, ‘There goes Chris, he’s going Hollywood.’ And it was
pretty clear that if I turned typically Hollywood my father and I would break off relations. He thought it was the
ultimate sellout.”[3]
Tom Mankiewicz: “He really wanted to be a great actor. And he was very serious about his craft. He was obsessed
with the fact that Superman would make him a star and ruin his career, all at the same time.”[4]
Jake Rossen: “When [David] Prowse departed to honor a preexisting commitment to a prince in Saudi Arabia, Reeve
was furious. He lashed out at his trainer, complaining that he had lost precious body mass during the ten-day
absence. Prowse conferred with [Richard] Donner, who told him Reeve’s impending stardom had already begun to
inflate his head. Three days later, Prowse was released from his obligations to the production. In Prowse’s eyes, the
newly crowned Superman had already become a diva.”[5]
Margot Kidder: “We had fights. And if I’d improvised something, Chris would cut take and say, ‘You can’t do that.’
And I’d yell, ‘Shut up! Don’t tell me how to act. This is your first movie and my tenth!'” One of the most irritating
things about Christopher was that he tried to tell everybody what to do all the time. And he was not very thoughtful
of other people’s feelings.”[6]
Christopher Reeve: “I mean, you go to a party on Friday and by Monday no one remembers you were there. But
they’ll always remember what you put on the screen — good or bad. And I have a responsibility to see that it’s good.
“That’s why I’m willing to make the sacrifices that I do… that’s why I’m antisocial to the extent that I am. I come
home every day from work, sometimes in agony because I feel that a scene wasn’t one hundred percent. So that’s
why when I’m walking around the set, I can’t take visitors, I can’t take screwing around, I can’t take lateness. I go
nuts, because I’m so rigidly focused into the work.”[7]
Jack O’Halloran: “Christopher had never done anything. His claim to fame was a soap. Being Superman was a big
step into the limelight. He thought he was a superstar. Chris started believing his own press. He wasn’t the nicest of
people until he got hurt.”[8]
Margot Kidder: “I didn’t often do the same thing twice, which Christopher found enormously frustrating. He’d whack
his hand down on the table and go, ‘I can’t work with her!’ And I’d go, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake don’t you try and direct
me, Chris Reeve!’ Somehow [Donner] accommodated to Chris’ wishes and then to mine. Mine was a much more
freewheeling [approach], an almost improvisational way of working, in the sense of going with what happened. And
Chris’ was very anal and he wanted to know where every pencil on the desk was before he did a scene. So we were
at loggerheads a lot, Chris and I, we were like a bickering brother and sister… and [Donner] would somehow make
both of us feel like we were in the right.”[9]
Jack O’Halloran: “Superman was his first film, his big break, and he became self-centered. And one day he made a
mistake with me. There was a great restaurant in London that was just starting out at the time and one day the
whole crew were there — I would always invite them over — and one time, Reeve started talking about my father,
calling him a mob guy and things like that.
“The owner of the restaurant called me and asked me how well I knew this Christopher Reeve guy, as he was saying
so much about my family. The next day, I confronted him and I told him never to talk about my father the way he
had been. He was acting like he really was Superman and he said, ‘Yeah, your dad is a mobster.’ I grabbed him and
slammed him into a wall, and I was about to kick the shit out of him, and Donner grabbed me and said, ‘Not in the
face!'”[10]
Christopher Reeve: “I was 24, and dead serious, with dead being the operative word there, really. I mean, I just took
this thing like it was a Bible. Because I felt, in a way, that the torch had been passed from previous generations of
actors, and readers, who had loved Superman. So I felt, during the 70s and 80s, that I was the temporary custodian
of a part that is an essential piece of American mythology.”[11]
Margot Kidder: “He could be a real asshole, frankly. But over time, Chris was much easier to work with.”[12]
Christopher Reeve: “You know, for the past few months, with people staring at me, I’ve had some idea of what it
must have been like for Brando, all these years. But I’m not up-ended by what’s happened. Not at all. I know I’m not
a better actor now than when I was working Off-Broadway for $75 a week. It’s nice to have been given this chance,
of course. And I’m grateful. But that’s about it, really; that’s about it…”[13]
Superman 1.86: Another Day, Another Door
So this is why we don’t call Superman the World’s Greatest Detective; for a guy with super-speed, he’s a bit slow on
the uptake. Lex Luthor has been sneaking around in the underbelly of this movie for almost an hour, stealing
meteorites and messing with missiles, and Superman literally doesn’t even know who Luthor is until he gets hit with
the villain’s supersonic Grindr profile.
I mean, I know it’s his plan, but Lex has to be a little put-out that he’s sitting there — 1.3 miles away, 48 years old,
looking for Chat, Dates, Gloating and Comeuppance — and the only way to get his dream guy’s attention is to tell
every dog in town how lonely he is.
It’s a weird structure for your movie, having the hero spend 45 minutes catching burglars and going on dates, and
then suddenly getting a pool party invite from the Big Bad, at which point the film is practically over, except for
miniatures shots. But this movie’s method is to make each individual sequence so appealing that you don’t really
notice that the structure doesn’t work, until you watch it a whole bunch of times and try to write 100 blog posts
about it.
What’s wrong with the structure? Well, for one thing, the main character doesn’t make a lot of choices. The first
third of the movie is about shuttling Kal-El from Krypton to Smallville to the North Pole, led around by a green
glowstick. In Metropolis, Superman is positioned as fundamentally reactive: he turns into a hero when Lois is in
imminent peril, and then looks around to see what other problems he can respond to. He doesn’t have a plan to
make the world better; he’s just going to wait around for something to develop.
The one really strong choice that he makes in the whole film is to set up a date with Lois. He initiates that sequence,
and as a reward, he gets a flirty conversation and a free trip around the Statue of Liberty. At the end of that
sequence, he almost makes another character decision, to reveal that Clark is Superman… but then he backs down,
and retreats into his shell.
And then the villain has to call Superman on the phone and specifically invite him over, to get him to participate in
the movie that would otherwise just go on without him.
Lex makes sure that Superman knows exactly where to go by putting a couple of doors in the way. There’s nothing
that Superman likes better than smashing through doors; it’s like leaving a trail of Reese’s Pieces for this guy.
Somehow, Superman is convincing himself that this is a bad moment for Luthor, where the hero will naturally
dominate the situation using his muscles, angry facial expressions and a stern tone of voice. In reality, he’s busting
his way through sidewalks and steel in order to fall into an obvious trap. Superman doesn’t worry about stuff like
that, because he thinks that he’s invulnerable, and that punching people and lifting heavy objects will solve every
problem.
But Lex Luthor is a mythopoetic trickster figure, who breaks social and cultural norms in order to create new ways of
looking at the world. In this scene, he actually takes those social rules and uses them as a stick to hit Superman with.
The big blue is clearly expecting Luthor to act like the ranting mad scientist that he is in the comic books, who in this
situation would be focusing his diamond-tipped death ray at the hero and shouting, “Nothing in the world can stop
me now!” Instead, Superman is facing off with a guy sitting calmly behind a desk.
“It’s open, come in,” Luthor smiles, as Superman steps into the lair. “My attorney will be in touch with you about the
damage to the door. Otis, take the gentleman’s cape.” It’s hard to punch a guy who’s talking like this. I mean,
Superman can do it — he loves punching people almost as much as he loves wrecking doors — but it’s difficult to
turn the conversation in that direction.
The delightful thing is that the trickster knows that he’s already won. The missiles are being launched right now, in
the moment that Superman is looking in the wrong direction. All Lex needs to do is smile and be distracting, so that
the space monster doesn’t pay attention to the rumble of impending disaster tickling the back of his ear.
So what we’ve got here is the only justified villain monologue in cinema history. Usually, the baddie taking the time
to explain his or her plan is just handing the temporarily-inconvenienced hero an instruction manual for how to
thwart the very scheme that they’re babbling about.
But here, the entire point is just to waste the hero’s time, getting him involved in a complicated discussion about
logistics, so that even if Superman manages to break free of the temporary inconvenience of being dunked
underwater — which obviously he will — then he’ll still be too late to stop both missiles, which is what happens. The
only way that Superman could avert Luthor’s plan is if he could travel back in time and do it all over again, which is
such a ludicrous plot point that even the trickster wouldn’t think of it.
The villain also has an advantage, in terms of audience appeal. Right now, we know what Luthor knows — that he
programmed the missiles, and they’ve already been launched — so we’re unconsciously identifying more with the
villain than the hero, at the moment. Superman’s trying to catch up to where we already are.
The most delicious moment in the sequence is this one:
Luthor: This is California — the richest, most populous state in the union.
Superman: I don’t need a geography lesson from you, Luthor.
Luthor: Oh, yes, of course, you’ve been there! I do forget — you get around, don’t you? (chuckles) Where was I?
Otis: California!
Luthor: California, right. The San Andreas Fault, maybe you’ve heard of it.
Superman: Yes, it’s the joining together of two landmasses. The fault line is unstable and shifting, which is why you
get earthquakes in California, from time to time.
It’s the innocence and naivete in Superman’s clear blue eyes that Luthor longs to see: a rival who is now entirely off
his guard, just because Lex off-handedly asked him for a geology fact. Superman can’t help but help, and that is his
undoing. He has no control over his innate urge to be of assistance.
Right now, Lex could do almost anything to manipulate this hunk of hero meat. It’s taken an hour and forty-five
minutes to get to this face-off, but it’s perfectly satisfying, because Luthor has identified Superman’s only weakness.
It’s not Kryptonite — that’s a temporary inconvenience, even Luthor knows that. Superman’s real weakness is that
he’s just not that bright.
Superman 1.88: Toward a General Theory of the Ding-Dong
January 6, 2022Superman: The Movieding-dong
Consider Otis: sidekick, lickspittle, punching bag, emotional support animal — and, most importantly, a ding-dong.
The ding-dong is the guy who sets off the alarm during the break-in, the one who forgot he couldn’t swim. When
someone asks, “Why are we whispering?”, he’s the guy that says “I thought you knew.” His purpose in life is to stand
next to a smarter character, and make them wince.
Strangely, ding-dongs still show up, even with network sitcoms on the decline. You would think that the race would
die out; he seems like exactly the kind of thing that natural selection was organized to prevent.
The question of whether Otis is enjoyable or irritating has puzzled Superman scholars for decades, and I don’t
expect to untie that knot by myself. All I can do is present my findings, and draw together some threads that may be
of assistance to future scholarship.
The first thing that you have to reckon with when assessing Otis is the way that he says “Mister Luthor“, because he
says it all the time and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. At my count, he says it 19.5 times during the movie, at
an average of 2.8 Luthors per scene. He says the name five times in the ladder scene, but on a per-line basis, the
most Luthor-heavy scene is Superman’s entrance into the lair, in which Otis has three lines:
I think he’s coming, Mr. Luthor.
He’s definitely coming, Mr. Luthor.
I don’t think he wants me to, Mr. Luthor.
It’s hard to account for Otis’ difficulty in saying his boss’ name, considering that Lex talks about himself constantly,
often in the third person, so Otis hears it a lot, and he’s certainly had enough practice to master the skill.
Interestingly, Lex doesn’t appear to object to this particular foible. In other cases when Otis makes mistakes, Lex
responds with insults, violence, sarcasm or at least a sigh, but this particular error happens more often than any
other, and Lex doesn’t respond to it. It’s possible that Lex is just gathering steam for a truly epic explosion of temper
still to come.
Otis’ primary outlet for ding-dongery is getting instructions wrong, often through an over-eager desire to please.
In one scene, he grabs the ladder out from under Lex and ferries it over to the opposite end of the room, without
realizing that he’s left his passenger behind. In a similar moment, he’s so excited about bringing Lex his robe that he
puts it on while his boss is still in the pool.
And then there’s the core ding-dong moment of the film, which expresses the paradoxical nature of the species: Otis
is bright enough to open the control panel of a nuclear warhead and reprogram the launch codes, but dumb enough
to get the numbers wrong, because he wrote them on his arm. Otis gets blamed and punched in the eye for this
mixup, although it feels like the situation could have been avoided with a more effective pre-heist checklist.
Another key trait for Otis is that he doesn’t seem to be aware of his own limitations, and tries to imitate the stronger
characters in the scene. This is mostly expressed in the way that he looks at Lex, often squinting closely at him as if
Otis could understand Lex’s train of thought if he just looks at him harder.
His greatest challenge comes when Lex shouts, “Now, think, people, think! Deductive reasoning, that’s the name of
the game.” Otis attempts to snap like Lex does, and then screws up his face in desperate concentration, trying to
make deductive reasoning happen in a brain that doesn’t know what deductive means.
There’s also a moment in the map room when Otis looks at Superman’s chest, and tries to make himself look bigger
as well, suggesting that he imprints like a baby duck on whoever he’s standing next to. If that’s the case, then getting
left behind in Superman II might be the best thing that could happen to Otis, giving him the opportunity to go follow
somebody with a better track record.
But the best outcome for a ding-dong, in terms of retaining audience appeal, is for them to turn out to be the wise
fool, whose childlike simplicity allows them to cut through complications and come to the correct answer without
realizing it. This is regular practice among sitcom ding-dongs — your Andy Dwyers, your Woody Boyds, your Joey
Tribbianis — but Otis is denied any moment of transcendence.
That’s a shame, because a good “Otis, that’s it! You’ve done it!” moment can win over the audience like you
wouldn’t believe. There’s nothing we like more than a character who can help us over an obstacle that’s getting in
the way of the plot. In fact, we’re going to see that principle at work in a couple minutes, when Eve helps Superman
out of the pool, moving the story forward and securing her place in our affections.
Ultimately, the best thing that you can say about Otis is that he doesn’t speak with a Valley Girl accent, and there is
no point in the film when he says, “Oh, wow, I’m breakdancin’!” No matter what you think of Otis, nephew Lenny is
still several films away, and for that, if nothing else, we should be grateful.
Superman 1.89: Bad Girl Goes Good
Forget Catwoman. Forget the Black Cat. Forget all of the scheming anti-heroines who commit crimes and then make
out with the superhero, whether they have a feline-based persona or not.
Because we have a champion, right here. As a temporarily-reformed supercrime vixen, Eve Teschmacher — known
to her friends as MISS TESCHMACHER!! — has got to be one of the all-time greats. She reforms for a grand total of
one hundred and twenty-five seconds, and during that period, she commits sexual assault. And she still doesn’t get
any jail time! This woman is unbelievably good at her job.
I mean, there’s no room for ambiguity about Eve’s role in the impending missile massacre. Girl climbed a bridge. Or,
at least, a stunt guy wearing a blonde wig and red evening gown climbed the bridge on her behalf, but there’s long-
established legal precedent that characters are liable for any actions performed by their stuntmen, in whole or in
part.
No, she didn’t come up with this cockamamie plan herself, but she was in the room during the brainstorming
session, and the missiles couldn’t have been reprogrammed without her. Up until the Kryptonite-in-the-pool scene,
there isn’t a single moment when we see her hesitate to offer Lex whatever assistance he needs. She called him
“sick” when he killed that detective, but she didn’t feel regret or horror; it was just something to chat about.
The costume design really does all the heavy lifting, as far as the illusion of remorse is concerned. She spends most
of the movie in lunatic Bond girl gear: a sparkly black dress that shows off her cleavage, a red evening gown that
shows off her legs, a skimpy lime green bikini. She dresses a little more like a human being in the “meteorites!”
scene, but even then she’s got a lot of cleavage showing.
And now, when Superman’s on his way, all of a sudden she’s got a sensible hairstyle, and a lily-white ensemble that
doesn’t even reveal her entire neck. This is the couture equivalent of a rock-solid alibi.
So I have to say, I am not a hundred percent convinced by this “mother in Hackensack” routine. I grew up half an
hour away from Hackensack, and when I was growing up, I never saw anything even remotely like Eve Teschmacher.
If I had, I probably would have come out as gay, like, a shit ton earlier.
Now, I don’t have any hard evidence to the contrary; it’s possible that there really is a woman in Bergen County
that’s responsible for all this mess. I’m just saying that there’s a lot going on in this sequence. Eve is definitely fishing
for something, and Superman is eager to bite.
I mean, Superman is saying, “You can’t just stand there, and let innocent people — millions of innocent people die!”
and he has basically nothing to hang that opinion on. This is the first time they’ve ever spoken. How does he know
what Eve can stand there and let?
Now, as it happens, I have a little production story about this moment of sentimental aquaculture, from the Making
of book:
“And then came the scene in which Miss Teschmacher, before rescuing the hapless Man of Steel, steals a kiss.
Despite several rehearsals, it looked more like an X-rated loop than a quick peck in a family film. (Dick kept
screaming at Perrine: “I want a short, simple, high-school kiss!“) And after each take, Chris had to jump out of the
water, have a new battery pack attached — when Miss Teschmacher ripped the chain off him, it pulled out the
connecting wires — and be recombed and made up for the next shot.
“In the end, the shot looked marvelous. And certainly no one could have questioned Val’s effort and enthusiasm.”
And I can see why Donner wanted this to look like an innocent kiss — because “innocent” is the word that she needs
Superman to use, whenever he thinks about her.
Look, I don’t want to have such a cynical interpretation of this scene. It’s possible that Eve’s abrupt change of heart
really is based on some nascent spark of moral courage, and appreciation for Superman’s soaking-wet hotness.
All I’m saying is, she looks down at the swimming pool, and there’s the guy that the movie that she’s in is named
after, and she makes the appropriate calculation. There’s less than twenty minutes left in the movie — characters
can tell time, just like everyone else — and she figures there’s not a lot of hope that this is going to be the finale.
So: modest dress + mother in Hackensack + high-school kiss = extenuating circumstances. You wouldn’t believe how
much a girl like this can extenuate, when she really needs to.
Now, if you’re watching the theatrical cut of this movie like a normal person, this pool party is the last time you see
Eve, but the bloated Extended TV Cut has a final scene where Superman returns to the lair, and finds Lex and Otis in
the process of dropping the traitorous Eve into a pit of ravenous beasts. That means that she’s a victim rather than a
villain, and she gets rescued, rather than apprehended and taken to prison, where she belongs.
Naturally, as soon as Superman’s flown away with Lex and Otis, Eve immediately starts sourcing hot air balloons, in
preparation for the jailbreak that she organizes in Superman II. This is why you shouldn’t make out with
microreformed supercrime vixens and then let them go; the recidivism rate is off the charts.
Also, somebody needs to explain to me why Eve doesn’t have amnesia now.
Superman 1.90: You’ll Believe A Man Can Buy
They didn’t use the word “synergy” for this kind of thing yet, so they just called it a “push”, as in SUPERMAN PIC
GETTING WARNER COMMUNICATIONS PUSH.
“Superman is due to get a super push from Warner Communications Inc.,” said Variety in July 1978, “marking the
first time a major entertainment conglomerate has marshalled virtually all of its subsidiary operations in the
advertising, promotion and merchandising of a feature film.”
And congratulations, the superhero movie is born, not with a whimper but a bang. Warner Bros. has realized that
they’re about to launch a feature film based on one of the most well-known characters in the world, and by now
they’ve actually seen a rough cut of the film, and it’s really good. So it’s time for the Warner subsidiaries to circle the
wagons, and get ready to make some Star Wars money.
In addition to the Warner Bros. movie studio, Warner Communications also owned Warner Books, Warner
Television, Warner Bros. Records, Atari, Licensing Corp. of America and DC Comics, and in 1978, they all started
busily selling Superman, a forty-year-old comic book character that everyone was already tired of.
Don’t get me wrong, Superman used to be a big deal, especially when it was supported by a popular radio show in
the 1940s and a TV show in the 50s. But in the mid-60s, Marvel started publishing Fantastic Four and Spider-Man
comics, and all of a sudden Superman looked kind of square. Sales of Action Comics and Superman had been
steadily dropping since 1965, and by the late 70s it really wasn’t anything special.
But now we’re going to see what a major entertainment conglomerate can accomplish, when they really put their
minds to it.
Viewed in the light of a merchandising goldmine, Superman has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest
advantage is his bulletproof name recognition. You don’t have to introduce him to anyone; literally everybody in
America already knows who he is, and what he can do.
The biggest disadvantage is that’s pretty much all that you have. Superman doesn’t have much of a supporting cast:
everyone knows who Lois Lane is, but people start getting hazy on Jimmy and Perry, and that’s all. The rogues’
gallery is also extremely thin in the American popular imagination: everyone knows Lex Luthor, but if you ask the
average person in 1978 to name three more Superman villains, they’ll say the Green Goblin, the Riddler and the
Incredible Hulk, and that’s the end of the conversation.
Superman: The Movie basically had one merchandisable character: Superman. Mego managed to squeak out a set
of four dolls by including Lex Luthor, General Zod and Jor-El, but the Luthor figure was dressed in his cartoony purple
and green body armor, Zod is hardly in the movie, and a figure of Marlon Brando in the wrong costume doesn’t have
a hell of a lot of play value.
Meanwhile, Star Wars has a very deep bench of characters and creatures that they were only just starting to mine in
1978. Kenner’s legendary line of Star Wars action figures already had 20 characters out by Christmas 1978, and
besides all the obvious figures — Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, and the droids — they also had
Jawas and Sand People, plus a Cantina Adventure Set that included Greedo, Hammerhead, Snaggle Tooth and
Walrus Man.
I’m trying to think of who would be the Superman: The Movie equivalents of the cantina characters, and so far I’ve
come up with the football coach who tells Clark to clean up the equipment, the guy running the fruit-and-vegetable
stand outside the Daily Planet building, the pimp, and the girl whose cat is stuck in a tree.
I mean, yeah, they could have done a young Ma Kent figure with an older Ma Kent variant sold with the Pa Kent
funeral playset, but besides that, there’s just not a lot of merchandising potential.
Still, there were a few licensees that managed to capture the authentic flavor of the movie, including this set of five
Pepsi promotional glasses — “Buy a Pepsi and keep the glass!” I’m not actually sure where these were sold. I
remember this style of glasses as being a McDonalds or Burger King promotion, but as far as I know, these were just
for Pepsi, with no specific restaurant affiliation.
They represent an impressive variety of movie scenes and promotional pictures —Kal-El’s starship, baby Clark lifting
the truck, catching Lois, and even the train tracks repair scene, which feels like a deep cut for a Pepsi glass.
The Aladdin lunchbox is also very much on point. The 1970s were the golden age of lunchboxes, when they used to
produce six different panels of original art to cover every surface on the box.
The lunchbox depicted Superman running on the front, with this incredible Daily Planet newsroom pic on the back.
Around the sides, there were paintings of Jor-El sentencing the three villains, Jor-El and Lara putting the baby in the
starship, the ship flying away from the exploding planet, and young Clark picking up the truck.
As far as I can tell, there is zero love for the movie’s Lex Luthor on any of this merch; the only thing I’ve located with
Hackman on it is the trading card set. But this jigsaw puzzle from American Publishing featues a a photo of Eve in her
sparkly black Bond girl cleavage dress, leaning up against the piano in Luthor’s lair while smoking a cigarette, which
is just about the most eccentric choice that they could possibly have made.
I have to say, I find this entire puzzle entirely puzzling; I don’t understand most of their choices. It looks like the kid
picking up the truck was instantly iconic, but the puzzle also includes photos of random Kryptonians dying in the red
furnace of their exploding planet, the mugger pointing a gun at Clark and Lois, and Lois trying to dry off Clark’s wet
crotch, which I just can’t imagine little kids assembling on the living room rug.
There’s some interesting art on the wastebasket produced by Chein Industries, as well, and by interesting I mean
terrible. I’m not sure whether Superman is supposed to be running or flying, and the more that you look at the
shape of his body parts, your day just gets worse and worse. The flip side had the kid lifting up the truck, which I
guess was just fucking catnip for the youth of 1978.
There was also a lot of generic Superman merchandise that didn’t specifically tie in with the movie, like this
California Originals cookie jar based on the old chestnut that Superman changes his costume in a telephone booth,
which hardly ever happened except in a Fleischer Studios cartoon.
This cookie jar finds Superman mid-change, so he’s still got his jacket and tie in one hand — but he’s also currently
making a phone call, which you would think would introduce some unnecessary complexity to the quick-change
process.
I like this one — a Superman Talking Alarm Clock, which pictures Superman flying over a collection of oddly-shaped
buildings in the Metropolis skyline. The box indicates that the alarm clock would say “Better get up or you’ll be late”
and “When you get up, my mission is done”, which is not what I’m looking for in terms of snappy dialogue, but it
looks terrific.
Man, there’s so much stuff. I hope it’s okay if I just show you a lot of stuff, because I’m pretty deep into it by now.
Here’s the Superman LiteWriter, which lights up for night writing — try and say that a few times, if you have a spare
moment.
I have a description for this item which says it’s a “Battery operated ballpoint pen with built-in light bulb and buzzing
device for Morse code”, and maybe you can figure that out but I sure can’t. You’d have to be pretty close to someone
if you plan on communicating with them by LiteWriter-assisted Morse code, so it would probably be easier just to
tell them what your message is — or you could write it down, using the pen that’s currently in your hand. I just can’t
picture the scenario. Maybe it’s me.
Then there’s the Cartoonarama cartoon paint set, which presents black-and-white animation cel-style imagery that
you can paint on. To make the kit appealing to girls as well as boys, they included Supergirl and Wonder Woman,
although to be honest nothing on the box looks particularly appealing for anyone. There’s a floating head of Krypto
the Superdog, who looks angry on the box but is less angry inside.
If you haven’t noticed it already, I would also like to draw your attention to the phallic nature of the exploding
rocket.
Along similarly immature lines, Avon’s bottle of bubble bath puts Metropolis’ skyline in a place that seems like it
would be uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, Atari produced a Superman video game with the catchy title Superman Video Computer System Game
Program. Apparently, in 1978, computer games were so new that they weren’t sure which words people would
recognize, so they went ahead and used all of them.
There are so many more things that I could show you — beach towels and nightlights and lapel pins and necklaces
and pinball games and wallpaper and yo-yos — but I don’t want to wear out my welcome, so I’m just going to
present a few more favorites.
First, there’s the Super-Hopper Superman pogo stick made by Master Juvenile Products, which I think is simply
magnificent.
There’s also the Kryptonite Rock!! sold by Pro Arts, which glowed in the dark after being exposed to light for five
seconds. The booklet said that the United States Observatory kept an eye out for Kryptonite meteors, and then
broke them into pieces so that Superman’s friends could keep them safe:
No matter how vividly a rock shines, it cannot harm Superman IF a friend of his keeps it safely out of range. This is
important, because a friend of Superman can guard the deadly Kryptonite so that no enemy can ever use it against
him.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Do not keep your Kryptonite Rock in the same room as one of your Super Hero Comics.
Do not lend your Kryptonite Rock to anyone, you never know whose side they are on.
Do not leave your Rock in the open when you are not at home.
And then there’s the Superman marionette by Madison Ltd, which makes very intense eye contact. Be careful not to
look into its eyes for too long, or you will fall in love with it. Take it from one who knows.
Superman 1.91: Defining Disaster
Time is running out. There’s a pair of misguided missiles streaking across the country in opposite directions, and
nobody knows how to turn them off, except the guy who doesn’t want to.
Superman is currently chasing the first rocket, striving to save Hackensack, and Bergen Country in general, from a
desperate fate. But while he’s not looking, the second rocket is headed straight for a fault line. He doesn’t have time
to launch the first rocket into the stratosphere, and keep control of the second rocket.
You know, it’s amazing to me that the people who decided to make two superhero movies at the same time never
noticed that the climax to their first movie is based on the idea that you shouldn’t try to do two things at once.
As for me, I’ve got my own ticking countdown to deal with, because I’m planning to finish these Superman: The
Movie posts at 1.100 — just ten posts, counting today — and then move on to Superman II, and the disasters that
follow.
Now, I know that this is just a movie and I shouldn’t be taking it personally, but it feels like Lex Luthor is annoyed
with me, specifically. One of the missiles is heading for North Jersey, which is where I lived when the movie came
out, and the other missile is heading for San Francisco, which is where I live now. So I do feel some urgency about
wrapping up this section of the blog, before the warhead arrives at my doorstep.
Luckily, there are hardly any character scenes left in the movie to write about. After Eve helps Superman to escape
from his Kryptonite bath, it’s almost entirely special effects, miniatures shots and disappointing resolutions. The
story at this point is the real-world drama around the film’s release, involving extortion, public shaming, accusations
of embezzlement, several lawsuits and a really bad review in The New Yorker.
For the Salkinds, of course, it’s all about the money. Executive producer Alexander Salkind, his son Ilya, and Ilya’s
friend Pierre Spengler have mostly focused on the financing, and how much of it director Richard Donner is
spending on reshoots.
When the Salkinds started making the picture in 1975, they used the proposed budget as a way to get people to take
the project seriously, taking out a three-page ad in Variety bragging about “the $20,000,000 film production of
Superman.” They hired Marlon Brando at a deliberately ridiculous salary, to show off how big the film was going to
be. But by summer 1978, as the shooting dragged on and it was obvious the costs were out of control, they tried to
underplay the swelling budget, to reassure their financial backers that they weren’t just wasting everyone’s cash.
After release, when it’s time to count up the profits, the Salkinds will switch back to exaggerating the costs, going
from an estimate of $45 million in summer 1978 all the way up to $140 million in 1980. But that’s the distant future;
right now, we’re still downplaying.
This is also the point when both Donner and Ilya start oversharing, and the conflicts over the film start spilling out
into public view.
The behind-the-scenes mythology about any blockbuster movie is always about how hard it was to make, so that the
audience appreciates the special efforts it took to get to the screen. And in a June Variety article called “Richard
Donner Over the Hump on Superman“, Donner added some final pieces to the pre-release mythology, which were
about how hard it was for Richard Donner, specifically.
Here’s Donner the hero:
“If I had known what I was getting into, I never would have done it. But I never would have passed on it, either.”
And the guy who’s protecting the Superman legacy from the foreigners, who he thinks are Hungarian for some
reason:
“They were going to make a picture with a Russian-Hungarian executive producer, a French producer, a British
director and an American cast in Rome.”
And here’s Donner the martyr:
“I had to have two scripts in mind at all times. It was nuts. I’d get into arguments with myself. I kept both scripts
together as one book — you could get a hernia carrying those scripts.”
But the real purpose of this interview is to assure people that the rumors they’ve heard about the failure to fly
aren’t true:
Much speculation has centered around the reportedly abortive attempts to make the flying scenes realistic, and
Donner concedes there were problems.
“Sure, he flies,” said Donner. “And if he flies, and flies well, you’ll take it for granted. It makes or breaks the picture.
To get him flying the right way took — from the first time I put multiple units on the job until the acceptance of the
first flying shot — eight months. The devices on Reeve are painful, actually causing him much anguish, but they’re
amazing.”
All of that is great, and completely on-message. The film is big and expensive and difficult to shoot, but we’re very
proud of it, and can’t wait for you to see it.
But then Donner does the thing that’s ultimately going to get him fired from Superman II.
Along with the normal production hassles, Donner had a severe falling out with line co-producer Pierre Spengler,
necessitating the hiring of Richard Lester as a kind of producer’s go-between.
“When I first heard they had hired Lester, I thought, that’s it, back to TV,” remembers ex-vidirector Donner. “Our
relationship started with distrust, but Lester did nothing but help me. I needed a producer. He was able to smooth
things over, and was on my side all the way.”
While given total authority and responsibility by the Salkind pere-fils team, Donner claims he was never told what
the budgets of the two films were. “How do you direct without knowing a budget? It’s still a secret. The only time I’ll
find out is after the picture goes out and goes into profit.”
Now, Donner is naturally charismatic and funny, so his gift for plain-speaking feels more normal than it actually is.
Here in the real world, you don’t badmouth your boss in public, if you want to continue working for them. This is all
good material for the DVD commentary, twenty years from now. Today is not the day.
This is the result of Warner Bros. stepping in, providing more financing and specifically saying that the Salkinds need
to keep Donner on the project. He thinks it’s okay to tell people that he’s not on the same side as the Salkinds, and it
is okay, temporarily.
Then in August, the Warner Bros./Salkind conflict started playing out in public.
In early August, seven Warner Bros. execs flew to London to see the rough cut of the film, which was four hours long
— and they were absolutely delighted with it. Donner asked them about the length of the movie, and they told him
that they trusted him, and it can be as long as he wants.
A week later, they held a marketing kickoff for 500 people connected to the promotion and merchandising of the
movie, and WB chairman Ted Ashley gushed about the film into the microphone. Ashley said he was having “a hard
time containing my natural enthusiasm for this magical picture,” and proceeded to describe a lot of key sequences,
including a blow-by-blow description of the finale, which he was not supposed to do.
Warner Bros. was so excited about the film’s prospects that they decided to raise the marketing budget from $6
million to $10 million, which everyone thought was a great idea… except for Ilya Salkind.
In a Variety article called “Ilya Salkind Defines Disaster: An $80-Mil Gross for Superman,” Ilya complained that the
promotion was costing too much.
Ilya Salkind, the 31-year-old superkid producer of Superman, says it will be a flat out disaster if the picture being
distributed by Warner Bros. fails to gross more than $80,000,000 domestically.
Because he thinks the film should sail into the $100,000,000 stratosphere on the wings of assorted tie-ins — books,
comics, records and a mammoth merchandising spinoff — he admits to superdoubts about Warners’ wish to add
$4,000,000 to the $6,000,000 campaign already agreed to.
The problem, for Ilya, was that the extra four million dollars was partly coming out of his pocket.
One pragmatic reason for Salkind’s wariness is the fact that campaign expenditures and advances are taken off the
top before his company, London-based Dovemeat Ltd, and Warners, do a 50-50 split of what is left. A $10,000,000
campaign tab would mean $4,000,000 less to divide.
So Ilya — with apparently no sense of irony — asked Warners to give him a detailed breakdown of the promotion
budget. “I would want to see what they’re doing and if it’s worth it,” he said. “Especially compared to all other areas
of promotion going on this film, do we really need so much?”
Now, those kinds of questions are perfectly normal in the industry, but my question for Ilya is, why are you telling
people about it? Warners is excited. Superman is diverting the rocket so that it flies even higher, out into the
stratosphere. You need to focus on the story of how great this movie is, and what a smash it’ll be.
But then there’s that second rocket — the bridge-snapping, doom-distributing missile, that will ultimately smash the
franchise to pieces — and it is heading straight toward those fault lines.
Superman 1.94: The Shakedown
The telephone trills.
It’s mid-November 1978 in sunny Los Angeles, and all four of the Warner Brothers, seated at their identical desks,
reach for their four matching telephone receivers. “Hello?” they chirp, in unison. “These are the Warner Brothers.”
“Good afternoon, Mizter Brothers,” says the voice, in an imaginary Russo-Swiss-Mexican accent. “Zis is Alexander
Salkind.”
Mr. Salkind is the executive producer of Superman: The Movie and the head of a bumbling, crumbling international
crime syndicate, and he’s making a transatlantic person-to-persons call to make Warner Bros. an offer that they can’t
refuse.
In this unrighteous reach out and touch someone, Alex explains that today he’s going to sell them the distribution
rights to Superman in several more foreign territories, for the generous asking price of $15 million dollars, payable
immediately and without question. He wants cash, and he wants it right away, and if they don’t pay it, he won’t give
them the completed print of the movie in time for the US premiere.
This is an actual thing that happened in the world.
Warner Bros. had already paid the Salkinds $10 million dollars for distribution rights in the United States, Canada
and 75% of the international markets. Now, for the bargain basement everything-must-go fire-sale price of 150%
more than they’d already spent, Warners would get the rights for Africa, Australia, Puerto Rico, Japan, Hong Kong
and Singapore, which is delightful but it wasn’t what they figured they’d be doing with the petty cash today.
And that was the final price, too: $15 million dollars. This was not a negotiation. It was a stick-up.
Now, you’d imagine that this kind of thing couldn’t happen, because obviously Warners would already have
contracts specifying the delivery date of the film. But that’s because you’ve never done business with the Salkind
family. When the stunned studio heads looked closely, they found that the delivery date in the contract was
December 31st, 1978 — three weeks after the US premiere. Apparently, Warners didn’t check that contract carefully
enough before they signed it.
Movie studios would be more rigorous about this in the future, obviously. Most of the best practices in the film
industry were developed in the wake of a Salkind project. They were educational that way.
Warner Bros. had already committed to a $7+ million dollar promotion campaign, including a saturation-bombing
television ad buy on all major networks, telling everybody that Superman was coming directly to theaters, starting
December 15th.
Warners had gone to all the trouble of booking 508 movie theaters for a guaranteed 13-week run, plus they had a
Washington, D.C. premiere with President Jimmy Carter on December 10th, and a London premiere with the fucking
Queen of England on December 14th.
And here’s this runty card sharp with blue-rinsed hair, calling the studio collect, and telling them that everything will
be fine, as long as they pay the $15m ransom in unmarked bills. They’re going to get the movie, nobody’s saying
they won’t get the movie. This is going to be one of those win-win scenarios.
Naturally, the studio asked what the Salkinds wanted it for, and Alex said, vhat are you talking about? It’s money. It’s
just a thing that you want to have more of.
Really, the problem was that Salkind’s investors were tired of shoveling other people’s money through a series of
shell companies and secret bank accounts without getting anything in return. They wanted some sugar. And they
were demanding it less than a month before the movie came out, so these were some impatient investors. If this is
the way the Salkinds behave, just imagine the people who are demanding 15 million from them.
You know, it makes you wonder what would have happened, if they’d had some kind of good influence during this
period in their lives, some symbol of honesty and fair play that could have inspired them. Well, I guess we’ll never
know.
So Warners paid the ransom, of course. What else could they do? They had to have the movie. They were planning a
preview screening in late November, and Richard Donner flew to LA to see what the audience reaction was like. But
they had to cancel the screening at the last minute, because they were still arranging for the wire transfer, and Alex
hadn’t sent them the film yet. They finally fixed it all up, just a couple days before the D.C. premiere.
As it turned out, Warner Bros. actually made money on the deal; the film made $60 million overseas. One studio
insider said that “Warner was led kicking and screaming into making millions.” If the Salkinds hadn’t been so
panicked about raising the money in a hurry, they could have made a lot more money by holding onto those
distribution rights. But that’s the way the Salkinds operated; it was like watching the Mafia tumble backwards down
a flight of stairs.
A couple years later, the story broke in The Los Angeles Times. Nobody at Warners would actually talk about it on
the record, because they were still waiting for the Salkinds to deliver Superman II, and why ask for trouble? All the
Times could get was a quote from an unnamed Warner exec, who shrugged, “It has to do with risk and reward; what
you are getting for what you are held up for. Besides, it was a business decision, and imparting an ethical coefficient I
don’t think is relevant.”
Well, you know me; I wouldn’t dream of imparting an irrelevant ethical coefficient. I’ll just say that the story ended
happily for everyone, except for Alex, who was arrested a couple of weeks later for embezzling funds, and he had to
flee to Mexico, and miss the movie premiere. Seriously, that is the actual thing that happened next.
Superman 1.95: Speak Truth to Power
Snap, crackle, pop. Apparently, there’s an electrical power station somewhere in the Western hemisphere that’s
experiencing some kind of electricity related fiasco.
“Watch that cable!” someone cries, like it’s my job to watch cables. “Someone try to pull the lead!” Somebody else
shouts, “It’s impossible, it’s red hot!” There doesn’t seem to be a protocol for this kind of situation.
But Superman flies in, and he flips a big switch, which turns everything off and saves everyone. Then he points at
somebody and says, “Gentlemen, is that man all right?” And I’m like, what man?
I mean, I don’t even know this guy; I’ve never seen him before, I’m never going to see him again, and with the smoke
filter, I’m not even sure that I’m seeing him right now.
You know, I’ve been pretty relentlessly positive about Superman so far, even the Krypton parts, but we have now
arrived in the section of the movie that I basically have no use for: the six minutes that follow the missile hitting the
San Andreas Fault.
I mean, the first fifty seconds are all right, because it’s Lois in peril, and the movie has spent the last hour training
me to believe that Lois Lane is the most important person in the world, which she is.
But then I’m expected to care about a bunch of kids on a school bus going across the Golden Gate Bridge, which I do
not,
except for the kid with an enormous afro, who you only see in a couple of shots. If that kid was the featured player
in this sequence, then it might have had a chance, but instead what we get is
goats, for some reason? Which
I have to say do not loom large on my list of
things I give a shit about, alongside
train randos
and more non-afro bus kids. It’s just hard to
focus on who I’m supposed to care
about, from one moment to the
next. I mean, I get that they’re trying
to show that this is a huge, wide-ranging
crisis, and that Superman is trying to
help as many people as he can, but at this point we’re
a full five minutes into the sequence, and
all of a sudden, there’s a whole housing development that we’re supposed to be concerned about, and what even
happened to those goats? There’s also a moment where
you see the panicking people from the housing development, and someone shouts, “Come on, George! Come on!”
like now I’m responsible for keeping track of how George is doing. It just doesn’t work for me at all.
Superman extra: A Small Amount of the Exciting Original Story of Superman: Last Son of Krypton
1978 was not one of the golden years of movie novelizations. Star Wars had done very well in 1976, and the Close
Encounters of the Third Kind novelization in 1977 did quite a bit toward helping people understand what the hell
that movie was even about.
But the movie tie-in section at Waldenbooks was fairly grim in ’78: there was Jaws 2 and The Bad News Bears Go to
Japan, and novels based on some unloved Disney films: Pete’s Dragon, Return from Witch Mountain and The Cat
from Outer Space. And that was about it.
The one thing that could have perked up the publishing category that year would be the novelization of the long-
awaited Superman film, but Mario Puzo screwed us on that, so we got this instead.
The Exciting Original Story of Superman: Last Son of Krypton was packaged as if it was the Superman novel, with a
picture of Chris Reeve on the front, and a 16-page section of pictures from the film stuck in the middle. But this story
had no relationship with the movie, except for the basic concept of starting in Krypton, having a couple chapters in
Smalville, and fighting Lex Luthor.
When Godfather scribe Mario Puzo was hired to write the Superman script, his contract specified that he was the
only person who could novelize the film, and if he didn’t feel like it, it wouldn’t happen. His script was basically
unfilmable, and the movie ended up being a collaboration between four other writers, so Puzo had no interest in
writing a book about it.
Instead, DC Comics writer Elliot S. Maggin wrote a 238-page exciting original story set in the current 1978 comics
continuity, which means that a) Clark Kent works at a TV station, and b) there’s not much interest in the
Superman/Lois relationship.
What it’s got instead is a slap-happy willingness to try anything; the plot involves the secret notebook of Albert
Einstein, an enormous hypnotic alien jester, black holes, Xerox machines and a secret code based on the names of
Moroccan coffee companies. Or something. I didn’t read it very carefully.
Still, if you’d like to skim along with me, here is The Exciting Original Story of Superman: Last Son of Krypton, heavily
excerpted down to three sentences per chapter.
Chapter 1: KRYPTON
Criminals were, as a rule, a troublesome group of people.
The Science Council, along with the great majority of the Kryptonian people, had grown soft and complacent.
“You have the choice of sleeping or winding yourself into a frenzy.”
Chapter 2: THE FIDDLER
“Strain shmain. What else is there?”
“Pardon my simplicity,” the old man said, “but have I the honor of addressing God?”
He would get past the nurse today, but not to buy an ice cream cone.
Chapter 3: SMALLVILLE
The old man imagined what it would be like to have muscle tissues heaped one on top of the other and ground
together as hard as the composition of matter whose subatomic particles had fallen in on each other.
It seemed amazing, as he walked onto the street with dusk beginning to fall, that he had received his mechanical
visitor only about nine or ten hours earlier.
“Walking around Smallville is what I do for a living.”
Chapter 4: THE TRACTOR
Parker sat smiling in a way that nearly annoyed the urbanity out of Stone.
“Like what? Another one of your Communist plots?”
“I should have stayed to see what Hitler would do with me.”
Chapter 5: THE ANCHORMAN
“When they told me I was gonna be on the tube, I figured the chicks’d be climbing the walls like King Kong to get
next to me.”
“Ah, that bald fruit’s not human.”
He made skin-tight outfits, especially in red and blue, a recurrent fashion among men.
Chapter 6: THE PENTHOUSE
This was the highest-paid staff in organized crime.
Every New Englander who lives north of Manchester, New Hampshire, knows there is a lot of flying hardware in the
sky from somewhere other than here.
“What do you mean egg juice?”
Chapter 7: PRINCETON
Jimmy thought of himself as the last of the Vikings.
“Seen any eggheads around? When do they open the safe?”
Luthor tore off the fake hair as he plopped into his confederate’s car, laid the sealed document on his lap, and
headed for the New Jersey Turnpike.
Chapter 8: THE POWER
Banks were thicker in midtown than Cadillacs in Teheran.
Superman caught the .22 shells in his mouth like jellybeans and spat them out at the three guy lines connecting the
pilot to his kite.
“Jimmy called up from Princeton and everybody went bazonkas.”
Chapter 9: ORIC
Among those lingering a moment after the service to listen to Towbee were an arachnoid from Polaris, a tripedal
from the Septus Group, even a humanoid.
Slavery, of course, was wrong.
“Terrans contend with rocks and sticks, with fossil fuels they’re in a fix.”
Chapter 10: THE MASTER
It stood to reason, then, that he who had the most possessions, since they could only be given and not bought, must
be the most beloved by those with whom he comes in contact.
“You may rise up on your wheels, Carlo.”
“Trisection? But that is impossible.”
Chapter 11: THE BROADCAST
Could Olivier, Gielgud, Brando, Nicholson pull off this act as effectively?
Maybe Clark should drop-kick the building into a lunar crater.
“The momentary downpour I created was for the purpose of duplicating conditions of a thunderstorm.”
Chapter 12: THE UNVEILING
“Every law office has my voice print on file.”
Luthor obviously had B.J. by the intrigue glands.
“Napoleon did it with conquest, Supes does it with pretension, my mother did it with guilt.”
Chapter 13: THE ENTERTAINER
One day a repulsive flying lizard swooped down from the sky over Metropolis.
And in a swirl and a splash of colorful clouds Toybee leaped from the back of his whale.
Easily ten thousand people stood in Fifth Avenue, entranced.
Chapter 14: THE CROOKED PHILOLOGIST
“Like the word ‘and’ came out spelled ‘texture-consolidated-general.'”
“Does he have four arms and a mustache and speak in rhymes?”
“Who’s the best pilot not serving time?”
Chapter 15: THE CAPER
“They seem to be tacked onto the subjects of clauses like prefixes.”
Clark showed off a crude, nearly indescribable harness-and-pulley system.
Superboy equipped the building with rare chemicals and minerals.
Chapter 16: OA
Average humanoid height in the Galaxy was somewhere between two and two-and-a-half meters.
“Our wayward brother has located and induced a dream sleep upon the Earthman.”
“Have you ever tried to talk a mugger out of pursuing his vocation, Professor Gordon?”
Chapter 17: THE SOCIOLOGIST
A beam of heat vision snapped the branch of the tree and the cat fell.
Superman occasionally wondered if the only recorded incidence of Regulus-243 contamination on Earth was the
death of Lot’s wife.
He glowed with life and power, and sometimes he twinkled under the sun.
Chapter 18: OLD-TIMER
“First question,” Superman’s smile asked, “are you really here or are you some kind of astral projection?”
“Was he the thief?”
He was awakened before dawn by the sound of the President of the United States brushing his remarkable
collection of teeth.
Chapter 19: POCANTICO TO VEGA
“May I call you Turkey Noodle?”
“You’re telling me that this three-dimensional test pattern is your spaceship?”
“Are you telling me that Jeremy McAfee is you?”
Chapter 20: THE ARRIVALS
Four-fifths of it was liquid, primarily water and ammonia.
Cyber would have been an architect’s nightmare and a technocrat’s wet dream.
A single grain of each of a dozen spices touched to Superman’s tongue was enough.
Chapter 21: THE INTERROGATION
Even naked and imprisoned, Luthor was not to be dominated.
“When I give him something, it’s a privilege; when he gives me something, it’s a non sequitur.”
His would-be tormentors who were his companions were back again, the broom speaking.
Chapter 22: THE HOTEL
There was something like a hotel on Cyber Island.
They would all have immediately begun spewing ammonia bubbles from their feed-out orifices.
Superman didn’t stop to figure out the odds for some extraterrestrial creature’s being named Abraham Lincoln.
Chapter 23: THE SECRET
Luthor never told anyone that he took secret delight in the fact that he was born under the sign of Scorpio.
All matter was effectively the same.
This might bring him around; it would probably kill him.
Chapter 24: THE MAD DREAM
This was the day Superman was introduced to God.
He knew every cubic centimeter of his body, inside and out.
It was a man, an Earthman, also approximately.
Chapter 25: THE ATROCITY
“For a guy who once posed as a Korean guru just to attract 33,000 impressionable teenage kids to a rally in Metro
Stadium and hold them for ransom…”
“Well, that only makes 399.”
“He built a time-snatcher powerful enough to manufacture duplicate planets.”
Chapter 26: COLLATE
It seemed that nowhere in the immediate Galaxy were there machines constructed which were capable of doing
what Xerox machines did as efficiently as they did it.
“Are you familiar with the twenty-six brands of Moroccan coffee?”
“One guy almost as big as you, but he’s got three legs.”
Chapter 27: THIS WAY OUT
Craft were running in and out of the deck like communicable diseases.
“Listen to the pretzel-brain, he wants authorization.”
“Right. Very good. Tomorrow we learn to spell cat.”
Chapter 28: THE EDGE
John Stuart Mill read about that fast, and came close to going mad because he was incapable of turning pages
quickly enough to keep up with himself.
His moss now spat out oxygen as fast as Luthor sucked it up.
“Hey, Hot Pants, I’m talking to you.”
Chapter 29: CHAOS
Every real estate office belonging to the Master filled up with life-supporting, business-stopping foam.
A new age was born here and now.
It made the rest of the trip disguised in an illusion of an infrared wave.
Chapter 30: RETRIEVAL
Luthor set about reaching a billion years into the future for a collection of Xerox-style copies of the dead husk of the
planet Oric.
There were nineteen Orics in the sky, and Superman felt quite useless here.
… and the pyramid had no point.
Chapter 31: THE COINCIDENCE
“And what’s more, the whole cockamamie world is wired for sight and sound.”
“What the sizzling suns do you think you’ve been keeping me from doing all these years?”
Was the station simply running a tape of yesterday’s news for some reason?
Chapter 32: THE TAKEOVER
The twentieth floor was naked like a ghost town.
“He has four arms and a large mustache.”
He had no disguise to drop but his madness.
Chapter 33: IN MY FATHER’S EYES
The reporter flexed every boulder-shaped muscle on the surface of his body.
No one in the entire television operation had been capable of thought since Towbee’s takeover of the broadcast
media.
Around him, Superman heard titters, then chuckles, then laughter, then guffaws.
Chapter 34: RESTORATION
“How should I know what I’m going to do?”
“What the flying moonballs do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m pretty much flushed with a victory over a would-be despot whose coming was apparently foretold eight billion
years ago.”
Chapter 35: THE GIFT
“My role in the whole thing was just that of Superman’s tool to take the would-be conqueror off guard.”
“Jimmy Olsen, Lola Barnett and Pelé are going to judge my Bloody Mary against your mother’s wonderful soft drink.”
There it was, written in Kryptonese.
Superman 1.96: Mixed Messages
The main thing is, everybody loved Christopher Reeve.
Gene Siskel called him “totally believable,” and Jack Kroll called him “ridiculously good-looking” and “a delight”.
Vincent Canby said “he manages to be both funny and comic-strip heroic without making a fool of himself,” and
Roger Ebert said “Reeve sells the role; wrong casting here would have sunk everything.”
Even Pauline Kael said that Reeve was “immediately likable”, and she hated the film worse than she hated kidney
stones and road accidents.
Now, back in 1978, it actually mattered what movie critics wrote in the newspaper, because we didn’t have a
website that counted everything up, and spit out a pre-packaged percentage.
Back then, we’d often consult a couple of reviews before deciding what we would go and see, maybe one from a
newspaper and another from a national magazine. The critics were thoughtful and candid, and we’d read the whole
review, carefully considering what they said about each aspect of the production, to get a fully-rounded picture of
the film’s strong points and deficits. In other words, it was a fucking nightmare. Percentages are so much easier; you
have no idea.
Superman: The Movie was broadly appealing, but it wasn’t for everybody. Even the film’s strongest boosters would
have to concede that taking forty-seven minutes before the lead actor appears can try the audience’s patience, if
they’re not already bought into the concept. So it was pretty much guaranteed that the reviews would be somewhat
mixed, and they were.
In The Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert started his review with:
“Superman is a pure delight, a wondrous combination of all the old-fashioned things we never really get tired of:
adventure and romance, heroes and villains, earthshaking special effects, and — you know what else? Wit.”
While The New York Times’ Vincent Canby began with:
“Superman is good, clean, simple-minded fun, though it’s a movie whose limited appeal is built in. There isn’t a
thought in this film’s head that would be out of place on the side of a box of Wheaties.”
It’s hard to say exactly what that line about Wheaties means; I’ve been puzzling over it. If anybody was printing the
thoughts in films’ heads on cereal boxes in the late 1970s, then that trend must have passed me by. In my opinion,
Mr. Canby was just trying to hurt people’s feelings.
The movie’s shifts in tone from one section to another made it a bit difficult for the reviewers to sum it up.
In The Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel didn’t like the Krypton scenes:
“The opening two reels of Superman are tedious. We want to see the guy in the cape, but he doesn’t make his
appearance until 40 minutes into the movie… It’s only in Metropolis that the film delivers the kind of excitement
we’ve come to see.”
But Gary Arnold in The Washington Post appreciated the romantic comedy elements:
“The most successful sources of comedy are the feats that Reeve pretends to perform with such adorable
nonchalance and the complicated romantic relationship he shares with Kidder’s Lois.”
Obviously, the special effects got a lot of discussion.
Arnold, who basically loved everything, gushed:
“People ask if the flying sequences in the movie look “real.” The answer is no, they look better than real; they look
like fantasies realized with an exuberant sense of humor and lyric imagination.”
But Charles Champlin in The Los Angeles Times was unimpressed, and he shared that feeling with the world.
“Superman confirms what hardly needs confirmation: that special effects can do practically anything.
“In a dismaying sense, Superman is like an ice show. Once you’ve established that people can get about on steel
runners, there’s not much for them to do except keep doing it. Once the special effects men have established that
Superman can leap and fly and lift in his splendid hyperbolic way, about all he can do is leap and leap and lift and lift
and fly and fly and fly.”
That Los Angeles Times review must have killed everyone who worked on the movie. It’s possible in 2022 to wave
your hand and say that “special effects can do practically everything” because it’s basically true, but in 1978, that
was just not the case. It’s also pretty harsh on ice shows.
You could tell that people were itching to make some kind of reference to the late-60s Batman TV show — five out
of the eight reviews that I looked up mentioned it — and it was always attached to Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor.
Canby saw it as a positive:
“The movie’s brightest moments are those very broad ones supplied by Mr. Hackman, Mr. Beatty and Miss Perrine,
whose bosom submits to her bodice only with a fight. Their comic moments recall the best of the old Batman
television series.”
But Champlin was unhappy with it:
“The attempt here has been to come up with a campy arch-fiend in the throbbing vein of the crooks Batman and
Robin contended with on television.”
And Siskel groused:
“Hackman is not the least bit threatening as a villain. His tone is more akin to the light-hearted bad guys on the
Batman TV show.”
But for me, the most interesting crit piece is The New Yorker’s review by Pauline Kael, who absolutely savaged the
movie for several pages. She came in hot, right from the jump:
“Superman, one of the two or three most expensive movies ever made, and with the biggest event promotion yet, is
a cheesy-looking film, with a John Williams “epic” score that transcends self-parody — cosmic fanfares keep coming
when there’s nothing to celebrate. The sound piercing your head tells you that you should remember each name in
the euphoric opening credits.”
So Kael started her review already furious, and we’re only up to the opening credits. She’s doing Superheroes Every
Day!
Kael was really pissed about the money, which she referenced twice in the first two paragraphs. Pretty soon, she’s
talking about Godard and the conventions of Pop art enlargements, and complaining that the film has “no
controlling vision”, which I suppose it probably doesn’t. She was hoping for the “disreputable energy” that comes
from the “narrative immediacy of comic strips”, and when she didn’t get it, “you can feel the anticipatory elation in
the theatre draining out.”
Then there’s a section about modernizing the story, which challenged the simplistic intellectual framework of the
movie:
“In an era in which urban corruption and decay are deep and widespread, Superman’s confident identification with
the forces of law and order, and his thinking that he’s cleaning up Metropolis (New York City) when he claps some
burglars and thieves in jail, might be treated with a little irony. (It would be more fun to see him putting out a fire
while kids threw stones at him, or arresting a mugger and being surrounded by an angry, booing crowd, or tackling
the garbage problem.)”
So, obviously Kael was hoping for a very different kind of movie than the one that she watched. She wanted a
deconstruction, not a celebration. The movie was fundamentally too square for her, and it was so concerned with
being respectful to the existing mythos that it didn’t question any of the comic’s premise. Police are good, crooks are
bad, newspapers print the truth, women are attracted to strong men.
Basically, she wanted irony in superhero movies, about ten years too early. In 1989, Kael absolutely adored Tim
Burton’s Batman, which delivered on the kind of dark urban critique that she was asking for here.
Kael didn’t even like the flying scenes, for reasons that I find difficult to understand. She brushed across the special
effects in general:
“Probably the moviemakers thought that the picture would sell on its special effects — Superman’s flying, and his
rescues, and the disasters and cataclysms. The special effects are far from wizardly, though, and the editing often
seems hurried and jerky just at the crucial moments.”
Later in the review, she picked on the flying again:
“When Superman takes his beloved up for a joyride in the sky, the cutting works against the soaring romanticism
that we’re meant to feel, and, with Lois reciting Leslie Bricusse lyrics to convey her poetic emotions, even the magic
of two lovers flying hand in hand over New York City is banalized.”
And I just don’t know what she’s referring to. There are some points in Kael’s review that I agree with, and some that
I disagree with, but on the whole I understand where she’s coming from. But saying that the editing on the flying
scenes is “hurried and jerky”, and that “the cutting works against the soaring romanticism” of the Lois/Superman
flying scene, doesn’t really make sense to me.
Basically, the critics’ responses to the flying scenes determined what they thought of the film as a whole. The
positive reviews responded emotionally, using words like “delight” and “lyric imagination,” while the negative
reviews approached it intellectually, worrying about the Wheaties box and expecting the film to comment on New
York’s garbage problem.
This theme of “head vs heart” is going to loom large in the history of superhero movies, because superheroes don’t
make sense, on a fundamental level. Their powers defy physics, and the way that they interact with the world is
unnatural. The only way to make a successful superhero movie is to use visual surprise and narrative tricks to
manipulate the audience into thinking with their gut.
We want Superman to fly, because it looks really cool when he flies. We want Eve to suddenly betray Luthor,
because Superman chasing the rockets is more fun to watch than Superman drowning in a swimming pool. We will
accept almost any crazy coincidence, or sudden swerve in a character arc, if it satisfies our emotional needs while
we’re watching the movie.
So this is a movie for people who are willing to be swept away by the effects, the humor, the music and the
romance. In 1978, it turned out that there were quite a few people like that in America, so for this movie, at least, it
all worked out.
Footnotes:
Here are the Superman reviews that I referenced:
The Chicago Sun-Times : Roger Ebert, “Superman“
The Chicago Tribune : Gene Siskel, “Too many cooks spoil the froth: Sloppy Superman is a fun but fumbling film”
The Hollywood Reporter : Ron Pennington, “Superman“
The Los Angeles Times : Charles Champlin, “Man of Steel, Feat of Clay”
The New York Times : Vincent Canby, “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Movie”
The New Yorker : Pauline Kael, “The Package”
Newsweek : Jack Kroll, “Superman to the Rescue”
The Washington Post : Gary Arnold, “Look! Up on the Screen! It’s Superman, a Classy Cliffhanger”
Superman 1.97: Man of Steal
Okay, we’re almost done with the story of Superman: The Movie, which means that it’s time to call in the lawyers.
Last week, we talked about that mad moment in mid-November 1978, when executive producer Alexander Salkind
told Warner Bros. that he wouldn’t release the final print of the movie in time for the premiere, unless they gave
him another $15 million for foreign distribution rights. And just as they were wrapping up that little scheme, Salkind
was arrested in Switzerland by Interpol, for a different but related crime.
Now, I’ve been writing a lot about the Salkinds and their bumbling financial crime syndicate, and people have asked
me, “So what ultimately happened to them? Did they get caught? Did they get punished?” There’s no real mystery,
so I might as well answer those questions now.
What happened to the Salkinds?
Nothing. They kept on making movies for another fifteen years, which got smaller and less successful until everyone
got tired of them. Their last production was the 1992 movie Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, which was
astonishingly badly-reviewed.
Did they get caught?
Yes, ceaselessly. Their production company folded in 1993, when Alexander’s son, Ilya, filed suit against his father for
fraud and racketeering.
Did they get punished?
Nope. People like this never go to prison. They’re just forces of chaos, whirling through the world like Tasmanian
Devils. They pick you up and spin you around, and then they go on their way, leaving you exhausted and confused,
and with a different amount of money in your pocket. There’s no way to predict how much money you’ll have at the
end of it, but it’s a different amount than when you started.
So here we are in mid-November, less than a month before the premiere of Superman: The Movie, and Alexander
Salkind is being led away by Interpol agents. It’s a bit tricky for me to explain this incident, because it’s a typical
Salkind story, which means it goes back for several years, it involves several different companies, and everybody
involved is lying.
The story starts with a German theater magnate named William Forman, who owned several chains of movie
theaters in the 1970s, including Cinerama and Olympic Kinobetriebs.
In 1973, Salkind somehow hooked up with a couple of Forman’s employees — Dieter von Stein, managing director of
the company, and the financial director, Walter Strohmenger — and they misappropriated funds from Forman’s
companies, to use as credit to fund some of Salkind’s ventures. They executed promissory notes and sold company
assets to pay for this scheme, which went on for two years, by which time they’d taken the equivalent of $20 million
in German marks. Salkind used the money to make a series of movies — Bluebeard, The Three Musketeers, The Four
Musketeers, and The Prince and the Pauper — and he also paid for the movie rights for Superman.
In 1975, Forman found out about this strange arrangement, and filed a civil lawsuit against Salkind, with affadavits
from Strohmenger and von Stein, confessing to their crimes.
Salkind settled the lawsuit, promising Forman 25% of his share in Superman, which was just going into production.
He didn’t miss it, because he was selling shares of his interest in Superman to lots of people. He knew that the
shares were based on profits after the movie release, and that was years away — by that time, he’d figure out how
to pay everybody what they thought he owed them. If you’ve seen the movie The Producers, then that is exactly
what Alexander Salkind did, but he did it in real life, and in a more confusing way.
But Forman really was counting on that money, especially after Cinerama declared bankruptcy in 1977.
Now, Alexander Salkind’s usual technique for evading the law was to not pay any of his debts until someone
threatened to have him arrested, and then he would cut a deal with them and give them some cash. That’s why he
had to get $15 million out of Warner Bros. all of a sudden, so that he could pay somebody and not get into trouble.
But a week later, he got arrested in Switzerland anyway, which makes me think that there was somebody scarier
than William Forman out there. Somebody else got the $15 million, so Forman reported Salkind to Interpol, using
Strohmenger and von Stein’s confessions, and got all three of them locked up for embezzlement.
I don’t know what happened to Strohmenger and von Stein, except that they spent several weeks in jail in Munich,
before passing out of my field of view.
But Salkind was able to get out of prison because he was the Costa Rican cultural attache to Switzerland, and he
claimed diplomatic immunity.
I’m going to give you a moment to reflect on that.
Alexander Salkind was not from Costa Rica. He wasn’t really “from” anywhere, but Costa Rica wasn’t even one of the
places that he wasn’t from.
Salkind obtained his diplomatic privileges years before, thanks to former Costa Rican president Jose Figueres, who
had a soft spot for shady foreign businessmen accused of embezzling funds and looking for offshore investment
opportunities. The Los Angeles Times said that Salkind had a “long association with Costa Rican officials,” so who
even knows how crazy that story is.
Later, when the LA Times asked Salkind about his duties as a cultural attache, he explained, “We made an exhibition
of Costa Rican paintings, and all that.” Then he paused, and added, “Talk about me as a producer, not as a diplomat,
because that is what I’m more interested in.” Yeah, I’ll bet.
So Alexander Salkind diplomatically excused himself from prison, and immediately hired a private jet to take him to
Mexico. One of his many eccentricities was that he was terrified of flying, so he usually traveled across the Atlantic
by ship. But sometimes, you really need to leave Europe in a hurry, so he put himself under heavy sedation and got
through the flight.
And that’s why Salkind didn’t come to the Superman premieres in D.C. or London, missing the opportunity to bask in
his greatest success, because he was hiding from the law in Mexico.
The criminal charges were dropped not long after, because Forman refused to appear as a witness for the Munich
prosecutors. It seems like he just used criminal charges as a way of clearing his throat, and now he had Salkind’s
attention.
Instead, Forman filed a civil lawsuit against Salkind and Warner Bros., charging fraud and breach of contract over his
share of the Superman profits.
The way I understand this part of the story, William Forman called up Warner Bros. and said, hello, I own 25% of
Alexander Salkind’s profits from Superman, and I would like my millions of dollars, please. And then Warner Bros.
said that they had no idea who he was, and this was not their problem. Also, the movie wasn’t even out yet.
So Forman filed the lawsuit on December 11th, suing Warners, Salkind and a bunch of Salkind’s make-believe shell
companies, asking for minimum damages of $60 million.
In my opinion, the nuttiest thing about this story is that on December 20th, Variety published a story called “Salkind,
From Swiss Clinic, Denies Forman Charges.”
The article says that Alexander and Ilya “deny with sorrow and anger all the accusations made by William Forman.” It
goes on to say, “The elder Salkind, who said he was speaking from a Swiss clinic where he was recuperating from
unspecified ailments, stated that his attorneys are preparing a legal response.”
Salkind was not speaking from a Swiss clinic. This was ten days after the Superman premiere; he’d been in Mexico
for weeks. But he decided to tell Variety that he was calling from a clinic in Switzerland, in order to confuse people.
That is how Alexander Salkind conducted himself, during the time that he was with us on this earth.
They finally fixed it all up, don’t worry about that. The scariest thing about the lawsuit was that Forman was asking
for a full accounting of Salkind’s expenses and assets, which if Salkind wasn’t already recuperating from an imaginary
unspecified ailment would have put him right back in the imaginary hospital.
So Salkind settled with Forman, for $23.5 million dollars. Now, go ahead and ask me how much Forman actually got
paid. The answer to that question is that I don’t know.
But that was Alexander Salkind’s way of interacting with the world; lawsuits were his native language. Once the
movie was out and earning money, a whole bunch of people started suing the Salkinds, including Mario Puzo,
Marlon Brando and Richard Donner.
In fact, in March 1979, the Salkinds even sued Christopher Reeve, claiming that he’d walked out on the Superman II
shoot, which hadn’t started yet. But that’s another story, for another movie.
Superman 1.98: That Dam Scene
I tell you what, today is not a good day to be living in Tinytown.
First, somebody dropped a midget missile on Li’l San Andreas Fault, which made a mess of the Golden Gate
Microbridge. Then the model train set fell apart, endangering dozens of itty-bitty passengers.
And worst of all, the model of Hoover Dam has burst, and now the floodwaters are threatening to overwhelm an
innocent community of dollhouses, ending playtime as we know it.
So this, I think, is the moment when Richard Donner’s reach officially exceeds his grasp. There are so many great
miniatures in this movie, and you don’t even know that they’re miniatures unless you’re specifically looking for
them. But this sequence is clearly an episode of Gumby, and it’s no use pretending that it’s anything else.
And it’s especially tragic because it comes after the Golden Gate Bridge sequence, which is terrific. To make this
sequence, they built a huge model of the Bridge outside at Pinewood Studios, 20 feet tall and 70 feet across.
Now, one advantage that the Bridge sequence has, as a model shot, is that the shapes are all straight lines and
angles. The Tinytown rockslide is all irregular natural shapes, which are easier to spot as fakes. The Bridge just looks
like the Bridge.
So they can run some fake traffic across it, make the wires snap, and it looks great.
They do a nice job of mixing actual stunt car crashes…
… with a cute little model schoolbus, going over the side…
and you end up with a clever sequence that’s exactly as convincing as it needs to be.
Then they try to do the same thing with the dam, and it goes wrong. This part is fine, with the dam bursting.
And they mix it with shots of people running around.
Then there’s the sequence with Lois getting crushed in her car, which is entirely convincing and horrifying.
Then the water from the dam rushes out into the canyon, which is fine.
And people running…
And the flood is getting worse…
And then the illusion breaks, right here. This is the first bad shot. It’s hard to say exactly why, but those are obviously
model train houses.
And this is even worse. None of the rockslide shots work.
And by this point, we need to stop and reconsider whether this sequence can even be in the movie.
I think it stands out especially because this is the thing that Superman is doing, while he isn’t rescuing Lois from
being suffocated and crushed in a rental car. Someone that we care about is in pain, while Superman is messing
around with his model train set.
Now, something that I’ve learned while watching the same movie for five months is that it’s always the lighting. That
is the difference between successful special effects and not-successful special effects. If you don’t get the lighting
right, then all of your process shots fail — flying fails, spaceships fail, and destroying suburban developments fails.
There is an explanation for why this sequence went wrong, which is that dumb ol’ Pierre Spengler allowed the
models guy to leave early. Here’s Richard Donner, complaining about it later in Cinefantastique:
A lot of things still make me cringe. Some of the miniatures I hate with a passion! Those are the ones that were not
done by the maestro. That was Derek Meddings, and I lost Derek because the producer did not tie him up properly
and had no idea what the duration of the film was going to be. And so I lost him to James Bond. He did give me his
input, but he had to be there, looking through that camera every second and changing things, and he wasn’t.
Which of the miniatures was he responsible for?
Well, he was responsible for Boulder Dam, but not the reverse end of Boulder Dam, where the little town gets wiped
out. He was responsible for the destruction of the Krypton models, Air Force One, and a lot in picture two.
The backside of Boulder Dam is one of the things you’re unhappy with?
Yes, very. No fault of anybody, except it’s just that the people who were doing it were rushed. I had to have it, and it
just wasn’t their selling point. Derek should have been doing it. And I didn’t have him. That was a tremendous
compromise for me.
So I understand his frustration at not having the best miniatures guy on hand, but I think this points to a larger flaw
with Donner’s approach: he never gave up. His method was to just keep shooting, and if it didn’t look right, then you
shoot it again and again until it finally looks right.
But at a certain point, you run out of money and time, and that’s when you say, y’know what, how about we just do
the school bus on the bridge? There are a dozen different mini-disasters in this part of the film, and it would be fine
if the last thing that Superman did was save the kids in the school bus.
This movie was a labor of love for Donner, which is why so much of it is so good. But that comes at a cost, which I
think was not being able to let go of a sequence that wasn’t working.
I will say that right up until the time we had to turn it over for printing, we were still out in optical houses for re-dos.
I wish I had another six months; I would have perfected a lot of things. But at some point you’ve got to turn the
picture over.
So, yeah, this is the time. Donner managed to keep the producers at bay for a year, thanks to the Warner Bros. execs
who were willing to keep funding his vision. But now it’s time to put the toys away, and finish the goddamn film.
Superman 1.98: Turn the World Around
Lois Lane is dead.
Now, you and I know that this is a comic book movie, and in superhero comics, almost nobody dies permanently.
Superman died in 1992, Spider-Man died in 2013, Wolverine died in 2014, and here in 2022, DC has just announced
that in an upcoming issue of Justice League, they’re going to kill off all of their popular superheroes, plus Zatanna.
They always come back.
But Superman was the first comic book movie, and they hadn’t established any ground rules yet. The film has been
ping-ponging from one genre to another, including psychedelic space opera, screwball comedy and James Bond
villainy, and in the last ten minutes, it’s taken a strong swerve into disaster movie.
And if you watch 1970s disaster movies — The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno — then you
know that there’s always one character who gets sacrificed, in service of the drama.
And Lois Lane is dead.
At least, if she’s not, then she’s doing a damn good imitation, because getting crushed in a car is rough. It’s not a
graceful swan dive off a cliff, where there’s some possibility of tragic romance. This is you and your shitty rental car
falling backwards into the ground, and getting pummeled by aftershocks until your lungs are filled with pebbles and
broken glass. This is you realizing that you’re dying, and trying to fight your way back up to the surface, and you keep
on trying with absolutely no chance of success, because you are now fully aware that these are your last moments
and they suck.
This is you being murdered by the world, for no reason. You’re not sacrificing yourself so that others could live.
You’re not being punished for making a bad choice. This is not even about you. But here you are, helplessly
drowning on dry land, in pain and in darkness.
So, yeah, a little respect, please, for the death of Lois Lane. If anybody thinks that this is a cheap stunt because of
the way that it gets resolved, then they’re not focusing on the important thing — two people that we’ve fallen in
love with, suffering.
Which is to say: yes, the ending works. It’s fine if you want to pretend that there’s some rational adult inside of you
that looks logically at the end of movies and says things like, “Well, if he could travel backwards in time to fix all of
his mistakes, then nothing bad would ever happen and he would always win,” and you think that’s some kind of
critique.
He’s Superman. Nothing bad ever happens, and he does always win. That’s why you’re watching a movie about
Superman.
So what they’re doing is giving us a situation that is so sad and dirty and awful and unacceptable to us as members
of the audience that we will accept pretty much any goofy thing that they need to do, in order to undo this.
As we’ve seen, the purpose of blockbuster movies is to pack as many people as possible into a movie theater,
preferably on a hot day in the summertime, and produce a shared, emotionally cathartic experience. Spending an
hour making us fall in love with Lois Lane, and then pointlessly, painfully murdering her in front of our eyes, is
guaranteed to stir us up. As they said about Birth of a Nation, hot blood cries for vengeance, and that’s when you’re
lifted by the hair and go crazy.
And Superman says: fuck it, this is not the end of this story. I will personally punch reality in the face, if I have to.
This will not stand.
This isn’t how they originally planned to end the movie. The idea was that Superman and Superman II would be a
two-part story, with a cliffhanger at the end of the first film.
In the shooting script, Lois falling into a crack in the earth was no big deal, just a minor moment of temporary peril.
Superman saw her in time, picked the car up out of the crack, dropped her on top of a mountain, and then went off
to fix other stuff. The big emotional thing that we were supposed to care about was that the missile that he pushed
out into space hit the swirly Phantom Zone mirror, and then Zod and Non and Ursa emerged and yelled “Free!
Free!”, and then: to be continued in Superman II.
Flying around the world and turning time backwards was the big finish for the end of Superman II; that’s how
Superman would make Lois forget that she found out he was Clark Kent. But while they were shooting, they
decided, screw it, let’s actually give the first movie a real ending that makes people feel something.
Now, there are people who contend that Superman flying around the world really fast wouldn’t make the Earth spin
in the opposite direction — and if it did, then that wouldn’t turn time backwards. It would just, I don’t know, knock
everything over and annoy people, or something.
Those people are obviously wrong. It would absolutely turn time backwards. I mean, how else could you explain why
Lois Lane is still alive?
So, yeah. This is how we solve problems now. Like, let’s say you’ve spent the last five months writing about
Superman: The Movie, and looking back on it, you probably could have cut about 25% of these posts and it would
have been tighter and more interesting, and possibly more successful, and by now a whole bunch of people have
given up reading your stuff, and you’re probably never going to get them back, and thinking about that makes you
feel like you’re on a movie set inside a car crusher with stagehands dropping dirt on your face while you try to battle
your way to the surface.
Do you give up? Do you move on? Fuck, no. I’ll tell you what you do. You fly around the world backwards, you turn
back time, and you do it again. I can’t believe I never thought of this before.
Superman 1.100: One Hundred and Thirty-Four Million Dollars
Okay, let’s get into the money, because that’s the only thing that matters.
Superman: The Movie made 7 million dollars in its opening weekend in December 1978, and it was the #1 box office
draw for 11 weeks, all the way into early March ’79. The total domestic box office was $134 million, making it the
highest-grossing film of 1979.
To give you a sense of scale, there were only seven movies in the 1970s that grossed more than $100 million, and
Superman was in the top five: Star Wars ($307m), Jaws ($260m), Grease ($160m), Animal House ($141m) and
Superman ($134m), followed by The Godfather ($133m) , Close Encounters of the Third Kind ($116m) and Kramer
vs. Kramer ($106m).
So, yeah, it was a big hit, and a big deal. So, the question is: why didn’t they make any other superhero movies for
basically a decade?
I mean, they did, but they were just increasingly disappointing Superman sequels, plus two low-budget Swamp
Thing movies and a disastrous film based on Howard the Duck. It was ten years before Warner Bros. finally made a
Batman movie, and then it was another ten years before Sony and 20th Century Fox got into Spider-Man and the X-
Men, and studios finally caught on that this was a profitable line of business.
We now recognize superhero movies as essentially a bottomless gold mine, and Superman: The Movie made the
1979 version of a very big pot of gold, so what was holding movie studios back from grabbing up comic book IP and
churning out copycats?
Well, one reason was that everyone involved spent several years telling everybody how difficult and expensive it
was. Everyone in Hollywood knew that it took forever to figure out the flying, and the budget was out of control, and
unless there was some kind of miracle, Superman was destined to become an epic, history-making flop.
So when it did actually miraculously turn out to be a hit, it was considered a lucky fluke, which it basically was. This
movie managed to catch lightning in a bottle, and even the people who made it were never able to repeat it. So
nobody wanted to be the dumbass who said, hey, that looks easy, sign me up for one of those outrageously
expensive leaps into the unknown.
And it really was outrageously expensive — at an estimated cost of $55 million, Superman was the most expensive
movie ever made, and it held that record for ten years, finally getting knocked out of the top spot in 1988 by Rambo
III.
The interest in comics-based films also declined after 1980, when there were two unsuccessful movies based on
comic strips. Flash Gordon just barely broke even at the domestic box office, and Popeye was an embarrassing flop.
And studios discovered, in the early 80s, that it was possible to make blockbuster money on less expensive and less
risky projects. Obviously, the Star Wars sequels did amazingly well, and there was also Raiders of the Lost Ark in
1981, which made $390 millon off a $20 million budget, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, which cost $11 million
and earned an astounding $792 million.
So despite Superman’s huge success, it may have been perceived as more of a cautionary tale, rather than an
inspiration. A proposed Batman movie drifted around from one studio to another for years, with Tom Mankiewicz
attached to the project for a while. It mostly got held up over questions of how “dark” it should be, a theme that will
start haunting this blog around 1995 and never go away.
So for our purposes right now, the legacy of Superman is basically that they went on to make more Superman
movies, and starting on Monday, I’m going to dive into the thrilling and complicated story of how they made,
unmade and finally stitched together the mad patchwork that they called Superman II.
As for the first movie, I think the only unfinished business that we have left is the lawsuits, which are plentiful and
amusing.
As I’ve discussed in I’m sure far too much detail, the Salkinds were not fiscally responsible business partners. The
overall game that they were playing with Superman was to promise that everybody would get percentages of the
movie’s profits, which weren’t supposed to exist. The Salkinds were never able to produce a strict accounting of the
budget for the film — partly because they were hiding it, but mostly because they literally didn’t know themselves
how much money came in and went out. So if you’re supposed to get 3% of the profits on the movie, then they
would say that there aren’t any profits, because dumb ol’ Richard Donner spent it all on retakes and opinions.
Mario Puzo, who wrote the first two drafts of the extremely redrafted script, had Ilya Salkind served with papers at
the Washington, D.C. premiere. So Puzo was already pissed off at not getting a large enough share of the box office,
and the movie hadn’t even come out yet. The premiere was actually a fundraiser for one of Rosalynn Carter’s
charities, so there was absolutely no money to argue about yet. And now Ilya has to stand around with a lawsuit in
his hand, like a chump.
Ilya and Puzo were on the same plane going home, and Ilya said, I thought we were cool, why did you serve me with
a lawsuit? And Puzo said that this is Hollywood, everybody gets sues when a big movie comes out.
But that wasn’t quite true. The real answer to that question is that Puzo wrote The Godfather, and he recognized
mob-style financial shenanigans when he saw it, so his lawyers were first on the scene.
Two days after the movie’s release, Marlon Brando also sued the Salkinds for $50 million, claiming that he wasn’t
getting his full share of the yet-to-be tallied movie receipts. He actually filed a restraining order trying to bar the
producers from using his likeness — including the footage in the film, which was currently playing multiple times a
day in 500 movie theaters around the country. Sadly, the restraining order was denied.
Los Angeles lawyers spent months in 1981 traveling to random European resorts to get depositions from Alex
Salkind, and he would tell them that he couldn’t disclose anything, because of the business-secrets laws of
Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Panama, where all of his shady businesses were incorporated. It all dragged on into
1982 until they came to some kind of a settlement, by which point they were all exhausted and couldn’t really
remember what they were fighting about anymore.
Superman II 2.1: Things That Richard Donner Probably Shouldn’t Have Said
January 24, 2022Superman IIart vs commerce, director, hubris, salkinds, sequel, shakespeare, trash-talk

So here’s how to torpedo your own film in six words, courtesy of Army Archerd’s Hollywood gossip colum in Variety:
Producer Pierre Spengler allows that he and Superman director Dick Donner differed during filming, but he says all’s
now well, and Spengler expects to return to complete Superman II. Donner, however, declares, “If he’s on it — I’m
not.“
It’s late December 1978, and Superman: The Movie has just opened in theaters to, if you’ll pardon the expression,
boffo box office. Everybody who worked on the film is feeling that Christmas spirit — except for Richard Donner,
who fucking hates Pierre Spengler, and is not shy about letting people know his truth.
In fact, here he is in Starlog magazine:
“Yeah,” the director says with a sigh. “I didn’t get along with the producers at all. I got along with the Salkinds all
right, but I didn’t get on with Pierre Spengler. I told him to his face that the film was too big for him but he wouldn’t
face up to that responsibility.”
And in Cinefantastique:
“As far as I was concerned, he didn’t have any knowledge at all about producing a film like that. If he’d been smart,
he’d have just laid back and let us do it. So, not only did we end up producing it, in a sense, but we also had to
counter-produce what he was doing.”
Now, the thing that’s not Mensa-level brilliant about Donner’s behavior is that he and Spengler and the Salkinds are
supposed to head back to Pinewood Studios soon, and finish their work on Superman II.
The original plan had been to shoot both the first movie and the sequel at the same time, and they shot a lot of the
Superman II scenes during the long production period. But everything was hard and took way longer than they
thought it would, so at a certain point, they said, You know what? Let’s just get the first film completed, and we’ll
worry about the sequel after the first one is released.
So they’ve got about 75% of the scenes for Superman II already in the can, including all of the scenes with the really
expensive people — Marlon Brando (Jor-El) and Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor). The Daily Planet scenes are done, ditto
the Fortress of Solitude, the White House, the prison break and the moon.
But they haven’t done any of the location shooting in Niagara Falls, or the villains’ wave of destruction. They haven’t
done the crucial “honeymoon hotel” scenes, or the battle for Metropolis.
To finish all this work, the original team was supposed to go back to Pinewood for another couple of months, and
get the rest of the film in the can. So January 1979 may not be a great time to say something like this to a Variety
reporter:
Reflecting on the film’s success, Donner also insisted that producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind “negotiate in good
faith” for the sequel if he is to direct it.
“That means no games,” Donner elaborated. “They have to want me to do it. It has to be on my terms, and I don’t
mean financially. I mean control.”
That phrase, “reflecting on the film’s success,” is the key to this display of bad temper. Now that Superman is a
runaway hit, he thinks that they need him to come back, and turn Superman II into an even bigger hit.
But students of mythology will know: Don’t mess with the gods.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! says Richard Donner as King Lear, dashing about on a heath and declaiming into
a stormy sky. You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts! Negotiate
with me, in good faith!
When Ilya talks about the Salkinds’ inevitable decision to fire Donner and replace him with another director, there
are two Donner quotes that sealed his fate:
If [Spengler’s] on it, I’m not.
It has to be on my terms. I mean control.
Donner is correct about Spengler being incompetent; the only reason that he was involved in the picture is because
he was Ilya’s best friend. After the Superman movies, Spengler never worked on anything successful ever again.
But publicly insulting the gods’ best friend is not going to get you anywhere in the negotiations; it just pisses them
off. And Ilya knew what “control” meant for Donner; it meant another years-long shoot that costs who knows how
many millions of dollars.
Ilya says that he tried to contact Donner to see if he could negotiate a peace settlement, but he couldn’t reach him.
Donner was out on a promotional tour in five European countries, to promote the foreign openings for Superman,
and in those days, it was legitimately difficult to contact somebody who was traveling overseas.
When Donner came home and wanted to get back to work on the new film, he received a telegram, informing him
that his services were no longer required. They were hiring another director to finish Superman II.
Now, it may sound like I’m blaming Donner, and I’m not, really. He really was the one who turned Superman into a
hit movie, and firing Donner was just the first of several stupid “Art vs Commerce” decisions that the Salkinds made,
which ultimately destroyed the franchise.
Still, Donner knew that the Salkinds wanted to fire him, and they were stupid enough to do it. It turned out those
oak-cleaving thunderbolts weren’t just for show, after all.
Superman II 2.2: It Wasn’t Ilya’s Fault
January 24, 2022Superman: The Moviecommentary track, fault, salkinds, the truth about dogs
“I think it’s been a little bit overanalyzed,” says Ilya Salkind, “because, really, a lot of the decisions were pretty logical
and common sense. I want to clarify a little bit, because it’s much simpler than all of the things that have been said. I
mean, Richard Donner did a fantastic first film, as we all know, and it was a tremendous success, and what happened
after was really, I would say, normal film history. Things happened.”
Okay, great, so that’s all cleared up. It was normal film history! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.
Ilya Salkind, if you’re not familiar, was the executive producer of Superman II, and his DVD commentary is like a two-
hour audio affadavit. In his commentary on the first film, Ilya was excited and braggadocious, swerving from one
self-congratulatory story to another. In this one, he starts right away with an opening statement from the defense.
“So I think the main thing here is to start with the big question, where especially the fans ask — and I’m a fan myself
of these kinds of films, obviously — and since they found out about the production of the first film, I mean, there
really has been a kind of — I would say, general misunderstanding.”
Whatever that means. Then he spends a surprisingly long time describing the parties that they had after the
premieres, and how friendly and drunk everybody was.
“Now, after that, some time passed, and, I don’t know, certain words were said, certain directions were taken, that
were relatively — I mean, I would say emotionally hurtful, because we had all worked like dogs on this. Although,
dogs don’t work that much, I’ve noticed. Everybody says working like a dog, but — I’ve never seen a dog, actually,
y’know, they walk, and they sleep, and — yeah, of course, police dogs work. Yeah. Police dogs work.”
Which makes me think, if this is how you talk, then I could see how a “general misunderstanding” might arise. It’s
true about the dogs, though.
So the theme of the movie, as far as Ilya Salkind is concerned, is: why is everybody being emotionally hurtful to Ilya
Salkind?
“The fans really started thinking that we just — y’know, without any reason, we said okay, we don’t want Dick
Donner for the second film, end of story. It was not like that at all. Pierre did try to talk to him, obviously — y’know, I
wasn’t there, nobody, these are things that are a long time ago — but definitely, the tone that was coming out was
really not, let’s say, friendly.”
The nice thing about Ilya stories is that you don’t actually have to care whether they’re true or not, because they
dissolve on contact; Ilya is the only person I know who speaks fluent Evanescent.
“It was never in the idea of anybody that Richard Lester would do the second film. I mean, it wasn’t, like, ‘Ah, we
planned to have Richard Lester direct the second film!’ Again, this is the kind of thing that can be very, y’know,
painful to hear, because it makes us look like these schemers, which we were not, in the sense that he just came to
liaise, and that’s what he did.”
Honestly, when you think about all the people that the Salkinds embezzled from and actively defrauded, it’s amazing
that Ilya’s this worked up about people thinking that he’s a schemer. You were a schemer, Ilya. You need to own that.
The nice thing about this commentary is that now I don’t need to talk to any Superman fans; he’s telling me every
problem that people have with the movie.
“Some people say, yeah, the tone doesn’t match — well, that’s not what the audience said, and certainly not what
the majority of critics said!”
Ilya really doesn’t like it when “some people” say things, although he’s had a couple of decades to think up a snappy
retort, and he has not used that time productively.
“Some people said, well it’s faster and all that — yeah, of course it’s faster, it’s twenty minutes shorter. Some of the
decisions, like the fire instead of the bullet, okay, that’s a question of taste. I personally prefer the fire, I think it’s
more unusual, because y’know, the gun, we already saw that with the crook in the first film, so it wasn’t that
different from what we’d already seen.”
It’s tough to pick favorites, but I think the best moment in the commentary is when Ilya talks about John Williams’
decision not to score the movie.
“John Williams did come to London. He did see the first rough cut. After seeing it — for whatever reason, and I don’t
know, cause I didn’t sit in the screening, which perhaps I should have done — he very nicely said no, I just can’t do it.
Whatever the reason was, and I don’t know it. And he was totally entitled to his decision, but he did come to London
— we actually paid for his trip, and all that— and we absolutely wanted John Williams, and he was completely
absolutely willing to do the film, and — I don’t know. Again, some mysteries will always be mysteries. So that’s one
of the facts that has to be clarified.”
Naturally, this clarifies nothing. My favorite part of this story is when Ilya has to make sure that we understand who
paid for Williams’ trip.
There are also several places where he talks about whether there was too much comedy in the film. He points out,
correctly, that there was a lot of comedy in the first film, which there was, although he thinks that there was “a little
bit too much of Otis walking back and forth,” which I don’t really know what he’s talking about.
“So it’s like there’s a prism here, where people look at one film with one set of judgment, and the other one with a
bias, and that’s what I would love to help clarify a little bit.”
This is the third time that he’s used the word “clarify”. I wonder what that word means, in his culture?
“I frankly must say myself that I’m not 102% convinced about the cone of ice cream at the end in Metropolis — but
then, at the same time, it worked! Because the suspense was still there. So nothing is ever perfect, and nobody
knows how to, y’know, really create perfection — except some rare individuals, like Leonardo da Vinci, I guess.”
And then he stumbles on about other great painters, and all of a sudden it’s an art history lesson.
The moment that breaks my heart is when Ilya is already being defensive about something, and he stops in the
middle, and points out Richard Donner’s cameo at the beginning of the diner scene.
“And by the way, this is Richard Donner, so I guess if we were such horrible people, we would have cut him out. We
didn’t!”
Which honestly makes me feel like giving him a hug. He’s really been stewing over this.
He’s also feeling pretty raw about this moment, when Superman removes part of his costume and throws it at a
villain, and it turns into magical clinging energy vinyl, which if it’s not the stupidest thing ever done in a superhero
movie, then it’s probably in the top three.
“Now, here, of course, have been people who said: new powers, new things. Okay, well, I must say that we worked
hand in hand with the comic book writers, and they helped us, and they said… y’know, and they didn’t object, and…
it’s comic books!”
So I don’t know, it feels to me like people should stop picking on Ilya, although I’m probably the only person in 2022
who’s still obsessed with him, and I like picking on him too much to stop. At a certain point, this may be more about
me than it is about Ilya. But I do agree with him about the dogs. Dogs have had a free ride for far too motherfucking
long.
Superman II 2.3: Let’s Twist Again
January 26, 2022Superman IIflashback, self-sabotage
Well, here we go again. We’re back on Krypton, which I’d figured was pretty conclusively in the rearview mirror.
But it’s here, on the cusp of this new dawn, that we find out what the three Kryptonians did to deserve being locked
up in a revolving parallelogram, and set adrift in the void. At the beginning of the last movie, all we saw was the
sentencing; we didn’t see the actual crime that they committed.
Well, now we know. They broke a crystal!
It was one of the important ones, too; there was a lot of good stuff in that one. Now, to you and me, it just looks like
a spangly red lucite churro filled with pop rocks, but it must be a big deal, because when Zod snaps it in half, there’s
the crash of a thunderbolt, like the Count has just successfully counted up to five.
And just like that, the lights go out, and the trio is caught in the remorseless spotlight of being sent to the principal.
It’s kind of their trial, but a weird dreamlike remix, which happens immediately after doing something naughty. This
is the criminals’ nightmare, where they’re just doing stuff, and all of a sudden, they realize that there’s a final exam,
and they haven’t studied for it.
In the real trial, which happened two and a half years and a movie ago, there were actual charges — Zod was the
chief architect of an intended revolution and author of an insidious plot, to establish a new order amongst us with
himself as absolute ruler. That sounds like something that you’d put a guy on trial for.
But this time, all he did was snap into a Slim Jim, which if it was such a big deal maybe don’t leave your snappable
stuff out in the open like that. If you ask me, this whole scenario seems like the careless product of wild imagination.
In lieu of any actual clue about why we’re upset with them, a disembodied bossy voice conducts a really judgmental
rose ceremony.
“General Zod: Your only feeling was contempt for our society, your only desire was to command.
“Ursa: The only feeling you showed was for your vicious general, your only wish to rule at his side.
“Non: You are as without thought as you are without voice.”
Now, I get that as a personality critique, and I hate when people mess with my collectibles too, but I don’t know if I’d
put someone into perpetual prison just because they didn’t have enough feelings.
Anyway, the reason why the producers situated this recap in the metaverse is that they didn’t want Marlon Brando
to have any more money. This is a scene from the first movie that was basically a showcase for Jor-El, gliding around
the soundstage like a big white New Paradigm Dalek with a magic light-up stick that went bing.
Brando was promised a famously oversized salary to appear in the movie, including a percentage of the profits
which the Salkinds had no real appetite for paying. But the first movie was a big hit, and they didn’t need to use his
name to get people interested in the sequel, so they reshot all of his scenes in Superman II using other, less
expensive people.
People talk about this like it’s an epic betrayal of artistic principle, but to be fair, Brando sued the Salkinds two days
after Superman came out, and tried to get a restraining order that would bar them from showing the movie to
anybody else. (I don’t know how you would stop 500 movie theaters from showing an incredibly successful movie
during its opening weekend, but maybe they could have set up a phone tree or something.)
So it’s not completely insane that they would cut Brando out of the sequel, since the lawsuit didn’t get settled until
nine months after Superman II came out. On the other hand, the only reason Brando was suing the Salkinds in the
first place was because they didn’t pay their bills or follow through on contracts, so maybe I should stop trying to be
fair.
It didn’t make the movie any better, I guess is my point. Zod still screams, “You will bow down before me, Jor-El!”
and spends the last third of the movie calling Superman “son of Jor-El!” so it would have been nice if they’d actually
had Jor-El in the movie.
And that was just one of the stupid, film-damaging decisions that the Salkinds made, once they’d really decided to
make their movie worse.
As we discussed a couple days ago, the Salkinds fired Richard Donner as the director, because he’d said some things
that they found emotionally hurtful. To replace him, they hired Richard Lester, who’d directed The Three Musketeers
and The Four Musketeers for them. Lester was unbelievably good at keeping to a schedule, and that was their main
kick against Donner.
Donner had already filmed about 75% of the sequel during the production of the first movie, but with Lester taking
over, they were going to have to reshoot some of that material. It’s a little hazy, but the way I understand it is that
the Director’s Guild of America said that you can’t be credited as the director of a movie unless you direct at least
50% of the material in the movie — otherwise Donner would still be the director, and Lester would basically be a
glorified second-unit man.
So Lester was obliged to cut out some of Donner’s existing scenes and replace them — and according to the rules,
they needed to be new scenes, not just reshoots of the already existing material. They needed to go and rewrite
stuff — not because it made the movie better, but just for the sake of rewriting it.
And they couldn’t use the best scriptwriter they had, because Tom Mankiewicz was Donner’s friend, and he refused
to participate. An exec from Warner Bros. asked Mankiewicz if he would work with Lester to rewrite the film, and
Mank said no, that would be a betrayal. So the exec said, how about you just come to London, and you happen to
accidentally run into Lester? Mank said no to that too. So the producers had to go back to David and Leslie Newman,
who’d written a previous draft of the film that really wasn’t very good.
Just to make sure that they’d done as much self-sabotage as possible, Lester pissed off John Williams somehow. In
yesterday’s post, I quoted Ilya from the DVD commentary saying that he had no idea why Williams decided not to
write the score for the sequel, which obviously wasn’t true. The fact is, Williams went into the theater with Lester to
watch the movie, and then he came out and told Ilya that he couldn’t work with Lester.
The film was also diminished by a couple acts of Zod. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth had died towards the
end of production on Superman, so he wasn’t available, and set designer John Barry died in 1979 while he was
working on The Empire Strikes Back. The loss of Barry explains why some of the sequel’s new sets are disappointing,
like the honeymoon hotel suite, which should be wacky and memorable like Lex Luthor’s lair, but turned out to be a
little box that they filled with pink stuff.
What this means is that Superman II is a film that was started by the A-squad, and finished by the B-squad. There’s a
lot of good stuff in it, but there are also a lot of things that would have been better in more skillful hands.
But it’s too late for regrets, now. Like a trio of galactic supervillain brats, the three producers grabbed the beautiful
spangly potential of this film and snapped it in half, just to prove that they were strong enough to do it. You will bow
down before me, the Salkinds cry, flush with power and petulance, and I suppose, for the moment, that we will.
What choice do we have?
Superman II 2.4: Fight the Tower
January 27, 2022Superman IIcome back, elevator lady, fridge logic, landmarks, plucky
Well, speaking of foreign distribution rights, here’s girl reporter Lois Lane let loose in a foreign country, and she’s
about to be distributed widely across a sizeable stretch of western Europe, if the hydrogen bomb she’s inadvertently
strapped to her back hits the pavement at the base of the Eiffel Tower.
The bomb — if it actually is a bomb — has been assembled by a group of inconclusive terrorists demanding nothing
in particular from probably the government of France. The terrorists take the elevator up to the top of the tower,
where they have the bomb (if it is a bomb) primed to explode in sixty seconds, which they don’t want to do, while
the police use their own explosives to set off the bomb, which they don’t want to do either.
This is a complex and somewhat confusing sequence, and I have only arrived at my limited understanding of it by
watching it about a dozen times. I will do my best to explain.
Lois arrives on the scene at the terrorized tourist attraction, having flown on the Concorde from Metropolis to Paris
during the twelve hours since the story broke. A moment ago, we saw Clark arrive at the Daily Planet in the morning,
which means that it’s, let’s say, 8am in Metropolis, and therefore 2pm in Paris. That means the terrorists started
occupying the Eiffel Tower around 2am, so those hostages must be the hippest late-night party animals that ever
managed to get past the bouncer.
Now, I am willing to waive the fact that, with the exception of the guard that Lois talks to, everybody in France
speaks English with a French accent. That’s a standard technique employed for audience convenience so that they
don’t have to use subtitles, and everyone in the audience has already implicitly agreed to that by only taking a
couple semesters of French in high school and then forgetting it all.
As Lois approaches the base of the tower, a spokesperson is explaining to the waiting press pool that les terroristes
have agreed to release the first group of hostages as a sign of good faith; if they don’t release the hostages, the
authorities refuse to negotiate. It sounds to me like the authorities are already negotiating, and they’re doing an
amazing job so far, so kudos to the authorities.
Lois arrives on the scene just in time to hear that the terrorists claim to have a hydrogen bomb upstairs in an oil
barrel. The spokesperson says that “it’s possible for anyone to make a hydrogen bomb, if he has the proper
equipment,” which I don’t think is true in real life, but in movies is a well-established fact.
There’s a cute little sequence where Lois gets to be the plucky trickster reporter, getting a guard to look up the word
“stairs” in her English-to-French phrase book while she ducks behind him, and goes up the escaliers.
The cop has one of those “come back!” movie moments, where the person left behind isn’t allowed to leave the
shot, so they call helplessly for the other character to return and then disappear into the wind. Nobody ever comes
back.
Brushing off the gendarmes, Lois mounts the stairs and stumbles toward the story, apparently unnoticed by the
police who are watching the whole event through binoculars and sharpshooter gunsights.
This may be the one completely unrealistic moment in the sequence. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’ve been
to the Eiffel Tower, and there is no way that she could get all the way up there without buying a ticket, and browsing
through the gift shop. C’est impossible.
The terrorists, wearing hats and shit-stained coveralls, are ushering the hostages into an elevator, which will take
them down to a lower floor, and then the hostages will be ushered into a different elevator, which will take them to
the ground.
This is part of why it took me so long to come to any understanding of this sequence; I didn’t realize that they were
using two elevators. There’s an establishing shot that establishes that there are two elevators running — one going
down, one going up — but the shot doesn’t connect properly to their actual plot-relevant position at this moment. I
figured it was all being done through quantum mechanics, where you can either know who’s in the elevator or what
direction it’s going in, but you can’t know both at the same time.
Then Lois does something excessively plucky, which is to clamber into the bottom of the elevator mechanism, so
that she can secretly travel up the tower along with the bad guys, and gather intel for a world-stunning scoop.
Now, I think this moment, right here, is when the audience starts to ask, wait, what the hell am I looking at? Why are
we in France? Is Lois suddenly a supersoldier? Why is she spelling words to calm herself down, when we know from
the first movie that spelling is not her strong point? There are no easy answers to these questions.
Then there’s some terrorist dialogue that does not inspire confidence in the development of this sequence.
Terrorist 1: Do you think we should have let the hostages go?
Terrorist 2: They’ll give in to us as soon as we prime the bomb. It doesn’t matter one way or the other.
Terrorist 2 is looking extremely sure of himself, for a guy who’s just given up most of his bargaining power, but my
main concern is the line “It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” which is a red flag.
We are currently hosting the Lois Lane Spelling Bee approximately 800 feet above the 7th arrondissement, and the
characters who are supposed to be responsible for supplying the tension don’t seem to be interested in investing
any more in the dramatic situation.
We don’t know who these people are, or what they’re trying to accomplish. What could you possibly get out of
hauling a hydrogen bomb up to the top of the Eiffel Tower? There’s only one exit, everybody can see everything that
they do, and if they set off the bomb, they would be vaporized. In fact, the authorities have had twelve hours to
evacuate the city; at this point, the people who are in the most danger are these three knuckleheads.
And if they do somehow get whatever it is that they want, then they still have to ride the little elevator all the way
down to the ground, where they will be instantly captured and imprisoned. I do not see the upside for these guys.
Now, somebody who wanted to speak up in defense of the movie might say that what I’ve just written is “fridge
logic”: the logical flaw in the movie’s plot that you don’t realize until you get home and open up the fridge, which is
obviously not an important flaw, because it didn’t interfere with your enjoyment of the movie.
When there’s a logical flaw in a good movie, the audience doesn’t notice, because you don’t get any time to think
about it — the movie distracts you by showing you interesting things, so that you don’t have time to puzzle over the
backstory.
But this sequence gives you plenty of time to wonder what this terrorist threat is all about. One of the guys says that
he’s going to prime the bomb, which involves fiddling with something that we can’t see for more than a minute.
So we’ve got time to look at the terrorists through binoculars, and watch the police whispering about their plans.
After fifty seconds of essentially nothing happening, one of the terrorists actually says, “This is the boring bit.” Jesus
wept.
The really mysterious thing is that the whisper cops are silently placing plastic explosives somewhere in the Tower’s
undercarriage, for absolutely no reason that I can imagine on this earth or any other. I defy anybody to explain to me
what the hell these people think that they’re doing.
The police somehow convince themselves that the guy who’s currently priming the hydrogen bomb is not actually
priming the hydrogen bomb, even though they’re looking directly at him through binoculars and nobody is doing
anything else.
So their plan is to cut one of the elevator cables, and plastic-explode I have no idea what, which makes the elevator
and the bomb (and Lois) plunge down the shaft of the Tower in free fall, to shatter into pieces on the rocks below,
and — at the very least — damage an internationally beloved public landmark, rather than just standing at the
bottom with a tunafish sandwich, and waiting for the terrorists to get hungry.
There is actually an explanation for why this sequence exists, and it begins with the end of the previous movie.
The originally scripted plan for the finale of Superman: The Movie was that it would end with a cliffhanger. Lois
didn’t die in the car crunch, and Superman didn’t spin the world backwards. Instead, he would save Lois just in time,
and then fly off to deliver Luthor to prison. The exciting part of the conclusion was that the nuclear missile that
Superman threw into the sky would hit the Phantom Zone prison in space, shattering it and freeing the trio of
villains, who head to Earth with anger in their eyes.
But Donner and the producers decided halfway through that they needed a stronger ending for the first movie, so
they used the “spin the world backwards” gag, which was supposed to be the ending of Superman II.
So the first movie, as released, ends with the Kryptonian villains still locked up tight in their parallelogram prison,
which created a challenge for the new team, when they restarted production on Superman II.
Richard Lester, David Newman, Leslie Newman and the producers needed a new opening sequence that would
accomplish the following things:
1) Superman does something exciting and heroic,
2) with an exciting countdown and an interesting visual hook,
3) which involves saving Lois and re-establishing their connection,
4) and sends a nuclear bomb hurtling into space, to free the Phantom Zoners.
So you can see how that line of thinking leads directly to the Eiffel Tower, which is a famous and interesting-looking
landmark, and points directly at the sky like an arrow.
The idea of Superman flying a nuclear bomb up through the center of the Tower and hurling it out into space is easy
to imagine and understand, with a pleasing visual simplicity.
If it’s the 1980s and you need a spare nuclear bomb, then obviously the scene involves terrorists. (If it was the 50s, it
would have been a mad scientist.)
And then you just strap Lois onto whatever that turns out to be.
That’s a clever solution to the problem, and it should have been a really fun sequence, but in my opinion, they
botched the execution.
It’s really not just fridge logic. With the exception of Lois, who’s being adorable, every single person that we see for
the next five minutes is doing something that doesn’t make sense. We have no connection to the terrorists; the
movie refuses to explain who they are, what they want, or why they’re doing any of the obviously pointless and
suicidal things that they’re doing. The police are also acting in bizarre and arbitrary ways. The guys looking through
binoculars say that the guy isn’t priming the hydrogen bomb, when the audience knows that that’s exactly what he’s
doing. Setting the plastic explosives and cutting the elevator cable clearly makes the situation a lot worse in a hurry.
And they give us five minutes to think about it, before Superman shows up to hug Lois and it suddenly becomes a
good movie again.
But obviously that’s the only way that you could start Superman II — with a big exciting criminal-catching
international caper. Right? I mean, unless somebody else could come up with a cool idea…
Footnote:
By the way, I just need to acknowledge that there is a framed picture of Bill Cosby in Perry White’s office, which you
can see in the first Daily Planet scene, and later on when the villains stomp through the Planet set. This is apparently
an homage to Cosby’s classic standup comedy bit about Superman, which appeared on his first album, Bill Cosby Is a
Very Funny Fellow… Right!, in 1963. So that’s what that’s about.
Superman II 2.5: The Donner Party
January 28, 2022Superman IIdirector's cut
Or, there’s the option where Lois is smart and figures things out right away, which I personally prefer.
In this version of Superman II, the action begins on the day after the previous movie ended. Yesterday, Superman
saved the West Coast and put Lex Luthor in jail, and now the main characters in the Daily Planet newsroom are all
busily congratulating each other on how well they covered the story.
And then Lois, sitting at her desk, suddenly realizes the obvious truth: that Clark Kent is Superman.
This is the almost-was, a glimpse of what Superman II would have been if the Salkinds hadn’t fired Richard Donner
halfway through production. For the actual theatrical cut, Richard Lester and the Newmans came up with a baffling
new scene involving terrorists threatening the world from the top of the Eiffel Tower. This newsroom scene is what
Donner would have done instead, and it is entirely adorable.
For one thing, it immediately and explicitly debunks the concept that Lois is stupid, a tough-talking reporter who
completely misses the world-shaking story that’s sitting right in front of her. Now that she’s got a photo of Superman
in her hands that she can compare with Clark, she comes to the correct conclusion.
So she grabs a black magic marker, looks across the room to where Clark is standing with Jimmy, and makes the
appropriate adjustments.
She finishes her sketch…
and delivers a series of cute facial expressions.
Perry calls Lois and Clark into his office, and I’m just going to go ahead and quote this part of the scene, because I
like it and you will too.
Clark (to Lois): How are you today?
Lois: Oh, I’m just super, thanks. (She nudges him with her elbow.)
Clark: Good morning, Mr. White.
Lois (elbows him again): I’m super? Hmm?
(He gives her a confused look.)
Perry: Morning, morning, morning. You’re late, Kent!
Clark: Uh, I know, I’m sorry, Mr. White. I, um, got stu-stuck in traffic.
Lois (absently, looking at her newspaper): Oh, that’s a new one.
Clark: Excuse me?
Lois: I mean, as opposed to “I was stuck in a phone booth,” or “I got locked into the men’s bathroom,” or something
like that.
Clark: Lois, what are you talking about? I’m sorry I was late…
Perry: If you two want to bicker, that’s great; I have just the assignment for you. You’re gonna pose as a honeymoon
couple in Niagara Falls, to get an exposé on the newlywed racket.
(Lois smirks at Clark.)
Perry: Some of those hotels up there are bilking those poor kids for every cent they can get. Real human interest
stuff! Make your Aunt Hattie cry her eyes out.
Lois: That is a great idea, Mr. White!
Clark: Excuse me, Mr. White, I’m sorry, but I’m right in the middle of a series on the City Council, and —
Lois: And it wouldn’t take long, we could just — (makes exaggerated “flying” motions with her hands) — fly right up
there, and zoom right back again?
(Clark looks worried.)
Lois: Y’know? (nudges him in the chest) Like Superman?
Perry: Ha! Yeah, if he’d give you two a ride, maybe we could save a couple of bucks.
(Perry gets up, and starts walking to the door.)
Perry: I’ve gotta see young Olsen. Six lousy photographs, and that kid’s hitting me up for a raise already!
Clark: Uh, excuse me, Mr. White? Can I talk to you for a sec —
Perry (out the door): Doris!
(Clark sighs.)
Clark: Darn.
(He turns, and looks at Lois.)
Clark: Well, my goodness. You certainly look like the cat who swallowed the canary this morning.
Lois: A canary? No, uh, actually, I was thinking about something bigger? (She makes wing-flapping motions.)
Something that flies? Something more in blue.
Clark: Uh, Lois, as usual, I’m, uh, totally in the dark as to what you’re…
Lois: Let me just turn on the lights for you, then.
(She shows him the picture that she’s drawn on.)
Lois: Get the picture?
Clark: Hmm.
Lois: You know, I didn’t start to put this together until this morning — which is really strange, because a good
reporter isn’t supposed to let anything slip by her!
Clark: Hmm. Well, that’s, um, very amusing. Um, excuse me…
(He walks toward the desk.)
Lois: Amusing…
Clark: Yes, sirree, that’s — that’s very amusing.
Lois: Amusing, huh? (She checks the picture.) Tall…
(He stoops a little.)
Lois: Broad shoulders…
(He pulls his shoulders in.)
Lois: Dark hair…
(He tries to smile, unsuccessfully. She puts down the paper, and approaches him.)
Lois: I gotta give you credit. You really had me fooled. And I’m nobody’s fool…
Lois: … Superman.
Okay, I’ll pause here. That’s only half the scene — I’ll talk about the more action-oriented second half on Monday —
but this is a good place to break, and tell you what this is all about.
Donner shot about 75% of the material for Superman II while they were shooting the first movie, so there was a lot
of existing footage that Richard Lester could use when he took over the project. But according to Director’s Guild
rules, Lester couldn’t be credited as the director unless he was responsible for more than 50% of the footage in the
film.
So Lester had to scrap some of the Donner scenes and replace them with his own work, and one of the things that
he cut is the unbelievably gorgeous scene that I’ve just quoted half of.
Now, my friend Anthony wrote in the comments below Wednesday’s post, “I’ve never understood this idea of
Richard Lester as the B-Team, especially compared to Donner.” Anthony, this is the first part of my answer to your
challenge: Richard Lester looked at this scene, which is objectively better than the Eiffel Tower sequence, and
decided to film the Eiffel Tower sequence instead.
When the film originally came out, hardcore fans were aware that some of Donner’s work was cut — the general
outline of the Donner/Lester dispute was discussed in professional fanzines like Starlog and Starburst, even before
the movie came out — but it wasn’t necessarily clear how much Donner had shot, and how much of his material
remained in the finished film.
Then when Superman II was released for television, the Salkinds made an Extended TV Cut, as they did for the first
movie, adding deleted scenes and extra material to make the film longer. Some of those extra scenes used footage
from Donner’s work, and fans started to reconstruct the “lost footage,” and get a sense of what the original film
would have been like.
In 2001, film editor Michael Thau produced a restoration of Superman: The Movie for DVD — and in the process, he
discovered six tons of Superman II footage in Warner Bros.’ vaults, including all of Donner’s material. Naturally, this
got a lot of people excited on the internet, and Superman fans wrote letters and petitions and impassioned blog
posts asking Warner Bros. to release Richard Donner’s cut of the movie.
This was more difficult than you might assume, because there wasn’t an existing “Donner Cut” just sitting around,
ready for DVD release. It was just raw footage — all the takes and retakes, which needed to be edited and turned
into a movie scene. Donner said that he wasn’t interested in doing all of that work, partly because it was just painful,
looking at the discarded work that he’d had such high hopes for.
Also, there’s the 20% of material that never got shot — the Niagara Falls scenes, the villains’ rampage across
America, the climactic battle in Metropolis — so a true “Donner Cut” would have big holes in the story.
And then there was the Brando estate. In order to use the Jor-El material that Marlon Brando filmed for Superman II,
they needed permission from his estate, which was a hassle. But in 2005, Warner Bros. negotiated with Brando’s
estate to use some of his footage in the 2006 sequel Superman Returns, and that opened the door to more
discussions about the Superman II footage.
Once that was done, Michael Thau started working on the project in late 2005, and although Donner resisted for a
while, he ultimately did participate in the recut. The result was a more-or-less complete movie, including all of the
footage that Donner shot, patched together with Lester material for the scenes that they didn’t shoot. It was
released on home video in 2006, as Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.
And yes, it’s worth watching. There are maybe five important scenes that are completely different — this opening
sequence, three scenes with Brando, and the honeymoon hotel discovery scene — plus a few scenes with extra
Hackman footage. There are also some scenes with the villains in the Daily Planet and the Fortress of Solitude that
were partially reshot by Lester, and they’re noticeably different in the Donner Cut.
So as we go through the theatrical cut, I’ll be checking in now and then with the Donner Cut, to see what the original
version would have been like. I’ll try not to be too nerdy and annoying about it — I now know way more about the
differences between the two cuts than any normal person could legitimately be interested in hearing about — but
you’ll definitely want to know about the gun vs the fire, and Eve in the Fortress, and Lois jumping out of the window.
In fact, we’ll pick things up right there, when I come back on Monday.
Footnotes:
Perry and Lois both congratulate Jimmy on his great photography, but there are no pictures of Superman in action.
The front page just has a blurry shot of what looks like a mountain and possibly the dam, and a mug shot of a bald
Lex Luthor, crossing his arms and wearing a striped prisoner’s suit. When Lois opens the paper to the big two-page
spread, there are five pictures of Superman, all of them posed publicity shots. In fact, two of the pictures on the left-
hand page are exactly the same picture, cropped differently.
That’s because the Daily Planet scenes were shot early in the production, and they hadn’t filmed much from the first
movie yet. Shooting began with the Krypton scenes in April 1977, then the Fortress of Solitude interiors for both
movies in May, and the Daily Planet interiors in June. By this point, Gene Hackman hadn’t worn his costume from
the first movie yet; I’m actually surprised that they already had a picture of him with the bald cap and prison garb.
Also, they also hadn’t been to New York for location shooting yet, so they didn’t even have the classic “Superman
poses in front of the Manhattan skyline” pics that we would see basically everywhere from summer 1977 on.
Superman II 2.6: Gone Out the Window
January 31, 2022Superman IIdirector's cut, out the window, soap opera
And then she goes ahead and throws herself out of the goddamn window just to prove a point, and that is what I
love about specifically Richard Donner’s version of specifically Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.
At the end of last week, I told you about the Donner Cut, a 2006 effort to reclaim the Superman II footage that
Richard Donner shot during the production of the first movie. He’d finished about 80% of the film before the
Salkinds fired him, and while some of that footage remains in the theatrical cut, there was a lot that was reshot by
the new director, so the Donner Cut assembles the material in an approximation of what the film could have been
like, if he’d completed it.
For the most part, it’s not that different from the theatrical release, unless you watch them side by side. There are
only three scenes in the Donner Cut that I think are really essential to understanding the development of the film:
the beginning, the ending, and the honeymoon hotel discovery sequence. Not coincidentally, all of them are about
Lois.
Richard Donner’s vision for Superman and Superman II relies on two basic principles: Superman can fly, and Lois is
the center of the universe. Every time Donner talked about the movie, he said that whether the audience believes
that Superman is flying would make or break the picture, which is probably true. He also said that, at its heart, this is
a love story about Superman and Lois, which is absolutely true. That’s why it’s okay to break causality and reboot
the world if Lois is upset about something.
For Superman II to work at all, we need to believe that Lois Lane is a woman who’s worth giving up your
superpowers for. And in both versions of the film — Richard Donner’s Daily Planet scene, and Richard Lester’s Eiffel
Tower sequence — the film begins with an opening statement about why Lois deserves to be in charge of the most
powerful energy source the world has ever known.
Lester’s Eiffel Tower scene goes deep into the “plucky” side of Lois’ character. She hops over to Paris with no luggage
and an inadequate French phrasebook, and manages to talk her way into a developing catastrophe, which I
appreciate.
Now that I think about it, Lois actually manages to solve this problem herself, using the technique of attracting
Superman’s attention to an imminent nuclear accident, which — if she hadn’t been there — would have inevitably
resulted in the demolition of a noticeable percentage of France.
But Donner’s opening scene makes her even more cunning and hazardous. The very first thing that happens in this
version of the movie is that Lois Lane sits at her desk rereading her own article, when she casually figures out the
world’s most important secret. And it’s first thing in the morning, too; just imagine what she’s going to achieve by
the end of the day.
The thing that I like about this sequence is that it explicitly counters the tedious idea that Lois must be stupid for not
figuring out that Clark is Superman. It’s entirely unfair, because people criticize the character, rather than the comics
writers who spent several decades resisting any change to the status quo, under the mistaken impression that comic
books are sitcoms that require a reset button at the end of every issue.
Comic books are not sitcoms. Comic books are soap operas. It is better for everyone when people recognize that.
The best thing about Superman II is that Lois is allowed to learn and grow as a character. She figures things out, and
sees things from a different perspective. In the first movie, she’s basically bamboozled by Superman, who uses his
hotness to distract her from the truth that he’s trying to conceal. In the second movie — especially in the Donner
Cut — she’s the one who tricks him.
Unfortunately, this is balanced out by the worst thing about Superman II, which is that they feel the need to put the
toothpaste back in the tube at the end. Somehow, they came up with the idea that everything would be ruined if we
allow Lois to know that Clark is Superman, which is not the case.
There’s all kinds of fun that you can have in a story in which Lois knows that Clark is Superman, and if you’d like an
example, I could point you towards pretty much this entire movie, except for the ending, when they chicken out and
undo it all.
The problem is that from a structural point of view, Lois is actually treated like a villain in this movie. There are three
obstacles in this film that stand in the way of Superman’s benevolent crime-fighting career: Lex Luthor, the Phantom
Zone criminals, and how much fun it is to make out with Lois.
Taking care of the first two problems is time-consuming but straightforward: take Luthor back to jail, and trick the
trio into losing their powers and falling into a bottomless crevasse.
Then Superman is left with the one problem that he can’t solve: how does he deal with the everpresent threat of
the plucky, nobody’s-fool, investigative reporter Lois Lane?
I mean, sure, for now he can use his super-breath to keep her aloft while he uses his heat vision to unroll an awning
for her to land on, so that she doesn’t realize that he saved her. But that’s a temporary solution, only applicable to
the current crisis.
Because Lois isn’t the kind of problem that you can solve in one action sequence. As the philosopher Chumbawamba
put it: she gets knocked down, but she gets up again; you’re never going to keep her down.
In the Superman movies, nuclear missiles are easy to deal with — you just grab them and direct them skyward,
where they reach escape velocity and pass harmlessly into the infinite void of outer space. Superman does this three
times in four movies; it’s basically routine.
But Lois Lane is a much larger threat than nuclear annihilation or black-clad alien dictators, because Superman can’t
get rid of her. You can’t throw Lois into the sun, or down a sinkhole.
I mean, sure, you could drop her into a mixed fruit salad, which might slow her down for a couple scenes. But she’s
just going to take a shower, move to a different location, and figure it out all over again.
Lois Lane is an omega-level threat, a kamikaze boss battle who plummets into your carefully-constructed house of
cards, and just when you get things back in order, she respawns and does it again.
She will put her own life in danger in order to get the story, and the story is you, and your secrets. What can you do?
What can any of us do, except fall in love with her and hope for the best?
Superman II 2.7: To Get to the Other Side
February 1, 2022Superman IIarchitecture, comedy, director, set design
Let us speak, then, of comedy.
When people talk about the difference between Richard Donner’s work on Superman: The Movie and Richard
Lester’s work on Superman II, they often say that Lester was a comedy director, and that he turned Superman II into
a comedy. There’s some truth to that — there is a different sensibility between the two directors — but it’s not the
difference between serious and comic. It’s the difference between two different kinds of comedy.
Donner’s comedy was mostly verbal. Basically, as soon as the film sets foot in Metropolis, everyone starts
wisecracking and never stops. Everyone at the Daily Planet is funny, all of the villains are funny, the big scene
between Superman and Lois is a romantic comedy sequence. Everybody talks fast, and they talk a lot.
Lester’s comedy is more visual than verbal, and the best example that I have is the scene that just happens to be
coming up right now, when Superman crosses the road and causes a traffic accident. In many ways, this scene
embodies Lester’s approach to the film, and the fact that it sucks does not bode well for the future of the franchise.
To start with, the visual continuity’s all wrong. The sequence opens with the same establishing shot that Donner
used in Superman: The Movie, filmed on location in New York, outside the Daily News Building on E. 42nd Street.
The camera is currently pointing west, with the ornate Art Deco facade of the Daily Planet on the left.
Having established that, we now cut to a set at Pinewood Studios, and we’re facing the wrong way.
Clark and Lois are on opposite sides of the street, walking towards us. Clark’s on the left, Lois is on the right, and
according to the establishing shot, the Daily Planet building should be on Clark’s side. But it isn’t, which I find
irritating on a level that I am not able to fully convey.
It’s not like there’s any behind-the-scenes production reason why they didn’t build the set to match the establishing
shot. They just didn’t care enough. There’s going to be a lot of that, coming up.
Clark sees Lois walking on the other side of the street, and calls out, “Hi, Lois!” She returns his greeting, and keeps
walking.
Then we see the following sequence of shots:
There’s something wrong with that sequence, but I’m not sure that I can explain it. It makes me wish that I’d actually
read that Film Directing: Shot By Shot book that I bought several months ago, rather than put it on my bookshelf and
hope that I get smarter just by looking at the spine once in a while.
I think it might be the second shot that I find disorienting. The action is a simple T shape: Clark crossing from left to
right, with the taxicab arriving to meet him at the midpoint. But that second shot suddenly puts us at a weird angle
that I don’t think works.
The other disorienting thing about it is that Lester is cutting around the thing that actually happened, in order to
save the visual punchline for the end of the scene. So you see Clark walking, the taxi driver screaming, and
something happens — but you don’t know what it is, and most importantly, nobody in the scene reacts to the event
in an appropriate way.
The driver leaps out of the door, to check the front of the car…
and Lois shouts an annoyed: “Clark!”
As he hurries to join her, she chides, “You ever heard of crosswalks?”
“Yeah, but, you know, I mean…” he says, helplessly.
As he reaches her, she continues, “Do you have any idea how stupid that was?”
And then we get the punchline: the taxi ran into the secretly invulnerable Clark Kent, and is now smashed up.
There’s steam coming out of the wreck, and the sound of bubbling liquid.
To close the scene, the driver looks at the retreating Clark, and shouts, “Freak!” Then he looks back at the car,
muttering, “That’s all I need…”
So here’s why I hate that scene.
#1) Clark has just destroyed someone else’s property, and he doesn’t care. The driver needs to drive this cab to earn
his living; this is a huge problem for him — and Clark just looks down, absently notices the damage that he’s done,
and keeps on walking. This is not how Superman should behave.
#2) Lois has just watched Clark get hit by a car, and wreck the car. She is looking right at him when it happens, and
her dialogue makes it clear that she has taken in the entire scene. The damaged car is clearly in her line of sight. But
she doesn’t notice that anything’s strange, which feeds into the annoying “superstar reporter Lois Lane is too stupid
to notice what’s in front of her” concept.
#3) The driver has just had a moment of terror, an income-threatening accident and a brush with the supernatural,
and his reaction is incredibly blasé. Under any circumstances, a New York cab driver would be yelling at the guy,
even if it was a mild inconvenience and not an extra-terrestrial mystery. He correctly labels Clark as a “freak”, but
then he allows the cryptid to walk out of his life, without asking any questions or trying to get compensation.
In other words, nobody involved in this situation acts in a comprehensible way, which in my opinion ruins the joke.
Donner said that his guiding principle was “verisimilitude” — that even though there’s a crazy space angel walking
around Metropolis, everyone should be reacting to it in a realistic way. I think that this scene is exactly what Donner
wanted to avoid, a moment that bends everybody’s psychology out of shape, in order to justify a comic punchline
that frankly isn’t worth the trouble.
I think that this is Lester’s style of comedy — setting up visual set pieces that are exaggerated and unreal. There’s a
similar moment in the next scene, when Clark tries to use Lois’ juicer, and crushes his thumb with an agonizing,
audible crunch — with Lois looking directly at him, and not reacting in any way. It’s not a particularly funny joke, and
once again it requires Lois to be oblivious to what’s happening right in front of her.
And while I’m at it, that Daily Planet facade doesn’t match the establishing shot in any way. I could accept excuses if
it was just a matter of not reproducing all of the fiddly Art Deco features, but this isn’t even close. The Daily Planet
sign is in the wrong place, it’s much smaller, and they didn’t even bother putting in a revolving door. The sidewalk is
way too narrow, and the fruit and vegetable seller is nowhere to be seen. Also, it’s on the wrong side of the street.
Now, the one thing that everyone says about Richard Lester is that he got things done on time. He kept to a budget,
he kept to a schedule, and if something wasn’t quite good enough, then he did as well as he could and then moved
on. That made the Salkinds happy, which is nice, but I think this scene demonstrates the limitations of that
approach, from the audience’s perspective.
This scene has bad staging, bad visual continuity and an extremely lazy attitude toward set design and construction,
supporting a joke that doesn’t make sense for the characters and isn’t particularly funny. I hate to be so negative like
this right from the jump, but we are two sequences into this movie, and my optimism is waning.
Footnote:
We’re going to see that cabbie again at the end of the movie, reacting to the Superman/Phantom Zoner fight.
Apparently, he got the car fixed, just in time for it to be blown down the street and through a plate glass window,
possibly with him inside.
Superman II 2.8: Orange You Glad
February 2, 2022Superman IIorange juice
Okay, orange juice.
I mean, if you need a scene where Clark and Lois chatter for a minute so that the audience understands their
relationship — and yes, this is the correct moment for a scene like that — then they have to chatter about
something, and it might as well be orange juice.
It’s 1981, and the current fads in the United States include the Scarsdale Diet, the Beverly Hills Diet and the
Grapefruit Diet, so given the need to generate some low-friction conversation filler, it’s natural that David and Leslie
Newman would choose Vitamin C as the fashionable topic under discussion. There were other options, of course —
Rubik’s Cube, Pac-Man, the Mount St. Helens eruption — but making Lois obsessed with fad diets helps to signal her
acceptance of traditional gender roles, which I guess is what they wanted.
No, the really surprising thing about this sequence is the way that Lois has apparently set the land speed record for
messing up her shitty little office.
I mean, it was only one movie ago that Lois had a desk right outside Perry’s office, with all the other reporters. Now
she’s got a depressing little box to sit in all by herself, and she’s clearly spent every waking moment since the San
Andreas Fault disaster filling up this joyless space with filing cabinets and roller skates and houseplants and a
television and some shells and a squash racket and two telephones and a whole bunch of papers and clippings and
miscellaneous tacked up on every surface. There’s so much junk in here that she probably had to hire a couple of
interns, so that they could come in and make a mess while she was out working on a story, assuming she ever gets
one these days.
Because I have to say, this does not look like the go-getter reporter that we saw in the first movie. When Lois was
introduced in Superman, the first thing she did was ask Jimmy how many Ts there were in bloodletting. Then she
ripped the paper out of her typewriter and barged straight into Perry’s office, with a banner headline for the front
page.
That Lois Lane was right in the center of things; the rest of the newsroom only existed to provide a busy backdrop
for her dreams and schemes. She could thread her way through a blizzard of desks and staplers and copy boys,
simultaneously dropping off her mail, saying good night to six people and explaining her entire life philosophy to a
starstruck superhero, before changing her clothes and taking a helicopter to go talk to the fucking President of the
United States, who I expect was utterly terrified, if he had any idea that Lois Lane was on her way.
This version of Lois wears an outfit that’s tight around the neck and wrists, which reduces her maneuverability to a
depressing degree, and somehow she’s got herself a Gucci shopping bag full of oranges, which I didn’t even know
that there were Gucci oranges.
She also spends more than half the scene with a clearly unlit cigarette in her mouth, so she’s mumbling her lines,
which are mostly delivered while she’s hunched over and looking down at her desk.
So I guess what I’m saying is that it seems like Margot Kidder isn’t having any fun today. Chris is having a whale of a
time, because he gets funny straight-man lines like this:
Lois: Do you mind if I give you a little bit of constructive criticism?
Clark: Uh, well, actually, yes, I —
Lois: You’ve got to be more aggressive. You know? You have to go from instinct. You see something, you want it, you
go for it! That’s what I do.
Clark: Uh, yes, I’ve noticed.
It’s good stuff, as far as he’s concerned, and he gets a bunch of twinkly little moments where he gets to look
lovestruck and hopeful, and then have his hopes dashed. Clark is still adorable, even in this setting, because his
character is about holding things back and making himself smaller anyway. But Lois is like a caged leopard, on the
verge of giving up hope.
The reason why they’ve created this space is because they need somewhere for the end of the film, where Lois can
talk about their relationship and cry, and then Clark can kiss her, which obviously they wouldn’t be able to do in the
middle of the newsroom.
Thinking about it from that perspective, I can see how they arrived at this idea — the same way that I understand
why they used the Eiffel Tower in the opening, and why they made a fake Daily Planet entrance when they needed
to shoot an exterior street scene and didn’t want to go all the way back to New York for it. I can understand the
logical rationale for a lot of these choices. I just don’t like them.
But here’s my concern, looking at Lois Lane sitting next to a crappy filing cabinet as the energy drains from her eyes:
I am only twenty minutes into this movie, and this is my third post out of five where I talk about how disappointing it
is.
I wasn’t really planning on going full-time negative this soon; I figured that phase of my life wouldn’t start until I got
to Swamp Thing. I’ve got a long string of mostly flawed films ahead of me — it is a brutal journey from here until
Batman, and I don’t even like Batman that much — so I should probably save some of that energy, for when I really
need it.
So I feel like my current goal is to figure out how to live with this movie. I want to get to the point where Superman II
is endemic, where I can accept that a diminished Lois Lane is the new normal. That’s not going to be easy, of course,
but I think it’s the only way.
Footnote:
I also need to take a moment to address the guy who’s shaving at work. As Lois and Clark are walking to her office,
we pass a Daily Planet employee who’s standing up, reading the newspaper and using an electric razor to shave
himself.
That’s just a little throwaway detail, no big deal — but the odd thing is that the same thing happens two scenes later.
When we see the NASA control room, one of the guys is walking around in his shirtsleeves, also shaving himself in
public at work. I think this only happens twice in the movie, but I haven’t gone through specifically to check for it, so
it’s possible that there’s a guy walking around in the Niagara Falls scene with an electric razor too. I’m just letting you
know that that’s a possibility, so that you can take whatever steps you feel are appropriate.
Superman II 2.9: From Original Material
February 3, 2022Superman IImusic
They stole his freedom, they took his wigs, they impounded his wardrobe and back catalog of National Geographic.
They dismantled the criminal empire that mostly existed in his mind, and left him with nothing but memories.
But there’s one thing they couldn’t take away from Lex Luthor: his theme song.
And here it is, as we pick things up with Lex and his little buddy Otis: tum-tumty-tum, that jaunty little woodwind
march backed with an anxious string section, which we know from the last movie. Pretty much everything on the
soundtrack sounds familiar, because it was assembled from processed John Williams pieces, rearranged and left
under a heat lamp for a while.
John Williams composed the score for the first movie, and he filled it up with as many catchy motifs as he could
think of. There’s the Fanfare and the Superman March, the Krypton theme, the Kryptonite/Crystal theme, the
Smallville motif and the Personal theme. The most memorable is the Love theme, also known as “Can You Read My
Mind?” and then there’s the Villain motif for Luthor, and if there were any other characters then Williams would
have written motifs for them too. The man loved his motifs.
Everybody wanted him to come back and write the score for Superman II, but he had some kind of mysterious
falling-out with the new director, Richard Lester. Williams enjoyed working on Superman with Dick Donner, and I
think that if Donner was still working on the sequel like he was supposed to, Williams probably would have as well.
Executive producer Ilya Salkind says that Williams came to London, and went into a theater with Lester to watch a
cut of the sequel. Then Williams came out of the theater, and told Salkind, “Ilya, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can
work with him,” and that was that. I don’t know what Lester said to upset him. He probably made some joke about
scherzos, and he didn’t realize that was a sensitive subject. Some people are just touchy about scherzos.
So Lester brought in his own musical henchman, Ken Thorne. They’d worked together on most of Lester’s films,
starting with the 1959 short The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film, and continuing with It’s Trad, Dad! (1962),
the Beatles films A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(1966) and The Ritz (1976).
When Thorne was hired for Superman II, he was given a very specific brief: to adapt Williams’ score from the first
movie, so that the two movies sounded like they were two halves of the same story. Thorne had all of Williams’
original score to use, including unused and alternate music cues, and he adapted them to fit the timing of the new
film and the size of the orchestra.
The credits read, “Music composed and conducted by Ken Thorne from original material composed by John
Williams”, and when Thorne’s name appears on the screen, the orchestra does the big “Sup-erman!” flourish, which
I’m sure is just a coincidence.
So we hear the Love theme when Lois tells Clark that she cares about him, and the Villains march in the prison
laundry, and the Krypton trial music when the Phantom Zone trio attacks the astronauts on the moon. The
helicopter rescue music is used for Superman saving the kid at Niagara Falls, and you can hear the spooky female
chorus from the “Council’s Decision” cue when Superman talks to his mom in the Fortress of Solitude.
Thorne used a smaller orchestra to record the new score, another cost-cutting measure by the Salkinds. I’d like to
say that my ear is sensitive enough to tell the difference between them, but I can’t; it sounds basically the same to
me.
But there were some problems with the sound mixing, which is described in the booklet from the Superman: The
Music box set:
“Unfortunately, choices made somewhere in the dubbing and mixing process for the film resulted in the music
attaining a muddy quality and an overemphasis of winds and percussion. In some instances, the placement of the
center and right channels of music was even mistakenly switched. These mishaps have led to an assumption that
these inaccuracies were inherent in the scoring masters.
“The presentation of the score here lays all of those points to rest. Working from the original 35mm magnetic film
mixdowns of orchestra, percussion and ambiance, the score for Superman II is now preserved in its entirety, its true
quality revealed for the first time.”
That’s all very nice as far as the box set is concerned, but appreciating the “true quality” of the score is kind of an
abstract pleasure if you couldn’t hear it in the actual movie that people watched.
So the Superman II soundtrack is a pastiche, rather than an original work. We can’t know what Williams would have
added if he’d scored the film from scratch, but there would definitely be a catchy new General Zod theme.
Thorne did write a little collection of notes that the Superman: The Music booklet describes as an original General
Zod motif, but it’s not particularly memorable. You can hear it in a couple of places — when Zod plays with an
astronaut on the moon, and when he lifts a guy up with his mysterious finger laser. You wouldn’t really notice it as a
motif, if you didn’t go and listen for it — it took me a couple times listening to those scenes to say, oh, that’s what it
is. It basically just sounds like tones.
After this film, Thorne went on to write the score for Wolf Lake, The House Where Evil Dwells and the TV-movie
version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and if you’ve never heard of those films, then that tells you how
successful Thorne turned out to be. Meanwhile, John Williams went on to more Star Wars films, Raiders of the Lost
Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, several Harry Potter movies, and so on, getting stronger and more powerful all the
time.
For Superman III, the Salkinds and Lester hired Thorne to write a brand new score, which apparently he did not
enjoy… but that’s a story for another movie.
Footnote:
As we go along, I’ll be flagging the Richard Donner footage that appears in the film. All of the Gene Hackman
material was shot by Donner — Hackman was asked to come back for some reshoots and dubbing by Lester, but he
said no, because he was pissed that Donner was fired. Any time you see Hackman’s face, it’s Donner footage.
There’s some extra Lex Luthor dialogue later in the film that’s performed by a Hackman impersonator, but only in
shots where the character is far away, or turned away from the camera. I don’t know if anybody in the audience
noticed that the voice was different, but if you listen for it, it’s really obvious which lines were performed by the
impersonator.
Naturally, being a nerd, I tried to find out who the voice actor was who doubled for Hackman, but I couldn’t find his
name anywhere.
Superman II 2.11: Kill the Moon
February 7, 2022Superman IIasshole aliens, murder, the whole point of superhero movies, villains
One of the central themes in 1980s American cinema is the question of how much we care about murder. 1981 is
right in the middle of the Golden Age of slasher films, when franchises like Halloween and Friday the 13th are just
starting to establish themselves. Raiders of the Lost Ark offers us heroes who don’t mind gunning people down or
pushing them into airplane propellers if they won’t get out of the way, and we’re just a year away from America
embracing the depressingly quintessential ’80s hero — a Vietnam vet named Rambo, who works out his emotional
issues through the medium of machine gun fire.
But so far, the Superman series has been remarkably restrained in its attitude towards death and destruction, if you
don’t count an entire planet exploding, which is more of a tragedy than a crime. In the first movie’s car chase
sequence, people shoot off a lot of guns — bangity bang bang bang, they go — but the bullets don’t hit anybody
important, as far as we can tell. The only on-screen murder we’ve seen so far is Lex Luthor pushing a police detective
in front of an oncoming train, and that hardly counts; Superman hadn’t even put on his costume yet.
The important thing is that under Superman’s administration, everybody gets rescued, including reporters, train
passengers, presidents, cats, goats, schoolkids, the 7th arondissement and the population of Tinytown.
But now we’re about to see the first three victims that Superman fails to save: a trio of international astronauts,
engaged in research projects on the moon. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s going to miss them.
The sequence opens with two gentlemen attending to a bunch of consoles, and clearly they’ve been working on
space stuff for too long, cause they’re sick of it.
“Somebody’s got to check up on those guys,” one of them sighs, referring to the moon explorers, and the other one
says, “Yeah, I keep on forgetting about ’em.” This seems like the wrong attitude, considering they’re currently sitting
in NASA mission control. What else do they have on their schedule, right now?
“They’ve been up there for forty-five days,” the other guy continues. “The whole world’s forgotten about them.” He
says this like the astronauts promised they were just going to the moon for a minute, and they’d be right back. Were
people really this blasé about astronauts in the early ’80s? I mean, admittedly, I don’t think about the people who
are currently on the International Space Station very often, but I’m sure they’re fine; nothing bad ever happens to
people on a space station.
So it’s an odd way to raise the curtain on this murder-on-the-moon sequence. I guess the idea is that this has been a
routine mission, and therefore nobody’s expecting the surprise that they’re about to get, but if even the people who
are paid to care about astronauts are bored with this crew, then I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it.
But here we are on the moon! which is pretty exciting. It’s a nice little set, and they do a good job with the wire
work, making the astronauts bounce around pleasingly in low gravity.
The first movie did a good job at showing us interesting places, starting with the science-fiction icebox of Krypton,
and then moving on to various New York landmarks. So far, the sequel’s brought us to Paris, and this is even better: a
rocky moonscape, where mysteries can happen.
The astronaut in the lander turns out to be cute, which is helpful. I don’t know when the era of cinema kicks in
where everybody with a speaking line has to be some version of gorgeous, but we’re not there yet, so it’s nice to
have a good-looking dude around.
He makes jokes, too, which I appreciate. He’s got a wry tone as he reports back to Houston, and he’s got the line, “By
the way, Boris and I are engaged,” which as a gay joke is actually kind of friendly; we won’t be hearing a lot of
positive references to queerness for another ten years. If there were more cute boys in the 1980s talking about
making out with male cosmonauts, I probably would have enjoyed the decade more than I did.
And then he sees something impossible.
The whole point of a superhero movie is to show us things that we’ve never seen before, and this is the moment
where Superman II starts to deliver on that promise. Yeah, Superman flew around the Eiffel Tower, but last time we
saw him flying around the Statue of Liberty, so it’s old news.
Right here, we have a beautiful alien lady who appears to have her own special relationship with gravity, calmly
treading across the moonscape with a quietly imperious expression. Jor-El told us that she was a baddie, before he
locked her up in what I guess we need to consider an involuntary escape capsule, but we haven’t really heard her
speak, and we don’t know what she’s like.
Turns out she’s not very nice. It’s never a good sign when somebody greets you with “What kind of a creature are
you?” It doesn’t leave you with a lot of room, conversationally, and probably indicates that you need to go and find
someone else to talk to. This poor guy figured that if any surprise guests turned up, he would be the one on the
opposite end of that question.
The thing that’s chilling about this sequence is how chill the villains are. Ursa grabs a chunk of the astronaut’s outfit,
suffocates him in his own spacesuit and then kicks him into the lunar horizon, and this moment of crushing horror
isn’t even that interesting to her.
We’ve seen aliens before, but not like this. Everybody on Krypton flounced around in flashy space angel attire, but
they acted more or less like humans who have been paid vast sums of money to appear in the movie you’re
watching. This is the first time that we’ve seen an alien who acts like an alien: at ease, curious, and with no
particular attachment to human life.
People are toys now, for Ursa and Zod. These guys are props that can be tossed around the sky, and there’s no
expectation that Superman will save the day — at least, not this particular day, and not these moonmen.
In the last movie, the villains were motormouth con artists who skulked in elaborately decorated playrooms,
scrambling to impress each other. Luthor was a psychopath, but only as a side hustle; most of his time was spent on
setting up manic practical jokes.
But these exiles don’t have a single funny line. They’re amusing themselves, but their comedy is more abstract, as in:
wouldn’t it be amusing if I thought of an interesting way to end your meaningless life. It’s really quite striking.
Zod is one of those helpful lead characters who cut through the excess plot points by just positing things, and
whatever they say turns out to be exactly correct.
So far, Ursa’s gotten as far as “Something is happening,” and Non is busy playing with flags, but Zod’s already
downloaded the intel. “The closer we get to an atmosphere with only one sun — a yellow sun — the more our
molecular density gives us unlimited powers.” You have to respect a guy who’s always keeping track of his molecular
density; he must have a FitBit or something.
So that was fun, but now it’s time for these terrible tourists to see if anything on Earth is worth wreaking. They’ve
wiped out the entire population of this particular rock, and it was just an appetizer; they’re still hungry for the
destruction and suffering to come. So off they go, sailing into the sky — the second star to the right, and straight on
’til mourning.
Footnotes:
This sequence is a mix of Dick Donner and Richard Lester footage. Everything that happens on the moon set was
filmed by Donner. The NASA shots and Nate’s dialogue in the lander were scripted by the Newmans and filmed by
Lester. The line “By the way, Boris and I are engaged,” is a holdover from the Mankiewicz script, but the response to
it has changed.
Nate, the good-looking astronaut, is played by John Morton, and around this time, he also appeared in The Empire
Strikes Back as Dak Ralter, the good-looking tailgunner at the Battle of Hoth, and in Flash Gordon as a good-looking
airline pilot. After those three minor roles, he left Hollywood and ended up in public relations.
Boris is played by stuntman Jim Dowdall, who’s been in a couple hundred movies: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes
Back, Flash Gordon, Octopussy, Brazil, Whoops Apocalypse, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, GoldenEye, The
Bourne Supremacy, a couple Harry Potters. According to IMDb, he did stunts in Spider-Man: Far From Home three
years ago, when he was 70 years old.
John Ratzenberger, known for playing Cliff Clavin in the sitcom Cheers and many voice roles in Pixar films, is one of
the guys in the NASA control room scene. Ratzenberger also appeared in the first Superman film, in a similar role as
a missile controller.
Finally, let’s do a quick list of things you can’t do on the moon: You can’t talk to somebody who’s not wearing a
spacesuit. You can’t hear the whoosh of somebody flying, or getting kicked, or getting thrown around. You can’t stop
the lunar module’s ascent stage from taking off by grabbing the legs of the descent stage, which is what Non does.
There’s also some gravity-related flubs: When the first astronaut turns away from Ursa, he bounces, but the object
he’s holding falls easily to the ground. When Ursa rips his suit, he falls easily to the ground as well. Same for the
flags, when Non drops them.
Superman II 2.13: The Great Escape
February 9, 2022Superman IIcomedy, director's cut
Pssht!
Did you just go pssht?
I wish I had, Mr. Luthor, before we left.
Pssht!
Not that pssht, that pssht!
Oh!
Pssht!
Pssht!
Pssht!
Don’t go pssht when I go pssht!
Pssht!
Pssht!
Pssht-pssht!
Okay, so maybe I get your point about the villains.
There are two schools of thought about the Luthor/Otis/Teschmacher cadre in the Superman films. One school, of
which I am a part, holds that they are generally delightful, and bring some of the first film’s finest moments. If
anybody needs an explanation, I need only gesture in the direction of the “Voila, voila, voila” moment with the page
from National Geographic. That’s where I stand on the issue.
But I can understand how, under certain conditions, these keystone criminals might inspire you to shoot yourself,
and those certain conditions include watching the Donner Cut.
As we’ve discussed, all of the footage in Superman II involving Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor was shot by the original
director, Dick Donner, because Hackman refused to come back and do reshoots once Donner was replaced with
Richard Lester. So this jailbreak sequence was already complete when Lester came on board, and the way that Lester
handled it reflects his understanding of the amount of patience the audience would have for Luthor-related antics.
In the theatrical cut, this sequence is split in two. First, there’s a three-minute sequence of Luthor and Otis breaking
out, which ends with Luthor and Eve flying away. Then there’s several minutes of Lois and Clark in the honeymoon
hotel suite, and following that, there’s a little 30-second tag with Luthor and Eve talking in the balloon.
Fully restored in the Donner Cut, the jailbreak is one five-minute sequence, which includes the above “did you go
pssht” exchange, and an extended version of the balloon scene that even devoted adherents of the Lex/Otis/Eve
school might find a little trying.
Lester’s version of the balloon scene takes place the morning after the jailbreak, because he’s wedged the daytime
honeymoon hotel scene in the middle. Some of the dialogue is excerpted from the original, but it’s performed by
the Gene Hackman impersonator, and dubbed imperfectly over actual Hackman.
Luthor: Very good, Miss Teschmacher. Very good!
Eve: Why am I here? What am I doing here?
Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, is this a philosophy seminar? No. This is a getaway.
Eve: A getaway.
Luthor: Right.
Eve: Lex, how could you do that to Otis?
Luthor: What else is ballast for? Miss Teschmacher… north. Due north.
Eve: Right. North.
And that’s it, just a little postcard from Mapquest and we’re on our way.
Donner’s original vision for the scene is about three times longer, and since it’s part of the larger jailbreak sequence,
it takes place at night. It also involves a lot of the “don’t go pssht when I go pssht”-style vaudeville patter that either
appeals to you or it doesn’t.
Luthor: Very good, Miss Teschmacher. Very good!
Eve: What am I doing here? Why am I here?
Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, is this a philosophy seminar? No. This is a getaway.
Eve: Getaway!
Luthor: Right. It’s ingenious, though! I don’t know where you got the inspiration from.
Eve: I got it from you, Lex.
Luthor: Aww.
Eve: Hot air rises!
(They point at each other and chuckle.)
Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, would you like to take a trip?
Eve: A trip! A vacation? Oh, Lex! (She embraces him.) Oh, I could go shopping! I can go buy a bikini! You must have
thought about me in a bikini while you were in prison.
Luthor: No, I didn’t, actually. (He turns on the black box that will lead them to the Fortress.) I thought about you in a
parka.
Eve: You thought about me in a parka?
Luthor: Mm-hmm.
Eve: You are sick, Lex. You are really sick!
Luthor: That’s possible.
(The machine starts to whirr and bleep. Lex points.)
Luthor: North, Miss Teschmacher. Due north.
(She smirks, and taps him on the shoulder.)
Eve: Lex…
(She gestures in the opposite direction.)
Eve: North?
(Lex smiles, and points the way that Eve did.)
Luthor: That’s what I said. North.
Eve: That’s what you said.
Luthor: I know I said I said that!
Eve: I know you said —
Luthor: I just heard it!
Eve: Yes, Lex.
Luthor: Don’t repeat what I say, when I say something!
Eve: I won’t repeat what you say.
Luthor: Okay, don’t!
Eve: (giggles)
Luthor: Well, stop repeating it!
So, pssht: Lex detractors, in this case, I feel you. I wish I didn’t, but I have to admit that I do.
Footnote:
I am informed by reliable sources that you can’t actually steer a hot-air balloon in whatever direction you want to
go. The balloon follows whichever way the wind is blowing. So if you want to take a hot air balloon and get
anywhere near a specific destination, you have to plot out all the current wind conditions at different altitudes, and
then move the balloon up and down to catch the wind that’s going in the direction that you want to go. And that’s
how you know that Superman II isn’t a documentary.
Superman II 2.14: How Suite It Is
February 10, 2022Superman IIchekhov, music, plot coupon, screwball, threshold
So here’s something that Superman II isn’t about: a honeymoon racket in Niagara Falls.
“I think this kind of thing should be exposed,” says the big blue boy scout in the big pink boudoir. “See, they get kids
here just starting out in life, and then they take them for every cent they can get! That’s what Mr. White says.”
That may be true, for all I know. Maybe honeymoon hotels were the NFTs of the early 80s, just a big honeypot trap
waiting for gullible marks to come along and get digitally swindled. I don’t recall reading any spicy exposés of the
honeymoon hotel industry in the news back then, but maybe every reporter who was assigned to the story got
distracted when they discovered that a close acquaintance had superpowers, so nobody ever wrote the story.
The only thing I know is that the plight of those swindleable kids has nothing to do with the story of Superman II. We
don’t meet any young couples starting out in life except for Lois and Clark, and the only hotel employee that we see
is the bellboy, who sneers his way through 75 seconds of screen time and then passes from our lives forever. In fact,
twenty minutes from now, when Lois collects enough plot coupons to achieve enlightenment, she and Clark are
going to fly off to their own private ice palace, and the Niagara honeymoon racket will continue, unimpeded.
So, the question is: what are we doing here?
Because so far, the movie has spent half an hour putting one gun on the wall after another, with no intention of
firing a good three-quarters of them. First there were the Parisian terrorists, then the orange juice, and now the
complimentary champagne, and none of them contributes meaningfully to the plot. It’s an entire armory of
Chekhov’s guns going to waste.
But the real purpose of this room is to be a fantasy play-space to examine Lois’ relationship with Clark, away from
the distractions of the busy newsroom and the potential for actual breaking news. In this place, for a limited time,
Lois and Clark are not coded as friends or co-workers, as they were earlier. They’re a couple, even if officially it’s just
make-believe, and Clark eagerly tests the boundaries of that arrangement.
There’s a nice moment at the top of the scene where the bellboy asks if Clark wants to carry Lois over the threshold.
“It’s sort of traditional,” he says, and Lois’ eyes dart to her “husband”, realizing that the nice guy from Kansas might
actually try to pick her up just to be polite, with disastrous consequence.
This is another screwball comedy scene, featuring a wisecracking, assertive woman who rejects mainstream social
customs and cultural attitudes, running rings around a mild-mannered man who struggles to keep up with her. While
the bellboy’s in the room, Clark is determined to keep up the appearance of being normal, lovestruck newlyweds,
but Lois punctures the disguise, making smart remarks about the polyester bearskin rug and the cliché of a roaring
fireplace in July.
The thing that separates them, and prevents her from seeing him as the romantic figure that he so desperately longs
to be, is the distance between Kansas and Metropolis. He’s the guy who describes things as “swell”, and cares about
being polite to the bellboy; she’s the jaded city dweller who can see through the artificiality of the room, as well as
the artifice of their pretended nuptials.
He’s clearly hoping that some of the forced romantic atmosphere might rub off on her, grasping for the tokens that
might spark a change in her mood: the complimentary champagne, the complimentary corsage and the kissing
contest. But this is another long walk through the newsroom, with Clark just following her around the room as she
reinforces the terms of their relationship.
But then, unexpectedly, there’s a moment of connection — a soft-focus shot of the two of them looking into each
other’s eyes. He pins the corsage on her lapel — a sad, shapeless thing that she clearly scorns — and a John Williams
music cue springs into action. This sequence hasn’t had any music up until now, but here comes the Love theme,
setting a new tone for the rest of the scene.
“You look very pretty,” he says, and she reaches out to touch his arm, saying, “Thank you, Clark.” And then she just
keeps making eye contact, rewarding him with her undivided attention, possibly for the first time ever.
He’s the one who nervously breaks contact, and she eyes him, thoughtfully — a moment of foreshadowing for the
realization that she’s about to have, a couple scenes from now.
Then he pushes his luck, asking what they’re going to do about “the sleeping arrangements.” This is too much of a
frontal attack on the boundaries, and she puts him back in his place, calling him “Mr. Smith” as a defense against the
potential warming in their relationship, and directing his attention to “the complimentary couch.”
Now, this is all very important character work that the movie needs right now, and the moment of connection at the
window hands Lois a plot coupon that she can redeem later for story development. But there are many ways to
accomplish those tasks — in the Donner Cut, that same plot point was delivered through the medium of a black
magic marker. So why did they decide to lock Lois and Clark in a room with a heart-shaped tub and a pink bearskin
rug?
The real purpose is to let us know that Lois isn’t a slut. Later on in the movie, we’re going to see her in bed with a
man she’s not married to, and in 1981, that was more meaningful than it would be today. There’s no room in the
story for a leisurely buildup of their relationship; once the villains arrive on Earth, there’s a ticking clock for
everyone. So if the film wants to show a moment of romantic/sexual fulfillment for Lois and Superman, it’s going to
happen on the first date.
So the filmmakers place Lois and Clark in this pink marriage box, and it affects the way that we see them as a couple.
In our heads, we know that these characters aren’t “married” in the text, but there’s a strong, memorable visual and
they’re using the Love theme, which gives the filmmakers direct access to our feelings. Between this scene and the
Niagara Falls scene that’s coming up, they deploy enough cultural clues to make us feel like they’re married, which
means it’s okay for her to hop into bed with Superman right away.
Essentially, the scene is asking us: Do you take this man and this woman seriously, as a romantic couple? and the
correct answer is: I do.
Tomorrow:
The best minds of 1977 tackle the big question in
2.15: The Symposium
Footnotes:
The bellboy is played by Antony Sher, who’s a lot more interesting than you’d assume from watching this scene. Just
a year after Superman II came out, Sher joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and became a well-respected
British actor. His 1984 performance in the lead role of Richard III won him a Laurence Olivier Award, and he
continued playing lead roles in important stage productions all the way up to 2019. He was given a Knighthood in
the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2000 for his services to the British theater. Yes, I’m still talking
about the sneering bellboy who waggles his eyebrows as he points out the bed.
Sher was also one of the first gay couples to get a civil partnership in the UK in 2005, and he and his husband got
married in 2015. This is all to show that you never know what you’re going to find, when you casually look up a guy
playing a minor role.
Still tracking the Lester/Donner meta-story: This is a Richard Lester scene, taking the place of a similar scene in Tom
Mankiewicz’s script. In this example, the Lester scene is way better than what the Donner scene would have been, if
they’d shot it as scripted. In Mankiewicz’s script, the characters’ roles are flipped, with Lois being the one enjoying
the complimentary champagne and looking forward to the newlyweds dinner. Clark is simply uncomfortable, which
doesn’t accomplish much. She brings up the kissing contest, and challenges him to plant a kiss on her, speculating,
“Strip away all that shyness, that klutziness, that feeble indecision, and underneath beats the heart of a rampaging
stud.” He does kiss her, and then she says she’d like to get into bed… because she’s getting a headache. It sounds
awful.
And one more thing: there’s a minor visual continuity error in the scene. The amount of lava that we can see in the
left-hand lava lamp pillar noticeably changes between close-up shots and long shots.
Superman II 2.16: The Fall of Man
February 14, 2022Superman IIfalls, product placement, romcom
If the Superman movies have taught me anything so far, it’s that people fall out of stuff way more often than you
would imagine. We’ve seen Lois fall out of a helicopter, and get herself strapped to a plunging elevator, and if you
watch the Donner Cut, she even throws herself out of a Daily Planet window on purpose.
There’s also a cat burglar falling down a skyscraper, Air Force One about to crash, and Lex Luthor hanging from a high
shelf in his library, and at the moment, the Phantom Zoners are gently drifting down through the upper atmosphere.
In the end, it’s all about altitude.
And here we are at scenic Niagara Falls, for a will-they-won’t-they romantic comedy scene featuring Lois and Clark
going undercover as newlyweds at the Honeymoon Haven Hotel. They’re planning an exposé on the honeymoon
racket, which as far as I can tell involves the fairly ordinary practice of vacation resorts charging a lot of money for
things. It’s unclear where this investigation would go, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not really part of the plot.
The point of this Niagara Falls sequence is to bring Lois and Clark together in a romantic location, to establish that
it’s okay for them to have premarital sex later on in the film.
Niagara Falls is striking, although the romantic ambience is undercut a bit by the fact that Lois and Clark are
practically the only young couple there. We see lots of other thrillseekers gazing at the waterfall, but they’re mostly
old people and families with children. There’s one young couple that walks by in order to trigger Clark to suggest
that he hold Lois’ hand, but beyond that, I don’t think the background players are living up to the Honeymoon Haven
hype.
Lois and Clark engage in some light dialogue, which has a different tone than their previous scenes. This isn’t
screwball comedy at the moment — Lois isn’t talking fast, and running rings around Clark, as she was in the
honeymoon suite. This is just regular early-stage romantic comedy banter, with Lois predicting that the happy
couples who they’re pretending are nearby will head straight to their make-believe divorce lawyers.
But the point of the scene is that this is the moment when Lois starts to figure out that Clark is Superman, taking the
place of the opening Daily Planet sequence that was originally filmed by Richard Donner. The new director, Richard
Lester, replaced that with the Eiffel Tower sequence, and moved this crucial plot point to the bank of Niagara Falls.
And for the first time so far, I think Lester’s scene is better than what’s in the Donner/Mankiewicz script. Clark’s
glasses fog up in the mist from the waterfall, and Lois cleans them for him — which means she gets a close look at
his face without glasses, presumably for the first time.
The music cue then does a lot of the work: a little bell faintly chimes, indicating a new idea in Lois’ head, and there’s
a gentle “up up and away” Fanfare phrase played on the flute, as she wonders if she really saw what she thinks that
she did. It’s a clever moment, because they’ve managed to do the recognition plot point in a way that’s specific to
the Niagara Falls setting.
Then they have some more romcom dialogue, which I might as well quote as an example:
Clark: Here you are, standing in front of one of nature’s most awesome spectacles, and you’re thinking about food! I
mean, aren’t you impressed?
Lois: Clark, once a girl’s seen Superman in action, Niagara Falls kind of leaves you cold. You know what I mean?
Clark: Him again, huh?
Lois: Oh, I’m sorry. I have a one-track mind, don’t I? Well, my one-track mind’s telling me that I’m hungry.
Clark: Hot dog?
Lois: Hot dog.
Clark: Hot dog.
(He turns to walk towards the hot dog stand, but she calls out:)
Lois: Oh, could I have some orange juice?
Both, in unison: Freshly squeezed?
Clark: I know, okay…
So it’s not Shakespeare, obviously, but it’s cute banter, and it establishes that they have a close relationship, with
shared history and private jokes.
While Clark is on line for hot dogs, we meet the rescuee: a dumb kid playing on the railing, directly above the
whirling cauldron of watery doom. He’s calling out “Hey, mom! Look!” but his ignorant mother doesn’t look, which
just goes to show that Canada is not sending their best.
So the kid topples, and Lois is first on the scene, screaming, “Oh, my god! Help! Help! Somebody help!” by which
point obviously the child has hit the water and died ages ago, except it’s a movie so he actually experiences 28
seconds of free fall before getting caught by a nearby superhero, who flies him back up to his negligent parents and
he’s fine.
The outline for this scene is the same in Tom Mankiewicz’s version, but the scene is seriously underdeveloped.
There’s only a snatch of dialogue where Lois mentions Superman and then tells Clark that she’s hungry, and that’s it;
no further discussion.
In Mankiewicz’s scene, instead of a kid playing on the railing, the problem is a kid and a dog who are out fishing in a
rowboat up the river, who get carried away by the current and head towards the falls. It’s kind of a silly threat,
actually, because you have to wonder why a kid would think it’s okay to fish in a little inlet just upriver from the
biggest waterfall in North America.
The entire rescue is scripted in icy silence; there’s just a description of the action shots with no dialogue. There’s the
line “One ride to a customer” when Superman brings the kid back to terra firma, which is retained in the filmed
scene, and then a line for Lois realizing that Clark wasn’t around, and that is it.
Now, obviously, Donner and Mankiewicz would have expanded on the scene, once they turned their attention to the
Niagara Falls shoot. They were constantly working over the script as they prepared for shooting, and every other
Donner sequence is filled with motormouth characters expressing their feelings, so I’m sure this would have been
filled out some more. But the fact is that the finished Lester scene is a lot more lively, and the threat is more
credible, than what I see in the older script.
And most importantly, Margot Kidder is having fun today. She was clearly miserable during the orange juice scene
back at the office, and only a little bit lighter in the honeymoon suite, but here — especially in this moment, when
she’s figured out that Clark is Superman — you can tell that she’s enjoying herself again.
She gets some more snappy dialogue here, and she delivers it with that playful tone that I like so much from the
Donner material: “Superman was here, and you weren’t, as usual. So whattya got to say about that?” They’re giving
Lois fun remarks today, and a plot point that allows her to be smart, which she clearly appreciates.
If you ever need to know how you’re supposed to feel in one of these Superman movies, then you look to Lois.
When she’s happy and talkative, it’s a funny scene; when she’s scared, it’s an exciting action sequence. And here, for
the first time in the theatrical cut, Lois smiles, and the world smiles with her.
Tomorrow:
Kal-El completes his student evaluation form in
2.17: The Curriculum
Footnotes:
Lois spends a lot of the scene taking pictures with her Polaroid One-Step camera, the first of the movie’s many
product placement moments. I don’t know if young people even remember what Polaroid cameras are, but in the
late 70s and early 80s, they were very popular and instantly recognizable. A lot of the blocking in this scene is built
around Lois taking pictures of mostly the hot dog stand, which gets so much attention that it makes me wonder if
the Salkinds also made a deal with Big Hot Dog.
This scene also includes a kid in a Grease T-shirt, which you can see when the crowd gathers as Superman drops off
his passenger. Grease happened to be the only 1978 movie that made more money than Superman did, $160 million
to Superman’s $134 million.
Superman II 2.17: The Curriculum
February 15, 2022Superman IIancient wisdom, favorite posts, poetry
Kryptonian Memory Bank:
Education Crystal # Three-Zero-Eight
Earth Culture (Section B)
Student Evaluation Form: Kal-El
Message begins:
As per Science Council guidelines, Kryptonian Memory Bank instructors are required to administer the following
student evaluation form at the completion of this Education Crystal.
As a reminder, you will be evaluating the course that begins:
“Kryptonian Memory Bank, Education Crystal number Three-Zero-Eight. Earth Culture (Section B). Trees, by Joyce
Kilmer of the planet Earth. I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…”
Your evaluation will be sent to the Kryptonian Board of Education Crystals and will help us to improve the Education
Crystal remote learning experience. Thank you for your participation.
#1: Did the instructor use class time effectively?
The lessons always started right on time; as soon as I inserted the crystal into the hole, the instructor started reading
“Trees” and then kept on going. The lessons definitely included everything that the instructor was hoping to put
across.
#2: Did the instructor build on the core concepts of the previous lessons?
It’s hard for me to say, exactly, because so far I haven’t found the crystals for lessons two-seven-nine to three-zero-
six. There are at least five-zero-zero crystals here, and they’re not labelled very clearly, so my method has been to
grab one that I think looks relevant, and insert it to see which one it is. I’ve located a complete run from the early
two-zero-zeros all the way to two-four-six, so I have a pretty good grasp on the Matters Physical and Historic
curriculum, and I’ve got two-six-three to two-seven-eight, which is most of the material on Various Concepts of
Immortality and Their Basis in Actual Fact.
A couple weeks ago, I attended three-zero-seven (Earth Culture, Section A), and then today I found three-zero-eight
(Earth Culture, Section B). If there’s anything important between two-seven-nine and three-zero-six, then I haven’t
heard about it yet. I really wish these things were labelled.
#3: How did the remote learning experience compare in value to live classroom instruction?
Well, I know that I’ve been writing this in a lot of these evaluation forms and I hate to be a nag, but I really do wish
that I had a chair or a stool or something. I spend the entire class standing up on this ice platform, and the courses
are often several days long. I know that I have super-strong legs, but it’s just awkward.
#4: Did the instructor’s teaching methods stimulate your interest in the subject matter and aid your learning?
It was pretty much the same method that it’s been all along, which is me standing here on the ice platform, and the
instructor delivering information in a passionless monotone. I found that after several hours, my attention began to
wander. I was with you during the recitation of the complete works of Joyce Kilmer of the planet Earth, but when
you started reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolff of the planet Earth, the multiple perspectives and stream-of-
consciousness narrative grew wearing after the first forty-five minutes or so.
#5: Did the instructor encourage student participation in class?
No. They never do. I’m the only student, and there’s no way to interact with the instructor. I don’t know why you ask
this on the evaluation form.
#6: Has the instructor improved your understanding of the course material?
Sure, as far as it goes, but I’m not sure why there’s such an emphasis on American and British literature from the
first quarter of the twentieth century. Earth Culture (Section A) covered The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot of the planet
Earth, Ulysses by James Joyce of the planet Earth, and Ripostes by Ezra Pound of the planet Earth, and Earth Culture
(Section B) had Trees and Mrs. Dalloway, plus The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald of the planet Earth.
I feel like I have a good grasp on the early modernists, but if Earth Culture (Section C) doesn’t include The Sun Also
Rises by Ernest Hemingway of the planet Earth, then I don’t think I’ll have a really complete picture of the Lost
Generation, and its influence on Earth Culture.
#7: Has this course helped to prepare you for your future career as a strange visitor from another world who came
to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and who — disguised as a mild-mannered
reporter at a great metropolitan newspaper — fights a neverending battle for truth, justice and the American way?
I don’t see how it could. Honestly, I’ve lived on Earth for fifteen years at this point, and I picked up a lot of
information about Earth Culture just by living in some of it. I’m not sure why I’m supposed to stand here on this ice
platform for twelve years while a bald man in a glittery tunic recites poetry at me. If I need to learn about Earth
Culture, would it be okay if I just went outside, and maybe visited a library or something?
Superman II 2.18: Mother’s Day
February 16, 2022Superman IIchekhov, gilligan, psychedelia, the whole point of superhero movies
Well, it’s not hard to understand why the Salkinds decided to cut Marlon Brando out of the second Superman film;
he was currently suing them over money that they owed him for the first one. In fact, during the first movie’s
opening weekend, he tried to serve them with a restraining order to get them to stop showing it, which if anyone
had taken it seriously would have been one of those Great Moments in Chutzpah that would ring down through the
ages.
Now, the principal photography with the expensive people was all done at the beginning of the shoot, so this
sequence with Brando and Gene Hackman was already in the can when the new director came on board. So when
Richard Lester came to this scene, he had to use the Hackman footage that existed, and replace the enormous
hologram of Kal-El’s father with something else that Lex and Eve could plausibly be looking at.
In the Brando version, the first crystal that Lex tries out is a recording of Jor-El reciting “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer of the
planet Earth, so that was replaced by the weird bald instructor from yesterday’s post.
Then Lex tries another crystal, and Jor-El describes the three Kryptonian super-criminals who are currently busting
out of the Phantom Zone. That’s more urgent intel that needs to be delivered by someone the audience will
recognize, so they decided to throw it to Lara, Superman’s mom, who it turns out was the keeper of the Kryptonian
Archive or something.
The thing that I respect about Lester’s version of this scene is the psychedelic crystal image projector, which looks to
me like a frost giant is holding up his hand for a high-five. The image of Lara is broken up and repeated in multiple
simultaneous refractions, which looks incredible for a sixty-second scene, but if you had to stand there and look at it
for hours while your mom reads poetry to you, it would probably drive you out of your mind. The best part of this is
the offbeat idea of positioning an extra mouth to the northwest of Lara’s actual mouth.
The general effect is something like the 1970s variety show staple of showing the performer from multiple angles at
the same time, which I don’t think they do any more because people stopped dropping acid and so it wouldn’t occur
to you.
But as I’ve mentioned before, the whole point of superhero movies is to show us things that we’ve never seen
before and didn’t expect, and the crystal projector delivers on that promise.
That said, the scene is a straight coconut-powered Gilligan’s Island infodump. Lex tunes into the radio, and what he
hears — following a brief introduction by Joyce Kilmer — is exactly the information that he can use to advance his
storyline.
It’s a long way to go, both geographically and narratively, just to learn something that the audience already knows,
and the odd thing is that it doesn’t actually help Luthor in any way. He brings Eve all the way north to this icebox,
gets an earful about the Phantom Zone villains, and then dogsleds his way south again… and disappears for the next
forty minutes of the movie.
Lex doesn’t appear again until the Phantom Zoners have taken possession of the Oval Office, by which point literally
everyone on Earth knows that there are three Kryptonian supercriminals wreaking havoc in the world. He didn’t
need to go to the North Pole at all; if this visit to the Fortress of Solitude was cut from the movie, it wouldn’t make
any difference to the story.
We lose Eve at this point, as well; she’s got some delightful material with Lex in the Fortress, but as soon as they
head back south, she drops out of the picture and is never mentioned again. She’s just another one of Chekhov’s
guns, carefully mounted on the wall and never fired.
So if part of the game of Superman II is to figure out where to assign blame for the things that don’t work — and I
suppose that’s the game that I’m playing right now — then this flaw goes all the way back to the beginning, maybe
even as far as Mario Puzo’s original script.
The problem is that Lex Luthor doesn’t really belong in this movie. The only plot point that he contributes to is that
he tells the Kryptonians that they can find Superman by going to the Daily Planet office, a piece of information that
they could have learned by asking basically anybody else in the world. He’s a luxury item in this movie, just hanging
around on the outskirts of the story, looking decorative and making smart remarks.
So drive south, Miss Teschmacher, south, and then vanish from the movie, which it turns out is actually about other
people. There is no security, in a world where even Marlon Brando can be replaced. He can make 2.7 million dollars,
but only God can make a tree.
Footnote:
The Brando material is restored in the Donner Cut, although for this scene it doesn’t really make that much of a
difference. It’s worth watching, though, because there’s some fun extra Lex & Eve material, especially the last line in
the sequence, which I think is one of the funniest moments in the movie.
Superman II 2.19: Die Hard
February 18, 2022Superman IIfavorite posts, flat surface, merchandise, toys
I grant you that life was simpler back then. In 1981, we didn’t have smartphones or streaming television, and the
only computer I’d ever been in the same room with was a Commodore PET that could only run programs recorded
on a cassette tape.
But even in simpler times, did we really need to be told in the instructions for a board game that you were supposed
to “open up the gameboard and place it on a flat surface”?
Now, I had other things that I planned to talk about today — bigger, better, and more important things — but it
occurred to me that I hadn’t really investigated the Superman II merchandise so far, so I started making some
preliminary investigations into what 1981 had to offer the American child, in the way of brand engagement with the
franchise. What I found was this Milton Bradley board game, and it feels to me like this is a story that urgently needs
to be told, so here we are.
The box explains that “the epic battle of good vs. evil from the motion picture continues in this thrilling game,”
although to be honest there isn’t much of a coherent philosophical subtext. You would imagine that a game
promoting “good” would require the players to learn how to cooperate, rather than sabotage each other and steal
their cards. Sometimes I think that the Milton Bradley Company didn’t care about our moral development, which is
a shame because given the state of the world today, we could have used as much help as we could get.
Once you’ve opened up the game board and located your nearest flat surface, this is what you’re faced with: a race
around a track to gain power and defeat your enemies. You start out in the Fortress of Solitude with a pawn, a
handful of Power Cards and the use of a single communal die, and your goal is to collect a set of three Villain Cards
representing Zod, Ursa and Non, and then head back home to bring them to some kind of unspecified rough justice.
Each player takes the role of a rival Superman, so technically your goal is to defeat all the other Supermen and take
control of the Fortress of Solitude, which now that I think about it is actually pretty morally complex.
Everybody starts out at Gate 24, a location that does not appear in the movie but is very important to the board
game. Everything about the game revolves around the numbers 6, 8 and 10, and when you add those three numbers
you get 24, so that’s the explanation for that.
Now, if you’re asking yourself, is he really going to spend this entire post explaining this dumb board game, then the
answer is yes, I’m afraid that I am. I’ve gone too far to turn back now. I wish I could say that I’m going to figure out a
point to this by the time I get to the end, but life is uncertain.
Anyway, you get three randomly selected Power Cards at the beginning of the game. Each one has a number, and
the instructions explain: “The Power Cards are marked with 6, 8 or 10 units of Power. The highest value is 10, then 8,
and the lowest is 6.” That feels like another “place it on a flat surface” style note for the mental minorities.
Collecting and deploying these Power Cards is basically the entire game mechanic, so it’s a shame that they look so
boring. Everything is hexagon-shaped in this game, because of crystals, so you need to be pretty into hexagons to get
a lot of visual enjoyment during gameplay.
You roll the die and move around the track, and you can go either forwards or backwards, which introduces some
strategy into the experience. You’re going to try and aim for the spaces with the Superman shield on it, because
that’s how you stock up on Power Cards.
When you get to a red spot with a number on it, you get to challenge the villains, which means you throw down one
of your Power Cards and then flip over the first card in the Villain Card pile.
If the number on the Power Card is equal to or greater than the number on the Villain Card, then you get to keep the
villain, unless you already have that one, in which case you don’t. To win the game, you need a complete set of Zod,
Ursa and Non cards, and you can only keep one of each.
Personally, if I played this game, my house rule would be that you could collect as many Villain Cards as you wanted
to, and if you gained a monopoly on one of the villains, then you could do an evil villain laugh, and tell everyone that
if they want an Ursa card then they need to kneel before you. There is a vanishingly small chance that I will ever play
this game.
There’s also a flight mechanic in the game. Once you’ve challenged a villain on the red numbered spaces, you have
the option of using a Power Card to fly from that space to the blank red space that it connects to. I have not yet
figured out how that would assist you in the gameplay.
The most fiendish strategic ploy is to challenge another player, and try to steal one of their Villain Cards by using
your turn and losing one Power Card, but if they have multiple Villain Cards then they may select one that you don’t
need, which won’t benefit anyone. The review of this game on Board Game Geek says that all you need are a few
good Power Cards and a lucky roll of the die to make an easy win, but I don’t think they’ve fully considered the
“player challenge” aspect of the rules. The more that I think about it, the more complex and devious this game
seems to be. The solution to this is probably to stop thinking about it.
By the way, you might have noticed that there’s a picture of Lois Lane on the board, and perhaps you’re wondering
what role she plays in the game. The answer is that she is entirely decorative.
Once you’ve collected all three Villain Cards — an emotionally draining task — then you still need to move around
the board and get back to Gate 24, which is the entrance to the Fortress of Solitude, while the other players — who
up until now, you had always thought of as your friends — try to sabotage you with challenges.
You’ll also need to have Power Cards that add up to 24 or higher to enter the mysterious Gate, which is a whole
other ordeal, and then when you get there, you still have to guess the “Mystery Villain” to win.
To do that, you randomly choose between Zod, Ursa and Non, and then flip a card from the Villain Card deck, and if
you’ve guessed correctly, then you win. If you’ve guessed incorrectly — and let’s face it, the odds are two-to-one
against you, unless you’re counting cards, which will get you in dutch with the pit boss — then you lose a turn and
have to try again, while the other ersatz Supermen sail around the board, screaming and cursing at you. This gets
more interesting if you put money on the outcome, although you may lose your amateur status.
So I don’t know how anybody ever actually won this game. It seems like it would take hours, especially for the “flat
surface” crowd, and the idea that you would spend longer playing a board game based on the movie than it takes to
actually watch the movie just feels fundamentally wrong to me. I mean, at a certain point, your mom’s going to want
you to come downstairs for dinner.
Superman II 2.20: Lois’ Leap
February 19, 2022Superman IIrescue
“Listen,” says Lois, “I’m so sure that you’re Superman that I’m willing to bet my life on it.” Her theory is that if
Superman knew that she jumped into a rushing river, he wouldn’t stand by and let her drown.
So she leaps into the water, and Superman stands by and lets her drown.
I mean, that’s the only way that I can interpret this sequence, as a vote of no confidence for Mr. Kent.
A couple scenes ago, the penny finally dropped for Lois, and she realized that Clark is never around when Superman
shows up. “I gotta admit, you know,” she tells her partner, “your disguise is nearly perfect. You had me fooled. And I
am nobody’s fool, believe me.” It’s a great moment for her, demonstrating the intelligence and quick wit that both
Clark and the audience admire.
So she takes a leap of faith…
And then she dies, obviously. She’s in that river for a minute and twenty seconds, and by my count, she is completely
and helplessly submerged in a dangerous current at least four times.
Meanwhile, here’s Kal-El, secret king of the sky, who just saved a random little boy from the same dangerous
situation, and he’s just standing by a railing and encouraging the woman that he loves to swim.
Finally, after hearing her spluttering cries for help for an agonizing forty seconds, he breaks out the heat vision to
knock a branch off of a tree…
… which lands in an entirely different part of the river.
Finally, thanks to editing, she manages to get somewhere near the branch, and continues drowning.
She does get hold of the branch eventually, as the action ace observes from his vantage point somewhere else, and
then he falls in the water and she basically saves him, and that’s the end of the sequence.
This river adventure is the theatrical cut’s version of the opening sequence that Richard Donner filmed. In Donner’s
scene, Lois jumped out of a high window in the Daily Planet building secure in the knowledge that Superman would
save her, which he actually materially does.
So this is an example of why the full Richard Donner version of the film would probably have been a lot better than
what we got.
In the Daily Planet version of the scene, Clark pulls a similar trick as he did with the river, secretly rescuing Lois
without having to don the supersuit. He uses his super-speed to get down to the sidewalk, his heat vision to unroll
an awning underneath her, and his super-breath to guide her descent, as she bounces off the awning and into the
welcoming arms of the fruit and vegetable stand on the sidewalk.
It’s the same plot point, but Clark’s rescue plan is much more active, and doesn’t involve leaving Lois in danger for a
probably fatal amount of time.
So I think this scene is a downer, rather than the clever thrill ride that it should be. I never liked it, and now that I’ve
seen Richard Donner’s treatment, I like this one even less. It’s a good placement for the scene, because it ties quite
naturally into the Niagara Falls setting, and it leads straight into the final revelation scene in the hotel room.
But I need Clark to take better care of Lois, to make this work. Her calculation was that saving her life was more
important to Superman than protecting his secret, and she was wrong. He would rather dither around on the bridge
making Clark noises. I don’t know how he’s going to explain this to the Justice League, at their next meeting.
Footnotes:
The river at Niagara Falls is obviously too dangerous to film actors in, so they built their own dangerous river at
Pinewood Studios. Margot Kidder is next to the actual river when she jumps, but she’s just jumping down onto a
crash mat below.
The fall into the river is a stunt double, filmed from above, jumping into the artificial river at Pinewood.
Superman II 2.21: First Contact
February 21, 2022Superman IIalignment, asshole aliens, ding-dong, long-overdue national conversation about race,
make a friend
“Hmm, a primitive sort of lifeform,” Ursa muses, as she assesses the rattlesnake. Ursa’s just arrived on the planet,
and she doesn’t know that you’re not supposed to pick up unfamiliar lifeforms. That snake probably had other
things on its schedule for today.
Annoyed by the interruption, the snake strikes, burying its fangs in Ursa’s supposedly impenetrable skin. Wincing,
she throws the reptile to the ground, and then sets it aflame with her magical heat vision.
“Did you see that?” she calls to her friends. “Did you see what I did? I have powers beyond reason here!”
Yeah, it’s called white privilege. A lot of us have it, unfortunately.
I mean, how else would you interpret the Kryptonians’ arrival on Earth, except as a metaphor about colonialism?
Three rich white people with fancy accents arrive somewhere that they’ve never seen before and know nothing
about, and instantly decide that they own it.
The colonizers have better technology than the current occupants, which is how it always works. All we have are
guns and nuclear warheads; they have heat vision and power breath. They’re also impervious to harm, thanks to
their molecular density which protects them from anything, except apparently snakes.
They consider themselves better than us, and they’re not entirely wrong, if your judgment is based entirely on who
has magic space powers. So now they’re going to take control, as per white people down through the ages. The only
thing they don’t have is a flag to stick in the ground.
So their first scene with residents of the planet Earth is a meeting between the colonizers and the soon-to-be-
colonized, and the weird thing about the scene is that we’re actually expected to identify with the evil white people.
The two representatives of humanity making first contact are a sheriff and a deputy from East Houston, Idaho, and
the beginning of the scene sets up how we’re supposed to feel about them.
Technically, the comedy trope of the grouchy sheriff and his ding-dong deputy is usually set in the South, but the
filmmakers have decided to set this sequence in Idaho, which is in the Northwest. So these two aren’t talking in
Southern accents, but they’ve got a vaguely lower-class rural accent and they’re playing twangy country music on
the radio, which gives the scene that Southern-sheriff comedy vibe.
When they approach the line of extra-terrestrials blockading the dirt road, the deputy says, “From the look of ’em,
I’d bet ten dollars they’re from Los Ange-lees,” which is the key to us understanding the scene that we’re in: a
collision between fancy people and unsophisticated hicks.
The other important thing that the scene establishes right away is that the sheriff and the deputy don’t like each
other very much. When they enter the scene, they’re in the middle of a frustrating conversation. The sheriff is trying
to explain something simple to the deputy, who’s acting like a ding-dong, and the dialogue ends with the deputy
contradicting himself, and the sheriff doing a slow-burn.
This is important because it signals to the audience that we’re not supposed to like these characters, either. When a
writer wants the audience to like a newly-introduced character, there are three steps: make a friend, make a joke,
and make something happen. Having a friend establishes that the character has value in the narrative, and we’re
naturally drawn toward characters that other characters like.
But if the sheriff is just as irritated by this ding-dong as we are, then we don’t assign any value to him. Then when
they’re facing three fashionistas from outer space, the sheriff hands the deputy a shotgun, and opts to sit in the car
while Dwayne deals with the potential hazards. This signals to us that the deputy is expendable, and we take that
cue.
So all of these things add up to an invitation to identify with the villains. The cops are rural, aka lower-class. The
audience is mainly middle-class, so we feel slightly superior to the cops, imagining that we’re smarter and more
powerful, and therefore it’s comical to watch the deputy struggle to comprehend what’s suddenly going on in his
life.
The deputy doesn’t know that these three are powerful supercriminals from another planet, but we do, which
means that we have more in common with the villains than the police. So we end up agreeing with the villains that it
would be amusing to toy with these lower-class, foolish weaklings.
This dynamic of the strong comically dominating the weak allows the film to pull some sleight of hand on us,
introducing a new superpower that we haven’t seen before.
The deputy brandishes his shotgun, and Zod casually uses his heat vision to turn the gun red hot — a power that
we’re familiar with. But then Zod apparently uses some kind of telekinesis, floating the gun through the air to his
hand.
We’ve never seen Superman do that — in fact, according to the established lore, he can’t do that. This is just the
first of many extra superpowers that Richard Lester creates in this film, and honestly I’m not sure that he’s even
aware that it’s new. While making the first movie, Dick Donner felt some urgency around sticking to the comic books
as a source of truth, but I get the sense that Lester doesn’t really know the rules and doesn’t really care. We’ll see
more of this, coming up.
But in this scene, the audience doesn’t really notice the introduction of a new power, because it’s part of the
humiliation of the ding-dong deputy, which we’ve already agreed to.
After that trick, the conversation is basically over, and the rest of the scene is just showing the privileged people
trying out some of their powers. Zod shoots himself in the chest, and throws the gun on the ground. Then Non picks
up the car in order to get the gun, revealing the cowardly deputy who’s trying to hide.
The puny humans are basically just punching bags at this point. The deputy is discovered, and shrinks further into
the background. The sheriff is intimidated by Zod’s gaze, and then Non drops the car, knocking the sheriff around like
a ragdoll.
The humans just kind of stop being important, and the end of the scene is just Non playing around with Earth stuff.
This is what happens in the colonial narrative: the people who live on this land are easily overpowered, and after a
while, they don’t matter anymore. The main characters are the colonizers, and the conquered become background
extras.
The problem with the colonial narrative, as far as the structure of this movie is concerned, is that the first three
space invaders to land on a planet are usually the vanguard of an entire civilization that plans to move in as soon as
they subjugate the population and install some amenities. But in this case, there’s no civilization backing these
three, and that means that plotwise, we’re going to hit a wall about half an hour from now that the story won’t
really be able to recover from.
Footnotes:
There are a couple of shots in this sequence that were filmed in a completely different location, which creates a
visual continuity error. Most of the scene was filmed in a fairly open space with some scraggly trees along the road,
but there are two long shots — when the sheriff sticks his head out the window to tell the trio to get off the road,
and when the deputy gets out of the car — where there’s suddenly a lot of greenery, as seen in the screenshot
below.
Also, the placement of the gun changes between the shot of the gun landing, and the shot of Non picking up the car.
The trio landing in East Houston, Idaho doesn’t make a lot of sense. (We know that’s the location, because it’s
printed on the side of the police car.) The joke is that the first people that the villains met were astronauts, so they
think the name of the planet is Houston. And then I guess the idea is that they landed here, because they thought
that this place was called Houston. But there’s not really any way for them to know the name of this town, or why
they would be drawn here instead of the more populous place called Houston.
Superman II 2.23: The One Where Lois Finds Out
February 24, 2022Superman IIdirector's cut, gunplay, screwball
It’s the most significant moment in Lois Lane’s significant moment-heavy life, so it’s a shame that it begins with her
talking about what a fool she is.
“Boy, I sure must have looked like an idiot,” she mutters. Her hairstyle doesn’t look that bad. Oh, she means the river
thing. “Jumping in the river, waiting for Mister Wonderful… who obviously had better things to do.” I remember the
days when Lois Lane was the coolest person in the world.
“Where’s my comb?” she asks. “Where’s my comb?” she repeats, with her head on a swivel. “God, not only have I
lost my mind, I’ve lost my comb.” Then Clark trips over a pink polyester bearskin rug and falls face first into the
furnace, and that’s how Lois didn’t figure out that Clark was Superman.
I mean, it’s fine, if you don’t care about characters or atmosphere or dialogue or personal dignity and your standards
for clever plot point construction are low af, and you don’t really know how to do romance or comedy, and the film
was supposed to be in the can yesterday. If squandering one of the greatest reveals in 20th century fiction is okay
with you, then sure, I guess you could accept this as something to project on a movie screen, while you’re waiting
for a better film to come along.
Of course, I’m saying that today, when I’m only 43 percent of the way through Superman II. There will come a time
when I’m waist-deep in Supergirl and the only things I have to look forward to in my life are Howard the Duck and a
second Swamp Thing movie, at which point I’m sure that a competently-filmed scene like this will seem Oscar-
worthy, assuming that the Oscars still exist at that point.
But for now, I still have some kind of standards and a functioning will to live, and this scene is just not good enough
to be in the movie. It is lazy and boring, and I have the receipts.
Because there’s another version of this scene — awkwardly shot and badly lit, under-rehearsed and shamelessly
violating visual continuity — and for one of the few times in the entire history of director’s cuts, it’s actually better
than the theatrical version.
This is from the Donner Cut, the 2006 assembly of all the parts of the film that Dick Donner shot for this movie
before he was fired from the project. Donner didn’t get a chance to shoot any of the honeymoon hotel scenes, so
under ordinary circumstances, this spot in the Donner Cut would be filled by the inadequate version filmed by
Richad Lester.
But by an amazing stroke of luck, this crucial moment was the basis for the lead characters’ screen tests, and they
still had the footage. So this scene in the Donner Cut was reconstructed from two different screen tests, to create a
watchable version that gives us an idea of what the scene would have been like in Donner’s Superman II.
It’s filmed on a bland, half-finished hotel room set that’s obviously not the garish pink box of the theatrical cut. It’s
also very clearly a Frankenstein from two different tests, because the close-ups of Clark don’t match the medium
shots. For Reeve’s test, they hadn’t worked out the makeup and costume yet, so his hair is stained black and
plastered to his head, and he’s wearing big silly nerd glasses. He also looks very skinny, because he hadn’t started
bulking up for the role yet.
Now, most of you probably haven’t seen the Donner Cut, so to show you what I mean, I’m going to go ahead and
give you the whole thing right here.
(Clark knocks on the door, as Lois is coming out of the bathroom in a towel. He opens the door, and almost bumps
into her.)
Lois: Whoops!
Clark: Oh, my gosh.
Lois: Oh, that’s all right, I just didn’t hear you knocking, that’s all.
(Lois sits down and starts checking her makeup. She spends most of the scene getting ready for the evening, only
half-paying attention to what Clark is saying.)
Clark: Lois! For goodness’ sake, the door wasn’t even locked! Just anybody can walk in here.
Lois: There you go, putting yourself down again, Clark.
Clark: Oh, very funny.
Lois: No, really, I’m serious.
Clark: Well, anyway… Here.
(He hands her a tiny bunch of flowers.)
Clark: A little something for the newlyweds’ dinner tonight.
Lois: Pansies! Clark, how… how different.
Clark: Well, would you believe, they grow wild all around here.
Lois: Mm-hmm.
Clark: Boy, you should see what they’re charging for roses at that gift shop.
Lois: I’ll bet, huh?
Clark: Mmm. You know something, Lois?
Lois: What?
Clark: Well, you know, in spite of the — the unreality of all this… well, you know, posing as newlyweds for the sake
of a newspaper story… well, in spite of myself, even, I’m kind of starting to feel like one, in a way.
Lois: A newlywed? You?
Clark: Well, I don’t see why that should be so strange.
Lois: Oh, I’m sorry, Clark. Really, I didn’t mean that. I mean, I’m sure there’s thousands of girls who… well, a few girls
anyway.
Clark: Oh, go ahead and say it.
Lois: Say what?
Clark: That somehow, you’re not satisfied being here with me. That in some way, I don’t seem to, uh… shape up very
well, in your eyes. Well, darn it, I don’t have anything to apologize for! I’m a good reporter. No, I’m a very good
reporter! And an even better friend, to you.
Lois: (shoots him a look) Stand up.
Clark: Stand up?
Lois: Yeah, stand up, just for fun.
(He stands up, and she settles him in front of a mirror.)
Lois: Now, come here — look at yourself. Just look at yourself.
(He sighs.)
Lois: What we have here is a potentially aggressive, dynamite guy, who can do anything he wants! I mean, it’s not
my fault you keep putting yourself down.
Clark: Oh, yeah? How?
Lois: Well, for starters, look, you slouch all the time. Here, stand up straight. (He winces.) There! That’s better. And
get yourself a jacket with a vent, and some shoes that don’t lace up, and a shirt with a little color or pattern or
something… and a bowtie that doesn’t look like a letter opener… (She’s teasing him.)
Clark: All right, Lois.
Lois: Mm?
Clark: All right! Now, we’ve been all through this before, haven’t we?
(She settles at the desk, and starts painting her toenails.)
Lois: (sighs) Yes.
Clark: Now, I know where this is all leading to, and I’m sorry. But no matter how hard I try, I just never will be… him.
Lois: Him who?
Clark: Him who? Him — Superman!
Lois: (very casual) Oh.
Clark: Now, I can’t help the fact that you seem to think that you love him. That’s just something I’m going to have to
live with. But darn it, Lois, that’s enough now! Maybe I just can’t stand the competition anymore.
Lois: And just maybe… you’ve been the competition, all along, huh?
Clark: Lois, I’ve never been particularly good at riddles.
Lois: Let me make this one really easy for you. Why — with thousands of children potentially falling off something
lethal all around the world — would Superman be in Niagara Falls today? Why wouldn’t he be in the Grand Canyon?
Clark: Why don’t you ask the child’s family? I’m sure they would know.
Lois: And why is it always whenever I’m with you, until Superman appears, and then you seem to disappear! Very
conveniently, it seems to me.
Clark: Well… I was getting hot dogs, for Pete’s sake, you’re the one who said you —
Lois: Uh huh. And when Superman appeared, I looked over at that hot dog stand, and you were gone, you weren’t
there. Nowhere.
Clark: I can’t help it, if I had to go to the…
(She turns towards him, and smiles.)
Lois: You are Superman, aren’t you?
Clark: (scoffs) Lois… we’ve been through these hallucinations of yours before. Can’t you see what you almost did,
throwing yourself off a building, thirty stories high? Can’t you see what a tragic mistake you almost made?
Lois: I made a mistake, because… (She reaches into a drawer, and pulls out a handgun.) I risked my life, instead of
yours. (She points the gun at Clark.)
Clark: Lois? Don’t be insane!
Lois: Now, don’t fall down, because you’re just going to have to get up again!
Clark: Lois, now, don’t — don’t be crazy! Lois!
(She aims, and fires the pistol. Clark stands stock still, staring at her.)
(Her eyes widen. There’s no way that she could have missed, at this range.)
Lois: It is you!
(He takes off his glasses, and crosses his arms. He is Superman.)
Lois: I guess I’ve known this for the longest time.
Clark: (with a deeper voice) You realize, of course, if you’d been wrong, Clark Kent would have been killed.
(She holds up the gun.)
Lois: With a blank?
(He stares at her, and realizes that she’s tricked him. He sighs.)
Lois: (grins) Gotcha.
(He sits down, and looks at her. She wins.)
So the thing that I love about this version of the scene is that Lois is in control, as she should be. She’s being clever
and mischievous, and she’s running rings around her romantic opponent, screwball comedy style. This is her scene,
and she doesn’t need the truth to almost-literally fall into her lap.
Looked at entirely logically, it doesn’t quite make sense that Lois would pack a handgun loaded with blanks in her
honeymoon luggage, but I’m happy to let logic lapse for a moment, to get a scene that demonstrates that Lois is
actually worthy to be the recipient of the world’s most important secret.
And the second half of the Lester scene, after the reveal, is even worse. But let’s come back tomorrow, and we’ll dig
into that.
Superman II 2.24: Kneel Before Clark
February 24, 2022Superman IIblocking, product placement
Intrepid reporter Lois Lane finally has that big scoop she’s been looking for, all these years: the true identity of
Superman, high-flying space angel and secret king of the sky. I’d like to say that she uncovered it through smarts,
determination and a keen insight into the human condition, but the fact is, it just kind of fell on top of her while she
was thinking about hair care products.
But never mind that indignity; this is one of the great discoveries in human history. There’s nothing that even the
most scattershot of directors could do, to take this moment away from her.
Oh, except to leave her on the floor, I guess, just looking up in stunned amazement…
while the six foot four thunder god walks up two steps before he turns to look at her, just to maximize the height
differential.
So that’s not amazing optics, but I’m sure they’re about to turn this around, and give her a really strong opening line.
Lois: I’m sorry.
Okay, apparently not. They’re just going to leave her there on the floor, with some artfully arranged product
placement on the couch. This is actually a pretty good shot, as far as Polaroid is concerned. Sucks for Lois, though.
She looks like a fucking housepet.
And the superstar stands up there on his personal podium, smiling and looking gorgeous and warm, and he says,
“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry about,” which is true. There are going to have to be some apologies made
at some point, but Lois is more the apologizee in this situation.
Cut to Lois, holding this pose.
“I don’t know why I did that,” says Clark, and Lois says, “Maybe you wanted to.” He executes another cute facial
expression, and says, “I don’t think I did.”
Back to this. “Well, maybe you didn’t want to with your mind,” she says. “But maybe you wanted to with your
heart.” Yeah, maybe. Can we get up off the floor now?
The answer to that question is no. There is a full ninety seconds on the clock before she gets up, and even then she
needs a man to help her to her feet. You know, it’s funny, I thought this was going to be a scene with Lois Lane in it.
The really annoying thing about this artistic choice is that this is a movie that specifically explores the humiliation of
being forced to kneel in front of somebody. They have a whole fucking catchphrase about it.
Go out and ask somebody what they remember about Superman II, and there is an excellent chance that the first
thing out of their mouth will be “Kneel before Zod!” There are two crucial moments in the film where the entire
focus of the scene is whether someone is going to abase themselves in front of a power-mad alien dictator.
So there is just no excuse for this.
And you can’t say that it didn’t occur to anybody while they were making the movie. If you’re rehearsing a scene
with this blocking in literally any movie, television show or stage production, it is one hundred percent guaranteed
that at some point, someone will say, “Kneel before Zod!” And that person wouldn’t even be on the clock; they’d be
saying it pro bono. This is the one time in the history of the dramatic arts where the production is literally paying
somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars to say the words “Kneel before Zod!” It’s their job to say it. This is the
Kneel before Zod movie.
So, I don’t know. If Richard Lester didn’t want to do this with his mind, then he wanted to with his heart, and then
he went and did it. Some honeymoon this is turning out to be.
Superman II 2.25: Before The Flood
February 26, 2022Superman IIpromotion, reviews
I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time, it turns out. I had a feeling I might be. I’ve spent the last six months writing
an endless series of little articles about the Superman movies, and none of them have started like this:
I remember taking a car ride with producer Ilya Salkind to Pinewood Studios when Superman: The Movie was just in
its final stages of post production.
That’s how Mike Munn started his article in Starburst about The Making of Superman II, and the thing that I love
about it is how casual he is about dropping an unspecified “car ride” into the conversation.
There’s no need to get into whose car it was, or why he was in it with Ilya. It just happens to be a thing that he
remembers, that’s all. Sometimes people remember things. It’s no big.
Now, Starburst, as I expect you don’t know, is one of those long-running professional fan magazines about science-
fiction/fantasy/horror TV and movies that are just managing to hang on to print by their fingertips. Starburst was the
British equivalent of America’s Starlog, and between them, they were a lifeline for internet nerds who didn’t have
access to the internet yet. Starlog sadly passed from this Earth more than ten years ago, but Starburst is still in the
game, bless them, as a print/digital hybrid.
In spring 1981, when Superman II came out, Starlog didn’t really pay a lot of attention: the American magazine was
much more committed to specifically covering the sci-fi world, so they were engrossed in Star Wars, Star Trek and
Buck Rogers. Over in Britain, Starburst had a wider brief that also included Universal Monsters, contemporary horror
and pure fantasy — including, in the issue pictured above, a five-page article on The Wizard of Oz, which would have
made Starlog readers as angry as… well, you know how the internet behaves. As angry as that.
So I’ve gone and looked up Starburst’s contemporary coverage of Superman II, to get a little taste of how the fans
were feeling at the time. The first real coverage is a four-page “Making of” article in March 1981, which begins with
a car trip to Pinewood Studios, and includes quotes from Richard Lester, Christopher Reeve, Terence Stamp and
Sarah Douglas.
The part that I find interesting is near the end of the article, where Munn says:
The studios also housed the hotel set where the film’s most sacreligious moments are enacted… when Lois Lane
discovers Superman’s identity and the two fall head over heels for each other, to later wind up in bed in the Fortress
of Solitude.
The love scenes are an integral part of Superman II and are its biggest flaw. Still, it gave Margot and Chris the
opportunity to actually go to Niagara for some location shooting.
Sacreligious!
And then it just goes on, with more Reeve quotes, and some speculations about how much of the film was directed
by Lester, as if that was a normal thing to write in a magazine.
That feels to me like such an internet moment — it’s one and a half tweets long, and it draws a clear line between
mass-market appeal and fan wisdom. It just states the critique as a fact, among all the others: the Metropolis battle
set is 800 feet long, Marlon Brando is replaced by Susannah York, and the honeymoon hotel scene is sacreligious.
And the movie hadn’t even come out yet!
In the April issue, John Brosnan wrote a four-page review of the film, and he’s not shy about expressing his feelings
either. It begins:
After a year of cinematic disappointments — culminating in the dreadful Flash Gordon — it comes as a real pleasure
to be able to say that Superman II is a winner on all counts and is even better than Superman I. It doesn’t patronise
the younger members of its audience, as does Flash Gordon, and it treats its superhero star with respect and a
reasonably straight face, which is the only approach that works with this sort of movie.
There’s some more received fan wisdom when he talks about the opening Eiffel Tower scene:
For a James Bond movie, say, these sequences would have served as an adequate climax, but for Superman II it’s
only the beginning. Are they going to top that, you wonder, or is it going to be all downhill from them on (as was The
Empire Strikes Back after the ice world section…)?
I didn’t realize that fans were casually hating on most of The Empire Strikes Back, in 1981. That comes as a complete
surprise to me, but in Starburst, apparently, it’s a well-understood fact.
Brosnan liked the film very much, and you can tell, because he describes literally every major plot point in the movie
— the Eiffel Tower, the moon sequence, Lois jumping in the river, Superman losing his powers, Zod forcing the
President to kneel, the diner scene, returning to the Fortress of Solitude to get his powers back, and so on. He only
makes one mention of the possibility of spoilers, and he dismisses the concept:
There’s a final confrontation between them all, including Luthor, in the Fortress of Solitude, and I guess I’m not
giving anything away if I say that Supey ends up victorious.
And then he goes on to describe the final scene of the movie, in detail:
There’s even a satisfying tag sequence where he goes back to the diner as Clark Kent, and gives the trucker his
come-uppance. “I’ve been taking a course in muscle-building,” he tells the startled owner of the diner after he has
sent the trucker hurtling down the length of the counter.
So I guess spoilers are something that happens to other people, as far as Starburst is concerned. I suppose the
readers should be grateful that Brosnan doesn’t describe the credits, and where you’re going to go for dinner
afterwards.
Brosnan’s one real criticism is about the special effects, which I find difficult to believe. He didn’t even like them in
Superman: The Movie, and I thought everybody did.
The special effects, I’m afraid, are at times something of a disappointment and as in Part I it’s the optical effects that
are the main problem (the physical effects are excellent), particularly those involving, as usual, travelling mattes. As I
said way back in Starburst #7 when discussing the effects in Superman I, no matter how technically accomplished a
travelling matte shot may be, using the blue screen process, there’s always something about it that doesn’t look
right. It’s difficult enough using it with an inanimate object like a space ship but with a human figure like Superman,
complete with fluttering cape, the loss of realism is even greater.
So I guess if those are Brosnan’s standards, he’s got a couple of difficult decades ahead of him.
But the part of the review that I like best is Brosnan’s wide-eyed treatment of the sacreligious romantic storyline:
Now a normal human being, Superman is able to actually consummate his relationship with Lois, an event of some
historical importance to us old readers of the comic book. (I mean, I never thought that… well… gosh!) The scene is,
of course, handled very discreetly and wouldn’t even bring a blush to the cheek of [British censorship-advocate]
Mary Whitehouse.
Two months later, we finally get to hear from the fans, in June’s letters column. This is basically the entirety of
Twitter, Tiktok and Reddit, as far as the nerds of 1981 were concerned.
The mag published four letters about Superman II, and all four display the usual mix of general approval and furious,
nitpicky complaints that we’ve come to know as the way that fans process everything.
Here’s one from a man with the astonishingly appropriate name Philip Atack:
The only flaw I found in the film, other than a few awful travelling matters, was the music which sounded as if it was
simply a compilation from the first film. The main title was spoiled by simply not being loud enough and the credits
were a great disappointment. (Why couldn’t they have used slit scan for the titles as they did in the first movie?)
But apart from those flaws I found the film totally enthralling and it’s by far the most enjoyable film I have ever seen.
So I have to imagine Philip sitting in the theater, simply seething over the greatly disappointing opening credits, with
his girlfriend next to him hoping that he’s going to calm down once the movie actually starts. Still, she knew what
she was getting into; you don’t end up next to Philip at the theater unless you’ve heard several anticipatory pre-
movie critiques in the weeks leading up to the release.
Three of the four letters criticize the flying scenes, which must have been part of the membership fee to be allowed
into the sci-fi nerd club. J. Rivas basically says it all:
I am a camera operator myself and I must admit I liked the camera angles and Lester directing techniques. The
effects I thought were just as bad as the first film, I am not saying they don’t deserve any credit, what I am saying is
that they were not perfect and for that sort of film they need to be pretty near it. I specially disliked the matte shots
and taking off techniques. Above all I enjoyed the film very much.
And then there were nitpicks about the moon from W.J. Flanagan, who pointed out that Ursa and the astronaut
shouldn’t be able to hear each other in a vacuum, and that the astronaut should have exploded, once his suit was
breached.
Finally, let’s hear from P. Douglas, who was disappointed with the ending:
I don’t think that a kiss and a dizzy spell is a satisactory end to the emotional relationship built up between Lois and
Clark during the film.
I agree with P. Doug, and he also says that he liked the Krypton scenes and thought the first movie was better than
the second, so he’s the one that I’d want to go on a date with.
I know, you probably didn’t realize that we were playing Smash or Pass, but it’s 1981, and these are the only four
people that I know in the English-speaking world who are interested in talking about superhero movies. You think
I’m going to pass up that kind of opportunity?
Superman II 2.26: The Preposterous Invasion
February 28, 2022Superman IIasshole aliens, evil twin, fridge logic
Three lunatics have come from beyond the stars to exert their will on the indigenous population, and I think it’s fair
to say that they’re still getting the hang of it.
They come from Krypton, this trio of voracious demons, a planet where everybody stands around under a giant ice
bubble wearing spectacular gowns and arguing about the pronouncements of the Science Council. I imagine that the
first thing the conquerors are looking for is the nearest depository of glowing crystals, to snap them all in half and
then stand around looking smug.
Earth has come as something of a surprise to the vanquishers; the first thing that General Zod noticed on planetfall
was the curious existence of bodies of water, just lying around on the ground being wet. So that’s going to be a
problem, vanquishing-wise. If you plan to rule the Earth and you’re unfamiliar with the concept of water, there is a
fairly steep onboarding process ahead of you.
And so, as they begin their reign of terror by taking command of a diner in Idaho, the big question is: How
dangerous can three people be?
This question of what to do, as a culture, with a single unstoppable individual has been haunting Superman media
for decades. In Superman II, the trio’s reign of destruction expresses a concern about the damage that a person with
Superman-level powers could wreak on the world, if that power isn’t grounded in the values of Smallville, Kansas.
And clearly that point is not settled to anyone’s satisfaction, because it comes up again in Superman III, with the
battle between “good” Superman and “evil” Superman, and it even shows up to some degree in Superman IV, with
Nuclear Man as another surrogate “evil twin”.
That question didn’t go away, and thirty years later, the danger of superheroes slipping out of societal control was
raised in two different movies released only two months apart in 2016: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in
March, and Captain America: Civil War in May. Clearly, this is an issue that still fascinates and worries us all.
But how much damage can one superpowerful person do? Someone could be the strongest individual that the
world has ever seen, but the world is big, and in 1981, there were more than 4 billion people available to rule,
spread out all over the place. Is it actually feasible that the entire world could be taken over by three individuals,
especially if they come from space and have no direct connection with any political or economic structure?
It’s a tough plot point to get across, and as is often the case with Superman II, we have two different approaches to
compare and contrast. Dick Donner didn’t have the chance to film his version of the alien takeover, but we’ve got
Tom Mankiewicz’s shooting script, which outlines how they were planning to get this done. So today, I want to look
at Mankiewicz’s original version of the sequence, and figure out whether it would have worked or not.
In the script, at this point, Lois has already discovered Superman’s real identity, and they’ve had time to get settled
in for a romantic evening at the Fortress of Solitude. Then the Kryptonians land on Earth and have a confrontation
with some representatives of Texas law enforcement, which goes pretty much the same way as the theatrical
version. There’s another sequence of Arctic smooching, and then this…
EXT. WASHINGTON MONUMENT – DAY
The cruel face of Zod fills the screen. His voice booms out with a deep, penetrating quality.
ZOD
I am General Zod!
Listen to me, people of the Earth!
CAMERA PULLS BACK: Zod is perched on top of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He stands erect on
the pointed apex of the tall, needle-like edifice, his voice echoing across the landscape as terrified TOURISTS below
scream, run away in panic.
ZOD
Today I bring a New Order to your planet!
One which shall last until the end of time!
Each of you…
INT./EXT. LINCOLN MEMORIAL – DAY
PEOPLE stand petrified inside and out of the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool beyond as ZOD continues.
ZOD’S VOICE
… each man, each woman, each child —
all will march proudly together in this New Order!
EXT. JEFFERSON MEMORIAL – DAY
CAMERA LOOKS THROUGH the Jefferson Memorial, across the Potomac River.
ZOD’S VOICE
Your lands, your homes, your possessions,
your very lives…
EXT. WASHINGTON MONUMENT – ANGLE LOOKING DOWN
CAMERA LOOKS DOWN PAST ZOD. Police cars with flashing lights begin to converge in the distance.
ZOD
All of this and more
you will gladly give to me!
And then we see some of Ursa and Non’s vacation photos, as they travel around the world and burn stuff up.
There’s a shot of the Kremlin in flames, Japanese people fleeing through the streets of Tokyo, the Eiffel Tower
melting under the heat shooting out of Non’s eyes. Then Ursa comes to Mount Rushmore, which she defaces with
her heat vision, turning the sculpture into a monument to the three Kryptonian captors. They’re counting on the
heat vision to do most of the heavy lifting here.
Through all of this, Zod continues his rant:
ZOD’S VOICE
There is no longer a need for separate nations
in this world, no need for petty squabbles
between one group and another…
Boom, bang, crash…
ZOD’S VOICE
There is now one law, one order, one ruler
who alone will determine your collective destiny!
One force before which all of you
shall kneel forever!
Then some police arrive at the base of the Washington Monument, and start shouting at Zod through bullhorns.
He’s unimpressed, and topples the monument, shouting that from this day forward there is only Zod!
And then back to Lois and Superman making out in the Fortress.
So that’s one approach: a quick trip around the world, to incinerate some popular tourist attractions. I’m not sure
how the terrible trio managed to pick up a Zagat guide on their incoming flight to help them identify the hotspots,
but maybe they just flew around until they found something eye-catching.
Both the original script and the finished movie are headed to the same place, after this sequence: a battle to take
the White House and occupy the Oval Office, as the ultimate demonstration of their power over the world. But this
scripted version does it as the culmination of an international bad-will tour, to show that they can spread their
malign influence around the world.
Now, I have to say, I think the dialogue is compelling. In the theatrical cut, Zod never lays out any kind of plan for
Earth; he just starts beating up on it. Here, the lines about the New Order, about marching together and working on
Zod’s behalf, are legitimately chilling. Saying that we don’t need any borders anymore, because we’re all under the
rule of a dude who doesn’t care what we call ourselves, has some promise as a scary theme to explore.
That being said, I think it’s a little thin. Yes, they can fly around the world and burn some things down, but showing
Ursa destroying Mount Rushmore and Non melting the Eiffel Tower reinforces that there’s really just three people
trying to establish dominion over the planet, and the picture-postcard nature of the terrorists’ targets cheapens
things a bit.
There’s also the problem that everyone on Krypton apparently speaks English, so Zod’s message is a little lost on the
people of Moscow, Tokyo and Paris. That nitpick is probably just “fridge logic” — something that you think of once
you’re at home opening the fridge, but that didn’t occur to you at the time, because you were swept up in the action
of the movie. But it’s just another piece of the problem with the film’s assertion that these three superfreaks could
subjugate the entire world, just by yelling and knocking some things over.
I think to really have power as the trio’s first targets, it would have to be something like the United Nations or the
Pentagon — a symbol of political, military or economic strength, rather than a pretty building. The most significant
target here is the Kremlin, but other than that, it’s all show. They’re not taking control of significant natural
resources or supply lines; they’re just ruining some tourists’ day.
The other problem with this version is that Lois and Superman are having sex, while all this is going on. In the script,
they hit the sheets before Superman gives up his powers, so all of this mess is happening around the world while
he’s still on the clock.
You can imagine that Superman wouldn’t be able to tell that there’s trouble in East Houston, Idaho, but if there are
terrified people screaming in Washington D.C., Moscow, Tokyo, Paris and wherever Mount Rushmore is, you’d think
that his spidey-sense would be tingling like crazy, even if he has very good reason for being distracted. I think it
would feel weird for the audience, to see such full-scale worldwide chaos, intercut with private romance time.
So in the Richard Lester version, they went in the opposite direction for the start of the Kryptonian reign of terror:
from scenes of global souvenir shop meltdowns to the three villains focusing their energy on a single American small
town. I’m not sure that version is compelling either, but let’s come back tomorrow and we’ll take a close look at it.
Superman II 2.27: Think Globally, Kill Locally
March 1, 2022Superman IIhelicopter, urban planning
Well, this is going to put quite the crimp in the East Houston Cultural Arts and Ballet Festival coming up in a couple
weeks. The orchestra is currently on fire, the dance studio no longer exists, and the recital hall has half of a burning
helicopter in it. We’re going to have to cancel the Poetry Slam, and we won’t have time to dedicate the new wing of
the East Houston Public Library, even if we manage to dig it out from under the rubble. This is going to set the local
art scene back like you wouldn’t believe.
I’m kidding, of course; the population of East Houston, Idaho consists entirely of leering comedy hillbillies, and that’s
why it’s okay to murder them and demolish their shitty business district.
Yesterday, we talked about the original vision that Dick Donner and Tom Mankiewicz had for the first big sequence in
the movie where the three Phantom Zone criminals unleash their power on the world. In Mankiewicz’s script, the
Zoners went from first contact with a couple of police officers straight into a world tour, where they toppled famous
monuments to get everybody’s attention, and then laid out their domination plans.
In my view, the problem with that sequence is that it jumped too fast into a worldwide crisis, and exposed the basic
weakness of the idea that three superpowered people could immediately conquer the entire Earth, just by standing
on the Washington Monument and declaring victory. It gives the audience time to think about the logistics of
darting around from one tourist attraction to another, wrecking stuff and running away.
So Richard Lester decided to take the exact opposite approach — the Kryptonians strut into the tiniest, crappiest
little town you can imagine, and then reduce it to cinders, which in this case is a decided improvement.
So I’m going to be honest with you: I’m not that interested in talking about the stunt-heavy fight with the military,
which is stagey but basically fine. There are some effective moments, like Non catching a rocket with his bare hand
and twisting it in half, and there are some moments — like the jeep swerving, going up a ramp and then somehow
driving all the way through the second floor of a building and magically busting through the wall, in order to flip over
and land in a used car lot — that are staged like deleted scenes from Herbie Goes Bananas or The Apple Dumpling
Gang Rides Again.
The thing that I’m fascinated with is how crappy this town is. Unfortunately, this production hasn’t been
documented with the laser precision that the first film was, so I don’t know if this small town already existed in the
studio backlot or if they had to build it from scratch, but either way, no expense was spared to create the dingiest,
most depressing streetscape they could scrape together.
Every single thing in this scene is caked in multiple layers of dust and grime. Every sign is pre-distressed. Every
surface is chipped and cracked. There are old tires littered all over the place.
And if you take the time to look, there are lots of depressing details, like the billboard for the Holiday Motel, which
pictures a young woman frowning, and looking like she is completely over this nowhere burg.
And I know that they had to build a big soft pit of dirt for the stunt man to fall on, but there is not even a hint of a
sidewalk or a paved road anywhere. This is the main street, and the front yard of the motel is just bare dirt, all the
way up to the front door.
The bar is such a piece of crap that burning it down is actually too good for it; I can’t imagine what that smoke is
going to smell like, once it drifts downwind to West Houston. And right next to this hot nightspot is a lime green RV,
with a random little row of broken fencing in front of it.
And this shot is just the saddest thing in the world, with a soldier ducking for cover behind a rusty coin-operated
kiddie ride, which probably doesn’t work. The guy over on the right is resting his rifle on a miserable little plastic
mannequin, which is displaying what looks like a stained piece of unidentifiable fabric.
This place doesn’t need Zod and Ursa to turn it into a burning pile of garbage; the Kryptonians are just accelerating a
process that the residents have been contributing to for decades.
And I don’t know what they were storing in this barn, but a helicopter falling on it is clearly not the entire problem. I
don’t know if they had meth labs in 1981, but if that’s what this is, then it must have been the main supplier for
three or four states. It’s possible that the falling helicopter had nothing to do with it; this was going to happen
anyway. Sometimes barns just give up.
So fine, if space people want to come along and do some rural redevelopment, then I don’t see any reason to stop
them. Honestly, I don’t even like Mount Rushmore that much. Superman, don’t worry: There is no reason for you to
rush. Just keep on doing what you’re doing.
Footnotes:
For the shot of Zod throwing the hillbilly through the diner wall, a facsimile of the wall was built sideways. In this
shot, the “wall” is actually the floor, and the stunt man is falling down through the false floor. The next shot, seen
from the outside, is also filmed sideways, and then combined with the real background using greenscreen. The
sequence finishes with a third shot, which is actually the stunt man being hurled sideways through the truck and out
into the street.
Superman II 2.28: We Serve
March 3, 2022Superman IIalignment, fire, unbothered, video game
Okay, so I might have gotten a little distracted yesterday by the unbelievably crappy little town that the Kryptonians
are demolishing, and I didn’t focus on evaluating this sequence for what it is: a tutorial level.
Obviously, the town doesn’t matter; it’s literally just a set of false fronts, populated with faceless army men and
wide-eyed NPCs. The three villains are the player characters, and they’ve just leveled up, so they have a bunch of
upgrades to test out.
One of their new abilities is a telekinetic finger laser, so a guy with a rifle pops up and threatens to shoot, giving the
player an opportunity to pick him up off the ground and shake him around a bit, with his little arms and legs kicking
helplessly in the air. I can think of a half dozen PlayStation games where I’ve had exactly this power. It’s really
satisfying, actually. I had no idea that Superman II invented it.
So for this moment, at least, the audience is aligned with the villains. We want to see what they can do with these
powers, so the movie’s giving them a little sandbox to play in. That’s why this town is a hayseed junkyard, populated
with toothless date rapists and gutter orphans. We’re playing Grand Theft Auto, and those are the dummies who
drive around town, begging to get carjacked.
The three fancy space people are kind of messing around at the beginning of this sequence, and a lot of the material
reads as comedy — Ursa arm-wrestling a male chauvinist to the ground, Non’s childlike struggle to activate his heat
vision, Zod picking up the squirming guy with his finger laser.
But this is the moment when they have to start presenting as an actual threat to the human race, so they’ve got to
transition out of comedy and into something that resembles menace.
When the army men show up, Non’s the first one to take them on, using his heat vision to blow out some tires on
the approaching Jeeps. It’s a good trick, but it leads to that Herbie Goes Bananas style stunt that I mentioned
yesterday, with a Jeep crashing through a second-story wall and flipping over.
And after that, there’s a disappointing, lengthy shot of one of the Jeep drivers stumbling away from the scene, with
an unnecessary hayseed on hand to say, “Are you all right, buddy?” We have no real stake in whether he’s all right.
The clock on the wall says that this only lasts for six seconds, but in our hearts, it is much longer.
It’s the next trick that finally breaks the comedy vibe: the army men shoot flames at Zod, who uses his superbreath
to blow the sheet of flame into the Tinderbox Saloon.
This is the first act of violence that actually lands, because this time, there aren’t any jokes. The camera just lingers
on the inferno, and after a few seconds, a guy tumbles out of the window and scurries away.
Then there’s a little scene with the President of the United States watching the carnage on television. I think this
happens too early in the sequence, because he makes a big deal about how these people are unstoppable, when at
that point really they’ve just blown some fire away.
But the scene finally accomplishes its goal when the army guys start firing rockets at the trio, which they simply
ignore. They don’t flinch, or move away; they just look around, as if they’re puzzled why anybody would want to
make such a racket.
And then there’s the key moment that unlocks the whole storyline for me: Ursa stepping across the lot, with clumps
of dirt and debris raining down all around her, and her enormous false eyelashes are going flickety-flickety-flickety-
flick. Sarah Douglas is actually walking forward through a hail of grime that is testing the tensile strength of her face
furniture, and she is unbothered.
This is the thing that makes them dangerous: they honestly do not care. They have stopped processing human
behavior as a phenomenon that has anything to do with them.
Ursa struts up to Zod like a middle school mean girl, and delivers what I think is the line that pushes this sequence
into the realm of the uncanny: “Look. They need machines to fly!”
It’s a surprising line, probably the most surprising thing that happens in this scene. So far, we’ve seen army men
target the super creeps, who brush the attack away, or turn it back on their opponents. But this is a moment when
they express amusement and delight about something that isn’t delightful.
This line has the shape of a joke, but it isn’t funny, as far as we’re concerned; it’s just funny to the aliens. They’ve
stopped trying to entertain us, and now it’s up to us to entertain them.
This is when the villains start to seem like a real threat. Anybody could start a fire, or shoot down a helicopter; a lot
of the action is just turning the army’s tools back on their own troops. The menacing thing is the attitude. These
people can walk through the world unscathed, and there are no limits on their behavior. It doesn’t matter whether
the Jeep survivor is all right. Nobody is all right, not anymore.
Footnotes:
We saw John Ratzenberger earlier in the film as one of the NASA controllers, and he’s got another, uncredited role in
this scene. When Non approaches the camera crew, we hear several perplexed voices coming from the newsroom,
and one of them is clearly Ratzenberger, saying, “Who’s the big guy?” He’s got four lines in the scene: “Okay, yeah,
we’ve got [unintelligible]…”, “Yeah, we got a slight crack in that diode,” and “Try to wiggle it.” It’s hard to say what
most of those lines actually mean; it’s like a haiku with a Boston accent.
Superman II 2.29: Home, and Other Dangerous Places
March 4, 2022Superman IIclubhouse, mansplaining
You know, they say most accidents happen in the home, and that’s even more true for Superman, because his house
is a slippery Arendelle ice castle with huge holes in the floor that act as an unwanted houseguest disposal feature.
It’s a nice place to visit, but you have to watch your step or else you’ll tumble into an eternal abyss. Also, there’s no
place to sit down.
So it’s kind of a shame that the Fortress of Solitude in the movies doesn’t have any of the amenities of the comic
book Fortress, like an interplanetary zoo or a business center. Superman has revealed himself to the woman that he
loves, and now he’s brought her to his awesome secret Arctic hideaway, and she doesn’t really know what to
interact with.
The only thing that you can touch in this enormous lobby area is the big crystal contraption up on the platform, and
if you mess with that, you’re likely to summon a bald guy who reads poetry at you. On the other hand, depending on
the random unlabeled crystal you choose, you might learn something about life on other planets, or scientific
concepts beyond our current imaginings.
But the only person who would be interested in that would be a reporter, and Lois Lane isn’t a reporter. At least, not
anymore.
The scene goes like this:
Superman: You see, when my father died — my Earth father, I mean — I found this crystal.
Lois: Huh?
Superman: Uh… this is kind of hard to explain, but you see, it, um… it called to me.
Lois: Oh.
Superman: Yeah. And it brought me here. It helped me to build this place. Well… actually, it built it, really.
Lois: (n/a)
Superman: But, um… that’s when I found out who I really was, and what I had to do.
Lois: (n/a)
Now, call me judgmental if you want, but I don’t think Lois comes off very well during that little exchange of ideas. I
know that telepathic alien crystal architecture is outside her usual beat, but you’d think that a top-notch reporter
like Lois Lane would take her notebook out of her purse and write some of this intel down, maybe ask a question or
two.
I mean, even on their first date, when she was absolutely starry-eyed and flirting like her life depended on it, she got
excited when he told her a new piece of information. To be fair, that was officially supposed to be an interview, and
currently she’s off-duty, but I don’t see even a flicker of resemblance between these two Loises.
Lois in the first movie could process information, and come up with follow-up questions. She was always peeking
around corners, and looking for a story. Now she’s got the biggest exclusive in human history, and Superman is
feeding her utterly preposterous straight lines, and she has literally nothing to say.
Now, these scenes were the first to be shot when shooting resumed on Superman II with Richard Lester as the
director, and I have heard people say that Margot Kidder is giving a bad performance here because she was upset
about Dick Donner and Tom Mankiewicz being taken off the project.
But honestly, Kidder is not the problem here; it’s the new script by David and Leslie Newman. They’ve given
Superman all of this as a monologue, and Lois doesn’t get any lines. So Lester keeps cutting to her for reaction shots,
and she’s not allowed to do anything but nod.
Then when they finally give her something to say, it’s this:
Superman: So what do you think? Do you like it?
Lois: Like it? It’s incredible! I mean, not that it couldn’t use a woman’s touch, you know? Especially around dinner
time.
which doesn’t mean anything.
Then it gets worse.
Superman: Dinner! Oh… I’m sorry. You see, I don’t usually do too much about… Listen. Tonight, the sky’s the limit!
Anything you want!
And then he immediately turns and flies away, without asking what she wants.
Now, this one is definitely on Lester. The script says “Anything you want, Lois,” and there’s a close-up on Lois, smiling.
Then the scene cuts to Superman arriving on a tropical island to gather flowers.
That cut allows some time compression, where Lois gets to say something before he flies off. But the way it’s staged,
he says the line and then leaps away with a whoosh sound effect, leaving her to sit down on an icy step and wait for
him to come back.
So it’s just bad filmmaking, really; there’s no excuse for it. Bad character development, under-written script, an
actress left to fend for herself with no material. And now she’s just sitting there in the cold, and she can’t even
explore the Fortress and find the room with the tiny bottle city in it, because there aren’t any safety railings and the
insurance would go through the roof. Still, it’s better than East Houston.
Footnotes:
The shot of Superman picking tropical flowers by a waterfall was filmed on location in Saint Lucia, in the West Indies.
The production sent Reeve and a small unit to film the brief sequence, which I think is very effective. The opening
shot shows the Jalousie Plantation, and the waterfall is called Diamond Falls, near the town of Soufriere. Tourists
now know it as the Superman Waterfall, and you can visit it, if you make reservations in advance.
Superman II 2.30: The King of Chickens
March 5, 2022Superman IIchickens, villains
The bar is destroyed, the Jeep is unsalvageable, the meth lab in the barn exploded, and the business district will
never be the same. Still, there’s one demographic in East Houston that seems to be pleased with the current trend
of events: the chickens.
“Come forward!” Ursa proclaims. (cluck cluck cluck) “Your general (cluck cluck) wishes to speak.”
“I am (cluck cluck) General Zod, your ruler!” says the suzerain. “Yes!” (cluck cluck) “Today begins a new order! Your
lands, your possessions, your very lives will gladly be given in tribute to me, General Zod! In return for your
obedience, you will enjoy my generous protection. In other words, you will be allowed to live!” (cluck cluck cluck)
That’s got to be the thing that appeals to the poultry voting bloc — the promise that if they’re obedient, they’ll be
allowed to live. That’s a better deal than chickens usually get.
And that’s basically it, as far as the public spanking in East Houston is concerned. The Kryptonians have occupied
Main Street, and their message to the world is being broadcast on all available channels. The army men are all
kneeling in the road, their hands above their heads in surrender. It’s not looking good for our lands, our possessions
or our very lives.
The goal for this sequence is to demonstrate how easily the all-powerful Phantom Zone escapees can dominate
everyone around them, up to and including the United States Army. They have superstrength, superbreath,
telekinesis and heat vision, and most importantly, they can’t be hurt, using human weapons. Also, they’re really
mean.
So the progression that the new masters of Earth take in the movie is: subjugate East Houston, terrorize the US
Army, vandalize Mount Rushmore, attack the White House, seize control of the world. This turns out to be
surprisingly effective, cinematically.
As we discussed earlier this week, the original script had the villains go straight from arrival to a world tour of
famous tourist attractions — destroying the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, the Kremlin and the Tokyo
skyline — before zeroing in on the White House.
This version that we see in the movie doesn’t have that kind of global scope, but it demonstrates how scary these
people would be on an individual level. This isn’t just the destruction of faraway buildings and symbols; this is
monsters showing up on your street and targeting you, specifically.
But I think there’s a big, unanswered question here, which is: What do these people actually want?
I mean, at the moment, they want to feel powerful, and they’re getting a lot of satisfaction out of seeing the
kneeling soldiers, and screaming in the face of the American military. They want explicit, tangible representations of
the inferiority of the human race, and their domination over it. They also take sadistic pleasure in seeing people
suffering, and they’re getting a grip on how to cause it.
But what else are they looking for, once they’ve got control?
Human invaders have some kind of goal: they want land, and money, and natural resources, and the comfort and
luxury that provides. They want safety from outside threats. They want prosperity for their children, and their
people.
But these lunatics don’t have children or people, and they don’t seem to want any. As far as they know, there are
only three Kryptonians alive in the universe, and when they discover that there’s a fourth, they try to kill him.
Recreating the glory of Krypton is an empty goal, when there aren’t any Kryptonians to live in it.
And it’s key to their characters that they don’t care about Earth stuff. They consider it beneath them, to even take an
interest in anything that Earth people do or create. They don’t want money, because they don’t want to buy
anything. They don’t want land, because they don’t have anything to build or any people that would live there.
They don’t even need food, apparently. In the previous scene, when Lois reminds Superman that dinner exists, he
suggests that when he’s on his own, it doesn’t occur to him to eat. So these Kryptonians literally have no needs or
desires that need satisfying, beyond their taste for praise and suffering. I can imagine them ordering everybody to
build statues of them, until they get bored of that, too, and then there’s nothing for them to do.
And we see proof of this sixteen minutes from now, which I think is the scene that actually breaks the movie.
By that point, Zod, Ursa and Non have taken control of the White House, and forced the President to abdicate. And
then they’re just sitting around in the Oval Office, playing with executive desk toys, and talking about how bored
they are.
“You’re master of all you survey,” says Ursa, and Zod is unimpressed. “So I was yesterday,” he moans. “And the day
before.” And then he sighs. The only thing that perks them up is hearing that the son of Jor-El is still around, waiting
to be revenged upon. But what will they do, once they’ve taken care of him?
So the domination of these three superjerks ultimately won’t amount to very much. Their utter disdain for anything
beyond themselves, and their lack of connection to any homeworld or legacy, means that achieving global
domination is an empty prize. We could probably just go about our business, and wait for them to get tired of Earth
and move on.
All hail Zod — the prince of no one, the king of nothing! Savior of chickens, and destroyer of Jeeps!
Superman II 2.32: Mama Don’t Preach
March 9, 2022Superman IImasculinity, religion, time to penis
Man, don’t turn your back on Superman during date night is the lesson of the day. After their champagne dinner at
the Fortress of Not As Much Solitude As Usual, Lois excuses herself to change into something more comfortable, and
I can’t imagine what that means, since she’s never been here before and they didn’t arrive with luggage.
But while she’s out of the room, Superman takes the opportunity to call his mom and tell her that he’s quitting his
job, which is probably something that he and Lois should have discussed first.
“If this is what you wish,” Lara tells him, based on a procedurally-generated AI conversation from the distant past, “if
you intend to live your life with a mortal — you must live as a mortal. You must become one of them.”
So I’ve got a question that I’m not sure they’ve considered: How come?
I mean, there isn’t a single word of explanation for this pronouncement. Lara just says it, and then directs him
toward the mortalizing booth.
“This crystal chamber,” she says, pulling a crystal chamber out of precisely nowhere, “has harnessed the rays of the
red sun of Krypton. Once exposed to these rays, all your great powers on Earth will disappear forever. But consider:
once it is done, there is no return. You will become an ordinary man. You will feel like an ordinary man. You can be
hurt like an ordinary man.”
There’s probably other stuff that he can do like an ordinary man too, but she doesn’t need to go through the whole
checklist. He’s in love with Lois, and that means he can’t be Superman anymore, according to a rule that I am not
familiar with.
Because obviously he can do both; he’s done it lots of times. In the newspaper strip, Superman married Lois all the
way back in 1949, and they stayed that way for two and a half years, at which point they decided it was all a dream.
There was also a “Mr. & Mrs. Superman” feature that first appeared in the Superman comic in 1978, depicting an
alternate reality where Lois knew that Clark was Superman, and she actually helped him with super-tasks as well as
covering up his secret identity. The feature moved over to the Superman Family title, and ran on and off until 1982.
Then, in the regular comics continuity, Superman and Lois got married in 1996, and when DC walked back their
unpopular “New 52” universe reboot in 2015, one of the things that they had to fix was to make sure that Superman
and Lois were still married. And then there’s the television shows Lois and Clark and Superman & Lois, which are
both based on the premise that a Superman/Lois union is not only possible, it’s inevitable.
So obviously there’s nothing inherent in the structure of a Superman story that makes it impossible for Superman to
fight crime and also go on dates with ladies sometimes. So what’s going on?
It’s clearly not about the schedule. You could imagine that the problem might be that spending time with Lois would
take time away from his superhero activity, but clearly that’s not an issue, because he spends lots of time out of
uniform.
If the problem was that he needs to focus on being a champion of truth and justice, then he shouldn’t have a secret
identity at all. Being Clark Kent is literally a full-time job, in the sense that Clark actually has a full-time job, and
Superman needs to be there the whole time. By definition, being Superman is a side hustle for Clark, a hobby that
he pursues in his off-hours.
In fact, being a top reporter at a major metropolitan newspaper is a particularly absorbing job; it’s not a predictable
nine-to-five experience. I’m sure that real journalists find it difficult to maintain a healthy work/life balance; imagine
being a secret alien king of the sky on top of that.
Besides, we saw in the first movie that Clark goes on nighttime dates with Lois. Her knowing that he’s Superman
would actually be more efficient, because he wouldn’t have to waste time finding excuses to go do Superman stuff
when he’s with her.
The typical cliche explanation for why a hero needs a secret identity is that if anybody knew that Clark was
Superman, then it would put his loved ones at risk; his enemies would know that they could attack him by hurting
his girlfriend.
But that doesn’t really work as an explanation either, because Lois already has such an elevated risk profile that
supervillains would hardly register. This is a woman who falls out of helicopters and into crevasses even when it has
nothing to do with Superman, not to mention her habit of attaching herself to major tourist attractions during a
bomb scare.
Also, everybody already knows that Superman is close to Lois, and the Daily Planet staff. That’s why the Kryptonian
villains go to the Planet office to find him. So that can’t be the reason either.
If there isn’t a practical reason why Superman can’t date Lois, then I have to conclude that the reason is cultural, or
religious. The fact that Lara can say that Superman “must” live as a mortal, without any evidence or explanation to
back that up, suggests that there’s some kind of Kryptonian moral code that forbids mixing with outsiders. She’s
essentially “banishing” Superman from Kryptonian society, for choosing to marry an Earth woman.
The fact that Kryptonian society doesn’t exist anymore means that this cultural attitude is even more self-destructive
than it usually is, when people abandon and denounce their children for marrying outside their
race/religion/culture. Kicking your only son out of the house for being romantically transgressive is difficult when the
house already exploded thirty years ago and half a galaxy away, but somehow Lara manages it.
In fact, if you look at it from that point of view — Lara and Kryptonian society are explicitly choosing to punish
Superman for choosing to marry someone that they don’t approve of — then her moist-eyed warning to be sure of
what he’s doing seems gross and gaslighty. She’s framing that as a choice that Superman is making, when it’s
actually a choice that she’s making, to kick him out on the street just for being attracted to human girls.
Okay, do you want an even more depressing interpretation? Cause here it is: I actually think that this is about
masculinity. Superman is the ultimate embodiment of individual masculine-coded power: he’s strong, and fast, and
he can’t be hurt. He doesn’t have powers that are culturally coded as feminine, like the ability to talk, or heal people,
or empathize with other people’s problems; his skill set is more in the area of punching people in the face.
So dating Lois is a problem, because it threatens to dilute that masculine power with icky girl stuff. As she said in the
previous scene, Lois would give the Fortress “a woman’s touch”, and that touch would destroy this bachelor pad
man-cave, domesticating the warrior. This is what all the comic book writers and editors were afraid of, in that 1977
“Super-Symposium” that I wrote about a few weeks ago — that the idea of Superman taking out the garbage and
caring for a child was simply unthinkable, because that would feminize him.
Ultimately, it’s all about the guy’s nuts; if we allow Superman to ejaculate, it would disperse his animal spirits,
making him weaker. Apparently, Superman is supposed to stay away from women and keep himself mentally and
physically pure; that’s the only way that he can maintain his massive superpowered erection.
So what we’re about to see is Superman becoming weaker and de-masculinized, just as Lois is getting a craving for
“big-sized” hot dogs. They definitely should have talked about this first.
Superman II 2.33: Who You Callin’ Kleenex?
March 11, 2022Superman IIfavorite posts, masculinity, mythology, style
You have to be careful with stories, especially the big mythological ones.
If you leave them sitting around in people’s brains for long enough, stories become ideas, and then ideas become
attitudes, which become worldviews. And that’s not a linear process, obviously. Your attitudes affect how you
interpret stories, and how you choose the kinds of stories you’re interested in engaging with.
At a certain point, you’re not telling stories anymore. The stories are telling you.
Now, I’m bringing this up because this is the scene where we see Superman and Lois Lane in bed together, being
cozy and presumably post-coital, and that means someone is going to bring up “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.”
There’s nothing we can do about it; it’s just the way that the world works.
“Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” is a clever and funny short essay by science-fiction writer Larry Niven, first
published in 1969 in Knight: The Magazine for the Adult Male. It’s a tongue-in-cheek pseudo-scientific exploration of
how Superman could keep the Kryptonian species alive, without destroying the woman who’s conceiving and
carrying his child.
The essay sets that stage by reflecting on Superman’s psychology, and genetic makeup.
What turns on a Kryptonian?
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the
marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain
shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.
Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.
What arouses Kal-El’s mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the
year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn’t have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a
kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy
— and would be, of course, by church and common law.
So that’s the tone: taking the concept of a superpowered extraterrestrial that looks like a human at its face, and then
following the logical consequences.
Here’s the best-known passage in the essay, and the one that inspires the title:
The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm
resembles “a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack.” One loses control over one’s muscles.
Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he
do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater
penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.
Superman would literally crush LL’s body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum,
gutting her like a trout.
Lastly, he’d blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be
unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El’s semen would
emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet.
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Sure, it’s a funny piece, but there’s something that feels a little odd about the pleasure that people take when they
talk about this article. That passage describes, in intentionally upsetting detail, the disassembly of a woman’s body
through the “involuntary” expression of hypermasculine sexual violence. It is told as a joke, and then retold again,
passed down through the generations, whenever somebody brings up Superman and Lois’ romantic future.
Now, I don’t want to be the guy who takes a joke too seriously; I consider myself mainly a comedy type person. But
it says “gutting her like a fish”. The joke is an expression of schadenfreude, and the pain that we are taking pleasure
in is a woman’s messy, painful death at the other end of an exploding penis.
So my question is: what does this story say about us?
I’m asking that because I think there are several ways to interpret the Superman/Lois Lane relationship, and this is
one of the incorrect ones.
The concept behind “Woman of Kleenex” is that Superman is more powerful than Lois Lane. He is not.
Yes, he can fly. He can run really fast. He can pick up heavy things. He can punch people so hard that there isn’t
anything left of them to punch. He has really good eyesight. He can, I guess, blow on stuff really hard. And it is
impossible to physically hurt him.
So why is Lois more powerful than he is? Because she’s Lois fucking Lane, that’s why. And because style is more
important than physical strength.
Take a look at the “Long Walk” scene from the first movie, where Lois is acting like the screwball comedy heroine
that she is always meant to be. She’s the one who’s at home in the Daily Planet newsroom, an entire environment
that is built specifically around her.
She’s walking out of the office, and Superman is asking if she’d like to go to dinner. “Oh, gosh, Clark, I’m sorry,” she
says. “I’m booked. Air Force One’s landing at the airport, and this kid’s going to be there to make sure that you-
know-who answers a few questions that he’d rather duck.”
That’s Lois’ evening. She’s going to change her clothes, take an elevator up to what might as well be her personal
heliport, and chase down the President of the United States, who is afraid of her. And she’s going to do it in heels
and a new hat. Now tell me who’s more powerful.
And there’s Superman, the guy who can pick up a car if anyone needs him to, which at the moment we don’t, and
he’s following her like a lovesick puppy, and all he can think about is how much he adores her, and how good she
smells.
This is important, because the concept “Superman is powerful, and Lois is not” is fundamentally unsound as the
premise for interesting narrative. It’s like telling the story of David vs Goliath, in which Goliath punches David really
hard and David dies. “Strong person dominates weak person” is not a story worth telling. For anyone who disagrees,
I have a late-breaking bulletin: Ya basic.
On the other hand, the concept “Superman is the most powerful person in the world, and Lois is even more
powerful than that” is interesting and funny and unpredictable. And it also happens to be a more accurate way to
describe the world, because it opens up the concept of “power” as being more than just the ability to lift things.
I mean, let’s say that there’s someone who’s the single best athlete in the world, to the point that they’re actually
better than all other athletes. They’re stronger and faster, and no matter what the competition is, they win every
game. This is impressive, and admirable. That person would be respected and looked up to around the world, and
they would have more and better sex than you could ever hope for.
But they wouldn’t be the most powerful person in the world, because that’s not how power works. Nobody is the
most powerful person in the world. The world is always more powerful than you are.
And honestly, the idea that Kryptonians are more powerful and therefore better than humans is clearly not the case,
especially in these movies. Kryptonians are elderly white people who huddle inside big empty rooms under a crystal
dome that they had to build because their planet sucks and they couldn’t think of a better way to handle that.
And their technology is clearly not better than ours. For one thing, their earthquake detection system is beyond
flawed, and they’re way too defensive about it. They don’t know how to build rockets — apparently the only one
ever made on the planet was in the shape of a pointy crystal star, and the only thing it can do is crash-land
somewhere and fall to pieces, hopefully within walking distance of someone who feels like dealing with a random
abandoned two-year-old. Their education system is ridiculous, and there is no evidence in this movie that Superman
knows anything more about algebra, Chinese philosophy or lyric poetry than anybody else who went to regular
school.
In fact, if you’re really invested in the fictional idea that Kryptonians are inherently superior to humans, then that is
kind of sad and indicates that you may have some issues to work through. People who are physically stronger and
have different technology are not superior to you. You are fine.
So the “Woman of Kleenex” essay is funny, but it shouldn’t be used as the basis for telling or interpreting Superman
stories. Modern Superman comics and television shows take Lois Lane seriously, and the relationship between
Superman and Lois is depicted as a partnership between equals.
Obviously, there are some aspects in their life together that he is better at and in charge of, like running off
somewhere to protect people from an exploding volcano or whatever. And then there are other aspects that she is
in charge of, which is basically everything besides exploding volcanoes.
That is who Lois Lane is. If you think that you’re going to gut her like a trout and blow her head off with your magic
powerful penis, then you can go ahead and try, but you’re about to learn some very important life lessons which it
would behoove you to heed.
Superman II 2.34: Mars Attacks
March 12, 2022Superman IIgunplay, music, style vs logic
The coup, when it comes, is ridiculously easy. Like, not even easy for people with superpowers, but just actually easy.
It feels like a high school field trip could take control of the United States, if they had a little time to prepare.
I mean, the defenders were clearly aware that trouble was coming; I don’t think they usually have the world’s
smallest gun emplacement right outside the Oval Office. They knew that there were three hyper-powered disco
dancers traveling east from Idaho, making a beeline for the White House with a couple stops to wreck tourist
attractions along the way, so these gentlemen went and got some sandbags and crouched behind them.
I suppose I can understand why they weren’t able to build a more impressive firing position; sandbags aren’t easy to
come by, at a moment’s notice. If somebody told me I had to go get a bunch of sandbags in a hurry, I wouldn’t even
know where to begin. On the other hand, I’m not the United States military.
But these chumps aren’t either, as far as I can see; a lot of the security detail representing America’s last line of
defense appear to be lightly armed, cowardly mall cops. They’ve got tiny little handguns, like the ones that you can
get at Party City for eight dollars, if you live in Texas.
One of these guys even tries to come at Ursa with a truncheon. The people defending Dino’s Restaurant in East
Houston were better armed than that.
There’s no armor, no snipers, no command and control. There are seven high-ranked military experts right on the
other side of the door, but out here, the strategy is to point and shoot.
They don’t even get that injured. There’s no blood. Mostly they just get tossed around, and some of them run away.
The most threatening moment is when Non chucks part of a marble column at a guy, and he shoots the chandelier,
which falls on him. Mostly I think they’re just going to have a bad back in the morning.
So, I don’t know, maybe these guys don’t mind being taken over that much. They certainly don’t object when Zod
struts in and proclaims himself monarch. You can kill me, they don’t say, but the people of Earth will never bow to
you. We will resist, they don’t continue, for the sake of our children and the future of our planet. We will fight you
until our dying breath, they don’t conclude. This might be the first administration entirely staffed by beta cucks.
So this is all very silly, and not really impressive as an action scene. These three are taking over the United States as
defined by the occupation of a single room, with no real sense that anything exists outside this set. We don’t see
Americans reacting to this development. We don’t see anyone trying to put up a real fight. The big dramatic surprise
in the scene is that somebody else pretends to be the President, briefly.
And yet this is an undeniably famous scene that everyone knows, and never forgets. “Kneel before Zod” is an
instantly recognizable catchphrase. Somehow, a soft-spoken man with an English accent, a pasty complexion and
pink eye shadow manages to take over the United States with one raised eyebrow, and we believe it.
Part of the explanation for that is the sound design. During the battle sequence, there’s no score, just the sound of
frantic gunfire, pillars collapsing, glass breaking and soldiers screaming. Non makes a couple of grunts, but mostly
the three attackers are silent, unstoppable forces.
Then the door explodes, and the Kryptonians walk through the portal to the accompaniment of a few descending
notes on the brass, and a frantic cry from the cymbal. Then the score adapts the music from the Krypton trial
sequence at the start of the first movie: austere and cold, with slow, emphatic smashes of the piano and irregular
martial paradiddles on the percussion that suggest that it’s wartime, and this is the leader of the enemy’s army.
When the guy pretending to be President stands up, the score adds some high-pitched synthesizer notes, and then it
transitions into the music from the scene with the Science Council rejecting Jor-El’s warnings.
It’s terrific. Go and listen to it. The score does so much work in this scene.
Meanwhile, the generals and aides are entirely still. They stand at attention, and stare silently at their captors. As I
suggested above, it’s an undignified surrender after not really trying that hard, but the stillness also marks this scene
as important and dangerous.
With the humans not giving a lot of reaction, the audience unconsciously leans forward a bit, anxious to hear the
invaders’ questions and demands.
And then there’s Zod’s dialogue, which is remarkable. He asks one yes/no question, makes a mean joke, and then
issues instructions.
Zod: You are the one they call President?
Not actually the President: I am.
Zod: I see you are practiced in worshipping things that fly. Good. Rise before Zod. Now, kneel before Zod.
And the guy just goes and does it, quietly and without fuss, because he was the recipient of a devastatingly arched
eyebrow.
It’s the simplicity of the scene that makes it work: the lack of action and hurry, the quiet acceptance of a terrible
destiny.
Zod doesn’t launch into a villain monologue about his feelings, or his plans. He doesn’t explain why he wants a
demonstration of obedience, or what he’s going to do once he gets it. He expresses the entirety of the confrontation
in three words: Kneel before Zod. It’s a simple instruction, with unspoken consequences.
And this round of the ancient struggle between style and logic ends with a knockout blow that will reverberate
across time. This is how superhero movies work. Style wins.
Footnotes:
Here’s a cute little trivia note: two of the stuntmen who appeared in the battle for East Houston also show up at the
White House, on the other side of the country. Jim Dowdall, who was thrown from the Jeep and fired the bazooka at
Non, appears here as the security guard that Ursa throws over her shoulder. Doug Robinson, who staggered away
from the flipped-over Jeep in East Houston, is the guy who Zod pulls through the window in this scene.
Superman II 2.35: Mainly About Hot Dogs
March 13, 2022Superman IIcoca-cola, favorite posts, masculinity, time to penis, world peace
Well, after centuries of stories assuring us that sacrificing something for true love is admirable and worthwhile, we
finally have a movie that begs to differ.
Superman II tells us that making sacrifices for love is selfish, and it benefits bullies who try to take over the world.
That’s why there are so many bullies currently running things. People need to keep that in mind.
So here’s the disempowered Clark Kent, freshly sprung from the Fortress of Solitude’s mortalizing equipment, and
he’s trying to keep up with his girlfriend’s unshakeable appetite for hot dogs that she doesn’t eat.
“See, I told you there would be a hot dog place somewhere,” says ace reporter Lois Lane, as they drive back home
from the North Pole in a car that I’m not sure where it came from, along a route that I guess cuts through Canada.
This is the third time today that Lois tells Clark that she’s hungry — asking for a hot dog at Niagara Falls, getting take-
out in the Fortress, and now stopping at a diner on the long drive home. She never got that hot dog at the Falls, and
when she sits down at this “hot dog place”, she orders a cheeseburger.
So I don’t know what’s up with Lois, and her ambivalent attitude towards hot dogs. It must be a metaphor for
something, but what?
But it’s a lovely relationship moment, showing once again that Clark loves Lois for the unique and complicated
woman that she is.
She orders a cheeseburger with everything on it, a Coke, french fries and a side salad, and he just grins at her, utterly
delighted by everything that she does. This is the last pain-free moment that this couple will ever have, so it’s nice
that they’re enjoying it.
Because here comes Rocky, a trucker/supervillain who routinely terrorizes the citizens of Don’s Diner. He sits down
at the counter, on the seat that Clark had his heart set on, and proceeds to ogle Lois and offer her a free meal. If she
plays her cards right, she might be able to defray some of the travel costs, but Lois isn’t particularly budget-minded.
When Clark gets back from the washroom, he finds that his seat has been filled by another dude. You’d think that
Clark would already be used to this kind of thing, because he’s been pretending to be a clutzy wimp for a while now,
and people in Metropolis probably aren’t always polite.
But this is a truck driver from Canada, and recent experience has taught us how obnoxious Canadian truckers can be,
if you let them get away with shit.
So Clark sees an opportunity to prove to Lois that he can still stand up for himself without superpowers.
He tells Rocky, “Gee, I think perhaps somebody ought to teach you some manners, sir,” and gets a snappy retort in
response.
The baffling thing for me about this scene is that this is not something worth fighting over. In fact, Lois stands up and
says, “Look, Clark, we can just —” and gestures towards the tables, which clearly they could just.
As far as Rocky’s concerned, this interaction is entirely over; he’s turned away from Clark twice in the last twenty
seconds. So far, his offense is annexing a counter seat and making a couple of cutting remarks, and there are plenty
of other seats that Clark and Lois can go and occupy in peace. Clark hasn’t even ordered yet.
But Clark insists on escalating the situation, prepared to fistfight with a guy over restaurant etiquette. He says,
“Excuse me, sir, would you care to step outside?” and when Rocky ignores him, he repeats the call to action in a
more determined tone of voice.
Obviously, I understand the point of this scene — this is the moment when Superman learns that losing his powers
means that for the first time in his life, he’s vulnerable. He’s not going to win every fight, and sometimes evil will
triumph, if we’re defining “evil” all the way down to a guy who smirks at you, and exacts a mild inconvenience. This
scene gets the job done, and gives us a moment to see the horror and surprise on Superman’s face as he discovers
that he can bleed.
Still, I wish this incident was a little more consequential, as an opportunity to stand up to the forces of darkness. He’s
not fighting crime, and he’s not protecting the weak and innocent. If Rocky triumphs, then Lois will have to get up,
and carry her Coke five steps to another table. That’s the problem that Superman has decided that he needs to
solve.
In fact, Clark is currently the one being an asshole. Rocky was impolite, but he tried to de-escalate by ignoring Clark’s
first request to step outside. Clark is the one who threatened violence.
In fact, after this first successful punch, Rocky goes and sits down again peacefully. The conflict is over. Rocky is
drinking his coffee.
There’s some lovely dialogue here:
Clark: I think maybe we ought to hire a bodyguard from now on.
Lois: I don’t want a bodyguard. I want the man I fell in love with.
Clark: I know that, Lois. I wish he were here.
But then he gets up and challenges Rocky to fight again, which is not the thing that Superman would do. This is
actually evidence that Clark is a violent hothead, who can’t accept the obvious consequence of his own actions.
And then, after Rocky continues the fight that Clark intentionally provokes, Lois jumps on the guy, grabbing his hair
and kicking him. The situation gets so hot for Rocky that he says, “I don’t like your meat anyway,” and he walks out
of the diner, restoring peace to the world.
I honestly don’t know what “manners” these savage lunatics think they’re going to teach Rocky, as they drive him
out of a public accommodation where he has every right to be. He’s been challenged and attacked three times, and
each time, he has responded with the least amount of force that he possibly could in order to resolve the situation
— one punch in the first round, an elbow in the stomach and one punch in the second round, and nothing but a
snarl at Lois.
The key to the scene is the sign on the diner’s window that says: “Get US out of the United Nations”. That must be
why the people who run the diner are on Clark and Lois’ side. I didn’t realize that the United States’ participation in
the United Nations was still an issue in 1981, or really at any time since the end of World War II. But the diner is
against world peace somehow, and they support Clark’s saber-rattling and pointless agression against the guy who’s
trying to calm everything down.
In fact, at the end of the movie, Clark — once more a major world superpower — returns to beat up on the guy, who
once again is sitting calmly at the counter, eating his meal and ordering another plate of food. Then Clark uses his
superstrength to throw Rocky down the counter and into the plate glass of a pinball machine, knocking him
unconscious and probably causing some kind of spinal injury. Now tell me again that he’s a hero.
Footnotes:
There are several logistical challenges for Clark and Lois’ trip back from the Arctic. Superman flew them to the North
Pole, but now it’s Clark making the home journey. Where did they get the car from? How do you drive from the
Arctic to Metropolis? Where did their clothes come from? (The Fortress of Solitude could feasibly have a change of
clothes for Clark, but I’m not sure why he has two spare outfits in Lois’ size, unless he’s doing the weird wax museum
thing.) Also, I don’t think they ever checked out of the hotel.
The establishing shot of Clark and Lois’ green car is actually footage shot for Luthor’s car crash in the first movie. You
can see that the windshield is blacked out, which they did to disguise that nobody was driving the car. It’s also
driving on the left side of the road.
Richard Donner has a cameo in this sequence, walking by the car as Clark is parking, and smoking a pipe.
There’s a ridiculous amount of product placement for Coca-Cola in this sequence, which is gradually revealed over
the course of the scene.
There are two Coca-Cola signs on the wall next to the restroom (although the smaller one is hidden by Lois in the
first part of the scene).
There’s a logo on the soda fountain further down the counter.
Lois orders a Coke, and twelve seconds later, she says, “Can I have my Coke now?”
The counterman brings her a can.
During the “bodyguard” line, there’s a close-up of the two guys sitting at the other end of the counter, and there’s a
little stack of Coke cans nearby.
When Clark gets up, we can see that there’s another Coke sign on the rear door, and two windows are decorated
with decals of Coke bottles. (This is when you can see the smaller Coke sign by the bathroom.)
When Lois attacks Rocky, you can see there’s also a Coca-Cola logo on the window above the Coke bottle decal.
After Rocky leaves and Lois helps Clark up to a chair, there’s a reaction shot from a guy at a table, and there’s
another Coca-Cola logo on the window next to him.
When Clark is at the table and Lois is dabbing at his blood, there’s a Coke can sitting a couple inches from his head.
When the waitress turns on the television, there’s a photo of a Coke fountain drink on the wall; when everyone
gathers to watch the TV, the fountain drink picture is framed nicely between the counterman and the waitress.
When Clark says “Zod!” and gets up, you can see a huge Coca-Cola sign outside the restaurant.
When you see the close-up of the TV, there’s a JVC logo, which is also product placement.
There’s one shot that has two continuity errors in it. The counterman pours Lois’ Coke twice, and in the shot where
he sets the glass down for the second time, Rocky sits down for the second time.
Also, when Lois assures Clark that he didn’t know this was going to happen, Clark says, “They knew. I heard him. I
just didn’t listen.” The original line that he spoke was “He knew, I heard him,” but they had to change it because
Brando was cut out of the second film. This post is brought to you by Coca-Cola.
Superman II 2.36: The Do-Over
March 15, 2022Superman IIdirector's cut, gilligan, narrativium, secret identity
They could not have been more clear about this.
“Once exposed to these rays,” Lara said, “all your great powers on Earth will disappear forever.” He said he was okay
with that. “But consider,” she said, “once it is done, there is no return.” He did it anyway.
And now here he is at customer service, with his receipt for one slightly used mortality, and he’s asking to speak to
the manager. He’s got a green crystal powered by pure narrativium, which comes with an “all his great powers”-back
guarantee.
So now I don’t know who to trust. What else did the crystal machine lie to him about? Next, you’re going to tell me
that you’ve seen a poem lovely as a tree.
So we’ve decided to hike all the way back to the North Pole, because we saw a really mean episode of The West
Wing.
In an emergency broadcast, the President of the United States announced on behalf of basically everybody that he’s
handing over the keys to a very angry man wearing a very shiny suit. But then he interrupted his own concession
speech to scream, “Superman, can you hear me? Superman, wh—” and General Zod grabbed the mic, to issue a
personal challenge to a person who doesn’t exist anymore.
So it’s a good thing the waitress turned on the TV, just in time to deliver this critical information to the one person
who needs to hear it. This must be one of those Gilligan brand TVs, with lead character detection.
Now, while we’re in Norway on foot and en route, we should take a moment to figure out who this new character is.
This is someone that we haven’t seen before, an unsuccessful composite of two characters who hasn’t properly
integrated his personas yet. This isn’t Clark Kent — the guy with the slicked-down hair, the eyeglasses, the stammer
and the full-time job. But it also isn’t Superman, the indestructible guy in the cape who rescues cats for a living.
He’s not wearing Clark’s suit, or Superman’s tights. He’s also not adequately dressed for a one-man hike through the
polar wastes, but we can leave that aside for now.
The important thing is to ask why this new creation — for the sake of discussion, I’ll call him Hot Clark — has been
such a failure. I was rough on him in the previous post for harassing a guy who had already stopped fighting with
him two punches ago, but it’s not surprising that Hot Clark doesn’t know how to behave. If he was regular Clark, he
would have stammered and touched his glasses, and then he would have sat down meekly at a table, problem
solved. If he was Superman, it wouldn’t have come up in the first place. Hot Clark is the third option, and he’s not
working out.
The only way to describe him is to talk about the things that he’s not. He’s not cowardly and self-effacing like Clark
was, but he’s not strong and resilient like Superman was. He doesn’t have any attributes that we know of; he doesn’t
even know what he wants to order at the diner. We can only consider him a person by process of elimination.
Back in the diner, Lois said, “I want the man I fell in love with,” and Hot Clark said, “I know that, Lois. I wish he were
here.” The common interpretation of that moment is that Lois fell in love with Superman, and this isn’t Superman.
I think it’s more accurate to say that Lois fell in love with someone who had two personalities — Superman and
Clark. They were kept separate from each other, but it’s the interplay between those two personas that she loves.
Clark knows her, and spends a lot of time with her. She’s not sexually attracted to him, but he’s a very important
person in her day-to-day life. Superman is the one that she recognizes as attractive, but he hardly knows her, outside
of one date and a couple of rescues.
So when she admits that she loves him, it’s because she’s discovered that he is Superman and Clark, not just one or
the other. This is a radical new interpretation that I just thought of on the spot.
So this is the ill-fated Hot Clark who reaches the Fortress, this unsatisfying melange who can’t do anything right. He
goes and stands on the platform, and gives the least convincing speech of all time.
Kal-El: Father? Mother? Boy, I really wish you could hear me. Cause I need you. You see, I — I, uh — I failed. FATHER!
And then — logic be damned — he notices the magical green glowy crystal that Lois dropped on the floor a couple
scenes ago, and he goes and picks it up, and everything’s fine.
It’s not a very satisfying way to end this storyline — Hot Clark picks up the green crystal and looks at it for a few
seconds, and then there’s a transition to a different scene, and later on, Superman arrives in full regalia at the
dramatically appropriate moment.
Now, in the competition between the Donner Cut and the theatrical cut, there’s a lot of room for disagreement.
Some people prefer Lois throwing herself into the river instead of jumping out the window, and it’s a judgment call
between Lois pulling a gun on Clark vs Clark falling into the fire.
But this is the one moment in the Donner Cut that is just objectively better than the theatrical version. This scene as
filmed by Richard Donner involves the artificially intelligent ghost of Jor-El appearing once more to his defeated son,
giving up the last shreds of his existence in order to heal Superman and fix the world.
It starts with the apology.
Kal-El: Father? If you can hear me… I failed. I failed you, I failed myself, and… all humanity. I’ve traded my birthright
for a life of submission, in a world that’s now ruled by your enemies. There’s nobody left to help them, now… the
people of the world… not since I… FATHER!
Hearing no answer, he turns to walk away… and that’s when the green crystal starts to glow. He picks it up, and
inserts it into the remaining shard of the crystal control center.
There’s a closeup, showcasing his battered and bruised appearance.
And in a blast of radiant light, the outline of a face appears as a mask…
… and resolves itself into a ghostly image of Jor-El.
Jor-El: Listen carefully, my son, for we shall never speak again. If you hear me now, then you have made use of the
only means left to you — the crystal source through which our communications begun.
Jor-El: The circle is now complete. You have made a dreadful mistake, Kal-El. You did this of your own free will, in
spite of all I could say to dissuade you.
Kal-El: I, uh…
Jor-El: Now you’ve returned to me for one last chance to redeem yourself. This, too, finally I have anticipated, my
son. Look at me, Kal-El. Once before, when you were small, I died, while giving you a chance for life. And now, even
though it will exhaust the final energy left within me…
Kal-El: Father, no…
Jor-El: Look at me, Kal-El. The Kryptonian prophecy will be at last fulfilled: the son becomes the father, the father
becomes the son. Farewell forever, Kal-El. Remember me, my son.
Then there’s some optical effects as the mask rushes by…
and Jor-El appears. He reaches out to touch Kal-El’s shoulder.
Jor-El: My son…
Kal-El shakes as white energy moves from Jor-El into his son. This increases until there’s a blinding flash…
… and we see Kal-El, alone, lying face-down in the ruins of the crystal.
So that’s great; there’s no way around it. It completes the father/son theme from the first movie. It shows that
Superman isn’t just flipping a switch; he’s giving up something important in order to reclaim his destiny. The visuals
are great, it’s memorable. I won’t hear a word against it.
Of course, the reason why they “couldn’t” use it in the finished film is that the Salkinds decided to cut Marlon
Brando out of the sequel, so that they didn’t have to pretend they were going to pay him any more money than the
amount that they were already not paying him. In the earlier sequences where Jor-El appeared, they replaced him
with Susannah York as Superman’s mother, delivering mostly the same information that he would have.
But they didn’t reshoot this sequence, and I’m not sure why. It’s possible that they just figured it wouldn’t have the
same emotional resonance without Jor-El, or they couldn’t do it for some production-related reason. Maybe they
didn’t think it was important. So the film shows him picking up the green crystal, and then Superman’s magical
return to Metropolis.
But it doesn’t really matter, in the most basic storytelling sense. This green crystal is an expression of narrativium,
the all-powerful force that bends events in a direction that produces a story which the audience finds satisfying.
We’ve seen Lois finding out about Superman. We’ve seen Superman and Lois on a romantic date. We’ve seen them
in bed. We’ve seen them try, and fail, to move on as a normal couple. So there’s nothing left to show us that would
be interesting to look at.
Hot Clark slinking back to civilization for a lifetime of servitude is not going to make anybody happy. We want to see
him become Superman again, and go fight the bad guys.
It doesn’t matter if this is a cheat, which contradicts dialogue from previous scenes. The only thing that matters is
that the audience wants Superman, and we are willing to go along with pretty much any coincidence or lunatic plot
contrivance that gives us what we want.
All successful stories work this way. Details are erased and glossed over, coincidence powers the plot points. It turns
out that we like it that way, whether we think we do or not.
So… Hot Clark? Go and get changed. We’ll wait for you.
Superman II 2.38: A List of Things That Our Kryptonian Overlords Don’t Care About
March 19, 2022Superman IIfavorite posts, mewling, villains
#1. Focus groups.
Obviously, “Kneel Before Zod” is going to be the main theme of our re-education program, as we transition to a fully
Zod-based society. It’s a simple message of global submission that everyone can understand. However, it’s not
testing as well with all demographics, especially the elderly and the injured, who are having trouble getting into the
correct kneeling position. It’s important to pay attention to the injured demographic, because there are a lot more
of them now than there used to be.
#2. Storage facilities.
Everyone has been notified that their lands, their possessions and their very lives will gladly be given in tribute to
General Zod, and overall compliance is very strong. However, things have gotten backed up at many of the
possession redistribution centers. One of the problems is that the trucks which are carrying the possessions are also
technically possessions themselves, so when those are gladly given in tribute to General Zod, it makes it difficult to
move the rest of the surrendered possessions around.
We also haven’t established yet where the possessions that are gladly being given should actually gladly go. There
was an early rush to pile them up on the lawn of the White House, but that site is now quite full, and since this is
1981, it’s mostly Rubik’s Cubes. Staff have issued fliers explaining that the General now has all of the Rubik’s Cubes
that he needs, and the surplus is being diverted to other storage facilities around the Washington, D.C. area. A
special commission has been set up to investigate further short-term storage options.
#3. Your puerile, mewling excuses.
General Zod’s daily briefings on the progress of global submission to his will are delivered each morning by an
expendable member of the staff. Zod is mainly interested in maps and pie charts that represent his authority and
control over the Earth people, on land and under the sea. (A misunderstanding in one of the early briefings left the
General with the idea that there is a population of Earth people who live underwater, and now he asks every day for
an update on the progress of his domination over the sea people.)
The tricky part of the briefing is when he asks whether we have discovered where the Son of Jor-El is hiding. We
have not yet determined a satisfying answer to this question.
#4. The weak.
It’s assumed that at some point we should start killing the weak, who aren’t worthy to participate in the glorious
new world of our Kryptonian overlords. However, many of the weak are doing useful weak-accessible jobs, which
the strong don’t want to do. There’s been a lot of discussion about this. It would be good to get some clarity on the
issue, because the weak are naturally quite anxious about it.
#5. Engagement metrics.
The communications team has been providing audio and video content to the media when General Zod has a new
message for the people, but this is released on an erratic schedule based on the General’s current focus. On Tuesday,
Zod’s speech about the world uniting under the common goal of marching proudly together in the New Order
received blanket coverage across the world on all channels, with very high viewership numbers, even after several
subsequent repeats.
However, on Wednesday, a request from the communications team for fresh content was not well-received. The
General would like it to be known that, in his words, “I am not one of your Earth influencers.” The team is currently
brainstorming alternatives.
#6. Arts funding.
One of the primary avenues for the expression of local submission to General Zod’s rule is the building of statues to
memorialize our Kryptonian overlords and their generous rule over all things. To encourage local arts communities
to participate, a scheme was proposed to provide grants for design competitions. The proposal was incinerated, and
we will not be moving forward with this project.
#7. This puny planet.
The entertainment industry has been organizing spectacles and television shows that they hope will amuse our great
captors, because we’ve found that when they get bored, they tend to fly around and set things on fire. So far, the
one surefire hit has been The Army Apology Hour, in which individual members of the armed forces say that they’re
sorry for attempting to resist Kryptonian rule in the early hours of their benevolent reign.
Other programs have not met with success. We had high hopes for a late night celebrity talk show called We Abase
Ourselves Before You, Mighty Zod and a live gladiator arena show called Is There No One on the Planet to Even
Challenge Me, but they did not meet with executive approval.
The real difficulty in this area — and indeed on most issues that have come up during this glorious era — is that our
faultless leaders tend to communicate with Earth creatures mostly through arched eyebrows and heat vision, so
we’re not entirely sure what they want. Honestly, we’re starting to wonder why they even subjugated us in the first
place.
Superman II 2.39: Lost in Place
March 20, 2022Superman IIperil, syd field
Enter Lex Luthor, unnecessarily.
I mean, we’re already looking at a worst-case scenario for the Earth, now entirely in the possession of three bug-
eyed monsters from Planet K, who don’t really have a plan for what’s going to happen next. The trio is already bored
with literally everything in the world, and since they haven’t even thought of redecorating their office, it seems like
they’re not very good at cheering themselves up. Honestly, the only thing that they know is destruction, which they
indulge in when they’re happy and also when they’re not happy.
So sending in Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind on Earth and this movie’s C-plot, is not technically necessary to
move the story forward. But the movie is hedging its bets on the villainy, throwing in a more engaging character as
backup just in case the three Kryptonians get boring, which they have.
We’re currently three minutes into the third act of Superman II, so it’s a good opportunity to take a look at the
structure of the movie. My guide in these matters is Syd Field’s 1979 book Screenplay: The Foundations of
Screenwriting, which popularized the idea of a three-act structure. Field claimed that every successful screenplay
follows this structure, which is obviously an exaggeration, but it’s a nice way of figuring out how a movie works.
According to the three-act model, Act 1 sets up the premise and the main character, and then introduces an inciting
incident that changes the character’s situation, and poses a dramatic question that drives the film.
In Act 2, the rising action shows the main character dealing with the fallout from the first plot point, and the
protagonist finds that they’re unable to solve their problems, unless they make some kind of important change. The
second act often ends with a rock-bottom moment, where things are as bad for the main character as they could
get.
Act 3 shows the result of the character’s development, resolving the dramatic question and demonstrating how the
characters have changed over the course of the film.
I like this model, because it allows you to track how the main character develops over the course of the film, and to
see whether all of the plot points actually lead to a satisfying conclusion.
Superman II actually has two-and-a-half separate plot tracks, which don’t come together until the end of the second
act.
The major plot is the story of Superman and Lois, who spend almost all of the first two acts entirely on their own,
hardly talking to anybody else in the movie. Act 1 is their trip to Niagara Falls, and Lois’ attempts to figure out
Superman’s secret identity. The act ends with Clark and Lois in the honeymoon suite, and the revelation that Clark is
Superman. The dramatic question at the end of the first act is: can Superman be with Lois, and still maintain his
heroic identity? Act 2 is Superman deciding to give up his powers to be with Lois, and it ends with the absolute rock-
bottom moment of the beat-up Clark realizing that he’s made a terrible mistake.
The B-story is the villains’ thread, and their main plot points occur around the same time as Lois and Clark’s. Act 1 is
the villains discovering they have powers on the moon, and then coming to Earth to rule; their first plot point is
making first contact with the Idaho police force, where they discover that humans are weak and worthless. In Act 2,
they flex their muscles, and take possession of the Oval Office. Their triumph at the end of the second act drives
Clark’s realization that he needs to become Superman again.
And then there’s the Luthor plot thread, which has essentially nothing to do with the rest of the movie. There are
several sequences with Lex and Eve — escaping from prison, heading north, and discovering the Fortress of Solitude
— which all happen while everyone else is doing Act 1. Then Lex disappears for all of Act 2, and returns forty
minutes later, here at the top of Act 2.
The major structural problem with Superman II is the same problem that the first movie had: an inability to integrate
the romantic story and the superhero/villain story.
Superman: The Movie worked like this — Act 1: Backstory, Act 2: Superman and Lois, Act 3: Superman vs Lex Luthor.
In the second act, Superman and Lois had no idea there was such a person as Luthor, lurking underground and
waiting for their opportunity to strike. Act 2 ended with Superman and Lois’ balcony interview, which is essentially
the end of the Superman/Lois character development for the rest of the movie. Act 3 was all about the missiles and
Superman confronting Luthor, with Lois pushed off to the side in order to put her in peril, without actually engaging
her in the movie’s plot.
Superman II does exactly the same thing. The Kryptonian story bubbles under the surface, with Superman and Lois
entirely oblivious to the fact that the villains are even on Earth. They’re already taking over the White House by the
time Lois and Hot Clark get out of bed.
And once again, as soon as Superman confronts the villains in Act 3, Lois is left on the sidelines. She’s left standing at
the window, a spectator who watches the big fight and doesn’t participate in it. When the action moves from
Metropolis to the Fortress of Solitude, Lois is brought along, but she’s just a peril monkey, standing around waiting
to be threatened. She doesn’t actually do anything.
And just like the first movie, when Superman wraps up the major romantic plot thread, Lois is an object rather than
a participant in the resolution, to such an extent that she’s not even aware that there was a problem in the first
place. Twice. They did that twice.
So the fact that Luthor doesn’t participate in any of the plot points either is hardly surprising. I like this scene, where
he inserts himself into the Superman/villain storyline by force of will, because he’s doing funny Luthor shtick, and I
enjoy Gene Hackman’s Luthor shtick.
But the information that he’s providing to the villains — that Superman has a relationship with people at the Daily
Planet — could have been provided by literally anybody in this fictional world. This could be the kid who Superman
rescued at Niagara Falls, walking in and telling them that; it wouldn’t make any difference to the plot point.
The only real contribution that Luthor makes comes at the end of the Metropolis fight, when Superman runs away,
and Luthor tells the villains that he knows Superman’s address. That’s a piece of information that only he knows,
which justifies the sequences in Act 1 where Luthor discovers the Fortress of Solitude.
Unfortunately, they play that scene in exactly the same way that they play this one. In this scene, the villains are
leaving, when Luthor says, “First you must find him — and Lex baby is the only one who knows where he is,” which
isn’t true.
And fifteen minutes from now, when the villains say they’re going to kill him, he replies, “Kill me? Lex Luthor?
Extinguish the greatest criminal flame of our age, eradicate the only man on Earth with — Superman’s address?”
So they don’t really use Luthor very well in Act 3, I guess is what I’m saying, and the same goes for Lois, which is
even more of a shame. One of these days, somebody’s going to write a superhero movie in which all of the plot
threads actually come together, and all of the main characters are involved in the movie’s resolution, but not today,
and not in this movie, I’m afraid.
Footnotes:
There’s a visual continuity error in this scene: when Lex sits down, he’s got his cigar in his left hand. When the shot
changes, he’s got it in his right hand.
Superman II 2.40: The Reshoots
March 21, 2022Superman IIdirector, hairstyle, reshoots
Perry White and Jimmy Olsen are worried. Standing in Perry’s office at the Daily Planet on this unquiet night, they
fret about the fate of the world.
“I can’t understand it,” Perry grouches, pacing across the room. “Where is he? I mean, he shows up every time a cat
gets stuck in a tree, and now he’s decided to pull a disappearing act.”
Jimmy starts pacing too. “Yeah, well, maybe we just haven’t figured out his game plan,” he offers.
“Game plan!” Perry huffs. “It’s fourth down, the two-minute warning has sounded, and the ball’s deep in our
territory. Just how brilliant do you have to be? I mean, uh —”
And then he stops, realizing that Jimmy is pacing exactly in step with him, and grimaces at the copy boy.
It’s a cute moment, which gives Jimmy and Perry one of their vanishingly few moments of cuteness in the sequel.
But was it worth rebuilding the Daily Planet set?
The production of Superman II supports an excessive amount of idle Monday-morning quarterbacking, which I am
taking full advantage of. It’s not fair, I know; most of the time, directors get to do their job without being haunted by
the footage left over from a previous director. But both Superman and Superman II have been blessed with
alternative cuts that expose the directors’ choices — the Extended TV Cut for the first movie, and the Donner Cut for
the second — which enables after-the-fact nitpicking that most films don’t have to deal with.
Still, as long as we’re here, we might as well enjoy ourselves. So far, we’ve looked at sequences that Richard Lester
directed that replaced the original Dick Donner scenes, like Lois at the Eiffel Tower, and sequences that replaced
scenes that Donner was planning to shoot but never got to, like Lois finding out that Clark is Superman.
Now we’ve arrived at a curious moment in the film — a Donner sequence that was already finished and in the can,
which Lester reshot but didn’t fully replace.
Donner filmed all of the Daily Planet scenes for both movies early on in the production — it was the second thing
they did, right after filming all the Marlon Brando scenes. So this sequence, with the Phantom Zone villains and Lex
Luthor invading the Daily Planet, was already wrapped back in May 1977.
Once Lester took over the production in fall ’79, he wanted to do this sequence differently, so they rebuilt the set,
and filmed some new footage. But they couldn’t completely replace the whole sequence, because Gene Hackman
refused to come back and do the reshoots. So what we see in Superman II is a Frankenstein patchwork of both
Donner and Lester’s version of this scene.
The most noticeable difference is Lois’ hair, which if you’re in the hair-noticing demographic is extremely obvious
and distracting. In the Lester version, Lois’ hair is more frizzy and full.
And Donner’s version is — I don’t know, less frizzy? Unfortunately, I’m in the demographic that’s hair-noticing but
not very good at hair-describing. It looks different, is what I’m saying.
So you can tell that the shots of Lois punching Ursa and cradling the fallen Perry were from the original shoot…
while this insert of Lois gasping, “Superman!” is from the Lester reshoot.
The funny thing is that the Lester reshoots don’t make that much of a difference. I’m sure if they could have got
Hackman to come back, Lester would have reshot the whole thing, as he did with the other sequences. But including
the Hackman footage means that they’re really just making changes around the edges, and creating visual continuity
errors.
Some of the difference between the theatrical cut and the Donner Cut are bits that Lester cut out. The Donner Cut
has a cute little moment where Jimmy’s taking flash pictures of Non, who gets annoyed and crushes Jimmy’s camera
with one hand.
Also, when Luthor enters, Jimmy says, “Wouldn’t ya know it!” and then Non picks him up by the scruff of the neck.
Zod asks Luthor, “This is the son of Jor-El?” and Jimmy squirms, “No, but I’ll bet you’re a son of a —” and then Lois
cuts him off with a shocked “Jimmy!” It’s cute, not a huge loss.
Another weird little difference is that the theatrical cut uses a Luthor line that I guess Hackman never recorded the
ADR for, so Lester has the Hackman stunt-voice do it: “Even with all this accumulated knowledge, when will these
dummies learn to use a doorknob?”
Here’s another reshot moment — in the original shoot, Superman lands on the flagpole outside Perry’s window and
says, “General — haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”
And then there’s a reaction shot with Jimmy, inside the office.
In the Lester reshoot, Superman says, “General — would you care to step outside?” which is a nice echo of his “step
outside” moment in the diner.
He’s switched position for the reshoot, favoring his right side rather than his left.
When the villains exit through the wall of the office, the theatrical cut uses this shot of Lois, Perry, Lex and Jimmy
through what used to be the wall.
But the Donner Cut has a couple more shots throughout the scene with Perry and non-frizzy Lois…
… which the theatrical cut swaps for a bit from the Lester reshoot, with a woman gushing over Non: “The big one’s
just as strong as Superman!”
After the fight, when Superman’s run off, the villains return to the Daily Planet office for one more little scene. As
with the earlier scenes, most of this is from the original Donner shoot, except for the last couple of shots, where
Ursa says, “Why not increase his handicap? Since he cares so much for these Earth creatures, let us take his
favorite!”
So it feels to me like the changes aren’t that consequential, and I’m not sure it was worthwhile to go to all the
trouble of doing the reshoots. On the other hand, doing a Superman movie at all is a bit of a luxury item, so if it
made them happy, I suppose there’s no reason to stop them. It’s probably too late, anyway.
Footnotes:
Okay, one more nitpick and then I’m done for the day: in the shot of Non smacking Perry into the ceiling, you can
see another person’s arm, holding Jackie Cooper’s hand.
Superman II 2.41: The Big Dance
March 22, 2022Superman IIarchitecture, fight scenes, punching
And then there was the night when the President of the United States appeared in the sky above Metropolis, and
tried to beat a guy to death with a bus.
So here we are, ladies and gentlemen, at the event we’ve all been waiting for: the big super-on-super action scene,
where things stop being polite and start getting real. For the first time ever on the big screen, in color and on
purpose, we’ve got the titans of the skies battling it out mano a mano for unquestioned air supremacy over a couple
of blocks in Midtown.
And the thing that strikes me, from the comfort of the backseat four decades later, is how dumb this is. Not that it’s
a bad scene, or stupid filmmaking. This is exactly what people paid their money to see in the first-ever blockbuster
supersequel, and the movie delivers. But these characters are fucking idiots, and they’re about to have a big dumb
fistfight in the sky.
The scene begins with Superman standing on a flagpole outside the Daily Planet office, annoying the undisputed
leaders of the formerly free world, and General Zod bellows, “Bow down before me, son of Jor-El! Kneel before
Zod!” And then he points at the floor with a dramatic flourish, to indicate where he would prefer the Son of Jor-El to
kneel.
And then they go and hurl themselves head-first through the window. These people think that they run the entirety
of the planet Earth right now, and this is how they behave. I can just imagine Jen Psaki, trying to explain this to the
White House press corps.
And then they all go and distribute themselves across the skyline, to have the stupidest possible conversation.
“Son of Jor-El!” says the Master of All He Surveys, positioning himself topside at a construction site. “We were
beginning to think you were a coward.”
“I’m not a coward, Zod!” is the retort.
Then Non floats by and goes rraaaaaaajhhhhhhh, and Ursa cries, “Let him prove it!”
So that’s where we’re at, strategy-wise: Prove you’re not a coward. They flew all the way here from Washington, D.C.
So then Zod’s like, “Then die, as you deserve to!” and he throws, I don’t know, part of a house, I guess? And
Superman’s like, oh no, part of a house. And then he burns it up with the heat vision that Zod knows perfectly well
that he has.
Also: “I’m not a coward” — “Then die, as you deserve to!” For not being a coward? These people need to listen to
themselves for a minute.
At that point, for reasons of his own, Superman decides to go fly around aimlessly for a minute. “Take him!” says Zod
to his officially stupidest minion. “He’s yours!” Why?
There’s a little bit of flying over the river, and then they start flying over the streets again, and then Superman hears
Ursa’s voice, saying, “Superman!”
And he just stops what he’s doing, and looks around, and Non punches him in the face.
Their strategy was to distract him by saying “Superman” and then punch him in the face. That was a successful
strategy.
The thing that’s amazing to me is how mythological this isn’t. This is the ultimate battle of good versus evil, on which
hangs the destiny of countless billions, and they’re just throwing architecture at each other. It’s like they’ve been
given the lantern that hangs at the crossroads of the end of all things, and they can’t figure out how to turn it on.
Next thing that happens: Superman kicks Zod in the face.
And then Ursa goes and gets a big stick. I’m not even trying to dumb this down for comic effect; they are consistently
going and making these choices. Big stick.
Ursa yells to Non to “Hold him!” which allows Superman the time to notice that she’s swinging a stick, so he ducks
out of Non’s grasp and Ursa ends up hitting Non, knocking him all the way backwards to smack into the Empire State
Building, and what was the original plan for that move? Non was supposed to hold Superman so that Ursa could hit
Superman with the stick… which would still knock both of them backwards. Non’s the one who would have hit the
building anyway. How are you so bad at this?
The thing they’re not really grappling with is the fact that they’re all indestructible, which means that none of this is
going to have any effect. It doesn’t matter how hard you throw an indestructible guy at stuff. He’s indestructible.
He’s going to be fine. This entire battle is happening because there are four of you and you haven’t figured that out
yet.
The problem is that this battle is entirely literal; there’s no mental or emotional or metaphorical struggle going on
here. This isn’t a moment when Superman comes face to face with his own fears, or the consequences of his
actions, or the sins of his father, or the terrible dent that he’s made in human history. It’s four people in the sky,
hitting each other with sticks.
I mean, they don’t even do “We’re not so different, you and I.” How dumb is your dumb scene when you can’t even
do that?
Superman II 2.42: Save My Baby!!
March 24, 2022Superman IIfavorite posts, save my baby, the madness of crowds
Now, I have to admit that this one has a pretty good excuse, compared to other Save My Baby Ladies in her weight
class.
Your typical Save My Baby Lady has left her infant unattended in a flammable apartment building playing with a pile
of oily rags while she goes out to the pachinko parlor, and she comes home just in time to realize that she’s going to
need a superhero, tout suite. “Save my baby!” she cries, and all of a sudden it’s everybody else’s problem, as seen in
Backdraft, Spider-Man and Hero at Large.
In this instance, the Save My Baby Lady has made the simple mistake of going out shopping with her baby, while
three sky tyrants beat the hell out of a guy in aerial warfare directly overhead. One of them just got knocked into the
Empire State Building, and the radio antenna snapped clean off, now plunging in the direction of down towards this
formerly carefree consumer.
Everybody else has the good sense to scuttle for shelter, but Save My Baby Ladies have a strict stand-your-ground
policy. “Oh, my god!” she screams. “My baby!” And then she tries to cover it with her body, which is sweet but not a
lot of help.
I mean, I don’t want to blame the victim, although to be honest, they are trending super blameable right now.
Because these are superhero movie New Yorkers, who are notoriously chill about their own safety while standing on
the fringes of action sequences.
For example, in the climactic street battle in the first Fantastic Four movie, the Thing throws a car, and the car hits a
bus, and the bus hits a power line, which is snapping and sparking everywhere, and the people of New York go,
whoa! and they back up maybe half a step. Superhero movie New Yorkers are for real.
So that’s why these clowns are standing around goggling at the pretty lights in the sky, as the world falls to pieces
around them. They’ve been living for at least a few days under the tyrannical rule of a team of lunatic alien sadists,
who have demanded — hang on, let me check the list — their lands, their possessions and their very lives to be
given gladly in tribute to General Zod.
Apparently word hasn’t reached the citizens of Metropolis, who seem to be holding on to their possessions, and are
currently in the process of obtaining more of them. I don’t know how many monuments you need to demolish to
get these people to stop shopping and take cover, but they have not yet grokked the seriousness of their situation.
So as the übermenschen tussle overhead, we see vast crowds of well-wishers taking to the streets, reacting to the
battle like it’s a boxing match at Metropolis Square Garden, as opposed to a humanitarian crisis with themselves in
the starring roles.
We even see the taxi driver from the beginning of the movie who crashed his car into the immovable Clark Kent,
looking up through a shower of rubble and saying, “Man, this is gonna be good!” These people are out of their
minds. How many taxis does this guy need to lose before he figures out there are healthier places to work?
But I have to admit, they keep up a delightful stream of outfield chatter. A lot of it is generalized crowd rhubarb, but
every once in a while you get a stray “Come on, Superman!” or “Look out!” or “Get her!” which must be good for
Superman’s morale.
Of course, once the monsters start making cars explode, things get a little more hectic at ground level. I assume at
this point that life for that taxi driver has gone from “good” to “well done”. But there seem to be just as many
gawkers and rubberneckers, well after the explosions should have chased them out of the area.
They go here, they go there, they flit from spot to spot, they redistribute themselves across the streetscape. It’s a
fun party game, if you’re interested in apocalyptic party games, to look for shots like this one, where people are
running in opposite directions. It’s possible that the Battle for West 34th Street is just an opportunity for aerobic
exercise for these kamikaze health enthusiasts.
I mean, this shot is 87 seconds after the first car exploded on this block, and look at everybody, still clogging up the
intersection. Firefighters are here, ambulances have arrived, but the foot traffic is at pre-pandemic levels. I don’t
know what they’re serving at Mike’s Bar, but people seem very reluctant to get more than a couple hundred yards
away from it.
That’s how you know it’s the same block, by the way; you see the same signs in all of these shots. The most visible
are the neon signs outside Mike’s Bar, Aristo’s and JVC Electronics, but you also see a lot of the Laugier Trust, and the
window display at Fiorucci’s.
And it’s not just the shoppers who are committed to a vibrant economy. When Non gets hurled through a building,
he crashes through a full office staffed with five people, well after nightfall. The lights are always on at Sterling
Cooper, I guess. These people are so blasé about their personal safety that they continue to have meetings during a
raging superhero battle royale, right outside. Who are you on the phone with, right now?
And in this shot outside the Laugier Trust — where just two screenshots ago, we saw firefighters hosing down a
burning car — the cleaning woman in the middle is actually yawning.
I’m not going to document every act of urban bravery that we see in this sequence, but if you watch this scene and
just pay attention to the bystanders, it will refresh your lagging appreciation of the human spirit. These people are
incredible.
And that is what makes this a great scene. As I said yesterday, the fight itself is just indestructible people throwing
each other into things, and getting up again. If they were doing these moves in an empty arena, it would be
repetitive and dumb. It’s the bystander reactions that give this sequence real energy.
That’s why they arranged crowds of people to fill every shot, cheering and pointing and reacting to everything that
happens. This isn’t the planet Mongo, where squadrons of faceless Hawkmen fill the alien sky above nowhere in
particular. This is New York, with real people doing things that we recognize.
The bystanders are explicitly demonstrating for the audience how we’re supposed to react to the onscreen action.
They scream, they cheer, they buzz with excitement and anxiety, and it gives the scene real stakes.
Yes, it’s silly that there’s a bus full of people just arriving at this intersection a full six minutes after the onset of
hostilities, but what good is an empty bus, dramatically? These people were all somebody’s baby, once. Let’s line
them up, and save them all.
Footnotes:
If you’re wondering why the Laugier Trust is so prominent in the sequence, a blog post by art director Paul Laugier
explains:
“We were heavily involved in drawing up the New York street set that would be one of the biggest ever constructed
at Pinewood. I was working on a block that got quite a lot of exposure because a ‘Greyhound’ bus crashed into it
during a ferocious windstorm and other draughtsmen were drawing up the other side of the street. When we
stopped to eat our sandwiches one lunchtime, someone suggested an alternative way of getting a credit for our
work. It is thus that, if you concentrate really hard during the big action scenes at the end, you will see a little sign on
one of the buildings which reads ‘The Laugier Trust’. I had finally got my name on a film!”
Superman II 2.43: Marlboro
March 25, 2022Superman IIcoca-cola, product placement
Okay everybody, time to light up. This week, I’m talking about the big Metropolis battle sequence, and I have to take
a minute today to appreciate the staggering amount of product placement strewn around the set.
This battle is the main action sequence in the movie, the one scene that everyone remembers as the showdown
between Superman and the Kryptonian villains, and that made it ground zero for advertising firms trying to get their
clients’ logo onto the screen.
Now, the original intention was that the producers would film both Superman and the sequel at the same time, so I
assume that the main advertising space was booked by the time they started shooting in 1977. But then there was a
break in the production, and during that time, Superman became a huge hit at the box office, so I expect more
companies started lining up to buy placement in the film.
I think that’s why this scene ended up so chock full of brand logos, because this was the big sequence still to be
filmed, and the Salkinds could just keep making deals all the way until production started up again. I mean, there’s
always more wall space, somewhere.
The example that everybody knows is the unmissable Marlboro truck, which Superman crashes into in a particularly
thrilling moment. Inside there are little boxes with the Marlboro logo, like the truck is a Kinder egg.
In the commentary written about the film, there’s one number that everyone quotes — that Marlboro gave the
producers $42,500 for placement in the film. They got a lot for their money.
In addition to the truck, there’s a taxicab with a Marlboro ad on it strategically placed at several points in the scene,
especially in the closing “don’t leave us!” moment. You’ll notice that a lot of cars get blown up in this sequence, but
not the taxi with the Marlboro ad.
There’s also a huge billboard further down the street, which we don’t see very clearly. In the above shot, you can
just see the edge of the logo on the left.
And in this shot, you can glimpse both the truck and the billboard at the same time.
Of course, the most unfortunate cigarette placement in the movie is the early scene with Clark and Lois in her office,
when she explains — with a cigarette dangling from her lip — that she’ll never get sick, because she drinks orange
juice.
There are a couple of other cigarette brands spotted briefly in the fight scene, as ads posted on a construction wall.
You can see ads here for Kent III and Viceroy’s Rich Lights, which must have been a late addition, because both
brands were introduced in 1979. There’s also a plug for OMNI, a pop science/paranormal magazine that was first
published in 1978. This must be the latecomers’ area.
The other major sponsor for this sequence is Japanese electronics company JVC, which appears basically
everywhere. They’d already made an appearance in the relatively product-light first movie, in the scene where
people are watching television news reports about Superman through a store window.
Their main placement in this sequence is the huge JVC Electronics sign. You don’t actually see the JVC part in that
many shots, but the neon “ELECTRONICS” is constantly in view, competing with Mike’s Bar and the Laugier Trust as
the most-recognizable landmarks on the street.
There’s also a massive JVC sign behind Ursa when she hits Non with the flagpole.
The other promotional JVC messages are a little more subtle. You can see JVC items in a store window early on in the
sequence, when the sidewalk trumpeter plays a trill.
And Aristo’s also has signage that reads “Hi-Fi — Video — TV — JVC Agent”. You get a decent shot of the red and
white JVC logos in the store window here, and they’re also glimpsed when Non picks up the bus.
I don’t know why Aristo’s feels the need to promote itself as a JVC Agent; it looks like you can get JVC products at
just about every store in Metropolis.
Next to Aristo’s is the Mothercare shop, which is featured appropriately during the moment when the Save My Baby
Lady is about to be crushed by the radio antenna. I wasn’t familiar with Mothercare up to now, but I’ve just looked it
up, and it’s a British store that caters to expectant mothers and young children.
The truck that Zod threatens to explode is another UK/European brand, the Essex Oil Company.
Now, as recognizable as all of this is as product placement, a lot of the brands are integrated naturally into the
scene, like the Mothercare store and the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. But this one for Timex is just naked
product placement.
In the first movie, Lois wore a Timex watch, which she checked when she was waiting for Superman to show up for
their interview. But apparently nobody needs a watch for any Superman II scenes, so they just wrote the word
TIMEX really big on part of the background. It’s not an in-universe ad for Timex appearing on the building; there isn’t
even a clock on it. It’s just sort of generally TIMEX.
Timex also has a spot at street level, on the awning next to the crashed Marlboro truck.
Here’s another one that I didn’t realize was real: Italian designer Fiorucci, which you see a lot of while Superman and
Non are slugging it out in the sewers.
And then there’s the big Times Square neon Coca-Cola display, which I find amusing, because the shot is actually the
Coke logo exploding, and falling to pieces. This one also feels kind of natural to me: the Times Square Coke ad was a
famous New York landmark at the time. It’s certainly more subtle than the Coke advertising blitz in the diner scene.
Okay, what else? There’s a billboard for Cutty Sark Whisky, which we see a couple of times.
When Superman gets thrown into the windshield of a car, there’s a takeout box from Kentucky Fried Chicken on the
dashboard…
And then there’s a lengthy moment during the super-breath sequence with customers exiting the store and getting
blown away, followed by a KFC-uniformed waitress trying to bring them their change.
And the last one that I’ve spotted is the bus ad for the Broadway musical Evita. This seems to me like an unlikely
product to advertise in a movie that’ll be seen by people all over the world, with no ready access to Broadway
theaters. Still, Eva Perón was famously ambitious, so it’s not out of the question.
In conclusion: MARLBORO.
Footnotes:
The rampant product placement is a handicap in one shot, when the people on the street react to Zod threatening
Superman with the construction site wall. The shot’s been flipped to give the gawkers an eyeline to the proceedings,
but that means the text on the cigarette and OMNI ads (and the NO ENTRY sign) are flipped as well.
Superman II 2.45: Things I Want to Tell You
March 27, 2022Superman IIspecial effects
Man, it feels like old times, right? Like, back when I was writing about the first Superman movie, I had an endless
fund of boring production details to talk about, and it took me forever to get through a single scene. That drive for
documentation pretty much dried up by the time they made the sequel, so I’ve been able to move along through
this movie without getting too tied up on anything in particular.
But there’s a lot going on with the big New York dance number, which is giving me more than a week of material to
dig into. So today, I’m going to tell you a few things that I think are interesting about this scene.
Just to kick things off on a high note, I’m going to point out that the set is really cool. I didn’t think much of it in the
crossing the street scene early in the movie, but that’s because they had the lights on, and this set is designed to be
seen at night.
It’s at least a couple of blocks long, and then extended with a big matte painting at the end to make it look longer.
They built it on the Pinewood Studios backlot, and it took four months to build.
I think one of the big achievements with this set is that it doesn’t feel new. They had to build all of this by hand,
including streetlights and window dressing and merchandise in all the stores, but everything is dirty and faded and
cracked, like it’s been here for a long time.
I know that’s basic filmmaking when you’re building a city street set, but twenty minutes from now, I’m going to
have to stop paying attention to Superman II, and my next stop is Swamp Thing, where even the stuff that was
filmed on location looks fake. Oh, how I will miss competence.
And then the other cool thing is that they made it again, in miniature, so they could throw cars around.
Considering how much time and energy it took to make the miniature set, they don’t actually use it that much. The
first shot that I can spot which uses it is when Non gets punched out of the sewer, and then crashes through a
building.
The exploding Coca-Cola sign is also a miniature.
The Making of TV special also said that there was one shot in the bus-throwing sequence that used the miniatures,
but looking at the scene, I’m not actually sure which one it is. I think it’s probably this shot, when the bus lands, and
starts moving along the street, but it’s very fast and I’m not sure.
And then there are several shots during the windstorm where the cars are flying around, and these are all
miniatures shots. In this shot with the taxicab crashing, there are two cars that smash into the Laugier Trust
windows, and the glass smashes are very convincing and clever.
Unfortunately, they do linger a little too long on the shots that have tiny people on the sidewalks, drifting gently
backwards, and that doesn’t look very good.
The car explosions were real, though, rigged up to explode safely. A lot of the extras in the scene are stunt people,
and you’ll notice that the streets are a bit less crowded in the shots where the cars actually explode.
Now, since all those miniatures are done so well, I’m surprised to see this shot using such obvious fake traffic. This is
Superman first facing off against Zod, and there’s a little track of perfect little cars, all moving at the same speed, and
it looks like another visit to Tinytown.
Speaking of cars, according to the Internet Movie Cars Database, the scene includes more than 30 real cars,
including a 1969 Ford Mustang, a 1974 Chevrolet Camaro and a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda. In other news, there’s
such a thing as the Internet Movie Cars Database.
One effect of questionable effectiveness is the General Zod dummy, which Superman picks up and spins around for a
full ten seconds before launching it into the sky. This actually works pretty well, if you’re not looking at it very hard,
although the moment where Superman releases the dummy is wobbly. This could have used some more coverage
from a different angle, to disguise the floppiness of this takeoff moment.
There’s one more cool stunt that I want to draw your attention to: Non crashing backwards through the office.
This set was actually built sideways, so that the stunt person playing Non could fall through the window and into the
crash pad on the other side of the set. This was similar to the cat burglar scene in the first movie, where we saw
Superman standing at a right angle on an office window. All of the props are attached to the “floor”, and the office
workers are all stunt people anchored in place.
All right, I’m going to tell you about one more silly thing, and then we’re good for the day. This is a little joke that
maybe everyone else in the world has noticed already, but I saw it maybe a dozen times before I realized it was
there.
Zod and Ursa are standing in front of a billboard for air conditioning when they discuss Superman’s concern for Earth
people. That’s where Zod’s standing when he uses his heat vision to blow up the oil truck, and when Superman
reflects the heat vision back at him…
the heat burns away everything but the spot where Zod was standing, which says: “Cool it!” So that’s cute. Okay,
that’s a wrap; we can move on.
Superman II 2.46: The Blowdown
March 29, 2022Superman IIcomedy, the madness of crowds, unbothered
It’s the ultimate battle between good and evil, or if not quite that, then at least the ultimate battle between cheerful
and cranky. I don’t know if anybody’s in the market for one of those, but here it is happening anyway.
Three Kryptonian supercriminals from the other side of a twirling parallel hell have descended upon New York City,
where they’ve challenged Earth’s greatest hero to a game of three-on-one grab-ass, hurling each other into things
and engaging in general endangerment.
Caught between glam rock and a hard place, Superman has been knocked off the playing field for a moment, so the
nearby movie New Yorkers — once again demonstrating that they’ll do anything for a good time — have turned on
their snooty overlords, armed only with sticks and traffic cones.
And then the villains start to blow.
What follows is a two-minute sequence where three shiny supervillains stand in a line in front of a front-projection
screen, blowing people down the street for far longer than you would ever expect. Pedestrians tumble, cars go
flying, umbrellas flip inside out, takeaway purchases are taken away. And still they blow.
This celebration of exhalation is played almost entirely as comedy. The victims’ reactions are exaggerated and often
inappropriate, even for movie New Yorkers. The crowd has been ridiculously blasé about the perils of remaining in
the combat zone, continuing to gawk and goggle as the skyscrapers fall to pieces around them, but now — fully eight
minutes after the start of hostilities on the street where they’re standing — residents are still eating ice cream,
buying fried chicken and making personal phone calls. It is a triumph of shtick over sense, and it lasts approximately
forever. I think this scene may be its own unique genre; I can’t think of a single thing in the history of cinema that’s
even remotely like this.
None of this is in the script, by the way. Here’s what it says on the page:
EFFECTS — It’s a hurricane force wind, wreaking incredible damage. Before the mighty, relentless gale nothing can
hold. Cars, trucks, people are blown down the street, smashing, tumbling. An amazing spectacle.
Superman flies in the face of the gale force – trying to reach the people.
SUPERMAN
Enough! It’s enough!
ON THE VILLAINS — Paying him no mind, they continue.
ON SUPERMAN — Staring up at them as he stands immovable in the path of the great wind. All around him is
devastation. A terrible struggle is going on inside him.
ON PEOPLE — gathered in doorways, trying to protect themselves from the wind, they watch fearfully.
And then Superman flies away. It doesn’t even mention Kentucky Fried Chicken once.
What’s happening here is that director Richard Lester is enjoying himself. Here’s what he says in the Making of
Superman II TV special:
“Once we got onto the street, I found that it was very much like ordinary action filming. For example, there’s a whole
sequence where the villains use their super-breath to create a kind of tornado that sweeps people down the street.
“Once you know how to do that specific effect with one stuntman, it’s very easy to ad-lib, and in fact, in a period of
three nights, we ad-libbed that whole sequence. It wasn’t something that had to be written out in advance, and
therefore, for me, it was a delight. It was a joy to be able to go and invent gags on the spot.”
That’s why this scene goes on for two minutes, far beyond its useful lifespan. When you spend three days in
enjoyable creative collaboration with a film crew and a set of lunatic stuntmen, coming up with as many variations
on a theme as you can, you’re inclined to keep some shots just because they were fun to shoot, even if they’re not
necessary or effective.
So there’s a mix of different tones in the sequence, which change from one shot to the next. There are some
sensible shots, like the firefighters who have been trying to put out the car fires struggling to keep control of their
hose.
Then there are shots that are vaguely sensible, but show somebody trying to do something that they should have
stopped doing on this block a while ago, like the guy walking his dogs.
There are shots of people who clearly haven’t noticed the noise and destruction happening right outside, like the
people walking out of Kentucky Fried Chicken with their dinner, followed by the waitress trying to bring them their
change.
There are shots of people who haven’t noticed the noise and destruction while they’re in the middle of it, like the
guy making a phone call and saying, “What? What sound?” while trying to hang onto the phone booth.
There’s some 60s comedy shtick, like the wife losing her wig and shouting, “My hair!” while her previously toupeed
husband cries, “Your hair, what about mine?”
And then there’s the guy who stays on the phone after getting knocked over and blown down the street, continuing
his conversation, and laughing hysterically as the world disintegrates around him.
There are some very effective miniatures shots showing cars getting blown around that are actually scary…
followed by a guy in a shiny red sequined vest on roller skates, trying to keep his balance in the gale…
followed by even scarier car destruction shots.
So here I am, metaphorically trying to keep hold of my umbrella, struggling to stay upright long enough to explain
why I don’t think this is entirely successful.
Because obviously I can’t just say that it doesn’t work because it’s comedy. I’m the first person in line to say that a
sense of humor is absolutely essential to good filmmaking, and making a joke in the middle of a tense situation
increases audience attachment to the characters. Having a mixture of styles is often good for a film, because it
makes things less predictable and more interesting.
But I have to go back to Dick Donner’s watchword, verisimilitude — that the events of the film should feel like
Superman exists in a real world, populated by real characters with some indication of an inner life.
A funny scene like Lois and Clark’s screwball comedy walk-and-talk through the maze of the Daily Planet office in the
first movie still works as verisimilitude, because while the dialogue and timing are obviously heightened, it doesn’t
shake you out of the idea that these are supposed to be real people with feelings and common sense.
But the characters in this windstorm scene are acting in ways that are on the spectrum from implausible to
impossible for the sake of making a joke, which means that they’re not real people.
Honestly, the thing that breaks it for me is the guy on the phone. He’s not only ignoring the dangerous situation
that’s happening around him, he’s cackling maniacally in a way that would be insane under any circumstances.
This is also the second telephone gag in forty seconds, which I think demonstrates why you shouldn’t just ad-lib your
entire action sequence. My guess is that they would have cut the first telephone booth bit, but it’s in the middle of
the Kentucky Fried Chicken bit, which they liked, and besides, they couldn’t cut it on account of the product
placement. But I suppose Lester really liked this one too, probably because it was so much fun to shoot, so they kept
both.
The real problem here is that this sequence undercuts the idea that any of these battle scenes actually matter.
They’ve established that none of the combatants can ever be seriously hurt, because they’re superstrong and
invulnerable, so the drama of the scene depends on the risk to the civilians. When Superman sees Non and Ursa
pick up the bus, he cries, “No! Don’t do it! The people!” which explicitly tells us what we’re supposed to care about.
But the cluelessness of the people in this sequence indicates that they’re not affected by the battle at all. The
Kryptonians had already been fighting for eight minutes before the windstorm even started, and everyone in the
area could feel the aftershocks of Superman’s underground punch-up with Non… but the KFC waitress hasn’t noticed
that anything is unusual yet.
There are some shots in this battle sequence that are legitimately exciting and scary, but we can’t believe in it,
because they keep showing us people who hardly notice that it’s happening.
Obviously, the one exception is the cleaning lady at the Laugier Bureau, who continues vacuuming while the world
falls apart, entirely unbothered. She is real to me. We’re about to see a whole taxicab smash through that window in
a minute, and I’m not worried about her at all. She is a badass, and the rest of the movie should be about her.
Superman II 2.47: The Snowdown
March 30, 2022Superman IIpowers, the whole point of superhero movies
“Scruffy,” sniffs the leader of Earth, alighting at his worst enemy’s palatial polar beach house. “So morbid. A
sentimental replica of a planet long since vanished. No style at all.” This, from a guy who’s still in the same outfit he
was wearing in Idaho.
Superman leaps out and takes them by surprise, because this was a clever ambush and not just running back to his
dad’s place. Then he stands there and waits for the bad guys to make the first move. I swear, these stuck-up
Kryptonians may know a lot about early Chinese writing and Joyce Kilmer poetry, but military strategy is not their
strong suit. That’s why they’re the only intelligent species in the universe to go extinct because their planet got tired
of listening to their bullshit.
Non decides to use his signature move, which is to jump towards Superman with his arms outstretched going
rraaagghooarrrrr, and our hero counters with a move of his own: peeling off a strip of his ectoplasmic essence and
force-projecting it toward his opponent, who gets quantum-tangled in the coruscating biothermic semi-optical
energy wave, rendering him temporarily fibrillated with artron energy and freak weather conditions. Yeah, I have no
fucking idea what he does.
This is a brand new superpower that nobody had ever thought of before, and nobody ever will again. I know that
any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but this is even more indistinguishable from
that. It implies that Superman’s costume is… I don’t know, tactical fruit leather? autonomous hypno-vinyl? It doesn’t
make sense.
Now, fantasy superpowers are always handwavy expressions of narrative dream logic, but I just can’t muster the
energy to mount a defense of this obviously dumb effect.
This is in the script, too; it’s not even one of Richard Lester’s on-the-spot ad-libs, like the hurricane comedy in the
Metropolis street fight.
EFFECTS: Quickly, in a dazzling display, Superman puts his hand to his chest. Magically, the “S SHIELD” emblazoned
there becomes a literal object in his hand while its “original” remains on the costume. It shimmers and shines with
an energy force that clearly connotes immense power.
Superman flings it like a discus.
ON NON — The effect as the “S SHIELD” hits him and wraps around him.
ON ZOD — He looks worried. He is beginning to realize that Superman, on his home turf, has powers and devices at
his command beyond their comprehension.
Yeah, mine too. The problem with this gag is that you can’t really fashion a mental model to help you think about it.
As silly as it is, flying around the world to make time go backwards actually makes sense on some gut level, because
the metaphor is that traveling in time is like traveling in physical space — you just “go” to another place, which
happens to be yesterday. But this ecto-shield is “an energy force that connotes immense power”, and like any time
that people use the world “energy” in fiction, it doesn’t mean anything.
And then they use finger lasers again, like they did in the Idaho sequence, except that time it was telekinetic and this
time it’s just heat vision coming out of their fingers. I’ll actually allow this one, because heat vision doesn’t make a
hell of a lot of sense anyway, and the mental model for finger lasers is easy: you point at somebody, and stuff
happens. Then Superman takes that stuff, and grimaces, and pushes it back at them using the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue
gambit, and they all fall down and act momentarily defeated.
And then we get another new power straight out of the package: teleportation via soundtrack. There’s some eerie
musique concréte synthesizer noise, and the villains wink away from existence with a little whoosh, and then return
five seconds later with a corresponding whissh, surrounding Superman.
So that’s a thing they can do now: non-instantaneous teleportation, which is ominous but takes longer than it would
to just fly over there, because of buffering.
Superman counters by doing one of the weirdest things that he could do besides put a bear trap in his mouth and
pretend to be a female Tasmanian Devil: he does the teleportation trick too, but splits himself into four illusory
mind-mirror projections, each one operating independently by remote control. This accomplishes hardly anything.
Ursa attempts a tornado roundhouse kick at one iteration of her opponent, but he’s just one of those fragments of
underdone potato that you see sometimes around Christmas, no more yielding than a dream.
Non’s version is even stranger, because it crumbles into jade styrofoam shards when he leaps on it. You know, for a
guy who leaps as much as he does, Non doesn’t have a very good leap-completion record.
And then Superman looks Lois Lane straight in the eye, and delivers one of the dumbest lines in movie history: “I
used to play this game at school. Never was very good at it.”
This is bizarre for the following reasons: a) How is this a game, b) You’re clearly amazing at it, c) Kids on Krypton
don’t have superpowers, and — most importantly — d) You didn’t go to school on Krypton, because you left the
planet when you were a baby. What the fuck are you talking about?
So the question is, why does this sequence rely entirely on fake superpowers that they just made up?
Well, for starters, the whole point of superhero movies is to show you things that you’ve never seen before, and
we’ve just seen all of the regular Superman powers in the 14-minute Metropolis battle sequence that immediately
precedes this one. This is maybe why you don’t have two ultimate showdowns between good and evil in a row.
They’ve already done strength, flight, heat vision, super-breath, cold-breath and general stick-to-itiveness, which
means they’ve run out of useful powers, and unless they figure out a way to have an ultimate showdown based on
listening really hard, there aren’t a lot of other places to go.
The real problem is that basically there’s no way for these people to ever come to any meaningful agreement.
They’re all indestructible, which means that they can’t hurt each other, no matter what they do. Superman can
absorb all the finger laser power that he wants, and then shoot it right back at the bad guys, but at the end of that
shot, nobody is weak or injured, or even tired. Everything that’s happened so far has had no visible effect on any of
the characters.
So fighting doesn’t work anymore, and by this point, there’s nothing in the normal box of supertricks that would
even be interesting to see again. And now they’ve exhausted their supply of bizarre new powers, and everybody’s
still just as strong and healthy as they already were.
To get out of this situation, Superman’s going to have to think laterally, and come up with a way to trick his
opponents. Luckily, these three knuckleheads can’t think of anything besides kicking and leaping, so that shouldn’t
be too hard.
Superman II 2.48: The Miracle
March 31, 2022Superman IImerchandise, novelization
The year is 1981, and once again, there’s a yawning, empty space in the Warner Books release schedule. Every big
movie in 1981 got a paperback novelization, one way or another — Ballantine Books published the Raiders of the
Lost Ark novelization, Jove published the Flash Gordon novelization, and Avon published a novelization for the
Popeye musical that included the song lyrics, which is incredible, because almost all of the songs in Popeye consist
of two or three words repeated endlessly.
But there wasn’t going to be a Superman II novelization, because dumb ol’ Mario Puzo had the rights to novelize the
Superman films, and he refused to have anything to do with them.
Back in ’78, Warner Books — stuck without a Superman: The Movie novelization in a novelization-friendly market —
threw up their hands and said fine, we’ll publish an original novel instead. The book, written by DC Comics writer
Elliot S. Maggin, was called Superman: Last Son of Krypton, and it was 238 pages of blithering nonsense about an
invasion by an enormous hypnotic alien jester who was using a cosmic Xerox machine to make copies of planets, or
something. It was confusing and not very good, but it had a picture of Christopher Reeve on the cover, and that was
good enough.
It turned out that it didn’t really matter what you put between the covers of a paperback that looks like a Superman:
The Movie novelization, because the kind of people who like to read movie novelizations would read just about
anything. It appears that Maggin didn’t have much of an editor; I guess the book was published on the honor
system. Maggin says that he knows absolutely nobody at DC read Last Son of Krypton before it was published,
because if they had, they would have at least stopped him from using the brand name Xerox, which he did quite a
bit.
So if the first book, written in a hurry without any serious editorial oversight, sold just about as well as anything else
would have in that format, then Maggin knew that for the second book, he would be able to write down the craziest
thoughts he ever had about Superman and they would publish it anyway, and that is exactly what happened.
The book is called Superman: Miracle Monday, and it is an extraordinary approximation of American literature. It’s a
free-standing novel by a current comics writer who is completely immersed in existing Superman continuity, and
dreams of being something more than just a comics writer. He has a lot of ideas about Superman that wouldn’t fit in
a 16-page comic book punch-em-up, and this is his opportunity to stretch out and really enjoy himself.
Miracle Monday is mainly about an upsetting dimensional intrusion by C.W. Saturn, a demonic agent of Satan, who
has manifested itself on Earth in the body of Lois Lane’s time-traveling secretary Kristin, in order to play weird tricks
on the world and piss off Superman. The other main plot thread is about Lex Luthor, who escapes from prison by
learning how to temporarily transform himself into a gas through meditation, and then uses a bewildering variety of
eccentric alter egos to get his hands on a lock of Superman’s indestructible hair, for reasons that are not
immediately clear.
But it’s about a lot of other things too, including the mystery of Lena Thorul’s identity, the true nature of magic, the
benefits of being friends with Ray Bradbury, how Superman really feels about Clark Kent, and what it sounds like if
you listen to literally everything at once. It’s about telepathy and tidal waves and art auctions and aluminum dust
and Noam Chomsky and chorus girls dressed up like Hasidic Jews and how to fuck with dairy farmers.
You may be wondering if I’m going to tell you whether this book is good or not, but if you are, that’s the wrong
question. Miracle Monday is interesting, and unusual. I’m glad that I read it, and I’ll probably read it again. But it’s
like asking if a thunderstorm is “good”; it’s just not a relevant question.
The book opens with the description of a nightmare that Jonathan Kent has, while Clark is still a boy. In the
nightmare, Superboy starts wearing his costume and helping people, in ways that are unthinking and dangerous. It
begins with a pair of bank robbers evading the law by traveling under a lake in divers’ suits:
Superboy plopped out of the sky into the lake and spotted the pair merrily plowing through deep murk, breathing
their canned air. The boy knifed through the water and gripped steely hands around a pair of aluminum air tanks. He
punctured both tanks in five places. The air rushed out, and a minute later, people saw the corpses of the pair of
drowned bank robbers surface in a dead man’s float until the police could fish their blue bodies from the lake.
It gets worse.
Superboy crashed through virgin forests to help build roads or dig mines. For the good of society he dropped tyrants,
heinous criminals and chronic speeders into volcanoes. He was a weekend guest at the White House where he
suggested that the president make him de facto Commander in Chief of all American military forces, since, according
to Superboy, he would be in charge of everything soon enough anyway. The president considered the expediency of
this.
In the dream, Jonathan finally realizes that he has to dig up the buried chunk of Kryptonite hidden on his farm, to
get his son to slow down long enough to talk about what he’s doing to the world… and then Superboy appears,
furious, and kills his father with a shovel.
It is dark as fuck. We are currently on page 8 of a Superman movie novelization.
It gets lighter, obviously. Jonathan has a talk with Clark that convinces him that the boy still has respect for humanity
and the balance of nature, and he goes back to sleep happy. Superman is still the good-hearted hero that we all
expect him to be. But it’s important for Maggin to ask that question: how would it feel to be responsible for
something as huge and terrifying as Superboy?
The writing style is more or less modeled on Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote darkly comic satires of American life, often
using science-fiction tropes. It’s funny and conversational, describing impossible things in a matter-of-fact tone. It
punctuates almost everything with specific details that are technically irrelevant, but create a picture of a wider
scope.
For want of anything else to do, I’m going to open the book at random and give you a taste of what it’s like. Okay, it
turned out to be chapter 14, which is about a famous and mysterious scientist named Dr. David Skvrsky. Here’s a
representative sample of Miracle Monday:
More recently, a boatload of overcrowded but unanimously healthy Vietnamese refugees floated unannounced into
San Francisco Bay with the story of how a miracle-working physician dropped from a helicopter onto their deck
somewhere in the south Pacific, examined ailing passengers and took blood samples. Then he synthesized, from a
gel produced under the gills of sea bass, a serum to combat a virus that was sweeping the boat. Soon afterward, the
health ministers of sixteen countries in Asia and North America received identical manila envelopes stuffed with
formulas and explanations in their respective languages, detailing nearly a hundred cures, treatments and foods that
could be made from this plentiful sea bass gel.
Skvrsky had been reported doing one thing or other this week in diverse parts of the world. Burma, Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, Togo, Colombia, Senegal, the Dominican Republic, Byelorussia, Liechtenstein and other places turned
up, in just about that order, in a wild itinerary of Skvrsky sightings. A free-lance foreign correspondent from London
named George Laderbush noticed, according to the “People” section of Time magazine, that someone claimed to
have seen Skvrsky in each of those countries immediately following a reasonably reliable report of the outbreak of
the Itching Sickness in each place.
Four days earlier in Reykjavik where, the day before, Superman had caught a toddler falling from a hotel window,
there were three reports of Itching Sickness. Laderbush went there immediately, and yesterday’s Daily News carried
a story by a European stringer named John Hughes to the effect that Hughes’ sometime collaborator Laderbush ran
into Skvrsky in a hospital lobby there. According to the Hughes report, the only quotable phrase Skvrsky uttered to
Laderbush was, “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
The most Miracle Monday thing about that excerpt from Miracle Monday is that the foreign correspondent from
London is named George Laderbush. It’s just one weirdly specific detail piled on another, and you find out a couple
pages later that David Skvrsky, George Laderbush, John Hughes and the Itching Sickness are all fictional constructs
invented by Luthor, to accomplish who even knows what. That is what Miracle Monday is like.
At its core, the book is an exploration of the concept of super-excellence. Maggin spends a lot of time describing
what life is like for Superman and Lex Luthor, who are both extraordinarily gifted, and live exceedingly complicated
lives where they succeed at every single thing that crosses their mind.
Luthor is essentially supernatural in the book, able to plan and implement the wildest and most unlikely schemes
you could imagine. He juggles a dozen fake identities simultaneously, many of them famous. He determines the
nature of the human soul while sitting alone in a jail cell. He fools everybody in the world except for Superman,
which drives him crazy.
Meanwhile, Superman does lots of Superman stuff, like turning a tidal wave into snow, and battling a demonic villain
who can turn buildings upside down and cause all the steering wheels in Metropolis to disappear at the same time.
He measures time in fractions of a second, making insane calculations about how fast and how strong and how
clever he needs to be to solve the many problems that he faces, including the ones that he’s created himself.
The book actually has some interesting parallels with Watchmen, with Superman as Dr. Manhattan and Luthor as
Ozymandias. Like Superman, Dr. Manhattan is all-powerful and can see through time; his impact on Earth and
history is potentially hazardous, because it leads humans to live with risks and problems that they would otherwise
have to solve themselves. Ozymandias is a Luthor figure who can look at a wall of TVs and magically intuit the future,
and he’s so accomplished and intelligent that he becomes a dangerous puppet master.
Miracle Monday is animated by essentially the same questions about superheroes and supervillains that Alan Moore
asks in Watchmen, but published five years earlier and pretending to be a novelization of Superman II. Obviously, it’s
not as good as Watchmen, because almost nothing is, plus especially Miracle Monday definitely isn’t, but it’s
working a similar patch of ground.
There are remarkable passages about Lois as well, and Maggin takes great pains to respect the integrity of the
franchise’s main characters. Chapter 10’s got a beautiful description of a Superman/Lois date at a secret hot springs
that only he knows about, and chapter 18 has a really well-observed and heartbreaking confrontation after Lois, and
everyone else in the world, learns that Superman really is Clark Kent.
But the cost of all of this fancy writing is that there isn’t much room for a coherent plot; the book is mostly a series
of interesting set pieces, and having the main antagonist be more or less the Devil means that all normal rules of
storytelling can be discarded. For one thing, I have tried and failed to decipher how Superman wins in the end. The
pleasure of Miracle Monday is in the details and surprises, and if it doesn’t hang together as a story, then that’s just
the way it is.
I’m realizing, while I’m doing this, that I like this book more than I thought I did when I started writing this post. I
expected that Miracle Monday would be just as baffling and worthless as Last Son of Krypton, and it’s exceedingly
weird for me to find myself liking a book that was published as a throwaway fake novelization. But this is an
exceedingly weird book, and life is like that, sometimes.
And it looks like Superman II may be the last big superhero movie for a long while that didn’t get novelized. I’ve got a
lot of them ahead of me, including Swamp Thing, Supergirl, Howard the Duck, Batman Returns, Daredevil and
practically everything that follows. Even Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has a “deluxe junior novel”.
So we might as well treasure this lunatic outlier, which was given a chance to explore new territory with very little
oversight. Thanks to some strange magic, Maggin currently owns the rights to the book, and he’s selling it on Kindle
for five bucks. Expect the unexpected.
Superman II 2.49: President falls down crevasse, administration’s agenda in doubt
April 1, 2022Superman IIfalls, murder, narrativium, style vs logic, the abyss, villains
You know, they say that Dems are in disarray, but I don’t think anyone’s ever been in more disarray than this
administration, which is currently on a badwill tour of the opposition’s main campaign strongholds. After a
disastrous whistle stop in Metropolis which led to a grassroots groundswell wielding umbrellas and traffic cones, the
delegation has moved on to a divisive meeting at the challenger’s North Pole retreat, where insiders report that they
have made limited progress.
We’ve just completed the “slap fight” phase of this epic showdown between the forces of good and evil, which used
up two minutes of screen time and accomplished basically nothing. The fugitives from Planet K are indestructible no
matter what you do to them, so shooting them with finger lasers or pretending to turn into a breakable statue of
yourself won’t have much of an effect on the final outcome.
So now we’ve moved on to the “Me? Lex Luthor?” part of the sequence, for the third time in the movie and the
second time in the last four minutes. This is where the theatrical version of the movie and the Donner Cut version
converge, because Dick Donner filmed all the Gene Hackman scenes, and Hackman refused to come back for Richard
Lester’s reshoots.
The last few minutes that we’ve seen in the Fortress of Solitude were all reshoots; the Donner version didn’t include
any of the newly-invented superpowers that Lester created. Lester had to keep Lex away from the action for that
part of the scene because Hackman wasn’t on set, so that’s why he gets dumped on a high shelf at the start of the
scene and then grumbles his way down to floor level, voiced by the Hackman impersonator.
“We have no more use for this one,” says General Zod, which is unfortunately true. Lex doesn’t really do much in the
sequel, which is why you can have lengthy epic showdowns that he doesn’t participate in. The fact that he has to
keep pleading for his life in every scene that he appears in indicates the logical flaw in his character arc — what is he
actually hoping to gain here?
Yeah, he technically gets a promise from Zod that he can have Australia (and Cuba, in the Donner Cut), but these are
vague temporary assurances that he’s aware they won’t honor. He knows that he doesn’t have much of a future,
constantly defending his value every five seconds. The point of his character is that he’s a savvy master manipulator,
so why is he still sticking around in a situation where he has nothing to gain and everything to lose?
It would make more sense for him to stay in Metropolis, while the Kryptonians chased Superman to the Fortress of
Solitude — there’s a vague indication that he needs to give them directions, but directions to the Fortress could be
adequately expressed in three words: keep going North. Then they could go off and either kill Superman, or get
defeated themselves, and Luthor would be out of range.
But who cares? Style beats logic every time, and letting Luthor tag along to the conclusion gives him one more
chance to do something villainous, and he deserves it. Even on a bad day, he’s five times more interesting than Zod’s
crew, and Superman feigning another betrayal is a little tribute to what Hackman has brought to both films.
After all, Superman’s trick doesn’t make a lot of logical sense either — fooling the villains into throwing him into the
briar patch, right where he wants to be.
There are all kinds of nitpicky questions you could ask about his final gambit: Why is the big scary molecule chamber
still in operation, when all the other controls have been destroyed, and this is specifically the one that he must never
use again? How does Lex know how to operate it? Also, Superman was in a lot of pain when he used the chamber to
take away his powers, so why don’t the villains feel anything? And so on.
But nobody cares, because this is the moment that everyone in the audience wants. Fighting unstoppable villains
who never change battle tactics gets old after a while, and at this point, we’re tired of them. Just to make sure that
we won’t miss them, Superman has to kneel before Zod, which Zod has said so many times that we don’t ever want
to hear about it again.
So the audience is longing for Superman to put an end to these people, and if he can make it painful, that’s fine with
us. Switching the molecule chamber’s effect is a clever little trick that Lex is there to admire, and it’s giving us what
we want, so nitpicks are easily swept aside with gratitude. This is how the good guys always win; they just wait until
the audience is sick of the bad guys, at which point we’re willing to accept just about anything.
Case in point: Superman murders Zod.
I mean, we don’t actually see the corpse that Zod will inevitably become, one way or another; he just plunges down
into one of the many bottomless crevasses that make the Fortress of Solitude such a hazardous tourist attraction.
We’ve never really noticed these plentiful holes to nowhere before, but apparently it’s an architectural feature that
gives you a place to dump your defeated enemies into.
I don’t know if there’s a floor down there to smack into, or a huge freezer, or if it just goes on forever somehow, but
this is clearly a scene about Superman and Lois cheerfully murdering their three opponents, and not giving a shit
about what happens to them.
You know, in the Henry Cavill movie, the audience got understandably upset about Superman killing Zod at the end
of the film, but he does exactly the same thing in Superman II and everyone is totally fine with it. It just goes to show
you that lighting is everything.
Superman II 2.50: Ice Cops
April 3, 2022Superman IIdirector's cut, justice, murder, trickster
One of these days, I’m going to write about a movie that isn’t actually two different movies. Specifically, that’ll be a
little over a week from now, when I wrap up Superman II at post 2.55, and move on to a simple little boy-meets-girl
thriller called Swamp Thing.
But in order to land this movie, I need to talk about two endings — Richard Lester’s theatrical cut, and the Donner
Cut — which take different routes to get to the same frankly unsatisfying story point. And today, as we bid farewell
to the giant Arendelle ice castle, I’ve actually got three different versions to discuss. I guess some people have a
problem with letting things go.
Now, the one thing that everybody agrees is that Superman knew that Luthor would double-cross him, because a
lying weasel like him couldn’t resist the chance.
Once the tyrants from planet K have plummeted to their uncertain fate, it’s time to deal with this wascally wabbit,
who’s going to try and talk his way out of a one-way trip to Nuremberg. As a mythopoetic trickster figure, Lex Luthor
knows that he doesn’t have any bargaining power right now, but he’s going to keep talking and see what happens.
“I was with you all the time!” he exclaims. “That was beautiful! Did you see the way they fell into our trap?” It
doesn’t work.
“Look, Superman!” He’s still trying. “I got a proposition for you! Now, don’t stop me until you’ve heard this! Because
— well, I know I owe you one, but… we’re in the North Pole, right?”
And that’s where the story branches — three roads diverging, with three different takes on what happens to Mr.
Luthor from here.
Option 1: Theatrical cut
In Lester’s theatrical cut, Luthor keeps on talking, as we see Superman and Lois leaving him behind: “Let’s wipe the
slate clean! If you give me a ride back, I promise I’ll turn over a whole new leaf. A whole forest!…”
And his voice dies away, as we follow the hero winging his way back to Metropolis. So in this version, Superman
leaves Luthor to die, cold and alone, in a big empty haunted house with dead aliens in the basement, and nobody to
talk to but a shattered Kryptonian memory bank that probably doesn’t even remember how to recite Trees
anymore.
There might be some leftovers from the couple’s romantic dinner in the icebox, which in this place could be almost
anywhere, but there are no other local food sources that we know of. Lois had to keep prompting Superman through
the whole movie before he finally sprang for a hot dog, so it doesn’t seem like he’d keep a well-stocked larder. It’s
likely that Luthor either starved to death, or fell down one of the enormous and deadly crevasses in the Fortress
floor.
Now, some apologists will attempt to retcon this brutal scene, saying that obviously Superman is planning to come
back to the Fortress at some point before Lex expires, and take him to prison and dinner, not necessarily in that
order, but I’d like to point out that there is no canonical evidence to support that theory, and besides, the Donner
Cut is even worse.
Option 2: Donner Cut
In the Donner Cut, Luthor’s dialogue ends with his desperate appeal: “Well, I know I owe you one, but… we’re in the
North Pole, right?” That’s the end of Lex as a material presence in the movie, because the extra dialogue from the
theatrical cut was performed by Lester’s Hackman-alike sound substitute. He just says “we’re in the North Pole,” and
then Superman and Lois fly away; the rest is silence.
Superman lands some distance away, has a touching little moment with Lois, and then he burns the Fortress to the
ground, destroying it with his heat vision, and vaporizing Lex and the three Kryptonians.
And that’s what happens, in this version of the movie. There is no way around it.
We see the villains fall down the holes in the floor. We see Lex talking. We see Superman and Lois leave the Fortress,
without him. We see Superman destroy the Fortress.
By all of the commonly understood rules of cinematic grammar, Superman left Luthor and the Zoners in the Fortress,
and then destroyed it, with all four villains inside. There are zero other possible interpretations for this scene.
That is Dick Donner’s version of the end of this movie. Superman murders Lex Luthor and General Zod, and leaves
them in the ruins for future ice archeologists to unearth. They should have shot this sequence in black and white, for
the full film noir atmosphere.
Option 3: Extended TV Cut
And then there’s the Extended Cut, with the correct answer. As they did with the first movie, the Salkinds sold an
extra-long version of the film to television, so that networks could run it in two parts as a two-night special feature.
The first movie’s Extended Cut was released on Blu-ray in 2017, but the Superman II Extended Cut mostly exists on
fifth-generation VHS tapes that were traded at comic book conventions.
That cut of the movie presents a different explanation for what happened to Lex, and the three Kryptonian villains:
they were arrested by ice cops.
The version that’s posted on YouTube is a bit blurry, but that little group of people moving around in the rear of the
shot are the three Phantom Zoners, being led into a US Arctic Patrol vehicle by a squad of polar police officers.
We hear John Williams’ jaunty March of the Villains one more time, as Lex continues pitching career opportunities
to Superman: “Who’d be the wiser? We’d say that you were killed in the battle. You’ll lie low for a few months, and
hang out at my joint. Then I’ll bring you along as a boxer! The Metropolis Masher, right? Don’t you love that?”
Then Superman says, “He’s all yours, boys,” and the gun-toting ice cop says, “Right, Superman,” because that’s how
polar justice works.
Lex continues pitching, as the cops lead him away and bustle him into the snowmobile, and at this point, the routine
gets wearing. Generally, I have a healthy appetite for Hackman’s Luthor shtick, but this scene exceeds even my
generous patience.
“We could be partners!” he says. “Sixty-forty! … All I’d ask is ten percent! … Eight percent! … Let’s negotiate. Five
percent! … Three! … Two! … One!” And then they close the door and the vehicle takes off, to bring Luthor to the
cooler.
That scene was shot by Donner, as all of the Hackman material was, but they didn’t include it in the Donner Cut.
Donner and editor Michael Thau might have felt that this Arctic Patrol scene slowed down the end of the film, when
the thing that we really care about is what happens between Superman and Lois.
Plus, the extended Luthor shtick really is too much; the not-very-funny countdown from ten percent to one takes 18
seconds, and ends exactly the way you’d expect. Also, there’s no such thing as the US Arctic Patrol, and it’s not clear
how Superman would have contacted them, and asked them to come to the secret ice-palace headquarters that
nobody’s supposed to know about.
Still, at least this would have clarified that Superman didn’t leave the four villains to starve or flash-fry — which,
according to the two existing sources, is exactly what he did.
Superman II 2.51: Hated the First, Loved the Second
April 4, 2022Superman IIreviews, toupee
“The original Superman,” said mean ol’ David Denby in New York magazine, “was one of the most disjointed,
stylistically mixed-up movies ever made. The mystico-sublime rubbed elbows with low farce and pop irony, and
everything gave way to disaster-movie squareness in the end. But now all is well.” Phew, that was a close one.
Because it turns out that Superman II is “easily the best spectacle movie of the season,” according to Denby, and he
wasn’t the only convert. Richard Schickel of Time dug it too: “It is that rarity of rarities, a sequel that readily
surpasses the original. This is not, perhaps, a task requiring Kryptonic levels of wit and wisdom, because the initial
effort was more than a little crude.”
But the most notable turnaround was Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, who absolutely savaged the first movie. Here’s
her new attitude: “Richard Lester, who directed this sequel, brings it one light touch after another, and pretty soon
the movie has a real spirit — what you wish the first had had. The picture grows faster and quirkier as it moves
along.”
And that’s pretty much how things went in June ’81, as far as the critics were concerned. There were a couple
killjoys at the Washington Post and the Boston Globe who didn’t enjoy themselves, but everyone else who mattered
thought it was, as they say in modern parlance, certified fresh.
Once again, every single human being on the planet thought that Christopher Reeve was perfect, even the people
who didn’t like the film. At the Post, Gary Arnold admitted, “The only aspect of Superman II that seems calculated to
preserve the good will is Christopher Reeve’s charm,” and Bruce McCabe at the Globe described the final kiss
between Reeve and Kidder in reverent tones: “The moment is sublime, both cinematically and romantically.” Kael
said that Reeve “brings emotional depth to Superman,” and Janet Maslin at the New York Times said, “It is
Christopher Reeve, of course, without whom this movie would not be remotely possible. Mr. Reeve is so perfectly
suited to the Superman role that he gives the film a warmth and energy it might not otherwise have.”
The other person that everyone had a good word for was Gene Hackman. Denby said that Hackman’s Luthor was
“an effortlessly funny performance,” and Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called it “a brilliantly orchestrated
performance.” Maslin said that he “very nearly steals the movie,” which is impressive, since he’s not in most of it.
As far as the actual villains of the movie were concerned, the critics were mixed. Denby gushed with the evangelical
fervor of a convert, “The three revolutionary traitors, expelled from Krypton and now eager to rule the earth, give
the film grandeur and menace. What a superbly evil trio!”
But Maslin was less ecstatic: “One of the current film’s inventions is the trio of villains from Krypton, who fly to Earth
threatening trouble and who dress like a punk-rock band.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times called out Luthor’s
contribution but hardly mentioned the Krypton crew, just saying “it features the return of three villains from
Krypton.”
Strangely, of the contemporary reviews that I read, Denby is really the only one that describes the three villains
individually, and nobody mentioned the catchphrase “Kneel before Zod”, which I would have imagined was either
worth loving or hating, as per.
The villains were the thing that really got under Arnold’s skin. “They put a creepy new complexion on everything,”
he moaned. “Unlike the funny villainous trio from Superman, the invaders from Krypton are a sheer pestilence,
escapees from some unimaginably nasty leather bar in a distant galaxy. You don’t want to linger around these
ruthless despots. You want to see them crushed, fast.”
Last time, everybody had to reassure each other that the flying effects were in fact as lyrical as we wanted them to
be, but that was three years and a Star Wars sequel ago, so fuck that. “The production suffers from a tacky veneer,”
Arnold continues to rant, “symbolized most conspicuously by some hideous composite photography in special
effects sequences. The impression that certain things are being done on the cheap is difficult to shake.”
Now, Arnold’s the heavy in this sequence, but he wasn’t alone on this one. Janet Maslin said, “The special effects are
more abundant than ingenious, but they’re convincing enough for the cheerful, uncritical audience this movie wants
to please.”
And Sheila Benson griped, “There are, of course, enough effects to fill a dozen Saturday morning serials, but they
aren’t necessarily the film’s deliciousness.” I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to pinpoint a film’s deliciousness, but it’s
harder than it sounds.
“Most of the Earth-based shenanigans of the Oilcloth Trio look very peculiar,” Benson continued, “as though they
were placed in front of projected action.” Everybody had their own little joke about the Phantom Zoners’ costumes,
and “Oilcloth Trio” was the least successful by far. Still, she’s right about the front projection in the blowdown scene.
The big dance number got another rave from New York‘s David Denby: “In a true Lester touch, cars, people and
refrigerators are swept up in the rush of air, while one man, talking on the phone, continues his conversation lying
on the curb, even after the phone booth has blown away. Few movies have made the confrontation of man and
supernatural power so astonishing and so funny.” That’s how much Kool-Aid Denby was drinking; he specifically liked
the sideways phone booth gag. Also: what refrigerator?
Richard Schickel in Time also liked the scene: “The final confrontation with Superman is a barroom brawl on a
delightfully gigantic scale. There is wit, even a sort of weird plausibility, in the action sequences that was not present
in the first film.” But Benson said, “The final aerial battle among the four superpowers, including that too-long
windstorm, is something of a ho-hum.” Which is exactly what I should have said, when I wrote about it. More than
25 paragraphs, and it never occurred to me to say it was something of a ho-hum. Well, we all have regrets, I
suppose.
One thing that got people confused was the mid-stream director switch, so the reviewers weren’t sure what was
Donner’s work or Lester’s. For example, Roger Ebert said, “This is some of Lester’s best work. He permits satire to
make its way into the film more easily. He has a lot of fun with Gene Hackman, as the still-scheming, thin-skinned,
egomaniacal Lex Luthor.” Donner actually directed all of the Hackman scenes.
Richard Schickel also gave Lester the praise: “Since the major change in the credits is the substitution of Richard
Lester for Richard Donner as director, it seems logical to single out the man who did A Hard Day’s Night and The
Three Musketeers as the one responsible for making Superman soar.”
But the no-prize goes to the NYT’s Janet Maslin, who said, “Ken Thorne’s music is perfect for a marching band, but
too loud and starchy for this movie; John Williams remains the only movie composer who can do this sort of thing
well.” Which just goes to show you how wrong Janet Maslin can be, when she puts her mind to it.
Maslin did call out the toupee, though, so she gets bonus points for that: “The villains capture the White House and
bring the President (played by E.G. Marshall, who wears a toupee that looks like a Davy Crockett hat) to his knees.”
Gary Arnold noticed it too: “They force the president (E.G. Marshall in a ludicrous toupee) to kneel and pledge
allegiance.”
There’s just a couple more notes from the balcony before I close. Describing the moment when Superman reveals
himself to Lois, Sheila Benson wrote: “A look around the audience at this moment found wish-fulfillment reflected
on more than one rapt, upturned face.” Girl needs to keep her eyes to herself.
And I don’t know what to do with Richard Schickel’s rant about ’80s superhero masculinity, so I’m just going to tell
you about it and then it’s your problem: “What the…! Clark Kent admitting his real identity to Lois Lane after all
these years? And then, in full Man of Steel regalia, flying her back to his place, pouring her champagne, cooking
dinner and egad! — taking her to bed? The mind boggles — is nothing sacred? But let’s face it, times change, and
Superman and friend have sweetly embraced the spirit of the ’80s as well as each other. They have become — no
other phrase will do — swinging singles (PG division) willing to talk things out, show their vulnerability, be mutually
supportive in their careers. In the next film they will doubtless negotiate a prenuptial agreement and buy a co-op
together.” Oh, for Pete’s sake.
Footnotes:
The reviews cited in today’s post are:
Gary Arnold, Washington Post (June 19): “Superman II: The Plot Weakens“
Sheila Benson, LA Times (June 18): “Superman II: A Human Touch to the Invincible“
David Denby, New York (June 22): “Movies: The Decline and Fall of Mel Brooks“
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: “Review: Superman II“
Pauline Kael, New Yorker: “Review: Superman II“
Janet Maslin, New York Times (June 19): “Superman II Is Full of Tricks“
Bruce McCabe, Boston Globe (June 20): “Superman II is a Sure Bet“
Richard Schickel, Time (June 8): “Cinema: Flying High“
Superman II 1.98: Here We Go Again
April 7, 2022Superman IIhurt feelings, kissing, narrative hygiene, neuralyzer, time travel
Mission accomplished!
Superman II 1.98: Here We Go Again
April 7, 2022Superman IIhurt feelings, kissing, narrative hygiene, neuralyzer, time travel
After several harrowing showdowns with the forces of evil, Superman has liberated the Earth, returning all
government, military and law enforcement power to the same people who had it before, which is obviously the right
thing to do, and not something that anyone will regret later on.
Of course, there are some unfortunate aftereffects. There’s all the wear and tear on Mount Rushmore, for one thing,
and a bunch of repair work that needs to be done around the Daily Planet building in Metropolis. Besides that, the
world is going to have to figure out how to develop a new approach to global politics and international security, so
that three mean people can’t take over the entire planet by blowing up a couple of monuments.
Most significantly, Lois Lane has sustained significant character growth, which will force her to make some difficult
choices. She’s been following a dream that can’t come true, and understanding that truth, while painful, will
ultimately help her to break out of an unproductive pattern and find a new path forward in life. So obviously we’re
going to need to put a stop to that.
Because the law of conservation of narrative in long-running episodic fiction demands that the status quo is
maintained at the end of an episode, so that the people who write the next episode will be able to pick up the story
without having to account for any story or character development left over from the previous one.
Or, at least, that’s what the people making Superman II believed. I don’t know if it even occurred to them that they
could complete the movie without resetting the premise back to the generally understood consensus view of the
Superman story. That may be an idea that people just didn’t get back in 1981, when literally every television show
worked that way except for daytime soap operas, which people did not yet recognize as the model for all long-
running serialized narrative.
The filmmakers didn’t want to give the movie a happy ending, where Superman and Lois find a way to build a life
together, or a sad ending, where Lois has to live with the agonizing daily heartbreak of working with Clark, and never
being able to reveal those feelings to anyone. Either one of those endings would have been a meaningful change to
what everybody thought of as the core of the Superman mythology, and might lead to confusion and unrest.
And so — denied the ability to write either a happy ending or a tragic ending — the filmmakers decided to just not
have an ending at all.
So what we’ve got are two different versions of the ending of Superman II, and both of them involve turning back
the clock, and undoing significant portions of the story.
The original version shot by Dick Donner and used in the Donner Cut involves two Superman/Lois conversations in a
row, which feel to me like they shot two alternatives and kept both of them.
The first conversation takes place in the Arctic after Superman destroys the Fortress of Solitude with his heat vision.
In this one, she tries to keep a brave face, telling him that she understands that the world needs him. And then she
kisses him, and he kisses her back, because kissing isn’t weaponized in this version of the movie.
Then he flies her home and they have the second conversation, with a completely different emotional texture. In
this one, tears are streaming down her face as she tells him, “You don’t have to worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
He says that he knows that, and she keeps crying, and he flies away.
Watching him go, her voice cracks as she tells herself, “Well, there he goes, kid. Up, up and away.” And then she goes
into the apartment and starts writing a story about Superman defeating the Kryptonians, because she’s a reporter
and there’s always a story to write.
And then Superman flies around the world backwards, and he turns back time. We see Lois untype the story, Perry
unbrushes his teeth, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument and the Times Square Coca-Cola sign all
repair themselves, and the three villains return to the Phantom Zone.
This was the original idea for the end of Superman II, undoing the property damage and returning Lois to factory
settings. In the script for the first movie, Lois didn’t get crushed in the earthquake, so there was no need for
Superman to mess with time. He caught both missiles, and the film ended with a cliffhanger: Superman throws the
second missile into space, and it hits the Phantom Zone diamond, freeing the criminals and setting up the sequel.
But the production went way over schedule and over budget, until they weren’t sure they could even finish one
movie, let alone two, so they decided to stop working on the remaining scenes for Superman II and just finish the
first one. With no real ending for the first movie except a cliffhanger pointing to a second film they weren’t sure was
going to happen, they decided to take the turning back time sequence from the end of the second movie and use
that as the end of the first.
Dick Donner and Tom Mankiewicz weren’t sure what they were going to do, once they got back to work on the
second movie and had to come up with a new ending. They just said they’d figure something out, once production
started up again. They’d already made lots of changes on the fly, and I’m sure they would have thought of
something. But they never had the chance, so twenty years later when Donner and Michael Thau were putting the
Donner Cut together, they didn’t have any choice but to use the original ending.
This turned out to be a better ending for the first movie than it would have for the second, because undoing Lois’
death is a specific dramatic choice that makes sense for that moment. It’s a bit of a cheap thrill, but at least it only
reverses a couple of scenes.
Used at the end of Superman II, as originally intended, it undoes the entire second movie, which I think would have
been completely unsatisfying for the audience. You’d walk out of the theater, and every single thing that happened
since you walked in would be irrelevant, the dramatic equivalent of a feature-length dream sequence. And it
wouldn’t even have the same emotional punch, because Superman wouldn’t be taking drastic action to save Lois’
life. He would just be trying to avoid the consequences of his own decisions, basically punching a hole in causality
just to not have to deal with Lois being sad the next day. I don’t think it works.
That being said, I’m not wild about what happens in the theatrical cut, either.
Or, at least, I don’t like the way that they resolve it. The conversation between Lois and Clark about Lois’ heartbreak
and pain is actually well-observed and convincing. She’s trying to hold it together, but she’s real with Clark about
what she’s feeling, and she has some very effective lines.
Lois: I guess it’s sort of like being married to a doctor, you know? The doctor gets awakened in the middle of the
night, and the wife has to cope with the fact that he’s gone. I guess I’m just too selfish.
Clark: No, no — you’re not selfish at all.
Lois: Yes, I am selfish when it comes to you, I am selfish! And I’m jealous of the whole world.
Clark: Lois, it may not be easy for you to hear this now, but… someday, you’ll —
Lois: Clark… look, don’t tell me that I’ll meet somebody. You’re kind of a tough act to follow, you know?
It’s devastating, and even more so because she keeps insisting that she’ll be fine. She’s Lois Lane, and she can handle
anything, including the absolute hopelessness that stretches out in front of her.
There are a bunch of scenes in the movie where I think that Richard Lester added not-very-funny comic moments
that broke the reality of the movie’s world, like the taxi accident and the sideways phone call. But this scene
balances the emotional content with an appropriate lightness of touch — “I’m jealous of the whole world” and
“You’re kind of a tough act to follow” are both lines that a funny person would say, through the pain.
And Lois is clearly still trying to be strong, trying to acknowledge that she knows this isn’t the most important
problem in the world. It just happens to be the problem that’s tearing her apart, that’s all.
Lois: Do you know what it’s like to have you come in here every morning, and not be able to talk to you, not be able
to — show I have any feelings for you, not be able to tell anyone that I know who you are? I don’t even know what
to call you!
That last sentence is just perfect; it beats “Well, there he goes, kid,” by a mile. It’s heartfelt and specific, a little detail
that carries so much weight in the scene. And then they spoil it all, with the amnesia kiss.
The problem is that the metaphor doesn’t work. A fantasy kiss can bring the dead back to life, or break a spell. It
symbolizes an awakening of passion, a powerful connection made between two lovers that can overcome
impossible challenges. If a character is hypnotized or time-tangled into forgetting that they love someone, then a
kiss could bring them back to that awareness.
But a kiss can’t make somebody forget their lover. It just doesn’t make sense, as a metaphor. What would that even
mean?
Giving Lois a hit of the Men in Black neuralyzer is unnecessary and the wrong thing to do, but if they’d used a
workable metaphor, we might forgive. Flying around the planet counter-clockwise to reset time is a silly but
coherent metaphor; an amnesia kiss is just a dumb idea.
Still, they had to end the film somehow, and it’s too late to go back and change it. Mission accomplished!
Superman II 2.54: The Scene of the Crime
April 8, 2022Superman IIdirector, justice
With Lex Luthor and the three Kryptonian villains either imprisoned, abandoned or vaporized, and Lois Lane
memory-wiped by an oscular neuralyzer, there’s only one problem left to resolve in the final scenes of Superman II,
which is the punishment due to Rocky, a Canadian truck driver who’s mildly insulting when he orders a second plate
of food at his favorite diner.
“Hey, Ron?” he grouches, midway through a mouthful. “Gimme another plate of this garbage.”
“Garbage?” retorts the crabby waitress. “That’s my number-one special, Rocky!”
“All right!” he groans, abandoning the argument. “Get me some more coffee too, will ya?” He doesn’t even say
“please”. Clearly this man is a major threat to world security who needs to be mercilessly crushed before he strikes
again.
So in walks our hero, Superman, champion of the weak and the oppressed, who decides that the guy who makes life
at a shitty roadside diner a fraction of a degree less pleasant needs to be taught a valuable lesson about how to
comport himself, through the medium of putting him in the hospital.
The last time we saw Rocky was during the territorial battle for counter space, which he tried to de-escalate several
times, only to be forced back into combat over and over until he finally had to flee the diner to escape Clark and
Lois’ demented persecution. This is probably the first time he’s worked up the courage to go back and have another
meal, and who walks in but his nemesis, the nerdy guy with glasses who refuses to admit that the fight is over.
And then Superman — an inhumanly strong extraterrestrial star warrior who can destroy things just by looking at
them — breaks all of the bones in Rocky’s hand, and then picks up the injured and visibly terrified man, sending him
on a one-way trip down the lunch counter that ends in a terrific crash as his spine makes contact with a pinball
machine.
Glass shatters beneath him, as he struggles to retain consciousness. He is almost certainly concussed, and it’s very
likely that he’s sustained crippling damage to his neck and back.
Assuming that he pulls through, Rocky will spend months in physical therapy, trying to regain a full range of motion.
He may never be able to walk unassisted again. He’ll lose his job as a long-haul trucker, driving his family to the brink
of poverty and weakening the global supply chain. Plus, he never got that second helping of food, so on top of
everything else, he’s still hungry.
This is an odd thing for Superman to do, especially given the commitment that the filmmakers have made to
protecting his boy-scout image. Over the course of two movies, he has never struck a human being, even when a
criminal hits him over the head with a crowbar. Lex Luthor tried to kill millions of people with his insane missile
scheme, and Superman didn’t break Luthor’s bones, or throw him into a wall. He just picked him up by the scruff of
the neck and transported him safely to prison.
But Rocky — a guy who has done nothing of any real consequence — is given a one-way ticket to critical condition.
Surprisingly, this weird violation of Superman’s core principles is not the result of someone meddling with Dick
Donner’s original vision of the character. The diner scenes were written by Tom Mankiewicz and shot by Donner,
during the production of the first movie. For some reason, Donner thought that lashing out at someone who you
find exasperating is acceptable and even heroic. I wonder where he got that idea?
Oh, right — this fucking guy. While Superman was fighting demented space invaders and uppity truck stop clientele,
Donner was fighting producer Pierre Spengler, who believed that “on time and under budget” was an actual thing.
I’ve written a lot about the Salkinds and their financial crime syndicate, but I haven’t paid much attention to
Spengler, who was the person that Donner actually hated the most.
Here’s what Donner said in a Summer 1979 interview in Cinefantastique:
Spengler was the liaison to Alexander Salkind, and he supposedly had this knowledge of production — but my God,
I’ve been in this business long enough to know what a producer is, and it was ridiculous for him to have taken this
job. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t have any knowledge at all about producing a film like that. If he’d been
smart, he’d have just laid back and let us do it; instead, he tried to impose himself. So not only did we end up
producing it, in a sense, we also had to counter-produce what he was doing.
Of course, you can’t actually say stuff like that about one of your producers to literally everybody who asks, and then
get invited back to film the sequel, which is why Donner was removed from the production.
I’ll be wrapping up my Superman II coverage in tomorrow’s post, so I’m about to bid farewell to Dick Donner and his
entertaining grudges. As a fond farewell, I’m going to give you a few excerpts from Pierre Spengler’s Cinefantastique
rebuttal in the Fall 1981 issue, just to show you what Donner was up against.
Because Spengler really does come off like somebody that you absolutely do not want to work with. Here’s what he
says:
You wish to reply to our interview with Richard Donner?
I found the statements Donner made in your magazine slanderous and childish. I don’t want to answer in such a
childish way. I shall only say that I have proven, with Richard Lester, that a Superman film could be made more
efficiently and economically. Period.
What’s left of Donner’s work in Superman II?
If we talk in screen time, 75 percent of what appears on the screen is Lester’s work. Out of the 25 percent left, 10
percent is the work of second unit directors from the Donner period, and only the remaining 15 percent, including
the credit sequence which uses footage from Superman, is Donner’s.
In the Superman films, you are credited as producer. What’s your exact role in the production triad you form with
Alexander and Ilya Salkind?
I know I am busy from dawn to dusk, but it’s hard for me to explain exactly what I do. Ilya Salkind and I form a kind
of double-headed hydra, but, roughly speaking, we share the job this way: he is more involved in casting, promotion
and publicity, while I am concerned with the day-to-day work, whether it’s the shooting, the editing, or the mixing of
the film. It’s difficult to give details about that. I can’t be more specific, but I know I arrive to see the rushes in the
morning, and I am busy in my office till 9pm!
Can you say how much the film cost exactly?
[After a 28 second pause] The figure was published in Screen International last year at the Cannes Festival — $109
million for the two films.
Which means…?
Which means? Which means it should have cost much less, say half of it.
Because of Donner?
No comment.
What are Lester’s qualities as a director?
Lester is a man who can make decisions and stick to them.
But that’s word-for-word what [special effects director] Colin Chilvers said about Donner!
Did he really? Well, if he did, that just shows that a technician’s point of view may vary from a producer’s! Lester
does not need twenty-seven takes to shoot a scene, if you see what I mean. Lester is a man who has his editing pre-
planned and can do his editing while shooting. Lester works fast.
But these are only the qualities of a good craftsman.
Lester brought much more than his craftsmanship: the Newmans did their rewrite in collaboration with him. He
contributed a lot of changes to the Niagara and the East Houston scenes. He strongly helped define the relations
between the villains. He came up with the idea of the kiss for the final scene. No, he is not only an adroit technician;
his contribution, to a very large extent, was an artistic one.
In fact, when we had brought him in on Superman, we had not meant just to use him as a bumper between Donner
and me. We had hoped Donner would accept him as a true consultant. But, as you know, Donner would not have it
that way. But let’s be fair; I insist Donner’s Superman was a good Superman. Only now I have to say I hope I can do
many more films with Lester.
How do you deal with technical matters on such an enterprise?
I personally am not on the set very often. But I have meetings with the technicians and the director whenever we try
to reduce the expenses. For instance, Derek Meddings had thought three different models would be needed for the
shooting of a scene. After a meeting with Lester, we found a way to work without the medium-size model.
May I say I am somewhat surprised that you seem to be very reserved about Superman — if not reserved, then not
overenthusiastic?
Do I? Probably because I must behave in interviews the way I have to when I negotiate contracts. Do I have to
support my project anyway? Its success is enough to do that now.
So there you go — as far as I’m concerned, that clears up all of my questions about Rocky and the diner. If I had to
work with Pierre Spengler every day until 9pm, I’d be ready to toss people into pinball machines too.
Rest in peace, sweet Rocky. You were always my number-one special.
Superman II 2.55: One Hundred and Eight Million Dollars
April 9, 2022Superman IImillions, revenge, salkinds, trash-talk
On its first weekend in June 1981, Superman II earned the highest opening-weekend box office in history: $14
million, which was twice the opening gross for the first movie. It actually knocked Raiders of the Lost Ark out of the
#1 spot, which had launched just a week before with a relatively small opening haul of $8 million.
This state of affairs didn’t last, of course. Superman II held on to the #1 spot for three weeks, but then Raiders came
back even stronger, taking #1 back and holding onto it for nine more weeks. Raiders continued to perform well all
the way through March 1982, ultimately earning $212 million. The Katharine Hepburn/Henry Fonda family drama
On Golden Pond came in second for the year with $119 million, and Superman II came in third, with $108 million.
Superman II‘s take was a bit below the first movie, which made $134 million in 1978/79, but it performed very well.
The comparable films in its weight class didn’t do nearly as well (besides Raiders, obviously): the year’s James Bond
installment For Your Eyes Only made $55 million, Greek myth fantasy adventure Clash of the Titans got $41 million,
and the pulp fiction inspired Tarzan the Ape Man earned $36 million.
But as successful as the Superman movies were, they were always overshadowed by the breakout hits that were
even bigger: Jaws, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Return of the
Jedi. The Superman movies could have been the iconic blockbusters of the late 70s/early 80s, if only George Lucas
and Steven Spielberg had never been born.
Now, if you ever want the perfect example of the difference between 1981 and today, here it is: Superman II opened
in France, Italy, Spain, Australia and South Africa during Christmas 1980, six months before it opened in the United
States.
The logic was that the movie was ready for release at the end of 1980, but Warner Bros. wanted to wait until the
summer movie season to release it in the US. But — as always, with the Salkinds — they had a crazy patchwork of
investors/money launderers who wanted to see profits right away, so they came up with a unique scheme in
American film distribution: release Superman II during each country’s hot movie season.
So it went to Europe, Australia and South Africa at Christmas… the UK and West Germany saw it at Easter… and
Japan and the United States finally got the movie in June.
Obviously, that strategy would be a complete disaster today — showing a much-anticipated blockbuster even five
minutes early in any other country would mean that Americans would instantly have it in their torrents. In 1981, you
could get away with it: some bootleg VHS tapes made it to America, but most people didn’t have VCRs yet, so the
movie was able to travel successfully around the world before it opened at home.
So it was Easter-time in England when Time Out magazine ran an in-depth cover story called “The Truth about
Superman“, documenting the lurid behind-the-scenes story of the Superman movies. The article, published the
week of Superman II’s release in the UK, summarized all of the backstory I’ve been writing about all these months:
the Salkinds’ shady approach to raising funds, including their last-minute $15 million shakedown of Warner Bros.
and Alex’s arrest in Switzerland, the many fights between Donner and the Salkinds, leading to Dick Lester being
brought in as a go-between, eventually ending in Donner’s dismissal from the sequel and replacing Marlon Brando
with Susannah York.
But all of that stuff was already in the public record, in Variety, the LA Times and Cinefantastique. The really juicy
stuff in the Time Out article were the quotes from Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve.
“I’ve been told not to talk about it but I don’t care,” Kidder said. “They are truly despicable people and it’s time it
came out.”
That was the first sentence of the article. It got even more exciting from there.
“They tried to screw me out of $40,000, which was a huge amount of money to me and very little to them. I was in
the middle of a divorce and I was badly in debt and I have my child to look after. But I was recommended to a lawyer
who had helped all the people in Musketeers, and as a result I renegotiated my deal and made a fortune on the
second one. They were behaving totally illegally and it ended up costing them over a million.”
Kidder also said that the Salkinds dropped Brando from the second film because they didn’t want to pay him, and
Time Out got a characteristically snippy response from Pierre Spengler: “It’s not at all the case. I hope you have
questions other than these because I must leave it to the lawyers. There are various suits pending.”
“It’s almost unprecedented for a star to discuss the producers of a hit series in this way,” Time Out admitted
breathlessly, “but Kidder obviously feels the injustice of the affair outweights commercial considerations and
personal interest.”
“Donner made my career,” she continues. “He made Chris’, he made the Salkinds billions. And they turned around
and stabbed him in the back. I mean, I have nothing but contempt for them.”
There was one thing that Kidder said in the article that got Spengler to actually lose his cool.
Kidder: “It was the only movie I’ve ever worked on where the crew demanded their cash in advance every week,
because initially the checks were bouncing.”
Spengler: “That is absolute bullshit, and you can quote me verbatim. There has never been a single bounced check
on any of the productions I or the Salkinds have worked on. That is libellous, defamatory and I will take whoever says
anything to the contrary to court.”
So obviously that touched a nerve.
Now, I don’t know what kind of magic spell Time Out’s Dave Pirie was able to cast on the stars of Superman, but he
even got Christopher Reeve to trash-talk the Salkinds, and Reeve was usually more restrained than this:
“Donner had an impossible row with the producers over quality. On Superman I he was the only one who kept
things from being done in a shabby way and kept our morale high and made everyone do our best. And then he was
fired behind my back and they — briefly — brought in Guy Hamilton.
“There was nothing I could have done to get him back because all the contracts were signed before I was even told.
So I felt a tremendous resentment against the producers for being so devious.
“I was also very apprehensive because suddenly there was this new script that I didn’t feel was anything near as
good as what Donner had worked on for Part II. And I think it’s appalling when you cut out a major actor like Marlon
Brando so you don’t have to pay him the gross, when decisions are made for economic reasons rather than for
artistic reasons, that kind of banking style of filmmaking where everything is conducted in terms of international
deals.”
That’s going pretty far, for Reeve… and then they got him to go even farther.
“Frankly I found the producers untrustworthy, devious and unfortunate as people. They just are not the sort of
people you want to give much time to and I really did try to keep out of the business side because it’s like walking
through treacle. In my view the way Superman II was produced is the lowest you can go without actually cheating.
But I’m talking about the production, not the film.
“As it turned out Superman II is different from Superman I, but not in quality. It’s a simpler film, a lighter film but
neither better nor worse. And I’m only going to do Superman III if there’s a legitimate creative reason and it’s not
just a profit-making exercise. We’ve got to rise above all this deal-making stuff if there’s gonna be a Superman III
that’s worth anything.”
So this is going to be fun for everybody, once they start working on the next film. Richard Donner was fired from
Superman II because of what he said about the Salkinds after Superman I, and after this interview, Margot Kidder
was next on the chopping block.
“As for Lois Lane,” Spengler said in Cinefantastique a few months later, “it is not sure whether she will appear again,
as we reached a kind of conclusion in Superman II as far as her story is concerned.” As we’ll see, Lois did appear in
Superman III, but only briefly at the beginning and the end of the movie.
As far as I know, there were no repercussions for what Reeve said in Time Out, but obviously if you’re going to make
a Superman film you can’t fire the guy who plays Superman, even if he calls you untrustworthy and devious. And
anyway, if the Salkinds are going to refuse to work with anybody who thinks they’re untrustworthy and devious,
then they’d never get anything done.

Superman III 4.1: The Sweet Smell

October 12, 2022Superman IIIart vs commerce, salkinds, sequel

Richard Pryor wrote:

I went off to London, to play the villain in Superman III. And yes, the movie was a piece of shit. But even before I
read the script, the producers offered me $4 million, more than any black actor had ever been paid.
“For a piece of shit,” I’d told my agent when I finally read the script, “it smells great.”
And so we come to Superman III, the next live-action superhero epic, which was thrust upon theaters in June 1983
to the satisfaction of almost nobody.
Superman III is the world’s first pure superhero film, untouched by ambition or artistry. The earlier Superman
movies were a passion project for Richard Donner, who cared deeply about doing justice to the character. The
Swamp Thing film was more of a stopgap project for the producers — just something to do while they figured out
how to make a Batman movie — but writer and director Wes Craven had his own vision for the film, and if that
didn’t show up on screen, then at least he tried.
But most of the people involved in Superman III did not actually want to make Superman III. Ilya Salkind wanted to
make a movie about Brainiac, Mr. Mxyzptlk and an unexpected romance between Superman and Supergirl, but
Warner Bros rejected Ilya’s treatment, because it was batshit crazy. Richard Lester didn’t want to direct Superman III,
until they offered him a ridiculous amount of money. Richard Pryor was in it for the $4 million. Christopher Reeve
was coming out of a terrible flop called Monsignor, and just needed a win. As far as I can tell, the only person who
genuinely wanted to be in Superman III was Margot Kidder, and they wouldn’t let her.
But Superman III was an economic inevitability, and it could not be denied. As Superman II drew to a close, we were
informed that Superman III was coming soon, a primitive mid-credits scene painted on the cave wall. They didn’t
have a writer or a director, or even a clue what the next movie would be about, but obviously there would be one.
Somebody else could figure out all the creative stuff, like a story and characters. The first two movies made money,
and there were more numbers after II.
Now, according to the Salkinds — the bungling international crime family that primarily made movies by exploiting
tax loopholes and settling everything out of court — the producers were still in debt at this point, which means they
had no choice but to make another movie.
In fact, Alexander Salkind claimed that they’d spent so much money making and remaking the first two films, they
were still $70 million in debt — but the Swiss banks threw an extra $40 million at him to make a third movie anyway.
“They’re interested in creating assets, so they can get paid,” Alex explained. He hoped that the third movie would
finally turn a profit for them — and if it didn’t, well, maybe they’d make a Supergirl movie. They were bound to
break even sometime.
That’s why Superman III is our first example of the pure essence of superhero movie-making: a cynical cash grab
based on other people’s IP, star-studded and market-tested. Richard Donner, the man who cared too much, has been
exiled from the genre, dragging his “verisimilitude” banner behind him. Now we can get down to the serious
business of assembling a new slice of junk culture.
The history of superhero movies is essentially the story of how this genre evolved over time into the ideal vehicle for
painlessly extracting money from the public, and giving it to entirely the wrong people. Superman III is an important
step in that process, the first time a grown-up movie studio tried to make a superhero blockbuster without actually
having any good ideas.
The problem was, the first two films were planned as an epic, with a very deliberate conclusion. Superman discovers
his tragic origin story in the Fortress of Solitude, talking with holograms of his dead parents, and the story ends with
a definitive goodbye to any connection with his home world. He falls in love with a dynamite reporter, marries her,
and then learns that he can never sustain a relationship with a human woman. He prevails over a morally-deficient
trickster plutocrat, demonstrating his ability to right humanity’s wrongs. In the end, he fights his evil opposite — a
group of superpowered renegades from Krypton — and neutralizes them, showing that great power can be wielded
by an honest man, without corruption or decay. There aren’t a lot of loose ends for Superman III to pick up and play
with.
So screenwriters David and Leslie Newman decided to do all the same themes over again. Superman III involves the
hero revisiting another part of his origin story, and there’s an unfinished romantic storyline, an evil trickster
plutocrat to fight, and an exciting battle with his evil opposite. It’s basically a remixed version of the same story, with
less iconic versions of the characters.
Oh, and then there’s Richard Pryor, airlifted into the film from a different genre at a premium price. Pryor was a bold
and brilliant stand-up comic who had recently achieved mainstream Hollywood success in a couple of buddy films
with Gene Wilder, and he was considered a bankable asset. At a tribute to Pryor in 1982, director Billy Wilder
explained how studio executives put a movie together: ”They approach it very scientifically — computer projections,
marketing research, audience profiles — and they always come up with the same answer: Get Richard Pryor.”
So when Pryor gushed about Superman II to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, the producers of Superman III saw
an opportunity to get another big name for the series. Marlon Brando was lured into the first film with an
outrageous salary of $3 million dollars, and now they’d get Richard Pryor for $4 million.
Now, the question that everybody asks about Superman III is: Is this a Superman movie, or a Richard Pryor movie?
It’s a reasonable question, because the film is basically split into two separate tracks, one for each of the co-stars.
But I think the obvious answer is, “It’s a Superman movie and a Richard Pryor movie stapled together,” and that
doesn’t get to the heart of what people mean.
The underlying question is: Is Superman’s half of the movie a good Superman movie, and Pryor’s half of the movie a
good Richard Pryor movie? And the answer to both sides of the question is unfortunately no, for interesting reasons
that we’ll spend the next little while unpacking.
If the story of making Superman I and II was a true crime drama, and Swamp Thing was a comedy of errors, then
Superman III is a disaster film, with several clueless captains actively steering the ship towards the inevitable
iceberg. And it begins, as usual, in the mind of Ilya Salkind.
Superman III 4.2: It Was Ilya’s Other Idea
October 13, 2022Superman IIIpostcards, salkinds, schadenfreude, script
So, let’s say you’re a Salkind. You’ve been producing movies for your father for ten years now, including some of The
Three Musketeers and a couple of Superman movies, but people still think that you’re just a money guy —
specifically, your dad’s money guy.
But you’ve been working in the same building as creative people for so long, you’ve started to hallucinate that
you’re a creative contributor as well. Since nobody has any idea what to do with Superman III, you sit down at the
typewriter and write an eight-page treatment, which you send to the Warner Brothers and ask them for millions of
dollars so you can make it.
In the years to come, you’ll tell people that Warner Bros thought it was too “sci-fi”, and too embedded in Superman
lore. That is not the reason Warner Bros rejected your treatment. They rejected it because they were grown-ups
who read movie treatments for a living, and yours is bugfuck insane.
Honestly, it’s hard to know what to say about Ilya’s little postcard from the infinite, except that he writes the way
that he talks, and as we know, he talks like a lunatic. This eight-page opus is Ilya in full flow: a rambling stream of
consciousness with sentences that zip off in multiple directions, and parenthetical sidebars that bump into each
other like playful golden retrievers.
To the extent that the plot can be summarized, here it is:
The movie introduces Supergirl, another survivor of Krypton, who’s raised by Brainiac, an evil alien scientist. Over
time, Brainiac realizes that he loves Supergirl, so she flees to Earth, where she adopts a new identity and starts doing
heroic deeds. Superman and Supergirl meet, and fall in love.
Brainiac comes to Earth and uses a machine to manipulate Superman’s personality, turning him violent and
destructive. Mr. Mxyzptlk, a trans-dimensional prankster imp, shows up as well, and causes more problems for
Superman.
Eventually, they all travel into the past, back to medieval times, where Superman has to beat Brainiac at a jousting
tournament. Once Brainiac is dealt with, Superman and Supergirl return to the present, and have to deal with one
final challenge from Mxyzptlk.
That sounds like a mess of a movie, and the actual treatment — which you will find below — is so much nuttier than
that. Characters pop in and out of the story, apparently at random. All of the choices are peculiar. If Brainiac is going
to fall in love with Supergirl, why would you introduce them when she’s an infant? Why make everyone travel back
to medieval times two-thirds of the way through the movie?
I mean, this sentence alone:
Brainiac now also realizes that Supergirl had contacted Superman with her X-ray vision, (so that he could come to
her rescue,) which confirms that Supergirl loves Superman and not Brainiac.
It’s a journey, that’s all I can tell you. So I’m going to get out of the way, and let you enjoy Ilya’s thought process.
Good luck; I’ll see you on the other side.
STORY OUTLINE of SUPERMAN III
The story could start with a pre-title sequence showing Clark learning that Lois Lane has asked to be transferred as a
correspondent to one of the foreign offices associated with the Daily Planet (Hong Kong?). He learns this from a
letter from her where she tells him that she cannot go on living in Metropolis, constantly being in contact with
Superman and as he is the love of her life she cannot stand the emotional pressure and prefers to forget as much as
possible by moving away. At the same time she sends her love to Clark as a friend (this could be done using Lois’
voice or he could read it). This leaves Clark obviously very distraught and as we all know that he is Superman/Clark
who loves Lois.
We introduce again Perry White and Jimmy who try to cheer Clark up — they would be telling him a bit more why
she was so fed up. We could possibly at this point introduce LANA LANG as the new star reporter at the Daily Planet.
We see Clark being quite impressed with Lana Lang, and they immediately take a liking to each other.
Immediately after the credits we end up explaining how at the time of the explosion of Krypton there was another
survivor… SUPERGIRL. We then establish her escape from Krypton in accordance with the Comics legend and we
show her landing on BRAINIAC’s planet.
A younger Brainiac will find her in the equivalent of the wheatfield in the first film. However the whole sequence
should be the total opposite to the Kent landing. (The planet being all black and sinister, Brainiac’s suit being utterly
black, the whole look being totally pessimistic.)
Brainiac finds the baby girl and takes her home, we then follow with various sequences of her growing up. We see
that she has super powers and we understand clearly that Brainiac is getting very affectionate, primarily as a father
but as she gets older into adolescence, his affection is of a man in love.
A sequence follows where we see Brainiac affected by Supergirl’s befriending others etc. which leads to her rejecting
his marriage proposal.
As the tension becomes greater she decides to run away and by destiny lands in a little city in the U.S.A. Here we
leave to find the explanation of why she takes on a secret identity when she becomes one of the inhabitants of (i.e.
Girlsville).
She gets adopted by locals and becomes a gym teacher at the local school. (Here again in accordance with Comics
legend.) Her exceptional Kryptonian powers make her easily assimilate Earth’s ways. During this period we cut to
Brainiac looking for her all over the Universe using his remarkable technical genius.
Concurrently we also see Superman doing one or two of his feats. Sooner or later Supergirl will reveal her powers by
solving a local threat which will make her known to Superman and the world. We will see Superman’s reaction when
he learns about this new Superheroine from the media.
He is obviously puzzled and needs to know more about her. To do this he poses as a petty criminal to see how she
will react and to see basically whether she is good or evil. She, of course, immediately comes to the rescue and finds
him out. The look between the two will tell the audience that they have magically fallen in love.
There is then conversation trying to find out if they are related. They are not.
Then there is an idyllic sequence of Superman and Supergirl climbing up to 7th heaven. We shall have to find some
beautiful place either on Earth or elsewhere (i.e. the Milky Way).
Leaving them in their bliss we move to Brainiac arriving on Earth. He immediately transforms stones into gold and
diamonds to have wealth and power on Earth. We then see Brainiac establish his headquarters in a historical
European castle. We see him setting up his weaponry, which is highly sophisticated. Through his ESP he finds out
about Supergirl, what she is doing, where she is etc. Naturally, during these endeavours he also finds out about
Superman, his strength, and more so, his love for Supergirl and that this same love is reciprocated.
Brainiac’s purpose from then on is to create a machine which will affect Superman’s personality (this will have to be
very carefully explained for the children and will have to show Brainiac moving various buttons and somehow
showing how each button will make Superman either violent, melancholic or sarcastically funny.) These ideas can
obviously be changed, but will show that Superman will become totally unpredictable in Brainiac’s hands. (Obviously
Clark Kent will also be affected by these same reactions alternatively, i.e. Clark Kent slaps Perry White when asked to
correct one of his own articles.)
When we leave Brainiac we go to Superman and Supergirl involved in some sort of feat, together, blissfully in love,
suddenly and totally unexpectedly Superman becomes violent and starts to destroy everything they are trying to
save.
In different ways this will happen and be repeated at different times. This of course will make Supergirl think, (panic
with disbelief), that this is not the Superman she knew. She obviously tries everything to play along with Superman’s
total unpredictable moments, her resistance of course weakens and at that point we have intercuts showing the
world totally bewildered by the actions of this now very strange Superman. There is the tension building up that
everyone wants Supergirl to get rid of Superman as she is the only with enough strength to do it.
At this critical moment Brainiac appears in front of Supergirl and offers her a deal. (This sequence to be delicately
thought as they are meeting for the first time since her escape from him.) If Supergirl agrees to marry him, he will
stop affecting Superman’s personality, if she doesn’t he will bring Superman to the utmost state of total evil
madness. Supergirl’s reaction is one of despair, suffrance and confusion as she still feels a daughterly love for
Brainiac. But seeing that the evil genius has lost all control through his passion for her she decides to play along with
him to find a way to discover a weakness, Brainiac’s Achilles Heel, and follows him to his castle.
Superman meanwhile, being released from Brainiac’s hold (Supergirl is still playing for time with Brainiac) is
searching desperately for Supergirl, as for some reason she has disappeared from the face of the Earth. While flying
in his search for Supergirl, Superman suddenly encounters MR. MXYZPTLK, a strange, small little man. (There should
of course be some sort of explanation with regard to Mr. Mxyzptlk.) Then we see Superman trying to save the world
from Mr. Mxyzptlk’s deadly jokes which can kill hundreds of thousands of people.
This new invincible enemy doesn’t permit Superman to have time to be Clark Kent any more.
During this period back at the Daily Planet, Perry, Lana and Jimmy are worried about the whereabouts of Clark Kent
and try to find out the last time anyone saw or heard of him.
Assuming that Clark Kent, because of his exclusive articles, is often where Superman is, Perry, still puzzled by Clark
Kent’s behaviour, sends off Lana and Jimmy to Europe where they know Superman is fighting with Mr. Mxyzptlk.
Superman finds a way to send Mr. Mxyzptlk back to his Galaxy/Universe by making him say his name backwards.
With Mr. Mxyzptlk out of the way, Superman can continue to search for Supergirl.
Meanwhile Brainiac having prepared everything for his return to his own planet along with Supergirl, who in the
meantime is desperately trying to find a solution, is, at the moment of leaving, interrupted by Superman’s arrival. He
has found them.
Before Brainiac has a chance to activate the controls which would affect Superman’s personality, there is a
tremendous confrontation where we discover that Brainiac’s powers are much stronger than those of Superman.
Brainiac now also realizes that Supergirl had contacted Superman with her X-ray vision, (so that he could come to
her rescue,) which confirms that Supergirl loves Superman and not Brainiac.
Brainiac then immobilizes Superman in one of his energy cages. Brainiac then, with Supergirl, activates his elaborate
machinery which takes them into the past, (into the era of nobles and serfs). Brainiac of course becomes a ruthless
tyrant with the serfs. He is also always reminding Supergirl that if she does not follow him willingly he will activate
the personality machine through the time lapse and destroy Superman.
Back at Brainiac’s castle in 1981, Jimmy and Lana, while still looking for Clark, are able to free Superman who made
them find the castle with the help of his super voice. At once, Superman takes Lana and Jimmy under his cape and
follows Brainiac into the past, landing in the same province as Brainiac and Supergirl.
We will have gathered by now that Supergirl has been able to postpone her departure with Brainiac which of course
infuriates him so much that he cannot rest in peace while Superman is still alive. Brainiac decides that he will remain
on Earth until he kills Superman and starts preparing his trap.
We then cut to Superman, Jimmy and Lana arriving in the town in serf disguise learning all about Brainiac, his reign
of terror, where he lives, and what he and Supergirl have been up to. They arrive at the castle and Brainiac cleverly
takes Jimmy and Lana as hostages and having become totally insane with jealousy decides to activate the personality
machine at its utmost power regardless of Supergirl’s pleads [sic].
However the love between Superman and Supergirl is so strong that the combination of their powers enables them
to resist the deadly powers of the machine.
This gives Superman the chance to escape leaving Supergirl, Jimmy and Lana at the mercy of Brainiac.
Superman zooms into the future, finds Mr. Mxyzptlk, agrees on a deal with him so that he will help. They both
reappear and Mr. Mxyzptlk with his awesome powers sends the whole town into another dimension where neither
Superman, nor Supergirl, nor Brainiac have any powers.
They fight as two ancient knights with armour, horses (lances etc), with Supergirl handing over her white scarf to
Superman (the White Knight) and the black scarf being handed to Brainiac (the Black Knight) by Lana, who not ever
having had superpowers, is still under the effect of Brainiac’s power.
Superman wins the DUEL and with the help of Mr. Mxyzptlk they all go back to 1981 leaving behind them Brainiac as
a humiliated and destroyed powerless man in the past dimension.
Now that all seems happy, Mr. Mxyzptlk does not respect his deal with Superman and masterminds the biggest
catastrophe of them all (i.e. Mr. Mxyzptlk stops the time and only he, Superman and Supergirl can move through the
paralyzed street. He then breaks up the streets and the people into a gigantic puzzle and gives Superman one
minute to put the puzzle together, if not, he will send the unfinished puzzle to the planet Mercury.)
Obviously Superman is able, with a little help from Supergirl, to save the millions of innocents and to send Mr.
Mxyzptlk back to where he comes from…
Metropolis then learns that all the strange behaviour of Superman/Clark Kent was caused by Brainiac. The next big
question is… does Superman marry Supergirl in Superman III or Superman IV?
Superman III 4.3: Enter Gus
October 16, 2022Superman IIIlong-overdue national conversation about race, special guest star, wouldn't it be nice
“Next!”
It’s an appropriate word to begin Superman III, history’s first superhero sequel. Superman II doesn’t count, of
course, because the original Superman movie was planned as a two-part story. So this moment — the beginning of
film #3 — is the first time the filmmakers have to skip over the origin myth, and start a brand new story from
scratch.
And it begins, naturally, with a negotiation over how much money we’re going to give to Richard Pryor.
You see, Ilya Salkind’s idea for what to do with the third movie was rejected by Warner Bros, because it was clearly
the ravings of a madman who should not be left alone with a typewriter. Obviously, Ilya couldn’t just forget about
the film and join Gus Gorman on the unemployment line because he wasn’t even sure what country he was a citizen
of, so he turned to the screenwriting team of David and Leslie Newman, who’d contributed to the scripts for both
Superman and Superman II.
Happily, the Newmans had a couple ideas for Superman III they’d been kicking around. As they told American Film,
“We never wanted to do anything more with Lois Lane. Biblically and otherwise they did everything. So, we thought,
remember that girl that Clark Kent used to like in high school? Wouldn’t it be nice if he saw her, his old high school
sweetheart, Lana Lang?”
That’s a cute idea, but so far it doesn’t sound much like a blockbuster film. They were thinking maybe it would have
something to do with computers, but they weren’t getting very far — and then they saw Richard Pryor, on The
Tonight Show.
There are actually two relevant appearances that Richard Pryor made on The Tonight Show in 1981 — one before
Superman II was released, and one after.
In the first one, Carson asks what kind of movies he goes to see, and Pryor says, “I want to see Superman II! That’s
what I’m waitin’ on to see.” Carson says, “Really?” and Pryor says, “Yeah! Did you see Superman 1? Well, in this one,
remember the peoples in the glass? He goes and gets them, and brings ’em back to Earth, accidentally. And there’s
four Supermans! Yeah, and one Superwoman.”
Carson chuckles, not sure what to make of this free promotion given to somebody else’s movie, and he throws to
commercial.
The second appearance, after Pryor saw the movie, is the one that the Newmans saw. That one isn’t on YouTube and
I don’t know where to find it, so here’s what I picked up from reading about it: Pryor told Carson that he saw
Superman II, and said, “I love that dude!” Then he did an impromptu routine about what he would do if he had
Superman’s powers, ending with, “Just give me some of that x-ray vision for one day, and I’ll be king. Maybe even
emperor!”
And so, as David Newman told American Film, “I can’t remember how it happened, but suddenly we were saying,
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Richard Pryor was in this movie!'”
The Newmans really needed to learn that “Wouldn’t it be nice” is not actually a story idea. They didn’t write a lot of
movies after Superman III.
Warner Bros approved the stunt casting, figuring it would broaden the appeal of the movie to include both
Superman fans and Richard Pryor fans, which isn’t really how that works. When the script arrived, Pryor wasn’t
particularly interested, but they offered him four million dollars, and you say yes to four million dollars.
So now they’ve got Richard Pryor in a Superman movie, and the question is: what will they do with him?
Well, the first thing they do is put him behind bars, which was something of a running theme in Pryor’s movie career.
He played crooks in early 70s Blaxploitation films like The Mack and Uptown Saturday Night, and in his first
mainstream success — 1976’s Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder — he introduced himself by yelling, “I’m a thief!” In
1980’s Stir Crazy, his next big hit with Wilder, the two friends were thrown in jail after being accused of a bank
robbery.
In 1981, Pryor played a convict breaking parole in Bustin’ Loose, and in 1982, he was a bank robber again in Some
Kind of Hero. It seems like maybe Hollywood was trying to tell us something about what they thought of Black
people.
But giving Pryor a down-on-his-luck character, as they did with Gus Gorman, makes some sense, based on his stand-
up comedy persona.
Everybody says that Pryor was a brilliant comedian, because he was, and it appears to be mandatory to say so. He
started performing in the 1960s with a jacket and tie on like Bill Cosby, doing funny middlebrow material on The Ed
Sullivan Show about TV commercials and the New York subway.
“You gotta watch when you ride the subway, because once I was riding the subway, I caught a guy with his hand in
my pocket. I say, man, whatcha doin’ with your hand in my pocket? ‘Looking for change!’ You gotta watch the
pickpockets, they slick, see? They bump into you, say ‘excuse me’, take everything but your pants. Gotta take your
elbow and go, POW! like that. I was on the train, ridin’, someody bumped into me, said ‘excuse me’, I go, POW! Turn
around, woman eighty years old… Wild, man.”
He was very successful and drew a big crowd, until one night in 1967 at the Las Vegas Aladdin Hotel, when he looked
around at his almost entirely white audience, said “What the fuck am I doing here?” and walked off the stage.
And that’s when he became Richard Pryor. From then on, he started loosening up on stage, and stopped trying to be
a model example of a Black man craving appreciation from a white audience. He started using the word “nigger” a
lot, as well as every other curse word he could think of, and he told the truth about the way he experienced the
world.
His breakthrough album was That Nigger’s Crazy in 1973, and this is how it starts:
“What? Don’t start no shit, now. Niggers be startin’ a fight and shit in a club. Pull out a pistol and shit, clear
everything out. Niggers never get burned up in buildings. They know how to get out of a motherfuckin’ situation.
They do! White folks just panic, run to the door, fall all over each other, choke to death and shit. Niggers get outside,
and then argue. ‘I left my money in that motherfucker!’”
He does an imitation of a guy ordering a complicated drink and getting mad at the waitress, and then another man
who gets really drunk and starts a fight. “You know, everybody know one nigger that drink, and every weekend he
get his ass whooped. He never wins a fight, but he always want to fight! You know what I mean? Nice guy during the
week: ‘Hi, hi, hi-yo.’ Weekend: ‘Motherfucker! Get out my face!'”
And then that imitation goes on for another five minutes, exploring the drunk guy’s entire night: yelling at the
bartender, messing with other patrons, getting beat up, vomiting in his friend’s car on the way home, promising God
he’ll quit drinking, telling his girlfriend that he kicked a guy’s ass to defend her honor, promising to fuck her all
night… and then falling noisily asleep.
What makes this a great routine, and Pryor a great comedian, is that he’s still doing comedy from the drunk guy’s
point of view. The character has his own jokes — when he’s told by the bartender that he’s too drunk to get another
whiskey, he cries, “Shit, you didn’t say that an hour ago, when you were selling me that shit!” So the audience can’t
help but like the guy and empathize with him, all the way home.
Pryor dug deep into his own experience, growing up poor and Black in Peoria with an abusive father and
grandmother, trying to get with girls and avoid the police. He was vulnerable. He talked about his own pain and
made it funny; he admitted to his own mistakes, and connected them to the common human experience.
That’s the comic persona that they want in the movie, so yeah, you make him unemployed and apparently
unemployable, a guy who’s got hold of the losing end of the shtick.
The problem is: this is a Superman movie, with very strict moral lines. The villain is pure capital-E Evil, with no
redeeming characteristics, and the hero is the ultimate symbol of Good. In this movie, the damage done by the
villain is actually fairly easy to resolve; the real crisis is the five minutes in Superman’s life when he gets drunk and
wants to have sex with girls.
So where does Pryor’s flawed-but-loveable persona fit, in that world? You can’t make him Superman’s friend,
because he’s not perfect enough — this is a guy who enjoys getting drunk, which in this movie is a clear sign of
moral decay. But you don’t want to make him the villain either, because he’s Richard Pryor, and you can’t help but
like him.
The story has two main sources of conflict — Superman vs Webster, and Superman vs Drunk Superman — and Gus
doesn’t have a clear place in either of those plot tracks. He wouldn’t fit in with the squeaky clean middle-class
people at the Daily Planet, and he doesn’t fit in with the corrupt wealthy people on the top floor of the Webscoe
building. So he hangs around on the fringes, a comic relief side character promoted to co-star status because he’s
too expensive for his actual role in the story. This is a problem that the movie one hundred percent does not know
how to solve.
Superman III 4.4: March of the Penguins
October 17, 2022Superman IIIcomedy, director, social realism, the madness of crowds
“Given a relatively free hand,” writes Andrew Yule in The Man Who “Framed” the Beatles: A Biography of Richard
Lester, “Lester decided to move the emphasis of III towards social realism, setting the first scene in an
unemployment office and hiring the most naturalistic actor he could find — Richard Pryor — for a key role, all in an
attempt to anchor the subject to a base of reality and reduce the mythic element he felt had already been
thoroughly explored.”
Which just goes to show how wrong a person can be in a single sentence. If Yule had bothered to watch more than
the first scene of Superman III before he started typing about it, he would have seen that the “social realism” of
Richard Pryor in an unemployment office is immediately followed by five minutes of the most tedious fluff ever
committed to celluloid.
One thing that occurs to me, as I look at this opening credits sequence, is that between the director, the writers and
the executive producer, the number of successful films that they made subsequent to Superman III is zero. That
seems to help, somehow.
Because this is just bullshit. It pains me to say it, because I don’t want to sound like one of those Snyderbros who
think that superhero movies need to be dark and serious all the time, but this is just the worst.
This bloated, unfunny comedy sequence is supposed to be like a Rube Goldberg machine, I guess, except this isn’t
what Rube Goldberg machines are like. It’s a sporadic chain of consequences linking one dumb gag to another, set in
a hellish Canadian Metropolis populated entirely by schlemiels.
If I had to say who I hate most in this sequence — and I don’t know what else there is to talk about — then it’s the
blind guy, who keeps popping up through the whole sequence performing the most credulity-stretching gags.
It starts with his seeing-eye dog breaking free and chasing a random little dog down the sidewalk, which is a thing
that seeing-eye dogs don’t do, so the guy gropes forward unsteadily out into the street, which is a thing that blind
people don’t do, because if they did there would be a lot fewer blind people around. He grabs onto the controls of a
street-painting machine, and decides that must be his dog, despite all of the obvious reasons why he wouldn’t think
that, and then he stumbles around in circles behind it for a really long time, despite the fact that the guy who
operates the machine is two feet away and only distracted for a moment.
But he keeps pushing the thing until it gets away from him somehow, and then he keeps stumbling around, and he
maneuvers over a big hole in the road by stepping on a guy’s head, and then he bumps into a tree and lifts his hat to
say “Excuse me” like we haven’t just spent the last three decades watching Mr. Magoo drive that specific joke into
the ground.
And then there’s a bank robbery and some very limited Superman action, and when that’s over, we get a second
helping of headlines from Chełm, starting with a guy getting a paint bucket stuck on his head who doesn’t even
consider lifting it off his head, and then there’s a thing with a mime, and then there’s the fucking blind guy again,
pushing his way through an oil painting like that’s a mistake that a human being could possibly make. It is grim.
The one bright spot in the sequence is Christopher Reeve, who’s had some practice being the bright spot in Richard
Lester comedy sequences.
He’s got a cute moment where Clark sees one of the marching penguin toys that’s managed to get across the street
with its hair on fire, so he picks it up, glances around to make sure that no one’s looking, and blows out the fire with
his super-breath. Then he returns the penguin to the road, and sets it back on its way, like it’s got somewhere
important to be. And then he gives it a subtle little wave goodbye as he’s turning away, because he’s awfully good at
being Clark Kent by this point.
The reason why that works — and I know that I’m explaining jokes right now, which I shouldn’t do — is that Clark is
an actual character, and he’s acting in a way that’s silly but consistent, as an expression of who he is as a person. You
believe in Clark here, in a way that it’s impossible to believe in the blind guy, or the dude with a bucket on his head.
The problem with this sequence is that it’s only sporadically backed up by characters or consequences that we care
about. The pretty girl who inspires the whole chain turns out to be one of the main characters, but we don’t know
that yet, and the camera doesn’t linger on her in a way that would indicate that she’s anything but the stock pretty
girl who distracts men when she walks down the street.
And it could have worked. I can imagine this being very funny, if there was some sort of plot point or throughline for
the sequence. Maybe Clark is holding an important piece of paper that blows away in the wind, and his attempt to
get hold of it is obstructed by this sidewalk full of lunatics. Maybe Lois is on the other side of the street, and the
chaos obscures her view every time Clark has to do something superheroic.
I am 100% on the side of comedy in superhero movies, but the comedy needs to serve the story and the characters.
This sequence keeps pulling away from Clark, and trying to interest us in random civilians having an awkward
experience.
And to the extent that Clark is involved, he makes odd choices about who he considers worthy of help. If this is a
representative example of the entirely accident-prone and profoundly vulnerable population of Metropolis, then
Superman probably shouldn’t let these people dig holes, or cross the street by themselves.
But instead of being concerned by the obvious disasters taking place on every square foot of the surrounding area,
Clark doesn’t even notice that he’s smacked a pie in a guy’s face, in order to spare the pretty girl that he’s ogling.
I know this is a comedy sequence and we’re not supposed to care about the guy on the receiving end of the pie, but
I think that’s a problem. The opening of a movie sets the tone for how we’re meant to receive this story, and if we’re
not supposed to care about the citizens of Metropolis — if even Superman doesn’t care about the citizens of
Metropolis — then it threatens to deflate the whole movie.
So screw Richard Lester, basically, for being bad at the thing that people think he’s good at. He didn’t even want to
direct this movie, but he had a history with the franchise and he was still speaking to the Salkinds, so here he is. In
that Lester biography, there’s a story about him saying no to the very generous salary offer, and then his wife throws
a sponge at him and tells him to stop being an idiot and take the money.
That was pretty much his only chance to get a decent job at this point anyway, because he directed two films
between his work on Superman and Superman II, and they were a prequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
which was a huge flop, and a movie starring Sean Connery about the Cuban revolution of 1958, which was a
medium flop.
Before he signed the contract for Superman III, Lester made Warners pinky-swear that afterwards he would get to
make another stupid comedy called Finders Keepers, and that was another huge flop, and that was pretty much it
for Richard Lester, except for another Musketeers movie that nobody wanted to see. So that’s how I feel about him.
Superman III 4.5: Not Waving But Drowning
October 22, 2022Superman IIIrescue
An unlicensed roller skater slips suddenly out of control, shoving a hot dog stand and interrupting three concurrent
telephone conversations. Robot penguins, freshly sentient, see their chance for escape at last, and make a break for
the open road. A woman is scattered across the sidewalk, surrounded by dented groceries. There’s mustard on
Jimmy Olsen’s lapel.
In other words, downtown Calgary is a mess, and it’s no wonder Superman is a little choosy about which disaster he
feels like addressing. I don’t know why we even came to this cursed burg in the first place.
The clearest sign of utter disarray is the ski-masked bank robber making a getaway while holding a bag marked
METROPOLIS CITY BANK, which is adorable, although the building clearly says Century Savings Bank so I don’t know
why they bothered. Nobody reads bags anyway.
The bank robber makes for the great open spaces, using a passing credit for Robert Vaughn as cover, as police fire
wildly into the lunch hour crowd.
Miraculously, nobody is hurt, including the bank robber, who scurries around the corner, pursued by a bear. But the
stray bullets cause a minor traffic incident, which results in one of those roadside drownings you hear about.
This is a clever answer to the question of how they get Clark Kent to change into Superman and do something
interesting and heroic at the top of the picture. They want something that Superman can do out on the street in the
middle of a crowd, and the idea of somebody driving over a broken hydrant and filling up the car with water is a
rather ingenious little trick.
It’s silly, of course, and I don’t believe in it, because it feels like the kind of thing you could fix yourself by opening
the car door. Still, I can see how they got here.
They undercut the scene a bit by sticking another gag in the middle of the rescue, with Superman changing in a
photo booth, which takes four pictures of the transformation from Clark to Superman. An inquisitive little kid tries to
grab the film, but Superman — scanning the column of pictures — rips off the Clark photos and hands the kid the
final photo of him in Superman costume.
This is legitimately funny and a nice character moment, but we’ve already seen two shots of the driver clearly
drowning, and this takes twenty-three seconds and distracts the audience from the dramatically urgent situation still
in progress.
But here he is, our majestic airborne angel, flying boldly across the road to get to the other side.
So the question is: does this work as the opening of a Superman film?
It’s got the basic elements: Clark sees a dramatic situation, changes into Superman, flies into action and rescues a
helpless citizen. Unfortunately, this may be the shortest and cheapest rescue that he could possibly make.
I mean, the opening stunt in the last movie involved Clark flying four thousand miles to save Lois from being blown
up by a nuclear bomb while falling down the Eiffel Tower, which had its own problems as a sequence, but was
undeniably spectacular. This time, they’re hooking Chris Reeve to a flying rig and lifting him across the street, using
some uncalled-for visual blurring at the top of the screen to disguise the obvious wires.
And then there’s a little crowd of spectators, just standing there watching the stunt and politely clapping when it’s
over. These citizens are looking at a caped wonder, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of
mortal men, and I hate to say it, but they look a little bored. They’re glad that the man in the car was saved, but this
isn’t the awe-struck crowd watching a miracle unfold in the skies above them, like in the first movie. We don’t even
get any individual reaction shots from the crowd. It’s just one medium shot of Superman lifting the guy out of the
car, and that’s the entire sequence.
Honestly, the main problem is that it doesn’t look expensive enough. This is a June 1983 audience watching this film,
and Return of the Jedi came out three weeks ago. We’ve seen E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Superman II, for
that matter, and we’ve got expectations around what a thrilling opening sequence is supposed to look like. This
looks cheap and small, and it sets the tone for how we receive the rest of the movie.
And if it seems like Christopher Reeve is kind of going through the motions, then maybe he is. He just came off
shooting a film called Monsignor, which he considered an important film that would establish him as a serious
dramatic actor. Reeve didn’t sign for Superman III until he read the script, and he decided to do it on the strength of
the “Dark Superman” parts, which would give him the opportunity to do something new with the character.
“I’ve played the part three times now,” he told a reporter, “and it’s become easy for me, although it was very hard to
do when I began.”
This sequence is the kind of thing that’s old hat for Chris Reeve, and for us too; that miraculous burst of excitement
that we got from the first two movies seems unlikely this time. He doesn’t even catch the bank robbers, who must
be halfway to Bearspaw by now.
Footnotes:
I’ve got a lot of nerdy little facts about this sequence, and if you like that kind of thing, then here they are:
The kid outside the photo booth is Aaron Smolinski, who played Clark as a toddler in Superman: The Movie. He also
had a little cameo as a Communications Officer in 2013’s Man of Steel.
The “Man in Cap” who features a lot in the sequence and ends up with pie on his face is played by Gordon Rollings,
who was the fisherman in Superman II who saw the villains make landfall at the lake.
They use the same shot of the driver in the car filling up with water from two different angles. The first shot of the
driver shows him looking around and finally screaming for help, and it’s followed immediately by the second shot,
which is the same reaction from the side.
The stunt man playing the driver is Roy Alon. He was equipped with a breathing apparatus if he needed it, but he
managed to do all the takes while holding his breath.
The car is a 1975 Plymouth Valiant, which I’m only mentioning because I love the fact that the Internet Movie Cars
Database exists.
And, because I enjoy this kind of thing, here’s all the other actors in the scene that I can identify:
Penguin Man: Harry Woolf
Roller Skater: Tracey Eddon
People in phone booths, from left to right: Wendy Leech, Clive Curtis, Billy Horrigan
Blind Man: Graham Stark
Bank Robber: Peter Wear
Guy who breaks the door handle trying to rescue the driver: Paul Weston
Dignified Gent: Bob Todd
Mime: Justin Case
Applauding Man: Stan Edmonds
Delivery Man: Terry Camilleri
I’d expect the hot dog vendor to be credited, but he isn’t. And that’s about it for nerdy facts today.
Superman III 4.7: Ones and Zeroes
October 30, 2022Superman IIItechnology
“Computers probably aren’t for everyone,” said the cover story to the August 1983 issue of a magazine called
Personal Computing, for fuck’s sake.
“It seems unlikely,” they continue, “that every person in America, let alone the world, will find it necessary or cost
effective to own or use a computer for storing and manipulating large amounts of data.” So that turned out not to
be the case.
But to be fair, that was an accurate description of the machines that they were writing about in 1983. The tiny
computer that lives in your pocket and holds all of your pictures, music, and indiscriminate sex apps is very far away
from the bulky, clunky machinery that they were using back then. If you wanted to use a computer in 1983, you
needed to invest time in reading a book, or taking an “introduction to computers” class, where they would teach you
new definitions for words you thought you already knew, like monitor, and memory, and fatal error.
Kids adapted pretty easily, as kids tend to do — they’d been playing video games for years, and a home computer
was just an arcade game that took forever to load and only displayed in one color. But a lot of adults in the early 80s
didn’t think that “storing and manipulating large amounts of data” was a thing that they would ever need to do.
The media buzzword was “Computerphobia”: the fear that using a computer was boring and time-consuming, and
would make you feel stupid if you even tried. The graph below is from an Atlantic article; it’s Google Books’
reckoning of how many times the word “computerphobia” was used in publications over the years. As you can see,
the concept peaked in 1986, and then took forever to go away.
I was looking up “computerphobia” material to get a feel for how average people thought about computers at the
time, and I found Computer Talk, an absolutely insane syndicated newspaper column from 1983 which basically does
nothing but disparage computers.
Here’s the beginning of a Computer Talk entry from spring 1983, called “Computers can be incredibly stupid“:
Give your computer a nickname and you’ll have less trouble with it. Choose the kind of name children sometimes
hang on classmates, like Dumbo or Bag of Bolts. Right away, ‘Bag of Bolts’ sounds less fearsome than ‘DEC PDP-11
microcomputer’.
Unlike bright people, who often plunge recklessly ahead before they understand the logic behind something, slow
learners have to get all the facts and instructions straight before they start something. So do computers.
After an example of how the writers got their own “Bag of Bolts” to sort a list of numbers correctly, they describe a
training program that’s trained “5,000 word processing operators” for a temp company.
Margarita explains, “First, we use people-oriented trainers, not computer experts. And we work 1 on 1 on 1: one
trainee, one trainer, and one machine. No classroom sessions for us.”
Margarita knows that preliminaries such as films, books and tapes don’t help. Instead, they make trainees wary that
the computer is some complicated ogre. “We sit ’em down at the computer right away.” That proves to trainees that
Olsten isn’t afraid they’re going to hurt the computer, or worse, get hurt by it.
Olsten’s trainers spend only two hours breaking in new recruits. Then each trainee spends 10 hours in self-managed
instruction and four hours on practice drills. After 16 hours — no more than four hours on any day — Olsten’s
trainees are certified to run a word processor.
So it does kind of make sense that the authors of Computer Talk would want to cut the computer down to size — if
you need a 16-hour training with 4 hours of practice drills just to start using a single program, you’re bound to have
some built-up resentment that needs to get expressed somehow.
That being said, there is really no excuse for the hit piece they wrote in fall 1983 called “Computers a school
necessity? Nuts!”
Parents and teachers are in a panic, we’re told by our sensitive barometer, reader mail. Letters are pouring in from
parents asking what computer to buy a 9-year-old so she can learn programming and not lag behind in the job race
10 years from now. School board committees are begging fast advice on the best computer to stick in every
classroom.
Once cause of the panic is a flood of books and articles by educators who’ve fastened onto the nonsense term
“computer literacy.”
!!!
It’s true, computers are becoming as commonplace as cars and TVs. But have you heard of a school that started
driver education in kindergarten so students wouldn’t fear cars at age 18? You’re afraid of computers because you
lived without them so long. Few of today’s children will fear them even if you never put a computer in your home or
school.
Educator/author Herbert Kohl calls classroom computers “the world’s most expensive flashcards.” Educators Jack
Chambers and Jerry Sprecher studied 13 research reports and found no agreement on whether computer-assisted
instruction helps kids learn.
They end up advocating against a proposed law that would give computer companies a tax break for donating
computers to schools, and insist that learning to use a computer will make no difference in college or the job
market.
So that’s where we’re at, in 1983: people were writing newspaper columns actively suppressing the use of
computers in school. All those secretaries needed special training to become word processing technicians, but for
most people, it was a waste of time and money.
So that’s the background for the choices that Superman III makes about how to cover this hot-button topic.
Computers are presented as necessary and inevitable — the systems that Gus hacks into later in the film make the
world run more smoothly — but they’re also mysterious, and potentially sinister.
Here’s how the script describes the first scene with Gus at work, in the Webscoe computer room:
The room we enter is one of those enormous computer centers. Along the walls are the massive data consoles, their
tape decks alternately rolling and stopping. Other machines extrude massive print-outs. In the center of the room
are desks, one after another, with small table-top computer consoles, the sort that are operated from a keyboard.
VARIOUS WORKERS are seen doing their jobs, including the ones operating the keyboard computers. They move
rapidly around in a curious and unique fashion: each WORKER sits on a chair that has ball bearing wheels and they
propel themselves from terminal to terminal by skittering around without leaving their chairs. To facilitate this
action, they all wear white tennis shoes, which grips the floor for maximum purchase. The impression we get is one
of robot-like humans zipping around from machine to machine.
We don’t get that dance scene in the film, which is a shame, because it could have been beautiful. The actual scene
has people on swivel chairs moving between terminals, but it doesn’t show them moving in rhythm to create a
larger visual pattern; they’re treated like the standard busy-office background to a conversation between Gus and a
co-worker. It’s possible that Richard Lester had to find a real computer center to shoot the scene in, and discovered
how mundane they were.
But that was a real fear at the time: that using computers would make us more robotic, stifling human nature and
bending us to their mechanical will.
In fact, Christopher Reeve said exactly that to Omni magazine in August 1983, while promoting the film:
“Ultimately, computers can be a destructive force that prevents people from relating to one another. Computers are
misused in Superman III by certain bad elements who are trying to take over the world.”
But is there an anti-technological bias present in the film?
“There certainly is from Richard Lester’s point of view. One of the premises of this movie is that as we move into the
future and towards high tech we must try not to move away from people. Getting a machine to do all our work for
us isn’t necessarily a good idea.”
The idea was that people who interact with computers would become more like computers: efficient, logical, and
unemotional. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it?
Because, damn, I would like to give that reality a shot. What’s actually happened over the last forty years is that
we’ve welcomed computers into every facet of our daily lives, and we are no more logical or efficient than we ever
were. There was never really a chance that we would become like computers; that’s not what humans do. The
problem is that the computers have become like us, amplifying everything that’s good and bad in our nature.
I have to admit, I kind of miss the idea that people need to take 16 hours of training before they’re qualified to
operate a computer. Just imagine how nice that would be.
Superman III 4.8: The Loss of Lois
November 8, 2022Superman IIImuppets, salkinds, self-sabotage, trash-talk, wouldn't it be nice
She’s only got three minutes, and she lands four solid jokes, which is four more than practically anyone else in the
movie. Lois Lane — up until this point, the single most important human being in the world — has been suddenly
and mysteriously called away to Bermuda, for a surfside adventure that’s probably way more interesting than
anything we’re going to experience in Smallville. She is with us, and then she is gone, like a forgotten promise, and
Superman III has to stumble along without her.
Obviously, this is a dreadful mistake. If Warner Bros had asked people in pre-market testing whether they wanted
Lois Lane to appear in the next Superman movie, 94% of respondents would have said yes, and the other 6%
wouldn’t have understood the question, because it’s such a stupid idea that they’d think the survey must be asking
about something else.
Now, there are two different explanations that have been given for why Lois Lane isn’t a main character in Superman
III. The first explanation is that Margot Kidder said something mean about the Salkinds in a magazine article, so they
punished her by only bringing her back for a cameo. The other explanation is even stupider.
Admittedly, the offending article is pretty bad. In April 1981, just before Superman II was released in the United
Kingdom, Time Out ran “The Truth About Superman“, a three-page expose about the Salkinds, and their bumbling
movie-production crime syndicate. The article covered the fights with Richard Donner, the shady financial deals, and
that time the Salkinds extorted $15 million from Warner Bros.
All of that material was already in the public record, so it wasn’t that shocking for anyone in America who followed
Variety or the LA Times. The big scoop was Margot Kidder talking on record, and at length.
“I’ve been told not to talk about it, but I don’t care,” she said, dismissing a very good piece of advice. “They are truly
despicable people and it’s time it came out.” And then she spoke her truth.
“They tried to screw me out of $40,000,” she said, and “they were behaving totally illegally.” Richard Donner “made
the Salkinds billions,” she continued, “and they turned around and stabbed him in the back. I mean, I have nothing
but contempt for them.” These are things that you just shouldn’t say about someone who you’re hoping will give
you $1.5 million dollars to appear in a feature film.
Strangely, the thing that really struck a nerve with the producers was this: “It was the only movie I’ve ever worked
on where the crew demanded their cash in advance every week, because initially the checks were bouncing.”
“That is absolute bullshit,” producer Pierre Spengler shot back in response, “and you can quote me verbatim. There
has never been a single bounced check on any of the productions I or the Salkinds have worked on. That is libellous,
defamatory, and I will take whoever says anything to the contrary to court.”
Of course, the matter didn’t end up in court, because the Salkinds were allergic to saying anything under oath; they
were more sued against than suing. But you can see how this situation might make things awkward at the next cast
party.
So in August 1981 — just two months after Superman II raced to a fantastic $108 million domestic box office take —
Kidder told People that she’d been fired from Superman III.
“If I think someone is an amoral asshole, I say so,” she said, having learned nothing. “Now I have a studio quite angry
with me, and the Salkinds in a position to claim my car.”
Still, she had other roles to play. She’d recently wrapped Some Kind of Hero, a 1982 comedy-drama, playing a hooker
who falls in love with Richard Pryor. “I love Lois Lane,” she admitted. “I could play her till I die, but I won’t die if I
don’t play her.”
So the idea is that the Salkinds sabotaged their own movie because Kidder insulted them, which seems petty, but
plausible. But there’s also a lot of evidence that points towards a different and much dumber explanation: They
couldn’t think of anything to do with Lois Lane.
Remember Ilya Salkind’s lunatic treatment for the third movie, featuring Brainiac, Mr. Mxyzptlk, a romance with
Supergirl and a medieval jousting sequence for the climax? In that treatment, Ilya’s very first sentence cuts Lois right
out of the plot:
“The story could start with a pre-title sequence showing Clark learning that Lois Lane has asked to be transferred as
a correspondent to one of the foreign offices associated with the Daily Planet (Hong Kong?).”
That is the first order of business, as far as Ilya is concerned: find an excuse to send Lois somewhere very far away. In
the movie they landed on Bermuda rather than Hong Kong, but the principle is the same: get her out of town as
quickly as possible.
And here’s the thing: that treatment has two dates on it. The first draft was dated November 7, 1980, and the
second draft March 27, 1981. That was a couple of weeks before Kidder was quoted so explosively in Time Out.
Cutting Lois out of the third movie wasn’t a sudden, impulsive move — Ilya was planning on getting rid of her
anyway, because he wanted to feature a romance between Superman and Supergirl.
And the screenwriters, David and Leslie Newman, didn’t want Lois in the movie either. They told Starlog magazine:
“There wasn’t anything with Lois in the movie because we all felt we had taken that love story as far as it could go.
The people who were so moved and touched and thrilled by Superman II‘s love story think, ‘Oh no, I wanna see
more of that.’ When you actually bring them into the theater, after about two scenes of ‘more’, they die of boredom.
Even if they think that’s what they want to see, they don’t, really.”
So that’s just about the dumbest idea that anyone has ever had: cut Lois Lane out of a Superman story, because
people aren’t interested in her anymore. It’s a devastating act of self-sabotage. It’s on the level of Brian Henson
using Clifford as the host of Muppets Tonight, because he thought people wouldn’t want to see Kermit the Frog
hosting a Muppet TV show.
Cutting Lois out of your movie means throwing away your most valuable asset: a fully-realized, beloved character
with strong relationships and emotional backstory, whose profession and personality make her one of the great plot-
generators of our time.
Lois is ambitious and vulnerable, manipulative and disaster-prone. She inserts herself into dramatic situations —
sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.
For example: if there’s a greedy industrialist who’s trying to destroy Colombia’s coffee crop and reroute oil tankers,
then Lois will get a job as a secretary in his office, and sneak in late at night, so she can get caught looking for
incriminating documents. And if there’s a mad genius computer expert who’s hacking into databases all around the
world, then Lois is the one who’ll figure out that the cyberattacks are all connected, and track them to their source.
That is what Lois does.
In fact, the magnitude of the loss of Lois in Superman III is so great that the movie actually has a greedy industrialist
and a mad genius computer expert, and in the entire course of the film, nobody ever figures that out.
The villains in Superman III stage several public criminal incidents — creating a hurricane in South America, handing
a chunk of Kryptonite to Superman, stealing a whole bunch of oil tankers — and there is not a single moment when
any character says, “It must be Webster!” and tries to do something about it. Superman is so out of touch without
Lois that he might have missed the entire climax of the film, if the villains hadn’t left him a recorded message telling
him precisely where to go.
Lois Lane is the key to making Superman stories work, and she’s been that way since February 1940. They’ve tried
replacing her before, with Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris and Lena Luthor. On Smallville, they gave Superboy three best
friends, two of them madly in love with him, and they still had to bring in Lois in season four, when they ran out of
ideas. For the last eighty years, people have been writing Superman stories nonstop, and after all this time, it is still
the correct and only answer: Lois Lane.
And it’s not like they’ve got any big plans for Lana, romantically or otherwise. For plot construction, the Newmans
were using the “wouldn’t it be nice” principle, i.e. “wouldn’t it be nice if Superman saw his old high school
sweetheart, Lana Lang?” I mean, they’re right, it is nice; I might even go so far as very nice. But it’s not interesting or
exciting, and it doesn’t lead to anything in particular.
The Superman/Lana interaction in this film is so low-energy that they stage a scene with Superman standing in the
living room of Lana’s house, and she leaves to get him a cup of decaffeinated coffee. I don’t understand the
mentality of someone who’d say that the audience is bored with Lois Lane, and then write that scene down on a
piece of paper.
And at the end of the movie, when the Clark/Lana story finally rattles to a vague and disappointing conclusion,
there’s another little cameo with Lois. She’s back from vacation with a front-page story exposing corruption in the
Caribbean, and she says, “You know, I knew I was on to something when that taxi driver kidnapped me!” And
everyone in the audience wishes that we’d watched that movie, instead. I bet it was terrific.
Superman III 4.9: The Sorceror’s Apprentice
November 27, 2022Superman IIIicarus, technology
I mean, these days Gus Gorman would probably be the hapless head of a secretly bankrupt crypto exchange,
breathlessly spinning imaginary plates and having no idea why people even believe in him.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” he would explain. “And of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a
compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe
there will be, so that’s sort of where you start.
“And now all of a sudden everyone’s like, wow, people just decided to put $200 million in the box. This is a pretty
cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided
should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that? Like, you know, this is, I mean boxes can
be great. Look, I love boxes as much as the next guy.”
And there he flies, bold Icarus, flapping his waxen wings en route to the sky, and then the sea. We are strangely
vulnerable to know-nothing hucksters, it appears, especially in tech, where people remake the world by typing
things. And there’s Gus Gorman, fast-talking his way to illusory riches, and everybody marvels: look at all those
pretty red flags, waving in unison.
As Gus Gorman and his fellow techbros know only too well, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some
just kind of randomly have greatness that comes out of nowhere, as a plot device in a story that they probably think
they’re the heroes of.
“Hello,” chirps the Webscoe Payroll Division, and who says user interfaces were unfriendly back in 1983? I don’t
know how it works at any other multinational, but the Webscoe Industries computer interface is unbelievably eager
to please. You just type “Overide all security”, and it goes ahead and overides it for you. Consider it overided, is the
instantaneous response.
This is the moment where the movie hacker is supposed to rub their hands and announce, “We’re in!” but it’s 1983
and they haven’t discovered the concept of “in” yet.
Here in the tech space of 1983, almost anything is possible, except a color monitor and a readable font. Master the
command line, and the world is yours to command. You can plot two bilateral coordinates at the same time, direct a
weather satellite to create bad weather, analyze the composition of an unknown imaginary space mineral, and
reconfigure payroll operations, even if you’re not an expert in those fields and you don’t even know how your
paycheck works.
In fact, if you can speak computer, then it doesn’t matter whether you know anything at all — the computer knows
how, and all you have to do is ask, often in plain English. The first time we see Gus Gorman sitting at his instrument
making the numbers dance, the dazzled data school instructor asks him, “How did you do that?” and Gus answers, “I
don’t know. I just… did it.” And then he does it again.
There is a tension in Superman III between Gus’ apparent intellectual demeanor and his uncanny abilities at the
keyboard. This tension is not resolved in any way, and your reaction to that can color your view of the film
considerably.
You can easily imagine the exact same plot structure with a know-it-all whiz kid, some kind of impishly
neurodivergent spindly guy with coke-bottle glasses who actually knows what bilateral coordinates are before he
starts plotting them. That character would suit this movie all the way down to the ground, reducing things to an
easily recognizable cliche that the audience doesn’t have to think very hard about.
But they cast Richard Pryor for this role, and they want some kind of approximation of his stand-up persona. That
character, the on-stage “Richard Pryor”, is not a highly educated guy. He’s a street-level striver, a trickster who
learned how to stay out of trouble through painful trial and error. He imitates winos and junkies, and talks about sex
and money and systematic injustice as experienced by himself and the people he knows. He doesn’t talk about going
to college and getting an engineering degree.
So the joke is that they’re taking that guy, and dropping him into the know-it-all whiz kid role with no advance
notice. The smart-person stuff pours out of his fingers somehow, while he stands by, just as stunned as everyone
else. You could describe Gus as an idiot savant, but he’s more like an apprentice wizard, decreed by destiny to wield
great power that he currently can hardly control.
Because that’s how all this computer mumbo-jumbo feels, for the technically un-savvy producers of this film.
Computer code is a collection of magic spells, and a facility for making the machines dance could manifest
spontaneously, even in deeply unlikely places.
When the audience knows what Gus is trying to accomplish — steal all the half-pennies, or define a target in
longitude and latitude — then he talks to the computer in plain English. When he’s doing something that sounds
tech-y, like reprogramming a satellite to shoot lasers at the clouds over South America, then he types a series of
impenetrable runes and sigils, like *S# A1 E9 PJC { ≠ V 2T2 S 00 {
oh. I just typed that, and now my computer is telling me that I’ve bypassed the firewall, and hacked into the
mainframe. Oh, my gosh. We’re in!
Superman III 4.10: Oh, It’s You
November 29, 2022Superman IIIbad manners, casual, fire
The situation could hardly be worse. An enormous chemical plant out in the middle of somewhere has burst into
flames in all directions, with fire and smoke pouring out of every window it can find. Firefighters are crawling all over
the scene, spraying their hoses at everything that looks hot, and the fire just keeps on burning anyway; I’m not sure
it’s even noticed.
There are workers trapped on the roof, scurrying haplessly from one bad outcome to another, and there doesn’t
seem to be anything we can do. “Get me the number three ladder truck in here!” the fire chief hollers, and one of
his men counters, “It won’t reach!” I don’t know why they didn’t bring the truck with the tall ladders on this trip; this
town needs taller ladders or shorter factories.
And then an omnipotent space angel materializes behind the fire chief, wearing a circus acrobat suit. “Chief, how can
I help?” it booms, raw power sizzling from every pore.
“Get this man a helmet!” the chief shouts, and then turns and recognizes what’s next to him. “Oh, it’s you,” he says.
So I don’t know, call me crazy, but I like it when people treat Superman like he’s something special. This is for all
intents and purposes the Outstretched Hand of an Ever-Loving God, appearing beside the fire chief at his moment of
greatest need to perform supernatural miracles in order to accomplish what is technically the chief’s actual job. I
would think he’d muster up a little more enthusiasm. The chief even takes a step forward and starts shouting orders
at his men again, like he’s already forgotten Superman stopped by.
This is a real change from the way that Superman was treated in the first movie, when he was brand new and
everyone was just getting used to him. The citizens of 1978 Metropolis knew how to appreciate a mythological
event; every time he appeared in public, you’d get a bunch of reaction shots from amazed onlookers, clearly
incorporating new information into their worldview in real time. People would point, and gather in little bunches to
murmur and gossip with each other, and generally indicate to the audience that this was a turning point in the
history of humankind.
And now it seems like Superman’s actually a bit of a nuisance, as far as the white-coat in the acid room is concerned.
This character’s name is Dr. McClean, which amuses me but I don’t know why, and he is unbelievably casual about
the sudden appearance of a superpowered celebrity in his office.
Superman: Sir? You’d better get out of here now; I’ll show you the quickest way.
McClean: Go and look after the others. I can’t leave here.
Superman: Why not?
McClean: I’ve got to stay and look after those. (gestures at the acid) That’s concentrated beltric acid. If that stuff
heats up over 180 degrees, we’ve got a crisis on our hands that’ll make this fire look like a Sunday school picnic.
But the fire is the crisis, it’s the same crisis, and you’re standing right in the middle of it. What could he possibly
mean? How would it help, for him to stay in the room and choke on smoke? Is he friends with the acid, and it’s less
likely to blow up if he’s in the room?
And who the hell talks to Superman like that, especially when you’re in the middle of terrible danger that he has
been specifically summoned at short notice from the pearly gates of Heaven to rescue you from?
The correct protocol in these instances is as follows: Oh, Superman, thank god you’re here, I’ve got some high-
maintenance diva acid in the other room, and it’s being a real drama queen about the temperature. You’ve got to
help us, you’re our only hope, and so on. You know the kind of thing.
“Go and look after the others,” indeed. I never heard of such a thing. I don’t usually get upset like this over fictional
bad manners, but this is a level of disrespect that I don’t think Superman should have to deal with in his very first
action sequence in the movie.
Now, I do understand, from a strictly in-universe point of view, that people might start to take Superman’s presence
for granted. It’s been five years since he was first revealed to the world, and since then, he’s presumably been saving
stuff pretty much non-stop. People can get used to a lot of things, and there’s probably a daily column in the
newspaper that just lists all of the crimes and disasters that Superman took care of on the previous day. It’s probably
the most boring column in the paper by this point, published on page 6 and mostly ignored.
In fact, it’s possible that this chemical factory has such piss-poor fire safety planning because if anything goes wrong,
they know that Superman will show up; he’s probably incentivizing management cutting corners on costly safety
programs because he’s willing to show up for free and save the day.
But from the audience’s point of view, we haven’t seen Superman in a couple of years, and it’s a little deflating to
return to Metropolis and find people treating our hero like a maintenance man.
And it really doesn’t help that there are three shots early in the sequence where you can clearly see the wires
lowering Christopher Reeve to the ground. This simply didn’t happen in the earlier films, because Richard Donner
was utterly obsessed with nailing the illusion of unaided flight. He made the flight effects team redo shot after shot
for months, until he got a result that looked effortless. That approach got Donner fired, so I understand why Richard
Lester isn’t pushing his luck, but when your movie’s release date is three weeks after Return of the Jedi, it’s a bad
idea to make your effects visibly worse than your last movie.
The problem with all of these landing shots is that the camera is set well back, to get the entire landing in one take.
We see the location, with the chief shouting orders and the firefighters busily unrolling the hose, and in the
background, Superman emerges from the top of the frame and slowly touches down. Even if you couldn’t see the
wires, the shot looks exactly like what it is: a man being carefully lowered to the ground. It’s awful.
For the actual flying scenes, Lester decided to drop the “Zoptics” flight system, the clever dual-camera system that
allowed Donner to shoot Superman soaring across the screen against a moving background. In this sequence, there
are three shots of Superman zooming away to find a water supply, and they are extremely basic.
First, we see a little Superman moving across a stationary long shot of the surrounding area…
Then there’s a straight-ahead shot of him moving through the air, cape flapping, against a front projection of the
countryside zooming by…
And finally another shot of Superman flying across a static shot of a lake.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with these shots, except how boring they are compared to the previous films.
They get the plot point across to the audience, but without any real inspiration or beauty. This is Superman as the
Salkinds always wanted him: just good enough that he wouldn’t be laughed out of the theater.
So what we’ve got here is a diminished mythological hero, like Samson halfway through a haircut. He can put out the
fire and get those acid jars to quiet down and go back to sleep, but this is just another day at the office for him.
Nobody is particularly impressed, and to be honest, it’s a relief to get it over with, and move on to the next part of
the movie.
Footnotes:
The state policeman gets one of the least funny jokes in the movie: “I mean, that fire, it’s spreading like wild… fire.”
This is immediately followed by an unforgivably clunky bit of exposition: “That’s not just a building, that’s a chemical
plant! You know what I mean? It’s like, uh… like chemicals!” He’s played by Shane Rimmer, one of those twinkly old
character actors who get the job done, no matter how clunky the dialogue is.
Rimmer appeared in the first Superman movie as a Naval Transport Commander, and in Superman II as one of the
NASA controllers who lost track of the astronauts on the moon. He also appeared in a lot of other stuff that you
might have liked, including Doctor Who (in the unbeloved 1966 story “The Gunfighters”), Star Wars (as an engineer
when the characters are preparing to attack the Death Star), Thunderbirds (as the voice of Scott Tracy and other
characters), Dr. Strangelove (as Captain “Ace” Owens), Batman Begins (as a Water Board Technician) and the 2012
Dark Shadows reboot (as a board member of Angelique’s company). Plus a couple hundred other credits in a career
that spanned more than fifty years. Dude kept busy.
Al Matthews played the Fire Chief; he was the only firefighter in the sequence who wasn’t played by an actual
firefighter. He was also the narrator for the TV special The Making of Superman III.
Dr. McClean was played by Barry Dennen, another busy character actor and voice artist. He was in Monster Squad
and Wonder Woman and Kentucky Fried Movie and DuckTales and Murphy Brown and The Smurfs. He voiced the
Chamberlain Skeksis in The Dark Crystal and Ramsis Dendup on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and from 2000 to 2016
he was in a whole bunch of video games.
A couple of bloopers, if you like that sort of thing: When Superman lands with Jimmy in his arms, the shadow of his
flying rig can be seen on the fire truck behind them. When Superman leaves Jimmy on the stretcher and walks away,
there’s a boom mic shadow on the ground.
In the script, this sequence was a forest fire, which put a nuclear reactor in danger. They scouted a location in a
forest north of Edmonton, but decided it was too much trouble: it would be difficult to get the cast and crew up to
the remote location, and they weren’t sure they would be able to control the fire. They shifted the sequence to a
factory instead, and used an oil refinery outside of Calgary as the location.
Unfortunately, the shift of scene from a nuclear reactor to a chemical plant kind of ruins the film in two different
ways, which I will tell you all about when we get there.
Superman III 4.12: Mission: Smallville
December 14, 2022Superman IIIbowling, our street of homes, wouldn't it be nice
So obviously there isn’t an actual news story in Clark Kent going back to Kansas for his high school reunion. How
could there be?
This is a man whose entire life is newsworthy. Just the fact that he exists is a civilization-stunner on its own,
upending everything that we know about aviation and muscle mass, among other things. He’s constantly monitoring
the world around him to detect the slightest hint of calamity, and then dives straight towards it for a photogenic
rescue, full of human interest. He is everybody’s favorite news story, twenty-four hours a day.
So where is the news angle on a brightly-decorated high school gymnasium in a state that, for Superman, is literally
flyover country? The only headline that I see in this room is Hayseeds, Appleknockers Have Pleasant Rube Reunion,
and that’s not going to make much of a dent in newsstand sales in Metropolis.
And I know that there isn’t a compelling news story here, because there isn’t a compelling movie storyline that
motivates it. As I’ve mentioned before, the Newmans wrote the script on the “wouldn’t it be nice if” principle, which
is not the correct method.
What Clark accomplishes in this particular story thread is that he re-establishes friendly relations with a local girl
that might turn mildly romantic but decidedly doesn’t, then goes on a picnic with her, and takes her kid bowling.
When he writes up this barn-burner of a tale, it’ll include the passage: “Old relationships suddenly seem very much
the same. The prettiest girl in the school is still the prettiest girl in the school.” Meanwhile, people in Metropolis are
tripping over flaming penguins and inventing ransomware.
So this “story” has to be a false flag of some kind, an excuse to get Clark Kent out of the city to engage in important
undercover work. I mean, it’s in a movie; it has to mean something. But what?
It’s a bit of a stretch to posit that Superman wants to return to his roots, and revisit his idyllic childhood in Smallville.
From what I saw in the first movie, Clark’s childhood was terrible. He had to hide his powers, and never do anything
fun. He was scorned by the boys and pitied by the girls; in the one scene that involved other kids, we saw Lana get
into Brad’s car and drive away as the boys laughed, leaving him alone and humiliated. Later that day, his adopted
father died of a heart attack, and he had to help his mother with the damn wheat crop until it was time to walk to
the North Pole and discover his destiny.
And anyway, this trip doesn’t reconnect him to the simple life and give him a chance to enjoy some peace and quiet,
because he still has to put on the monkey suit and rescue people. There’s always a fire or a bridge accident or some
dumb kid getting tangled up in the farm machinery. Besides, if he wanted to see Smallville, he could fly there any
time he wants; the only reason he had to take a bus this time is because he’s making a big deal out of Clark killing
time in this nowhere town.
So here’s how I figure it: there’s something in Smallville that Clark needs to find or fix. It’s not something that he
could just fly in and take care of; he needs to spend a few days on site to monitor the situation.
My first thought is that maybe there’s something that he left behind, some remnant of Kryptonian tech that fell off
the back of his spaceship when it crashed into the wheat field. It’s lain dormant for decades, but in the last few days
it activated somehow, and he needs to find it before it eats somebody.
That’s why he goes on a picnic in this desolate overgrown patch of weeds, next to a field that is currently being
noisily combine harvested. He needs an excuse to go out into the outskirts and scan for trouble.
But then there’s the bowling sequence: one of the most complex scenes in the movie, which we will return to more
than once during our time with this film. For some reason that is not explicitly spelled out in the movie, Clark feels
the need to assist Lana’s terrible son, Little Ricky, at an awkward social moment when he runs the risk of bonding
with a helpful father figure. Clark separates the two, and then secretly uses Ricky’s ball to destroy other people’s
property. There is no explanation in Heaven or Earth for why Clark does this.
I mean, the kid is clearly hopeless. He can’t bowl, he can’t fix his mom’s car, and he can’t even run around in a wheat
field without knocking himself unconscious, and what else is there to even do in Kansas in 1983?
So the fact that Superman — the most powerful magical creature in existence — takes an interest in Little Ricky’s
emotional development just doesn’t make logical sense. Even if you were fond of Lana Lang, you wouldn’t take an
interest in Ricky. The kid’s a blank slate with a bowl cut.
My theory is that Clark suspects that Ricky has made contact with the alien tech, probably by tripping over it. Clark is
concerned that Ricky may have Kryptonian nanomachines in his blood, turning him into some kind of sonic
superweapon who can alter the course of human history with the sound of his annoying voice. As we will see, that
turns out to be exactly the case.
I mean, I’m willing to consider alternative explanations, if there are any, but I think everyone would agree that Clark
must have some deeper reason to spend time in Smallville. I mean, it’s not possible for him to have a shallower one.
Tomorrow:
4.13: The Girl Who Waited
Footnotes:
There’s a cute reference in the reunion scene to The Goon Show, the 1950s British radio comedy sensation that you
should look into if you haven’t already, because it’s one of the funniest shows ever made. The tiny old woman who
greets Clark at the reunion is named Minnie Bannister — actually just “Miss Bannister” in the dialogue — which is
the name of one of Spike Milligan’s recurring characters in The Goon Show. Richard Lester has a connection to the
Goon troupe, having directed the 1959 short film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, featuring Peter Sellers
and Spike Milligan.
Minnie Bannister is played by Enid Saunders, in her first credited role. She went on to play a bunch of minor
characters in the 1980s, most of which were variations on “Old Woman” and “Deaf Old Lady”. Coincidentally, she’s
got two credits in 1987 — a film called Home is Where the Hart Is, and an episode of MacGyver — where her
character was named Minnie.
The D.J. at the reunion was played by Kevin Harrison Cork, in his only film role. Kevin is now involved with a live
interactive D&D show called The D20 Initiative, where he plays the Dungeon Master. His bio on the D20 site says,
“He has published books, acted Shakespeare professionally, helped Superman dance, helped GenXers invest for
retirement, been interviewed on national TV and in international magazines, ran AOL forums, taught 700 Boomers
how to take Instagram selfies and terrorized children as the Green Goblin.”
Superman III 4.13: The Girl Who Waited
December 19, 2022Superman IIIhistory, villains
She catches his eye, and for a moment, all Creation holds its breath. There’s a pretty girl in the room, and against all
odds, she’s actually happy to lay eyes on Clark Kent.
A divorced mother scraping by as a secretary, friendly but lonely, pretty and vivacious and just mildly out of synch
with the rest of the world, she stands out from the crowd of Smallville lifers. She dreams of the day when she can
break out of this burg, and go be a divorced mother scraping by as a secretary in the big city.
She’s a fun character played by an adorable actress, and I have just one question: Who is this dame supposed to be,
anyway? Because they keep calling her Lana Lang, and that can’t be right, because Lana Lang was Superman’s first
and most formidable supervillain.
I’ll show you what I mean. Here’s her bone-chilling introduction the first time she appeared in the comics, in a 1950
issue of Superboy:
This little lass with a fatal curiosity is as pretty as Lois Lane… as inquisitive as Lois Lane… as harassing as Lois Lane…
and even has the same initials as Lois Lane! She’s Lana Lang, young Clark’s next-door neighbor, who manages to get
in the Boy of Steel’s hair wherever he turns, and whom you will get to know as… The Girl in Superboy’s Life!
So there you have it. Before Lex Luthor, before Brainiac, before the Toyman and the Prankster and the Ultra-
Humanite — there was the Girl. In the early 50s, Superboy didn’t run into a lot of top-shelf villainy; he mostly dealt
with chiselers and racketeers and practical jokers. The only baddie that posed an existential threat was his prying,
scheming next-door neighbor, who had hair-getting-in powers like you wouldn’t believe.
If you’re going to give Superboy a solo title — essentially the 1950s comic-book equivalent of Muppet Babies — then
it’s only a matter of time before you introduce the child version of Lois Lane. The character is an incredibly
productive story-engine: smart, independent, entirely immune to warnings and obstacles. Add Lois to any Superman
story, and it becomes more complex and interesting, especially if he needs to keep her from finding out that he’s
Clark Kent.
So that’s what we’ve got here: a young Lois-figure, who lives next door and spends her days and nights plotting the
downfall of Superboy.
In those early days, Lana found lots of ways to tangle herself into Superboy’s life. Her parents were African explorers,
which is a thing that people used to be for a living, and she stayed at the Kents’ place sometimes while her parents
were away, peering into corners and setting traps for Clark. She would be the victim of armed robbery, and the only
thing that mattered to her was noting that Clark disappeared at the moment that Superboy rescued her. Making
Clark’s life harder was her life’s ambition.
And when Lois got her own comic, it was only a matter of time before Lana showed up to ruin that too. Superman’s
Girl Friend, Lois Lane launched in 1958, and exactly a year later, a grown-up Lana moved to Metropolis to raise hell.
Her first order of business — literally, the top of page 2 — was to blab about a special ring that Superboy gave her
back in the day, just to screw with Lois.
Lana apparently became a TV newscaster in Metropolis, not that we ever saw her TV newscasting, because her real
job was to make Lois worried and jealous. Lana got temporary super-powers on three different occasions over the
next year, and the only thing she wanted to do with them was marry Superman. She swooped in when Lois turned
into a baby, and swooped again when Lois was turned into an old woman. Lois could hardly turn into anything
without dumb ol’ Lana Lang standing by to reap the rewards.
And then there was the time when Lana stole the Phantom Zone projector from the Fortress of Solitude, and
trapped Lois in a shadowy invisible half-life prison with a bunch of Kryptonian criminals and Mon-El, apparently
forever. Then she did the same thing to Superman’s mermaid friend, and finally held Superman himself at ray-
gunpoint, ordering him to marry her.
Sure, it turned out that she was under the influence of a blue space metal that turns people evil when they touch it,
but in my opinion it was, like, ninety percent Lana and ten percent blue space metal.
Really, the only way to deal with Lana was to give her another Superman to date, which they did in 1979. She had a
relationship with a dude from another planet with magic powers named Vartox, who was based on Sean Connery’s
costume in the 1974 film Zardoz.
Just to make sure that everyone got the point, in the story that first brought them together, Vartox was disguised as
a human being who worked with Lana at the TV station. He had to go and patrol his own planet in the Sombrero
Galaxy, but he came back about once a year in the Superman title to continue his romance with Lana, although she
also had an ongoing let’s-go-to-dinner relationship with Clark at the same time.
So it’s not really possible to talk about the pre-Crisis Lana Lang as an individual character, because she was always
defined by her similarities with Lois. As a child, she was the Lois-substitute, and as an adult, she was basically a
mirror for Lois’ impulses and insecurities.
And then there’s the Lana Lang of Superman III, who is nothing like the comic book character. She’s pretty, she has
red hair, and she knew Clark when he was growing up in Smallville, and that is the entire resemblance between
them.
In the movie continuity, Clark didn’t gain his costume and superhero identity until he left Smallville; it’s presented as
his rite of passage, which creates the boundary between teenager and adult. That means movie Lana doesn’t have
any childhood relationship with Superboy, which was basically the comic book Lana’s entire personality.
And far from the suspicious and harassing Lana of old, movie Lana is entirely free from any notions that Clark and
Superman might be the same person. Clark returns to Smallville for the first time in decades and all of a sudden
there are Superman sightings; they even both show up to her picnic. But Lana pays no attention at all, and is happy
to offer lunch to whichever dark-haired man from Metropolis happens to turn up at the time.
She’s not suspicious, she doesn’t scheme, and she doesn’t send anybody to the Phantom Zone — why, it’s almost
like the movie has decided that women are not inherently villainous just by existing. I can’t imagine where they got
that idea.
Superman III 4.14: King of the Prom
December 20, 2022Superman IIIalcohol, bowling, favorite posts, sexism, villains
Now, the first thing that I’d like to point out is that Superman III is extremely judgmental about the consumption of
alcohol for the purposes of adult refreshment.
It’s something that only the baddies do, and they do it performatively to show how bad they are. At the beginning of
the seduction-of-the-innocent sequence, Webster makes a big show of accessing his enormous in-office liquor
cabinet, and giving Gus a drink. Later, Gus uses Brad’s interest in thirst-quenching beverages to gain access to the
company computer. And what is the last straw for Dark Superman, when you know that he’s really gone rotten? He
goes to a bar and has a drink.
So I think that’s important context to establish, before I present my analysis of the film’s anti-Brad agenda.
Brad Wilson — former football hero, current single guy with a steady job — does drink alcohol at several points in
the movie, guilty as charged. He also briefly puts his arm around Lana during the reunion scene, in a way that she is
clearly uncomfortable with. That is a bad thing that men should not do.
But, hear me out on this: I am not convinced that Brad is the worst person in this picture.
Take away the anti-alcohol bias, and what do we know about Brad?
Well, for starters, he’s not lying about who he is or leading a double life, like some people I could mention. After high
school, he didn’t run off to a polar icecap and inherit supernatural powers. Brad stayed in his hometown, like a
normal person, and he got a job, and he pined for the girl that he loved.
Sure, when we first see him, he’s bragging to somebody about an old football game, but if you want to talk about a
show-off, then we should start with the guy who flies around in the sky wearing a bright red-and-blue circus outfit.
We also know that Brad has real feelings for Lana, which he expresses consistently throughout the movie, as
opposed to the guy who parachutes in and hands her a lot of big talk, and then scuttles back to the city to write
newspaper articles about her.
In the movie taking place in Brad’s mind, he knew that Lana had married the wrong man. Donald — the King of the
Prom — was going to let her down, which he did, leaving her flat with a young kid to raise. And now that Donald is
out of the picture, the high school reunion would be the perfect time for Brad to reconnect with Lana, and tell her
how he feels. Unlike the other jerks in town, Brad doesn’t mind that Lana comes with strings attached; he’s willing to
raise Ricky as a stepson. He just needs her to give him a break for a minute, and maybe she’ll see that the right guy
for her has been standing here all this time, quietly hiccuping.
And when lying boasting coward runaway Clark Kent suddenly shows up in a spotless white tuxedo to sweep Lana
away, does Brad try to grab her, or fight with Clark for her? Of course not. She’s made her choice, at least for tonight,
and he just stands there looking sad. And yeah, he has another drink. Who wouldn’t?
And consider this, from the next sequence, when Clark is helping Lana to clean up after the dance:
Lana: Thanks for helping me out!
Clark: Are you kidding, Lana? A lot of guys would like to be where I am.
Lana: Ha. You’d be surprised how many offers I didn’t get. Even Brad wouldn’t stick around for this!
Reflect on that line for a moment. “Even Brad wouldn’t stick around for this!” implies that Brad would ordinarily
stick around and help Lana, and this moment is the exception.
And why didn’t Brad stick around this time? Because you-know-who is monopolizing the attention of the woman
that he loves.
And then there’s the bowling scene, which I mentioned a couple posts ago that we’d come back and examine. In this
sequence, Lana has taken her utterly hopeless son Ricky to the bowling alley, even though he can’t bowl and the
other kids don’t want to play with him. And Clark’s there too, for I guess journalistic reasons.
The scene begins with the kids grudgingly accepting Ricky in their game.
Lana: I just can’t stand this.
Clark: Oh, Lana, he’ll be okay. Believe me, I know — I was a late bloomer myself.
Lana: It’s not just that he’s small for his age. How’d you like to be the only kid in town without a father?
(Brad peels himself away from the bar, and starts climbing over the chairs to reach them.)
Lana: Oh, look — stewed to the gills in the middle of the afternoon.
Clark: Gee, all he had was chocolate milk.
Lara: No, I mean him.
Brad: Hey, sweet thing! Little kid getting hassled, huh? Kent, you still here?
Clark: Well, I seem to be, Brad.
Brad: All the kid needs is a couple pointers from the ol’ champ here. Kent, I bet you didn’t know I won the all-
country bowling championship two years in a row.
Clark: Gee, I didn’t know that, Brad.
Brad: Yeah. A natural athlete can play any sport.
(Brad walks toward Ricky, as he prepares to take his shot.)
Lana: Brad, you’re just going to make it worse!
Clark: It’s all right, Lana — he’ll be okay.
(Ricky is not okay. Rick sucks at this. The children jeer.)
Clark: You watch, he’ll get a spare! C’mon, Ricky!
(Brad approaches, and takes Ricky’s ball.)
Brad: Hey, kid — look, you’re holding it all wrong. Let ol’ Brad show you how it’s done.
(Clark gets involved.)
Clark: Uh, Brad? Say, Brad, I think maybe he’ll be better off doing it his way.
Brad: Well, for a guy who was lucky to be waterboy in the high school team, you sure got a big mouth, Kent.
Clark: Well, I just think that maybe Ricky doesn’t need a bowling lesson in front of all the other kids.
Brad: He needs a man to show ‘im!
Clark: I think he’s doing just fine on his own. ‘Scuse me.
(Clark takes the ball away from Brad.)
Clark: Here you go, Ricky. And give it your best shot. Okay! There you go.
And then Clark uses his secret magical powers to make Ricky believe that he bowled competently.
So here’s my objection: Brad was actually helping Ricky. Not helping him cheat, the way that Clark does, but actually
helping him to improve at the thing that he’s trying to do.
The way that Brad expresses himself is not in line with modern enlightened thought — “He needs a man to show
him!” — but you have to admit that Ricky is desperately in need of another caregiver. Lana has been raising Ricky by
herself since he was three, and look what an utter mess of a child he’s become.
And here is Brad, displaying a sincere interest in Lana and her family. Brad is clearly demonstrating that he would like
to be a positive figure in Ricky’s life.
You’ll notice that once again, when Clark grabs something out of Brad’s hands and pushes him aside, Brad does not
react with anger. He just allows it to happen, because he doesn’t want to make a scene, and he’s not a bad person.
Yes, again he does the unwelcome shoulder-grabbing of Lana, which is not excusable and I do not excuse it. And yes,
he cracks some jokes at Clark’s expense, which I will excuse, on account of Clark continuing to hang around
poisoning Brad’s potential relationship with the woman that he has longed for all these years.
As far as Brad’s weekend afternoon buzz is concerned, if you don’t hold the Prohibition-era view of alchohol as a
moral evil, then one might observe that it’s common for adults to drink beer at a bowling alley. That’s why there’s a
bar there. Honestly, the film’s goody two-shoes idea that you’re not supposed to drink at social functions is shared
by pretty much no one.
I’m not saying that I think Brad and Lana should be together at the end of this movie. He’s an alcoholic, and he
needs to quit it with the unwanted shoulder-squeezing. But if he went to meetings and did the 12 steps for a while, I
think Lana could do worse than go on a date with a guy who actually loves her, and wants to take care of her family.
I mean, she could go and follow the guy who causes senseless property damage at a struggling local community
recreation spot, in order to give a child a lifetime of confused expectations as he struggles to understand how he
could have been so powerful once and only once in his life. She could even move to a dangerous city with high rent,
bad schools and a rising crime rate, in the hopes of a relationship with a man who’s taken a secret permanent vow
of extraterrestrial celibacy. That is an option that Lana is free to pursue.
I just wanted to put in a word for the guy who didn’t inherit enchanted space powers, currently holding down a
shitty job and dreaming of something better.
Superman III 4.15: The Man Who Loved Mayonnaise
December 30, 2022Superman IIImake a friend, screwball
So let us speak of Lana Lang — once the Queen of the Prom, and now the leading lady in a movie that technically
doesn’t need one.
She’s not Lois, we’ve covered that, and she’s not even really Lana, in the original sense of the word. This is a brand
new Superman III original, constructed entirely out of the idea that somewhere in the world there must be a girl
who likes Clark Kent.
And they’ve decided that she should be funny, which makes all the difference.
I talked quite a bit about screwball comedy during the first Superman movie, and this isn’t really that. But it’s
screwball-inflected, and that’s a helpful place to start.
Quick recap: screwball comedy is a variation of the romantic comedy genre that was very popular from around 1934
to 1944. It used romantic farce plots with disguises and mistaken identities and borderline scandalous behavior, and
the movies were populated by fast-talking women who dominate the conversation and leave their leading man
struggling to catch up. Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story. That kind of thing.
Lana, as performed by the lovely Annette O’Toole, isn’t really a fast-talking screwball heroine, but there are echoes
of screwball in her first couple of scenes, as she runs roughshod over her conversations with Clark.
In her first scene, she’s in charge of the high school reunion, bustling around with several different things in her
hands.
Clark: Here, let me help you with that —
Lana: No, I can manage —
(She hands him a bowl, and immediately turns and walks through the dancing crowd to the DJ, still continuing their
conversation.)
Lana: This is the first time — excuse me — you’ve come back to this little burg since your mom passed away, isn’t it?
Clark: (bumping into dancers) Yeah, it’s — I’m sorry… um…
(Lana hands the DJ a stack of paper plates, instead of the records that she’s holding in her other hand. The DJ is
confused.)
Clark: (following her) So, I heard that you and Donald split up!
(She’s already on her way back through the crowd, to the buffet table.)
Lana: Did you eat yet?
Clark: Uh, no. (to the dancers) Beg pardon. Excuse me. Sorry.
(Lana gets to the buffet table, takes a ladleful of potato salad, and then realizes that she’s still got the records in her
hand.)
Lana: That’s not right.
Clark: No?
Lana: Yeah, you’re right about Donald and me, but — hold this a sec, okay?
(She hands him the ladle of potato salad.)

Clark: Oh, sure.

(She heads back to the DJ, to exchange the records for the paper plates. Clark is left alone at the buffet table,
clumsily holding the ladle.)
Lana’s not dominating Clark with a lot of fast chatter, as a screwball heroine would, but the effect is basically the
same — the leading man awkwardly following her around the room, bumping into people as she sails through the
crowd. But what we lose in screwball chatter, we gain in sweetness, and that’s not a bad trade.
If you want the audience to like a new character, there are three things you need them to do: make a joke, make a
friend, and make something happen. Making a joke lets the audience know that the character understands that
their job is to entertain us; making a friend with an existing character establishes that the new character belongs in
the narrative; and making a plot point is just good manners.
The plot point is questionable, and we’ll deal with that later, but Lana immediately nails both the joke and the friend
as soon as she appears. Clark is thrilled to see her, so she must be important, and her entrance is a charming little
dance around the room that plays nicely with Clark’s eternal straight-man persona.
The overlapping conversation is the key to Lana’s character, as David and Leslie Newman describe it in the script:
A NOTE ON LANA LANG: Lana is one of these people, who, both by nature and by exigencies of her situation, seems
to be carrying on three conversations at once and often doing two or three different tasks at once.
Although such people seem perfectly clear in their own minds about the direction their thoughts are going in, it’s
often confusing and disconcerting to others. As Lana is often keeping three conversation balls in the air
simultaneously, Clark is hard put to keep up with her, getting lost in the conversation, thinking she means one thing,
when in fact she’s gone on to another subject.
The effect is comical for us, a bit unsettling for him, and should finally be genuinely charming and adorable in his
eyes.
That habit of running several simultaneous conversation threads really is adorable, in the two and a half scenes that
they allow her to do it. I don’t know if it’s realistic to say that Lana is “one of those people” who do that, because I’m
not sure people like that exist outside of movies, but for a comic heroine, it’s a good gimmick.
Her second scene, cleaning up after the party with Clark, gives us more of this behavior.
Lana: Thanks for helping me out!
Clark: (standing on a ladder and pulling at streamers) Are you kidding, Lana? A lot of guys would like to be where I
am.
Lana: Oh, you’d be surprised how many offers I didn’t get. Even Brad wouldn’t stick around for this! It really isn’t
easy.
Clark: The streamers? Yeah, you just pull — and they —
Lana: No, not the streamers. Everything. (She’s picking up trash.) Not that I’m complaining, it’s just that — I don’t
know why, I just feel like I can talk to you.
Clark: (still up on the ladder) What?
Lana: I feel like I can talk to you!
(Clark snaps a streamer in half.)
Clark: You can?
Lana: (giggles) Yes.
(Clark comes down from the ladder, to join Lana.)
Clark: You know something, Lana?
Lana: What?
Clark: I, uh — I always wished that you would. I mean, even back in high school? Remember? When you were —
Clark and Lana: Queen of the prom?
(They look at the blown-up photograph of Lana and her ex-husband, in their glory days.)
Lana: Yeah. And then three years after the royal wedding, the king abdicated. Isn’t that terrible.
Clark: Yeah, it sure is.
Lana: There must be a gallon of potato salad left over! (She walks over to the buffet table.) You know what the
problem is?
Clark: Umm, I don’t know. Too much mayonnaise?
Lana: Mayonnaise? Donald loved mayonnaise! Why would you think that was the problem? No, the problem is, why
do I stay in Smallville?
So that, in my opinion, is the first legitimately funny joke in the film, which means that I have zero critiques about
Annette O’Toole’s character or performance. She’s really funny when they give her a chance, which is unfortunately
not that often.
You know what the problem is? The problem is, they have three different movies in this movie, and they can’t
decide which one they want to make. There’s a sweet romantic comedy between Clark and Lana about leaving
Smallville for Metropolis, a superhero movie about Superman turning kind of evil, and mostly a Richard Pryor
comedy about three villains taking advantage of a naive computer genius.
Unfortunately, the romantic comedy falls apart, because the heroine doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot,
and they can’t figure out whether it’s okay for Superman to have a girlfriend or not. But we’ve got this moment,
anyway, and it’s worth treasuring. We’ll always have mayonnaise.
Superman III 4.16: The Man from The Man from UNCLE
January 2, 2023Superman IIIbond, unbothered, villains, wouldn't it be nice
The first thing that you notice about Ross Webster, as a Superman villain, is how chill he is. Well, technically, the first
thing that you notice is that he’s the guy from the old spy show, and then you notice how chill he is.
And as a predatory corporate raider in 1983, he has reason to be chill. He’s only a couple years into the Reagan
administration, an era when concepts like “I want to control all of the oil” were back in vogue as acceptable topics of
conversation.
The first thing that happens to Webster in Superman III is that he’s informed that someone has stolen $85,000 from
his business, which he takes entirely in stride, expressing admiration for the thief’s ruthlessness and skill. He
certainly doesn’t act like someone who had earmarked that $85,000 for something else, like another chunk of
stainless steel to clutter up his shitty office.
1983 was a golden era for self-satisfied corporate overlords, because the federal government’s idea of how to boost
the US economy was to cut taxes on personal income and capital gains. Ross Webster currently has lots and lots of
money, and nobody seems to want to take it away from him; the only dramatic question driving the plot of this
movie is how much more he’ll be able to acquire over the next hour and a half.
Webster doesn’t even have any direct competitors, unless you count the world in general. Here’s what he tells Gus
about his first big scheme:
Webster: Under different company names, I control the price of coffee beans in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Jamaica
and the Republic of Gabon. But I have a problem — one country won’t play ball with me, and I guess you know how
that can bug a guy, right?
Gus: That could bug, uh… What country?
Webster: Colombia!
Gus: Colombia?
Webster: Yes… Colombia has two important exports, and one of them’s coffee. And I have tried to reason with them
— believe me, I’ve tried — but this one miserable pissant little country has the gall to think that it can dictate the
economy of an open market!
Webster isn’t fighting with another coffee magnate; he already owns all of the important brands, under different
names. The thing that makes him unhappy is that there’s a sovereign nation that refuses to kneel before Zod. There
is money in the world that the world feels like keeping, and that is unacceptable to Ross Webster.
He has unquestioned rule over his immediate environment; all he has to do is stand up from his chair, and loud
arguments are suddenly silenced. He surrounds himself with obedient supplicants — in fact, until Superman shows
up in the last twenty minutes, Webster doesn’t talk to a single person in this movie who doesn’t work directly for
him. So he never really has to change the tone of his voice, and he doesn’t bother trying.
It’s a thing called being smooth, and Robert Vaughn was famous for it. From 1964 to 1968, Vaughn played the lead in
the spy-fi show The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was about an American spy teaming up with a Russian spy to do spy
stuff.
Vaughn’s character, Napoleon Solo, was actually named by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, who contributed to the
early development of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. If you’re familiar with the way that Bond behaves, then Napoleon
Solo is kind of like that, with the violence toned down for an 8pm timeslot. He’s always cool and confident, with a
weakness for beautiful women and a generally smug attitude towards the world, which only exists in order to hand
him smugness opportunities. That’s essentially what Vaughn is doing here as well, playing entirely to type.
The interesting thing is that the character is a Bond villain — hiding in his lair, and pointing at blinky maps of things
that he wants to take over — but they’ve cast him as if the role is James Bond.
There was some backstage disagreement about who to cast, and it was the last role to be filled. The writers, David
and Leslie Newman, wrote it for Alan Alda, who was famous for the “sensitive nice guy” persona that he developed
as Hawkeye Pierce on the TV show M.A.S.H.
In American Film, David Newman explained:
“We thought, this is a character who when you first meet him, he’s getting the Humanitarian of the Year Award as
the nicest guy in the world. He’s like Nelson Rockefeller — underneath Rockefeller’s facade there was this fella who
was ready to drop the bomb on everybody. So we thought, wouldn’t Alan Alda be wonderful?”
I don’t know if he would be “wonderful”, and the Newmans’ “wouldn’t it be nice?” thing is grating on my nerves like
you wouldn’t believe, but yeah, that would have been more interesting than what we got.
They do mention the Humanitarian of the Year Award in the first Daily Planet scene, and Webster’s intro scene starts
with a photograph of him accepting that award, but we don’t actually see that public-facing side of him at all. We
only see him in his office or at his private penthouse ski resort, which deprives Vaughn of any opportunity to show
depth of characterization. Ross Webster begins as a smooth-talking narcissist psychopath, and continues that way
for the entire film.
The obvious comparison is with the Lex Luthor from the first Superman movie, who also had a crazy-looking office,
two squabbling henchpeople and a lunatic scheme that requires Superman’s attention.
They’re both stylized big-screen villains, but Webster is technically more realistic than Luthor is. In real life, there
couldn’t actually be a zany mastermind hiding from the police under Grand Central Station with a library full of
National Geographics and top-secret missile codes, while there were plenty of narcissist multi-millionaires with
penthouse New York offices scheming to control the global coffee market.
But I think Luthor’s motives, while ludicrous, were more dramatically satisfying than Webster’s. Luthor had a specific
plan because he cared about owning valuable real estate, and he wanted to create new “beachfront” property on
the West Coast. It’s a silly superhero-comics idea, but the audience can understand exactly what he wants, and how
he’s trying to get it.
In contrast, Webster doesn’t really care about anything in particular, except for a general desire to pile more money
on top of the money that he already has. He wants to destroy Colombia’s coffee crop, but when he fails, he moves
on to the next scheme. His second plan is to control all of the world’s oil tankers because oil is more valuable than
coffee beans, and then he just kind of drifts into wanting a really big computer.
In other words, he’s basically any CEO in 1983, and once Superman’s done with Webster, he ought to go around and
check on everybody else who has a top-floor office in Metropolis. Now that I think about it, that’s probably not a
bad idea.
Footnote:
Mr. Simpson, the worried executive in this scene, was played by Robert Henderson, who had a background part in
the first Superman movie as an Editor in the Daily Planet scenes. Henderson had small parts in movies and TV shows
dating back to the early 1950s, mostly playing roles like Judge, Attorney, Old Professor and Elderly Man. He was in
his late 70s when he filmed this role. After Superman III, he had another couple credits in 1985 as Diner Customer
and American Millionaire, and then he died at age 81.
Superman III 4.17: The Great Indoors
January 4, 2023Superman IIIbond, director, set design
White, black, gray, silver, transparent and stainless steel, in every combination and everywhere: this is the non-
traditional design sense of villainous corporate recluse Ross Webster. He likes his ornamentation any way he can get
it: in swoops, angles, circles, puddles or piled up in heaps. When Ross Webster decorates someplace, it stays
decorated.
So I don’t know what to do with this lunatic set. There’s so much of it, and it makes so little sense.
I mean, I’m already on record in strong support of idiosyncratic lair design. Back in the first movie, I wrote
extensively about Luthor’s bizarre hideout buried beneath Grand Central Station, which I consider a high point in
imaginary architecture.
Like Webster’s office, Luthor’s lair was over-stuffed with knickknacks, statuary, framed pictures and other value-
adds. It had a roughly consistent color scheme, and was divided into several sections, including an area for physical
fitness.
The idea behind this outré approach to hideout design was that Lex Luthor spent a lot of Superman: The Movie
hiding in the basement of a bus station, and it was imperative to distract the audience from thinking about that.
That’s why everything was so grand and spacious, with eye-catching elements that fired the imagination. The set
made Luthor look clever and important, instead of a homeless huckster hiding from the police.
So I can see how they arrived at Webster’s office in Superman III, because it’s trying to lift the same weight. If your
villain is going to spend most of the movie cooped up in his office telling somebody else to go and push some evil
buttons for him, then he’s going to need at minimum two telephones on his desk, to assure the audience that he is
actually an important person that a lot of people want to speak to. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always three
phones.
In Superman II, they didn’t need a set like this, because they had the Phantom Zone criminals, who could go outside
and wreak visually compelling havoc — burning snakes, defacing monuments and hitting Superman with flagpoles.
Lex Luthor and Ross Webster are indoor kids who don’t do any of their own hitting, so you have to provide them
with interesting places to sneer from.
The big exciting sets from Superman: The Movie — Luthor’s underground theme park, the busy warren of the Daily
Planet office, the transcendental playspace of the Fortress of Solitude — were designed by John Barry, who Richard
Donner informed me was a genius and I believe him. Barry was also the designer for A Clockwork Orange and the
first Star Wars movie, and he would have gone on to make a lot more great movies, but unfortunately he died in
1979, while he was working on The Empire Strikes Back.
So when Richard Lester brought everyone back to shoot the sequences needed for Superman II, Peter Murton came
on as the new production designer. Murton was the art director for Dr. Strangelove in 1964, and then he worked on
several James Bond films — Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) — as
well as the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile (1978) and the Frank Langella version of Dracula (1979).
Most of the important Superman II sets had already been constructed before Murton joined the production — they
already had the Fortress, the Daily Planet, the truck stop diner and the Oval Office, and Niagara Falls was just sitting
there waiting to be filmed next to. I think Murton’s main contribution to the film was the honeymoon suite set,
which was fine but didn’t look like anything other than what it was, a big pink box constructed at Pinewood Studios
to put actors in.
So this is Murton’s first big splashy set — a steel-gray holding pen for wannabe world-masters. Like Luthor’s dream
house, it surrounds the players with ostentatious reminders that whoever lives here is rich, clever, devious and
eccentric.
I don’t even know where to start with a description, so I guess I just point at this concept drawing and all the
screenshots and just say, there — it’s all of that.
There are multiple seating areas, including some that they don’t even use. There’s Webster’s fancy office chair
behind his desk, of course, as well as several sets of modular couches popping up all over the room. There are
bookshelves and huge lamps and a fountain in the middle, and every bit of wall that’s left over is etched with
elaborate faux-Art Deco ridges and textures.
I say faux-Art Deco, because actual Art Deco has some kind of visual focal point, which leads the eye and gives you
something to look at. This set looks like a decorator with attention-deficit disorder got all hopped up on caramel
mocha lattes, and walked around pointing at things, saying, I want some Art Deco there, and there, and there, and
there, and some more over there, and on this wall, and up and around that door. Just splash it everywhere! Art
Deco, Art Deco! I want everything to have some Art Deco on it!
That suits these characters just fine, because they are also highly caffeinated non-stop distraction machines. There’s
a moment in this scene where Webster is having a plot-relevant conversation with Mr. Simpson, while Lorelei picks
imaginary lint off of Simpson’s coat, and then swings herself into a chair as she kicks up her feet and knocks into
Simpson’s briefcase, and then she pretends to pick off another bit of imaginary fluff from her bare leg, plus Vera is
over on the side with a compact and tweezers, plucking at her eyebrows.
Why are Lorelei and Vera doing these distracting things while the guys try to have a conversation about the plot?
Because Richard Lester thinks it’s funny when you add more and more and more stuff to a scene, and even more.
That’s why we had flaming puppet penguins marching around the scene of a bank robbery, while everyone paid
attention to the mime who was slipping on gumballs. If something is funny, then more of it is more funny, is the
general idea.
So that’s the design principle at work here, which gives you huge looming arcs of stainless steel lighting fixtures
hanging over coffee tables with their own conical lighting fixtures, next to some tree branches studded with white
flowers, and some pictures hanging on the wall, each with their own individual light fixture, and some random
statuary between them, possibly Egyptian-themed.
There’s a whole section of couches over by the wall, which nobody even sits on, with what looks like an enormous
pile of small black and white cushions that are of no use to anyone.
There’s also a big marble chess set at an awkward height next to Webster’s desk, which you need to crouch down in
order to play, and it’s got huge chess pieces that look like shampoo bottles from a fancy hotel, and look! — behind
that, there are a bunch more chairs that nobody even comes close to using during the course of the movie.
And then there’s the exercise area in the back corner, cause if it wasn’t there it would have to be someplace else.
This was the period when a Soloflex machine was a popular status symbol, so the idea is that Webster is so rich that
he has a whole gym’s worth of equipment in the corner of his office.
Although it’s not super clear whether this is Webster’s office, or his home. A lot of it looks like a living room, and if
there’s a workout area, then there’s got to be a shower around here. Oh, and look, there’s the third phone.
Most of the stuff on this set is just scattered around everywhere, cluttering things up, but there are a couple items
that get a proper scene all to themselves. My favorite one is the carpet/fountain space in the middle of the room
that turns over, to reveal a big silly Bond villain map with blinky lights denoting things.
This is followed by another reveal, where the fireplace splits in half, and you see a second Bond villain map on the
wall, because obviously nobody has only one blinky Bond map these days.
So that’s what’s going on with the decor in this movie — it’s not very good, but there’s certainly a lot of it. Of course,
it could be worse; just wait until you see Luthor’s penthouse apartment in Superman IV.
Footnote:
Anybody want to take a stab at identifying the people in the pictures behind Webster’s desk? The clearest shot is a
little more than an hour into the film, when Gus phones Webster from Smallville. Ronald Reagan’s all the way to the
left, and Muhammad Ali just behind Webster. On the other side, there’s Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, but
that’s the best I can do.
Superman III 4.18: Cats
January 5, 2023Superman IIIhollywood ugly, sackful of puppies, sexism
Okay, I promise, this is the last post that I’m going to write about this villain intro scene. The topic on today’s agenda
is the fraught relationship between Superman III and women in general.
As you’ll recall, the movie opens with an endless slapstick slow-motion disaster sequence, which is initiated by a
beautiful blonde woman in an appealingly tight skirt, just walking down the street and minding her own business, as
the world careens into chaos around her. The original incident that sends downtown Calgary crumbling to the
ground is the guy who doesn’t look where he’s walking, because he is looking at the admittedly spectacular ass of
Lorelei Ambrosia.
That’s all it takes to bring down civilization: one good-looking woman, simply existing in the world. There is an
armed bank robbery in this sequence that has fewer dramatic consequences than Lorelei, let loose on the streets in
her strawberry-themed ensemble.
And then there’s the proverbial puppies. This is the way the scene is described in the script:
Coming out the front door of a building is an absolute knockout of a GIRL: voluptuous, sexy, young, and healthy. Her
every step causes a series of mind-boggling ripples. She is seemingly oblivious to the effect she has on passers-by.
About 25 years old, this is somebody we will be seeing much more of later. LORELEI AMBROSIA.
As she walks AWAY FROM CAMERA, her rear end reminding us of the proverbial puppies fighting in a sack, a GUY
walking down the street from the opposite direction turns to ogle at her and therefore doesn’t look where he’s
going.
Puppies fighting in a sack! I don’t even know what to say about that, except to note that it’s in the novelization too:
“This is a street corner with hundreds of different trajectories, one of which belonged to a Miss Lorelei Ambrosia, in
whom wondrous body flow had been bestowed, enough to corkscrew the trajectory of an unemployed auto worker.
Seeing Lorelei, seeing her dress rolling like a sackful of puppies, he swiveled his head and walked backwards
toward…”
So there you are, two sacks of puppies, and who’s going to take care of them all? Plus, there’s the wondrous body
flow and the mind-boggling ripples — mind-boggling! Honestly, both the script and the novelization appear to be
written by people who have recently learned about the existence of attractive women, and haven’t gotten over the
shock.
And in the other corner, there’s the equal and opposite reaction given to Vera Webster, a less attractive woman, as
noted by literally everybody who looks at her.
Vera is mannish and stern, save for a splash of red lipstick, and she is the target of everyone else’s smart remarks.
She storms down the stairs in her first scene, and right away her brother barks, “Vera, get ahold of yourself!…
Nobody else ever will.” And then we see the other man in the room, who incidentally isn’t much of a feast for the
eye himself, sniggering at this not very well-phrased putdown.
In reality, Vera is only Hollywood ugly, which means that she’s actually quite pretty, underneath all the handicaps
they’ve put on her. The makeup, the hair and the outfit all conspire to make Vera look hard and masculine, plus they
put her next to a woman who’s twenty years younger, carrying multiple sacks of puppies in the back seat.
The mockery of Vera’s appearance begins before she’s even on the screen, and continues relentlessly through the
course of the movie. Lorelei sniffs that she’d look better if she turned blue, and when Gus meets her, he assumes
that she’s Webster’s mother. And Vera is the one who gets the gruesome body-horror transformation at the end of
the film, as if she needs to be brutally and specifically punished for the crime of not looking like Lorelei.
So this film includes a dizzy blonde who gets a lot of positive attention from the guys, and a dowdy Hollywood-ugly
brunette who gets nothing but disdain, and the first thing that they do is have a noisy catfight. There’s not much one
can do about this, except to sigh and say that in the ’70s it was even worse.
But then there’s the running gag that Lorelei is much smarter than she pretends to be, and she gets what I think is
the funniest line in the film.
It happens right in the middle of the movie, with no warning or context. We see Lorelei on her own in Webster’s
office, reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and she reflects, “How can he say that pure categories have no
objective meaning in transcendental logic? What about synthetic unity?”
Then Webster opens the door, and she stuffs the book under a pillow, picks up a tabloid, and returns to her usual
high-pitched baby talk. It’s completely incidental and actually a little distracting from the very important plot
exposition that’s about to ensue, and I love it.
There are a few other places in the film where Lorelei’s dizzy-blonde mask slips, and her real personality emerges. In
the ski resort scene, when Vera asks how they could get at Superman, Lorelei blurts out “Kryptonite,” then
backtracks and babbles, “or… Kryptonham, or Kryptonheimer? I don’t know what you’d call it, but there’s this stuff
that can, like, hurt Superman!” There’s another moment where she identifies that Gus’ blueprints are for a
computer, and once they’ve got the big scary computer running, she knows how to turn it on.
The thing that I like most about these moments is that none of them are in the script; as far as David and Leslie
Newman were concerned, Lorelei was the dippy broad that she appears to be. It was while they were filming that
Richard Lester and Pamela Stephenson found a number of places in the film to let the character’s real personality to
come through.
Obviously, this doesn’t exactly strike a blow for second-wave feminism, because the whole joke is that pretty
blondes are stupid, and this one is unexpectedly smart. But I like that they gave this shallow stereotype some actual
depth, and that it goes unexplained, and is left entirely to the viewer’s imagination.
And I have to say, I enjoy Vera as well. It took me rewatching the scenes a bunch of times, but one way or another,
I’ve developed an unconditional positive regard for her. As I said the other day, Webster’s kind of a low-energy
villain, just emitting his rich-and-suave-guy purr, and taking credit for everyone else’s ideas. Vera’s the one who
comes storming down the stairs, tightly-wound and ready for battle.
It doesn’t last, of course; in the end, they pull her face apart and paint her silver, and then Superman, who I’ve been
informed is supposed to save people from exactly that kind of circumstance, just zaps her with her own electrical
power, and then throws her downstairs and forgets about her.
Still, at least that’s some kind of career advancement, which is better than a lot of women got in 1983. But who’s
going to take care of all of those puppies?
Tomorrow:
Probably the bowling scene again
4.19: Still About Bowling
Footnotes:
Vera is played by Annie Ross, who has such a fascinating Wikipedia page that I’m not even going to try to summarize
it very much; you should go and read it, and be amazed. It includes the sentence “At the end of 10th grade, she left
school, changed her name to Annie Ross, and went to Europe, where she established her singing career,” with guest
appearances by Count Basie and Lenny Bruce.
In the 1950s, Ross was a popular jazz singer, and formed an internationally famous vocal group called Lambert,
Hendricks and Ross, who recorded seven albums. Here’s a video of one of their filmed performances. She is fantastic
in it.
Lorelei is played by Pamela Stephenson, who is also fascinating and unsummarizable. She was a British comedian
who became famous in the UK on the sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News, and right after that she was in
Superman III, and then she joined Saturday Night Live for a minute. She’s also a licensed psychologist with a
specialty in Human Sexuality and Sex Therapy, she wrote a best-selling biography about her husband Billy Connolly,
she did a travel show about backpacking through Papua New Guinea, she campaigned against food coloring in
children’s confectionery, and here’s a video of her making fun of Kate Bush, very effectively.
I would also like to draw your attention to a thread on the askphilosophy subreddit about whether Lorelei’s line
about Kant and synthetic unity actually means anything. The answer, as far as I can tell, is probably yes.
Superman III 4.19: Still About Bowling
January 8, 2023Superman IIIbowling, make a friend, smallville, worst moment
And besides, what is Ricky supposed to get out of this incident? What lesson has he learned? What lasting
advantage has been bestowed upon him?
The problem that Clark Kent, alias Superman, is supposedly trying to deal with is that young Ricky here is being
bullied by his classmates. They don’t want him on their bowling team, for a very good reason: the kid has no skills,
and brings nothing to the organization.
If the miraculous intervention on Ricky’s behalf makes it appear as if he has suddenly and temporarily acquired an
inhumanly destructive right hook which blows bowling pins to fragments, then what? Even if this moment of
triumph, which he did not earn and does not deserve, imbues him with masterful confidence heading into his next
time at-bat, he still sucks at bowling and that deficit has not been corrected.
And as for the bullying, if you think that the only problem the other kids have with him is his bowling skills, then you
need to take another close look at Ricky.
“I just can’t stand this,” sighs Ricky’s mother, referring to the afternoon group activity that she has apparently
delivered him to. She has just tied his shoes for him in front of the other boys, and if Ricky can’t tie his own shoes at
this age, then that is a fundamental problem that even Superman can’t correct.
“Oh, Lana, it’ll be okay,” says the alien space god. “Believe me, I know, I was a late bloomer myself.” This is only
comforting if Ricky has a private ice palace to hike to that will confer upon him a special genetic destiny, which does
not seem likely.
“Well, it’s not just that he’s small for his age,” Lana replies. “How would you like to be the only kid in town without a
father?” Which is… wait, what? Is it possible that in 1983 Smallville, the Langs are the only couple in a generation
that have gotten a divorce? I feel like the entire corpus of American country and western music would indicate
otherwise.
Also, Clark Kent was the only kid in town without a father, as Lana well knows, so that’s a very insensitive thing to
say.
Also: what is this scene about?
If the scene is trying to say that Clark would be a better stepfather for Ricky than Brad would, then it doesn’t really
do that, because, as I said earlier, Brad is actually trying to help the kid, and anyway, that’s not the storyline of this
movie. This isn’t a love-triangle competition for Lana’s hand; Lana dislikes Brad on sight, and Clark isn’t really
pursuing a romantic relationship with her.
If it’s trying to interest us in Ricky and his emotional well-being in order to give strength and purpose to his late-
movie intervention with Dark Superman, then it’s not doing that, either. If you want to interest the audience in a
new character, then the procedure is to make a friend, make a joke and make something happen, and Ricky is not
accomplishing any of those goals. Ricky has no friends, he isn’t funny, and we don’t even hear him talk; the kid
doesn’t get a single line in the whole sequence.
In fact, what this scene establishes is that Ricky is a hapless nonentity buffeted about by fate, just a pawn in a
passive-aggressive dick-swinging contest between the town drunk and the strongest man in the world.
And it’s not like Ricky’s problems start and end here at the bowling alley. As we’ll soon learn, in another sequence
that reduces him to a passive victim of circumstance, Ricky can’t even run across a wheat field without knocking
himself unconscious, which means he’s going to have a tough time surviving childhood in a town made up mostly of
bowling alleys and wheat fields.
But the important question, which we will return to later on, is: Why does this movie hate Smallville?
Footnote:
Ricky is played by Paul Kaethler, in his one and only screen credit. I could not discover a single other fact about him
in my admittedly not very extensive search.
Superman III 4.21: The World According to Attila the Hun
February 5, 2023Superman IIIcomedy, self-sabotage
Okay, somebody secure the bankbook, we’ve got incoming. Brando’s famous paycheck for the first movie was $3.7
million at best, and now the Salkinds are paying $4 million for the services of superstar comedian Richard Pryor. So
far in the movie, he’s just been typing in the background, but here — in his first sequence with Ross Webster — is
the moment where Pryor is out of the chair and bustin’ loose.
Except they forgot to write him any jokes.
The idea, I suppose, is that Richard Pryor was famous for his inspired ad-libs, so all they had to do was put in some
empty space, and let him do his thing. That’s what they do here in the computer room, and it works just like they’d
hoped.
Here’s the scene as scripted:
FRED
Gus?
GUS
Say what?
FRED
The boss wants to see you.
GUS
Say who?
And that’s it; that’s the end of the scene. Clearly, this must be a placeholder; I can’t imagine even Richard Lester
shooting a scene like that on purpose.
This is how Pryor expands the scene on screen:
Fred: Hey Gus, the boss wants to see you.
Gus: He can see me all right from here, I can see him too! Hello, Mr. Lewis!
Fred: No, not that boss. (He points up.) The boss.
(All activity is suddenly silenced.)
Gus: (points up) You mean the boss?
Fred: Yep.
Gus: Wants to see me?
Fred: Yep.
Gus: (nervous giggle) Why would he want to see me? I mean… (He gets up.) Why would the boss want to see me?
There’s no reason, you see. (He starts walking, smiling and waving his arms.) Oh, I know! It’s my suggestion for the
volleyball uniforms. That’s it! (His smile vanishes, and becomes a worried frown.)
It’s a funny little moment, and it’s clearly ad-libbed, because in the last two seconds, you can hear the crew
chuckling. (Seriously, you can. Go check it out.) Richard Pryor abhors a vacuum, and if there’s a quiet moment, he
will fill it with funny.
A nervous Gus goes up in the elevator, and he gets one more funny moment at the start of the Gus/Webster scene:
Webster: Mr. August Gorman?
Gus: (startled) Oh! Sir! August Gorman here. Listen — I know that you’re a man of compassion, and you have pity,
and I don’t want to go to jail, because they have robbers, and rapists, and rapists who rape robbers…
The “rapists who rape robbers” line does come from the script, but Pryor rewrites it on the fly to a much funnier
version. Unfortunately, that’s his last funny line for the foreseeable.
Webster: Mr. Gorman, I just want to ask you one question. You’ve been a naughty guy, haven’t you?
Gus: I, uh —
Webster: Come on! Admit it, now! You’ve been just a liittle bit naughty, haven’t you?
Gus: I was kind of —
Webster: Oh, that’s all right, pal, I understand. I can, um — what do the young folks say today? — “dig where you’re
comin’ from, brother.” You want to be rich. Right?
Gus: How can, what? I —
Webster: (starts making drinks) I was born rich! Never worn the same pair of socks twice.
Gus: What do you do with your socks?
Webster: I don’t know, they’re laundered and sent to some charitable institution, I think. Actually, I don’t know
what they do with them. Maybe they turn them into dust rags, or penwipers, or something like that.
Gus: Maybe socks!
Webster: (pauses) Yes! That never occurred to me.
So that’s six to zero, advantage: Webster, and it stays like that through the entire scene. Webster gets legitimately
funny lines, which he delivers well — the socks, for instance — and Gus is the nervous straight man. There’s a
moment where Robert Vaughn looks at Richard Pryor and says, “You’re a genius,” and then doesn’t give him any
opportunity to do the thing that he’s actually a genius at.
Vaughn has a nice sense of comic timing, for an actor who’s not usually associated with comedy. He delivers an
entire comic monologue slyly mocking his character’s greed and heartlessness, while Pryor stammers and does a
little physical business that doesn’t add up to much.
“Colombia has two important exports, and one of them’s coffee,” Webster says, and “You know, a wise man once
said — I think it was Attila the Hun — it is not enough that I succeed. Everyone else must fail.” He gets all the good
lines, and then his sister comes downstairs, and she gets a bunch of good lines too. It’s actually a pretty good scene,
if you ask me, but I wouldn’t pay four million dollars to the guy who hardly says anything.
Here, I’ll show you what they were supposed to be paying for, from the 1976 Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder film Silver
Streak. In the movie, George (Wilder) is falsely accused of murder, and he’s stolen a police car to make his getaway.
While he’s driving, we find out that Grover (Pryor) was sitting handcuffed in the back seat.
George: Who are you?
Grover: I’m a thief, man! Take it easy! I ain’t going to freak you out no more, how about hand me them keys up
there? I’d like to get these cuffs off.
George: Sorry. (hands him the key)
Grover: (unlocking the cuffs) It’s real nice the way you handled yourself back there with ol’ Oliver, I was listening!
What they want you for anyway, man?
George: Murder.
Grover: (pauses, eyes him warily) Drop me off anywhere along in here, okay? I don’t mess with the big M.
George: I’m not stopping anywhere! Do you know the roads around here?
Grover: Yeah.
George: Well, maybe we could make a deal. I’m not a murderer, I’m trying to prevent one. But in about a minute,
we’re going to be surrounded by cops. If you can get us out of it, you’d be doing both of us a favor! What do you
think?
Grover: I think you better make a right up here, and then a sharp left. I’m comin’ over.
(Grover climbs over the seat to get in the front, as George makes a sudden screeching turn. Grover tumbles into the
seat.)
Grover: Jesus Christ, man, that’s how you murdered your victims? Put ’em in a car, and bounce them to death?
George: Sorry.
Grover: Sorry, my ass! You dangerous.
That’s already funny just from the transcription, and when you add Pryor’s timing and facial expressions, it’s
basically a perfect scene. He plays Grover as a combination of streetwise and vulnerable, a guy who runs from the
law and makes friends easily. It’s already a whole hour into the movie, but the audience instantly accepts him as a
second lead.
And as you can see, Pryor has all the funny lines. Wilder does the exposition and feed lines; Pryor is the funny one.
That’s why you put him in the movie.
But in this scene, the filmmakers are doing exactly what the villains are doing: flattering Gus, pretending that they’re
his friends, claiming that they can’t do this without him — when what they really want is for him to keep quiet, and
do what he’s told.
Pryor won’t be making a lot of decisions about how he’s going to play a scene. There are a couple obvious
exceptions where they let him off the leash for a moment, but for the most part, he’s boxed in as a nervous
character who reacts to the other actors, who are playing stronger parts. It’s cinematic self-sabotage, really, at a
premium price. But as Attila the Hun once said, everyone else must fail, and there appears to be enough failure to go
around.
Superman III 4.22: The No Comprendo
February 7, 2023Superman IIIcomedy, smallville
For almost one minute of screen time, the Superman III soundtrack is Roger Miller singing “They Won’t Get Me.”
Why?
I mean, it’s not a good song. It is an aggravating song, and as far as I can tell, they wrote it specifically for this movie,
to play over footage of Superman hitting Richard Pryor in the junk with a car.
“They won’t get me, me, me, me,” sings Roger Miller. “They won’t get me, me, me, me,” he continues. I imagine that
it’s supposed to refer to Gus sneaking into town in order to do something nefarious, but you can tell from the verse
that the song is about a man feeling trapped by women who want to snare him into a committed and satisfying
relationship, so it applies equally to this abruptly domesticated Clark Kent, still hanging around in Smallville and
watching Lana do her grocery shopping.
“I’ll help you, Lana,” says Clark, but apparently what he means by “help” is sit in the station wagon while she does
the actual shopping, and then walk to the back of the car after she’s already placed her bags inside.
Clark does a lot of this kind of helping in the movie: rescuing Ricky when he’s in danger of learning how to bowl,
escorting the family to a picnic lunch that he did not meaningfully contribute to, and generally presenting himself as
a potential father figure when he has no serious intention of investing in this family in the long-term. Fortunately,
Lana doesn’t need anybody’s help as far as basic life skills are concerned; she’s been doing an adequate job
providing for her family for years, and she will continue to successfully hoist her groceries into the wayback after
Clark has gone back to the city.
But that’s all emotional subtext that we’re not supposed to pay attention to; the point of the scene is to stage a little
comic moment when the two stars of the movie bump into each other, unaware that their destinies are intertwined.
This is followed immediately by another little comic moment when Gus observes the latest trends in Kansas
menswear…
… registers baffled disgust …
… turns and walks away …
… stops, turns back, registers again …
… turns to give the town in general the once-over …
… shakes his head, whispers “Jesus Christ!“, and walks away.
This scene is there to establish the comically loud suit that Gus will be wearing when he infiltrates Wheat King’s
computer network. It’s a funny suit. But Gus has been wearing that crappy tan jacket for the entire movie so far, so I
don’t understand how the existence of the loud suit in a store window condemns the entire town to ridicule and
revulsion, except in the general sense that the movie despises everything about Smallville.
And honestly, I’m not that open to more comic moments at this point, coming after Webster’s comic monologue
about Colombia, and the Daily Planet scene where Jimmy is taking a comical picture of Mr. and Mrs. Maury Stokis,
who have won a trip to South America thanks to the Jingo numbers that Perry comically pulled from the hopper in
the previous Daily Planet scene.
This little side trip will pay off later as we see the Stokises having a lousy time in South America, and then coming
back to raise hell and destroy the Planet, which is another comic subplot that the audience is supposed to be
tracking through the whole movie.
And my question is, how much “comic relief” is too much, in a movie that’s not technically a comedy? Does one
need the family Stokis, followed by a comical Roger Miller song playing over the spectacle of a ground-breaking
comedian taking a shock to the shammies? What happens when you pile up the comic relief so high that it blocks
out the rays of the sun?
Footnotes:
Here’s some more trivia for you: Pa and Ma Stokis are played by R.J. Bell and Pamela Mandell, who also both
appeared in the 1985 film Morons from Outer Space. You may recognize Mandell as the diner waitress from
Superman II.
And checking back in with the Internet Movie Car Database, as I like to do every now and again, Lana’s crappy car is
a 1974 AMC Matador Station Wagon.
Superman III 4.23: Sure, the Picnic
February 8, 2023Superman IIIsave my baby, smallville, location
As students of the cinema will readily appreciate, the difference, auteur-wise, between the Donner-directed
Superman movies and the Lester-directed Superman movies is that Richard Donner gave a shit and Richard Lester
clearly did not.
That’s why the flying scenes in Superman III are so disappointing. In the original movie, Donner was willing to spend
untold months and millions perfecting the technology, while Lester figured you could just put a shot of Christopher
Reeve holding his arms out on top of a picture of the landscape, problem solved.
But if you really want to see the full extent of Lester’s that’ll-do pragmatism, just look at the pathetic little patch of
weeds that he chose as the location of the film’s picnic scene.
I mean, look at this mess. Who found this empty little patch of scrub and sadness and decided this was a
picturesque location for a semi-romantic scene? It’s no wonder the dog instantly runs off camera, fleeing the movie
in hopes of a better life. Once again, the movie has the opportunity to demonstrate the idyllic small-town pleasures
of life in Smallville, and it does not take that opportunity, because according to this movie, Smallville sucks.
I mean, that is the number one topic of conversation that comes up whenever Clark and Lana have a scene together.
Over the course of this pity picnic, Lana explains that she’d like to have a man in her life — for Ricky’s sake, if nothing
else — but every acceptable man in Smallville is married, or not interested in her. She’s being pestered by Brad, and
she knows that she’s not going to find what she wants in Smallville. She’d like to move to Metropolis, but she’s
staying in this town because she’s afraid of taking the risk.
Really, considering how much of this movie takes place in Smallville, it’s amazing that we really only get to know
three people who live here, and they’re all miserable. The mayor is a blowhard, the other kids bully Ricky, and
according to the style file of Gus Gorman, they don’t know how to dress. Nobody even sticks around after the prom
to help clean up the potato salad. There is not a single good thing that you could say about this weed-riddled
hellscape.
And, of course, as soon as you take your eyes off Ricky for a hot second to eat some dog food and repair your shitty
car, he instantly falls over and knocks himself unconscious, right in the path of an oncoming multinational wheat
concern.
I mean, honestly. The kid’s spent his entire life in Kansas, and he can’t successfully navigate a wheat field. Maybe we
could tie a balloon to him or something. I just don’t know what to do.
But here come the combine harvesters, although it’s clear from this shot that they’re very far away from anywhere
Ricky might have reached under his own power. They’ll be a lot closer in a minute, because, as I said, Richard Lester
does not sweat the small stuff.
Fortunately, here comes — oh, dear. Well, I did tell you about the flying.
And then there’s a shot where you can clearly see the wires…
And Superman stops the combine just inches away from Ricky’s tiny helpless body.
Naturally, the kid driving the machinery is horrified; he had no idea that there was a child in his path. And Superman
gives him a look, which indicates, how dare you try to harvest grain products by driving a noisy machine in a straight
line that is very easy for pedestrians to predict and avoid.
Concerned, the driver says, “Gosh! Is he all right?” And Superman says no, he’s not all right, he’s fucking Ricky, this is
like the third near-fatal accident of the day.
And it’s a shame, because Annette O’Toole is here, and she’s really trying to do something productive for the movie.
She’s giving a genuine performance of a winsome, listless and easily distracted woman stuck in a depressing life,
who’s suddenly meeting a celebrity alien while she’s fixing her car.
It feels like O’Toole is the only person who actually showed up to work this morning, but she’s got mostly lousy
material. She doesn’t even get a “save my baby” moment, which I bet she would have nailed.
And the scene ends with Clark finding the lost dog in the open drainage ditch that’s ten yards away from where they
were having their picnic, because seriously, fuck Smallville.
Footnotes:
That’s a Massey Ferguson 750 combine, by the way. I just happen to know stuff like that because I’m super into farm
machinery.
I don’t know the name of the kid who’s driving it, though, which is weird, because he has a speaking line. There was
a lot of that in Swamp Thing as well, but I thought that was because those guys were local South Carolina degens
who were paid in beer and razor blades. I’m not sure when people started paying attention to actually populating
the credits with a complete list of actors appearing in the movie, but it clearly has not happened yet.
Superman III 4.24: The Moroder Mystery
February 13, 2023Superman IIImusic
So we were discussing Clark and Lana’s picnic of peril yesterday, and if you’ve watched that scene, then you may
have but almost certainly didn’t notice that it’s scored with forty seconds of the “Love Theme from Superman III”,
which is not audible to the human ear.
We’ve got Ken Thorne again, providing music for Superman III. He’s the guy who was called in to do the score for the
second movie, when they couldn’t get John Williams to come back. Thorne’s brief for II was to pretend that he was
Williams, and recycle music cues from I. He did an adequate job, so now he’s back for III, and he’s not particularly
happy about it.
Here’s what Thorne said in an interview for CapedWonder:
Superman II had been a happy experience, which probably had something to do with the decision to give me this
assignment. When I first sat through the movie in a Pinewood viewing theatre I was disappointed. The premise of a
drunken Superman didn’t appeal to me at all, and the comedic elements seemed forced and unfunny.
However, I very much wanted to work with Richard Lester and his crew again so I took it on. It proved to be a really
tough job! It couldn’t decide whether to be serious or comical. I found it very difficult to score and only wish it could
have been as stimulating as Superman II!
So we can add another name to the star-studded list of people who didn’t really want to work on this movie, along
with Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Richard Lester and me.
And I don’t blame him; John Williams is a hard act to follow. He loved writing memorable themes, and for the first
movie, he wrote the Superman March, Clark and Lois’ love theme, Lex Luthor’s March of the Villains, and the
Krypton theme, any of which I could hum for you at a moment of your choice with no rehearsal or preparation.
In Superman III, Thorne used a lot of old Williams material, but he also created four themes himself, none of them
memorable. The Thorne tunes are:
#1. Computer theme — This theme is introduced when Gus starts using the computer to steal the half-cents; it
basically sounds like Sylvester sneaking up on Tweety in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
#2. Gus theme — A playful little tune that’s often played on clarinet, heard most clearly when Gus drags Brad’s body
to the WheatKing computer to turn the second key.
#3. Supercomputer theme — A zippy little bit of tension music, with driving timpani and a bed of grumbling
synthesizer. This is first heard when the guys start building the computer in the cave, and then throughout the final
supercomputer fight.
#4. Love theme — A sweet bouquet of flute and strings for the Lana scenes, which does not appear on the
soundtrack album.
So let’s talk about that soundtrack album, one of the great mysteries of the age.
Side A is pretty much what you’d expect: 19 and a half minutes of excerpts from the score. That doesn’t seem like
much, but it’s comparable with the other Superman soundtracks, which are all about 20 minutes a side. They were
called LPs back in the day, but the L was often a generous estimate.
1. Main Title/Streets of Metropolis (5:23)
2. Saving the Factory — The Acid Test (6:09)
3. Gus Finds a Way (0:58)
4. The Two Faces of Superman (2:50)
5. The Struggle Within — Final Victory (4:16)
The amazing thing about Side A is how little of it was written by Ken Thorne.
The first track is Thorne’s music, which plays over the opening scene that nobody likes very much.
Then there’s 58 seconds of the Gus theme in “Gus Finds a Way”, leading to a big crescendo for the computer-hacking
montage waltz, which is not included on the album.
The other tracks have a lot of Williams in them. “Saving the Factory” quotes from the helicopter rescue and the
Golden Gate bridge rescue from the first film, and “The Two Faces of Superman” is almost entirely spooky Krypton
music, with a bit from the “chasing rockets” scene.
There is some original fight music mixed in with more Williams cues in “The Struggle Within,” but another composer
named Edward Gregson claims that he was a ghost-writer on that track. Then “Final Victory” is just two minutes of
the Superman March, which you have to include on a Superman soundtrack album or people get restless.
And then there’s side B.
The five tracks on side B were written and produced by Giorgio Moroder, a music producer and composer who was
making a name for himself in the film soundtrack game. He wrote Donna Summer’s “On the Radio” for Foxes, and
Blondie’s “Call Me” for American Gigolo. In 1983, around the time that he was producing songs for Superman III, he
also wrote the music for Flashdance, including the hit “What a Feeling”.
The early 80s were a golden era for original songs in soundtracks, with “Fame” and “Footloose” and “Eye of the
Tiger” and “9 to 5” and “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” and “The Power of Love”, and lots of other songs that climbed the
charts and got nominated for Oscars.
Naturally, the Salkinds wanted a piece of that action, and they hired Giorgio Moroder to write songs for Superman
III, which they mostly didn’t use.
Here’s Side B:
1. Rock On — Marshall Crenshaw (5:23)
2. No See, No Cry — Chaka Khan (3:18)
3. They Won’t Get Me — Roger Miller (3:20)
4. Love Theme — Helen St. John (3:14)
5. Main Title March — Giorgio Moroder (4:20)
There’s really only one song on the album that you could easily identify in the film: Roger Miller’s “They Won’t Get
Me”, which is very prominent in the scene where Gus gets off the bus in Smallville, and when Gus gets Brad drunk. It
is not a pleasant song and I do not appreciate the effort that they put into commissioning it. The version on the
soundtrack album has extra backup synthesizer-voices, which don’t make things any better.
“Main Title March” is the Superman March song, played on synthesizers. I think it’s possible that this was meant to
be the end credits song, but the filmmakers lost their nerve and used the regular version.
And then two of these tracks made it into the movie subliminally. Way in the background of the unemployment-line
scene, you can hear Chaka Khan’s “No See, No Cry,” playing on a distant radio. Later, when guys are fighting while on
line for the gas pump, there’s thirty seconds of Marshall Crenshaw’s “Rock On” playing on a car radio, which is
mostly obscured by the fighting and screaming.
Either one of them would have been perfect for the high school reunion scene, but instead Richard Lester used the
Beatles cover of “Roll Over Beethoven”, twice. Lester had a connection to the Beatles — he directed A Hard Day’s
Night and Help! in the mid-sixties — so maybe they got a discount for it.
And then there’s the “Love Theme“, which is entirely mysterious to me.
The very well-informed booklet in the Superman: The Music soundtrack set says that Giorgio Moroder wrote this
“Love Theme,” and then Ken Thorne was asked to use it as the basis of the Lana theme, as heard in the Clark/Lana
picnic sequence. And as far as I can tell, the two songs have nothing to do with each other. I have listened to them
many times, and I have not spotted the resemblance.
So they paid Moroder to produce five pop songs, and they really only used one of them in the movie. I have to
imagine that the people who bought the soundtrack in 1983 were completely mystified by side B. Still, as long as
they took the record off before it played the synthesizer “Main Title March”, it probably didn’t cause any lasting
damage.
Superman III 4.25: Revenge of the Cowboys
February 15, 2023Superman IIIalcohol, comedy, fashion, mystery box, singing cowboys, trickster
I knew that they were coming; I just didn’t think it would be this soon.
As you’ll no doubt recall, my introductory post for the blog discussed singing cowboys, an unaccountably popular
film genre from the 30s and 40s that spawned dozens of movies per year, and then disappeared completely from the
American public consciousness. The fate of the singing cowboys looms large over the history of superhero
blockbusters, suggesting that even the most successful genres can be abandoned and forgotten.
The singing cowboys will be back one day, when comic-book stories are tired and played-out, to fight once again for
their place in the pantheon. They are the existential threat just over the horizon, ready to pounce when the
superheroes stumble.
And even here, the cowboys remind us that the eternal sequel is never assured.
Here’s the scene: Rootless Gus Gorman — once an unloved, unemployed ex-dishwasher standing on line for a
handout — has been transformed by a powerful wizard with a penthouse office into the creature standing before
you, holding a mystery box, and angling for permission to cross the threshold.
Last time that we saw him, Gus seemed helpless, caught in the whirlwind of comedy coffee king Ross Webster, who
got all the funny lines and plot points, and didn’t like sharing. But now, revealed before us, we see Gus the Trickster,
who can put on thoroughly unconvincing identities that everyone goes along with anyway.
The trickster is a mythopoetic figure who appears in the folklore of many cultures, including ours. He steals fire from
the gods, evades the blasts of the hunter’s shotgun, and hijacks nuclear missiles using a fake traffic accident and a
blonde woman’s legs. This figure exists to rewrite the rules, giving the social fabric a tug and opening the world to
new ideas.
The trickster is particularly good at weaponizing social convention — double-talking his target into believing his
nonsense, because it would be rude not to.
Brad, the easily bamboozled guardian of the gate, expects that he’s going to tell this interloper to get lost at the end
of their encounter, just like he would for any stranger showing up so late after office hours. But Gus keeps on talking
in a way that’s difficult to resist, and Brad can’t dismiss him until he figures out what he’s talking about, which gives
Gus time to weave his spell.
And inside Gus’ magic mystery box, which must have taken up most of the room in his luggage when he arrived in
Smallville, there is the exact combination that opens the lock on that door.
As we’ve seen, Brad is specifically vulnerable to the lure of free alchohol, and Gus must have smelled that from a
thousand miles away. Who knows what could have been in that box, if a different guard was on duty?
So this is the one time in the movie that somebody tries to understand Brad Wilson, and his needs and concerns.
I’m already on record as being opposed to this movie’s anti-Brad agenda. I’m not talking about the Brad that we see
on screen, of course, but the real Brad Wilson that the movie is based on. If this wasn’t a work of anti-Brad
propaganda, he would be a friendly and open-minded man with a steady job who makes friends easily and enjoys a
drink, as so many of us do.
But the movie insists that taking adult refreshment is a mortal sin on par with disrupting global supply chains and
ruining the Olympics, which on the whole it is not. So Brad’s talent for inventing novel cocktails is his weak point,
which the trickster can exploit.
This is yet another comic relief moment at the end of a long string of mostly comic relief scenes, and the relevant
question is whether we should find this funny. The trickster needs some kind of obstacle on his glide path to
releasing pure chaos into the world, and if the director insists that all of the empty space in his Superman movie
should be filled up with laughs, then the path around the obstacle might as well involve getting everybody drunk.
Now, I know that alcoholism is not a joke, despite the enormous pile of evidence that suggests that drunk people are
hilarious and have been for centuries. But this is actually a way in for Richard Pryor’s stand-up comedy persona to
finally emerge in the movie.
Pryor was famous for his satiric-but-empathetic character work, slipping into the role of a wino or a junkie trying to
get around in the world, and this movie is making it very difficult for him to express his comic genius. But in this
sequence, for the next six minutes, Pryor gets to be the loveable drunk, which takes the edge off the carnage he’s
about to inflict on Colombia and Bloomingdale’s.
Still, there’s the huge foam cowboy hat, which strikes a sour note. There’s no reason for Gus to be wearing that hat,
and no sign of where it came from or why it was knocking around in a WheatKing office. It’s clearly the result of the
director’s impulse to add yet another detail, to make sure the audience recognizes that the scene is supposed to be
wacky. It’s an almost-literal depiction of “putting a hat on a hat”.
And it sticks with people, as surprising visual elements often do. If you ask somebody about Superman III, there’s a
better-than-average chance that they’ll mention Richard Pryor in a big foam cowboy hat. It’s distracting, and it
undercuts the joke that ex-dishwasher Gus is able to put on new identities and manipulate people, using only his
cleverness and charm. Plus, they’re playing that godawful Roger Miller song again, which I can not and will not
forgive.
See the singing cowboys, almost out of sight at the far end of their endless prairie, beginning to stir. So far, there’s
been two successful Superman movies, followed by an unsuccessful Swamp Thing movie, and now, Richard Pryor in
a big foam cowboy hat. There is little evidence that the public will still be clamoring for Superman movies forty years
from now; in fact, people are hardly clamoring for the one that they’re making right now. That hat is a warning that
the Superman producers should heed.
This weekend:
A weekend popcorn post about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania!
100.1: The Problem Is Not the Problem
Footnotes:
There’s a blooper in the first part of this sequence, and it’s surprising that they left it in. When Gus is doing his “your
boss is going to be real peeved” performance, you can hear Brad start to say “What are —” Then Gus finishes his
line, at which point we cut to Brad saying, “What are you talking about?”
We can enjoy some product placement here: when Gus is stumbling around looking for the computer, he opens the
door to a closet, which has a red Kentucky Fried Chicken bag hanging on a hook. You get a nice clear look at it when
Gus is dragging Brad into the computer room. Later on, Gus makes a reference to KFC’s marketing, saying to
Webster, “You know how they’re always trying to find the secret recipe in that chicken in a bucket?” There was some
prominent product placement for KFC in Superman II, as well, and we’ll see it again in Supergirl.
There’s a longer cut of this scene on the DVD called “The Con”. It adds about 15 seconds to Gus’ routine at the door,
and an extra 45 seconds to Brad and Gus’ drinking scene. That second bit starts with Brad drinking the Singapore
sling with extra vodka and saying, “Perfect”. Gus points out that Brad’s invented a new drink, and he should get to
name it — but “Brad” isn’t a good name for a drink. Brad says, “You know what they used to call me in high school?
Smallville Flash.” Gus says, “That’s a great name for a cocktail, pal!” Then Brad falls over and it’s the end of the
scene.
Superman III 4.26: Walking the Dog
February 21, 2023Superman IIIcomedy, director, props
One of the problems with Superman III is that there is not enough attention paid to Gus Gorman’s yo-yo. There, I’ve
said it.
This is something that I’ve been bottling up, but now that we’ve reached the first of two big yo-yo related scenes, I
can no longer ignore it.
Now, I’ve written before about Richard Lester’s entirely overrated reputation as a director of visual comedy, and
what I want to talk about today is the way that he treats Gus’ yo-yo.
According to the script, the yo-yo is supposed to be practically a supporting cast member in the film. Gus is
constantly fiddling with it, keeping it in the audience’s mind, so that we think it’s funny when he uses it in a clever
way.
To his credit, Lester does keep the yo-yo on screen quite a bit — Gus is holding it, or has it nearby, in practically
every scene. But it’s usually hidden, and you only see it if you’re specifically looking for it, including during the
scenes where it’s important.
Today, I’m going to walk you through where the yo-yo appears, and why it’s important, and I hope that fits into your
plans for how you’re spending your time today, cause it’s too late to turn back now.
The yo-yo is introduced in the first scene of the film, when Gus is standing on the unemployment line. He’s playing
with it nervously, and for a very brief moment the camera follows the yo-yo, from the ground back up to Gus’ hand.
The condition of the yo-yo is actually supposed to be a character trait in the film, according to the script:
GUS kills time by trying to make
a beat-up old wooden yo-yo
perform the basic up-and-down maneuver,
but he’s not very good at it.
CLERK
Name?
GUS
(as he tries to untangle
his yo-yo string)
Gus Gorman.
They don’t do the untangling business in the film; Gus just has the yo-yo in his left hand during his encounter with
the clerk, and then he puts it in his pocket.
We see it again in Gus’ next scene in the computer class, sitting next to the keyboard with the matchbook that
inspired him to come to the class.
You hardly see the yo-yo on the screen here, but in the novelization by William Kotzwinkle, it’s actually a
fundamental part of this moment of character development.
The instructor pressed a button:
“… memory…” said Henry the Computer. “I am a function of…”
Memory, thought Gus.
He had the whole thing in his mind somewhere, up there with his yo-yo strings.
His wrist flipped out, an under-the-kneecap move, yo-yo suspended momentarily in the air.
I know something ’bout this already…
“… in which we have strings of data…”
Strings, thought Gus, looking down at his yo-yo. Always knew this instrument was tryin’ to tell me something.
“… string variables are labeled with a dollar sign…”
Make perfect sense, thought Gus.
“… what we call looping it…”
Gus looped his yo-yo round and round. Yessir, it’s all clear as a goddamn bell…
When Gus and his co-worker go to the cafeteria and talk about missing half-cents, the script has a stage direction:
“Gus mutters and works his yo-yo with no success.” He doesn’t have it in the film.
He’s not holding it when he steps out of the sports car either, but both the script and the novelization make a big
deal about his yo-yo upgrade.
The script says:
GUS steps out of the elevator,
nervously working his yo-yo
(an upgraded model
now that he’s come into some money;
this is a plastic one)
And the novelization gives the new yo-yo its own introduction:
His yo-yo went down, its tiny rag polishing his shoe tips.
All eyes in the elevator were upon this act.
… I just glide on by these folks…
That a man should play with a yo-yo in the elevator of Webscoe was, of course, unheard of.
Gus’ yo-yo had a battery in it, causing it to light.
His fellow employees watched this illuminated object going up and down.
Clicking his fingers, spinning his yo-yo, he watched the elevator open at his floor, and stepped off.
In the film, he doesn’t get a fancy yo-yo here; he’s still got his brown wooden one. He’s holding it when he’s called
upstairs to see the boss…
and this is the yo-yo’s most visible moment in the film. He’s flipping it up and down, repeating, “Ross the boss, Ross
the boss,” in time with the yo-yo. It’s mostly out of frame, but there are little foley slaps as it returns to Gus’ hand.
He’s still fiddling with it during the entire scene with Ross the boss, which is where I think it starts hiding in plain
sight.
As I prepared for this post, I went through all the Gus scenes to spot the yo-yo, and I was amazed at how many times
I never noticed that he had it. It’s just something in his hand, and it’s never the focus of the shot, so it just kind of
disappears.
I remembered that he had it in the elevator, obviously, and then I watched this scene, looking for the moment that
he puts it in his pocket… and he doesn’t.
He just shifts it from hand to hand through the whole scene, messing with it whenever he wants something to do
with his hands. At this point in the scene, he’s got a loop of string hanging down from his left hand.
And here, he’s winding the string up, as Webster pours him a drink.
It’s possible that other people have a better sense of overall situational yo-yo awareness than I do, and you’ll all brag
in the comments that you knew exactly where the yo-yo was at all times. If that happens, I promise that I will be
impressed with your observation skills.
The scene shifts to the Daily Planet office, and when we come back to Webster’s penthouse, Gus is still holding the
yo-yo, passing it from hand to hand.
Gus has his hands full in the next scene, carrying around his portable liquor cabinet, so we don’t see the yo-yo here.
After this, he’s double-talking Brad at the door to get into the WheatKing office, and playing with a yo-yo would be
distracting and spoil the disguise.
But once everyone’s drunk, the yo-yo comes out; it’s sitting on the corner of the table, next to Gus’ left hand. When
Brad passes out and Gus gets up to evaluate his condition, he picks up the yo-yo and puts it in his pocket.
A moment later, he’s got it in his hand again. On the way to the computer room, he’s got the keys in his left hand and
the yo-yo in his right.
The first big scene is coming up, and by now, they’ve done a lot to establish that Gus and his yo-yo are an
inseparable pair — except with me, because I haven’t noticed it since the elevator.
He’s holding the yo-yo as he walks over to the computer and sits down, but it’s hidden in his hand. I know that he’s
got it, because there’s a little foley “thunk” sound when he puts it on the desk, but we can’t see it.
So: the thing that I am objecting to — the reason why I’m writing this entire lunatic post — is that Lester needs to
give us a close-up of the yo-yo, right now. We got one on the unemployment line and in the elevator, but that was
thirteen minutes ago and apparently I have object permanence problems.
In this scene, the yo-yo is the clever solution to Gus overcoming the obstacle of not being able to turn both keys at
the same time.
He’s going to pick up the yo-yo, loop the string around Brad’s wrist, and thread it across the table, so that he can pull
it, to make Brad insert the key.
Which maybe everybody else understood, but I was thinking, I wonder where he got the string from?
That’s because even here — in the yo-yo’s big hero moment — there isn’t a single close-up on it, or even a very clear
shot of it. It’s hidden inside Gus’ hand the entire time.
Once the action is over, there’s about a half-second when you see the yo-yo on top of the computer…
… and Gus immediately sits down, and you can’t see it anymore.
Now, for everyone who’s saying I wonder where he’s going with this?, the answer is nowhere. I am going nowhere
with this. I’m doing it anyway.
It’s at this point in the script, when Gus arrives at Webster’s rooftop ski resort, that we see that he’s now got
another yo-yo:
At which point GUS enters,
flipping a fancier yo-yo
(the walnut executive model),
looking very nervous and disturbed
about something.
So, you see? It’s not just me; the screenwriters were obsessed with the yo-yo too.
But in the film, Gus doesn’t have the new yo-yo in this scene, because he’s got to grab ski poles and careen down
the building in a minute.
Now here, when he’s waiting for his Kryptonite delivery, is probably the most natural place to remind people of his
hobby. The script says:
GUS waiting in a little room
practicing his yo-yo.
By now he’s finally mastered up-and-down
and is into (badly) some tricks like “walking the dog.”
He makes a few tries and almost jumps when
a finger taps his shoulder sharply from behind.
So as far as the writers were concerned, this isn’t just a running gag; it’s an actual character arc.
But that doesn’t come across on the screen at all. In this scene, instead of a yo-yo, Gus is futzing with some damn
thing that I don’t even know what it is.
When the special K arrives, we can glimpse something in his hand…
which turns out to be…
The walnut executive yo-yo!
So now Gus has a fancy designer yo-yo, which he carries around for the rest of the film. He doesn’t play with it at all,
but it’s usually in his hand or nearby on a table. I’m not sure it’s fully functional.
But they always manage to get it into shot, even here in the gas station diner scene, where he holds it up like a
medallion for some reason.
I admire the follow-through to give Gus a fancy new yo-yo, but I think this may make the problem worse, because it’s
even less recognizable and makes the yo-yo rescue sequence more baffling.
Here’s the film’s second, climactic yo-yo moment, when Gus is on the second floor of the supercomputer and
decides he doesn’t want to be anymore. The script says:
ON GUS —
he whips his yo-yo out of his pocket,
pulls the string all the way out,
throws it over one of the guy wires
that anchor the machine to the floor.
He jumps off the terrace,
holding onto both ends (yo-yo and string)
and slides down to the ground, a la Topkapi.
Which is kind of what happens, except you don’t see any of that stuff. We see him reach into his pocket…
And then they cut to something else…
And when we come back to Gus, he tosses the yo-yo over the cable, and gets ready to jump.
This is the other place where we could really use a close-up on the yo-yo, to make sure that people get the joke,
which as far as I’m concerned, we don’t.
So he swings down the cable holding the yo-yo string like it’s a zip line, which is a pay-off to a running joke that I’m
not sure people in the theater even noticed. This upsets me way more than it should.
When Gus gets to the ground, he puts the yo-yo down on top of something or other, and then he forgets about it,
and it passes from our lives forever.
Footnotes:
Gus saying “Hello, baby!” to the computer is an ad-lib from Pryor; it doesn’t appear in the script, either here or
when he says it again in later scenes.
The movie was filmed at Pinewood Studios outside of London, and the sign above the computer accidentally uses
the British spelling: “No Unauthorised Person to Use This Machine”. It’s actually spelled correctly (for Americans) on
the closet door that Gus opened a minute ago, which says “No Admittance Authorized Personnel Only”.
There’s a similar error in the final supercomputer battle scene, where a switch is labeled “Exterior Defence”. I’m
informed by the internet that you can also spot the word “colour” somewhere in the movie, but I haven’t figured
out where yet.
Superman III 4.27: The Funny Part
February 22, 2023Superman IIIcomedy, continuity, director, the madness of crowds
Hapless hacker Gus Gorman has breached the firewall, and touched the face of God.
In a dimly-lit room, the machines are awakening, like a cavern of ancient dragons becoming aware of an intruder in
their midst. He tames them, and brings them under his control. The ensorcelled computers mutter to each other, in
their secret binary parseltongue. There are flashing lights, and whirring tape drives. A man has his finger on the
ignition key of the world, and hacking is occurring.
And once again, I find myself compelled to criticize a comedy scene, which is contrary to my nature and I do not
appreciate it.
For one thing, we’ve had so much comedy by this point in the movie that we could use some dramatic relief. So far,
Superman has saved a guy from drowning, he put out the chemical fire, and he picked up Ricky in the wheat field,
and everything else in the movie has been nothing but wacky.
This moment is the first intentional act of villainy in the movie, where Gus takes control of the blue-ish space lasers,
and uses them to harm real people. Webster may talk about it as “destroying the coffee crop”, but you can’t wreak
that kind of devastation on a country of 28 million human souls without casualties. The loveable loser who’s been
clowning around for the last hour is currently in the process of committing mass murder.
So this would probably be a good time to play some dark tones, just to help the audience understand that this is an
important plot point, with material consequences that drive Gus’ character development.
Or you could do this, I suppose.
The movie presents us with three examples of computers creating social disruption, to demonstrate the theme that
Chris Reeve talked about in Omni magazine: “Ultimately, computers can be a destructive force that prevents people
from relating to one another.”
And I have to admit that the sequence does show people who are having trouble relating to one another. Each of
the three scenes shows people coming into conflict as the result of minor technological errors, in a pantomime
routine accompanied by a chirpy Viennese waltz.
And, oh, they make me tired, in the same way that Dark Superman blowing out the Olympic torch will make me
tired, twenty minutes from now.
They are weak sauce. They involve characters who do not respond to stimuli in a recognizably human way. And they
can’t even keep basic day/night visual continuity, which bothers me way more than it should.
I mean, this is just elementary filmmaking. The montage is cutting back and forth between Gus tapping on the
computer, and the impact on people outside. The basic grammar of film tells us that these events are happening at
the same time: Gus taps some keys, tape drives whir, and something occurs in the world.
We know that it’s night-time, because the whole point of the previous sequence was that Gus found a way to sneak
into the WheatKing office after hours. The first little scenario happens at night, with the guy pulling cash out of the
ATM, and there’s no problem with that.
And then the Bloomingdale’s sketch violates the grammar, showing the computers printing incorrect bills… and then
fast-forwarding to, I don’t know, breakfast time, maybe two days later?
I don’t think that I’m being overly harsh here, nitpicking an unimportant detail. Everyone watching the film feels that
sense of disconnect here — that we’re suddenly cutting from now to a couple days from now, and then back again.
It’s the only way to understand this sequence of images, because we’ve seen movies before.
It’s also not funny, even in a world where it’s okay to squash grapefruits on people, for several reasons that I don’t
need to get into. But the night/day thing is the worst.
And then there’s the Calgary traffic catastrophe, demonstrating what doesn’t happen when there’s a problem with
the computer controlling traffic signals.
Again, it’s during the day, so screw you Aristotle, and also the joke is ridiculously over-extended by the massive
crowds of extras getting tugged back and forth around the intersection. The sidewalks are absolutely jammed with
people who are all trying to walk through each other; it’s like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for assholes.
And you hear people screaming, which is not typical behavior for city dwellers in a superhero movie. In the previous
film, there was a dangerous sky battle between superpowered alien criminals right overhead, and Metropolis still
went shopping; a faulty traffic signal isn’t going to move the needle like this.
It feels false. Every single person in the audience has had some experience with a malfunctioning traffic light, and it
does not lead to mass violence.
You know what would have been funny? If this sequence was Clark Kent walking down the sidewalk, and noticing a
string of strange occurrences, as the computers all break down. He could be puzzled by the guy at the ATM, and
then maybe the traffic lights, and then more examples of computers acting strangely as he continues down the
street, to demonstrate that modern life is controlled by computers, and wouldn’t it be weird if they all started acting
in an unpredictable way?
The sequence that we see here is trying to make a statement about the impact of computers on our lives, but it
doesn’t connect any of these occurrences together. It doesn’t say that computers are everywhere in our society; it
just says that there are computers in several places that impact random people at various times during the week.
Worst of all, it doesn’t involve mild-mannered Clark Kent aka Superman, even though the security breach is taking
place in the small town that he is currently bumbling around in. In this movie, Superman is not allowed the courtesy
of noticing the strange events, and figuring out that they’re all part of a villainous scheme. It’s just stuff that
happens in some mediocre sitcom world, unnoticed and sadly unfunny.
Footnotes:
A few cast members of note in this sequence:
The ATM guy, credited as Man at Cash Point because the movie takes place in Britain apparently, is played by Peter
Whitman, who also appeared as the comedy deputy in Superman II. He went on to have minor roles in a lot of
movies over the next decade, including Yentl, Little Shop of Horrors and actually those are the only two that are
worth mentioning.
Sandra Dickinson, who plays Wife, is probably best known for playing Trillian in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
TV series. She’ll return briefly to the franchise as Pretty Young Lady in Supergirl. She had small roles in The Batman
and Ready Player One, and her ex-husband and son-in-law are both Doctor Who.
Husband is played Ronnie Brody, a comedic actor who Richard Lester also cast in Help!, The Knack… and How to Get
It, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Bed Sitting Room and The Ritz.
Superman III 4.28: The Stokis Uprising
February 25, 2023Superman IIIjustice
The story so far: loveable loser, wind-up penguins, chaos in Calgary, Lois in Bermuda, casual attitude toward angels,
uneaten potato salad, fake Art Deco, sackful of puppies, the bowling scene, half a soundtrack, and computers
preventing people from relating to one another. Add six cups of comic relief, and stir.
It’s no wonder the Stokis family is barging in, demanding recompense. I feel exactly the same way.
They have been roughly handled, these incandescent Stokises, and they want somebody to do something about it.
They have been folded, spindled and mutilated by the ongoing nonsense known to the public as Superman III, and
they didn’t even watch the bowling scene, so you can just imagine how I feel.
I’ve spent weeks now, painstakingly establishing my critical framework for discussing the disappointments of
Superman III, and if we’re honest with each other, you’re sick of hearing about it and so am I.
So I’m just going to run through the next ten minutes or so at top speed, clearing out the backlog of smart remarks
that I would like to make, and then after this I’m going to talk about comic books and merchandise for a minute, and
just generally try to get my blood pressure down.
Okay, to start with: Colombia, which is made out of sticks.
I mean, this must be the shoddiest-built country in all of South America. First, that red house on the left falls over
backwards like it’s just a front with no building behind it.
And then the house on the right falls over, and it looks like they weren’t keeping anything inside it. Who’s in charge
of real estate in Colombia?
Next: Webster’s big idea is to re-route all of the oil tankers in apparently the world and bunch them up together in
the middle of the ocean, at which point Mr. Ross Webster will control all of the oil.
“If Gus Gorman can push the right buttons,” he postulates, “I can have it all. All the oil! All the pumps! All the
tankers!” That is the entire scheme.
My question: How does he think he’s going to get away with this? Everybody knows who he is. He’s a billionaire and
he’s famous.
Sure, Gus can send the tankers to someplace other than their intended destination, but the oil still belongs to
somebody. If Webster says, “Finders keepers, this is all mine now,” does he expect everyone else to shrug and go
along with it? I don’t get it.
Then: Superman saving Colombia from the hurricane. They’d planned this as an actual action sequence in the film,
and we do get two shots from that original sequence, but then they decided it would be funnier if Gus put on a
tablecloth and jumped around.
This is actually why they hired Richard Pryor in the first place: they saw him on The Tonight Show, acting out the
story of Superman II in front of an amused Johnny Carson. For one beautiful moment of live television, Pryor caught
lightning in a bottle, doing an improv routine that was so funny they gave him four million dollars to come and do it
again in a Superman movie.
But the thing that made that moment funny was that Pryor was violating the rules of the late-night talk show,
getting up from his chair and zooming around like a kid. He was clowning around in front of Carson and a live
audience, and like the amazing stand-up comic that he was, he turned that nervous, ecstatic energy into a hilarious
performance.
Now here he is on the set, with people telling him go ahead, take the tablecloth and pretend it’s a cape, and act out
the story, like you did on Carson. It’ll be funny!
I can’t think of anything more poisonous to a moment of spontaneous creative improvisation than to try and make it
happen again, in cold blood, when everyone’s expecting you to do it. He tries, and they make sure that Lorelei is
happily chuckling the whole time so there’s a little bit of a live audience, but he’s just going through the motions
because they’re telling him to. It makes me sad.
The big fall: Silly as it is, Gus’ ski jump is an interesting and well put together stunt. The stuntman is Greg Elam,
falling several hundred feet attached to a cable.
They’re using a device called a “fan descender” which allows for a safe cable-controlled descent, originally used by
the Royal Air Force to simulate parachute landings in hangars. Stuntman Vic Armstrong developed a variation of the
fan descender for use in films while shooting a 1981 British heist film called Green Ice.
Armstrong had a history with Superman himself; he was the stunt man doubling for Chris Reeve in the flying scenes
for Superman: The Movie and Superman II. He got a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 2000 for “the Fan
Descender, for accurately and safely arresting the descent of stunt persons in high freefalls”.
Also stunt-related, there’s some nice footage in the Making of Superman III special of a long, trying day for Elam as
he tries over and over to ski convincingly down the glass slope for the middle of the stunt.
Then he lands, and I’m back in tedious comic relief territory. I’m not going to get into it, see previous posts on the
subject of comedy, but I would like to point out that the scene is the mirror image of Lois falling in Superman: The
Movie. This must be what happens to people when Superman isn’t around to save them.
Moving on! Of all the silly things that Gus can do with his magic computer powers, I think this is the least explicable:
using a weather satellite to analyze the chemical makeup of a mineral in another galaxy.
There is the strange idea in this film that if a person is smart about one thing, then they’re smart about everything.
It’s not just Gus; Vera also has a sudden upgrade at the end of the film so that she knows how to program computers
too. This is the usual result, when non-smart people try to make a movie about smart people.
And finally: Why do Mr. and Mrs. Stokis have to suffer these indignities?
First, there’s a cruel and misogynistic joke about Mr. Stokis not considering winning his wife’s hand to be valuable,
and then they get sent to South America, where they’re battered and broken, purely for the joy of inflicting injuries
on characters that the movie doesn’t like.
You’ll notice that there are a lot of comic sequences in the movie that involve insulting, assaulting, criticizing and/or
punishing characters for the crime of appearing in the movie. Jimmy Olsen, who was adorable in the first movie, is
now portrayed as a tedious bore. Gus is hit in the crotch, Vera is mercilessly mocked, and Brad is dragged around the
office while he’s unconscious and later thrown into a wall head-first.
Ricky’s picked last for the bowling team, Wife gets half a grapefruit in the face, Lorelei endures endless
condescension, the crowd at the Superman rally find that the size of their asses is somehow up for discussion, and I
shudder to think what might have happened to that poor mime, struggling on the sidewalk. Even the guys on line at
the gas station get a punch in the face, and they didn’t do anything.
I think Lana is probably the only one to survive the film unscathed. Besides her, it’s collateral damage, everywhere
you turn.
So this, if you’re up for it, is another piece of the critical framework: comedy in and of itself is not the problem with
Superman III. The problem is that the comedy is often misanthropic and mean-spirited, to the point where it seems
like the film hates its own characters. The Stokis family objects to this, and so do I.
Footnote:
There are also a few little bloopers to look for in the scenes that I’m talking about today: Gus programs the
coordinates of Colombia as 75 degrees west and 5 degrees south, which I am informed is actually the coordinates of
Peru. There’s a continuity error around Gus’ shoes/boots over the course of the ski jump stunt. Finally, the computer
says “Instructions recieved” when Gus asks it to analyze the Kryptonite.
Superman III 4.29: Kotzwinkle
February 27, 2023Superman IIIlong-overdue national conversation about race, mad science, merchandise,
novelization
So, get a load of this.
“Excuse me… sorry…” Engrossed in thought, Clark had stumbled against a woman in the street. She looked at him in
disgust. “Watch where you’re going, you four-eyed moron!”
That’s on the first page of William Kotzwinkle’s novelization of Superman III, and it doesn’t get a lot cheerier from
there.
By the time the Superman III book came out, William Kotzwinkle was well-known as the author of the 1982
novelization for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the story of a strange visitor from another world with powers and abilities
far beyond those of mortal men. The film was a huge success, and the novelization was too, which doesn’t happen
that often.
The appeal of the E.T. novelization is that Kotzwinkle does a deep dive into the mental and emotional lives of the
characters, offering insight into their identities and motivations. The character of E.T., who hardly speaks in the
movie, is given new dimensions by the way Kotzwinkle describes his observations and reactions to the alien world
around him. Even the dog gets his own internal character arc.
The novelization shot to the top of the mass-market paperback best-seller list, and stayed there for quite a while, a
testament to both Kotzwinkle’s skill and the public’s hunger for more E.T. content.
He followed in 1985 with an original sequel, E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet, which was the only other entry in
the E.T. Expanded Universe. The book sold pretty well, but obviously nowhere near the original. In Green Planet, E.T.
returns to his home planet, Brodo Asogi, where nobody really likes him very much, and he longs to return to Elliott,
who’s grown into a teenager and is less receptive to his old friend’s psychic emanations.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I found a contemporary review of Book of the Green Planet in the Washington
Post, where the reviewer objected to Kotzwinkle’s cynical view of life on Earth:
“It does not take a very perceptive reader to see that underneath the layers of vivacious surface color is a brooding
despair — a contempt, in fact, for the whole adult world. Spielberg knew better in E.T. than to show contempt for his
characters. He poked fun at suburbia, but he also respected the gutsiness and independence of some of its
inhabitants, including Elliott’s mother. Kotzwinkle sees her as aimless, manipulated, and in matters of the heart very
nearly a cretin.”
Which sounds a lot like Superman III, actually. As I observed in yesterday’s post, the film doesn’t like its characters
very much, finding humor in mean-spirited mockery and/or punishment of just about everyone on screen.
And in Kotzwinkle’s novelization, the film’s contempt for the characters is amplified like you wouldn’t believe.
It really is an extraordinary piece of work, so from here on, I’m just going to show you examples of the misanthropy
on parade.
Superman hates himself
Clark Kent continued along, as the inner voice faded. He would accept insults from strange women with shopping
bags, and from Lois Lane. He was just Clark Kent the creep, klutz and nebbish. (p8)
Did people need flattery? Fine, he’d flatter them. Did they need to feel superior to someone? Good, they could feel
superior to him. He despised himself for all that mild-mannered stuff. (p52)
“I haven’t laughed like that since I can’t remember when.” “Neither have I,” said Kent, who would have eaten an
entire case of Ken-L-Ration if it meant being liked. (p105)
“Call me,” said Clark, unable to stop himself from playing with her emotions. Did he have some sort of male-ego
game going? Did he have to feel women were his for the asking, even though he’d sworn to avoid intimacy with
them? (p106)
The Daily Planet characters hate each other
White chomped on his cigar, his lower lip in a cynical sneer. “Olsen, somebody oughta give you f.two in the mouth.”
(p31)
“What the story is really about is how the typical small town has changed in the last fifteen years. Take me, for
instance —”
“I do take you, Kent. Every day. Like medicine.” White cranked angrily on. (p35)
Lois looked back at him, wondering in what way he thought he was sophisticated. His glasses looked like he’d bought
them at Woolworth’s and the cut of his suit was early Salvation Army. She spoke none of this, not wishing to hurt the
poor boob’s feelings. (p36)
No, thought Clark, I must stand here with everyone laughing at me as I hold this crank in my hand, my mind going
like lightning, reading every nuance of Perry White’s mockery. (p37)
Clark Kent, seated beside Jimmy, stared blankly at him, as if he were a talking fish.
“… He says the stuffing should be cooked outside the bird…”
Clark could not help feeling that somehow Olsen had been cooked outside the bird, long ago. (p44)
Gus is a racial stereotype
Once Gus gets some money from the half-cents scheme, he wears what I guess are supposed to be pimp clothes: a
Day-Glo shirt (p146), alligator skin pants (p75), suede socks and “a tasteful little belt made of boa-constrictor lips,”
(p77) plus a “pair of rhinoc’ros boots.” (p177) He dreams of “a proud little boat filled with tradition and five tons of
marijuana.” (p163)
Here are a couple more examples:
Gus faded in behind the ski slope. “… not my fault things didn’t work out. I did what I was supposed to do. But that’s
always been the way, even in school. Teacher accidentally back into an open switchblade, who took the rap? Gus
Gorman…” (p132)
Windows be flashin’ by me… Owing to the velocity of his fall, Gus’s perceptions were heightened and he had certain
spiritual insights: … fine-looking secretary bendin’ over that desk… ‘nother one crossin’ a tough pair of legs… Too bad
I won’t be roun’ at coffee-break time. (p134)
The one nice thing is that absolutely none of that is in the movie. Gus talks the way that Richard Pryor talks, and he
doesn’t wear tasteless pimp clothes. This is 100% Kotzwinkle.
Brad is baffling
This is a weird one. During the high school reunion scene, the narrator establishes that Brad sells terrible beer:
Brad was, in fact, distributor of a local beer; the taste of this brew, resembling boiled gym shoes, was popular with
the bums around the courthouse square, and in cellar taverns where old athletic supporters went to die from
drinking it. (p59)
This is particularly mysterious, because Brad’s occupation is key to another sequence later in the film. This is how
Kotzwinkle handles that:
Were any of the local sports fans there, they might have found the rolling gait of the watchman familiar, for it was
that of Brad Wilson, former golden boy, who’d lost his beer franchise and was now employed by Wheat King, owing
to the kindness of the owner, Eddy Roebush. Roebush had been Wilson’s tight end back in the past, and was
frequently tight in the present, down at a Smallville gin mill called the Sportsman’s Club. Many sportsmen had been
clubbed there, with chairs or anything else that might be handy. Having shared a good many such occasions with
Roebush, it was only natural that Wilson should come to him for employment. And so, only a few nights before, he’d
begun work, with a solemn promise never to drink on the job. (p114)
Kids are terrible
These revealing photos spit out of a slot in the machine, where they were immediately grabbed by a perverted child.
(p17)
They were just Smallville kids, and like so many boys their age all over America, were sadists. (p79)
But watch out, terrible kids, because there’s a weird little subplot about Ricky gaining super-strength from flying
with Superman for a few seconds:
At the same time, the grand musculature of Superman’s own form sent intense pulsations of power into Ricky,
putting grace, elasticity, and physical prowess into the boy’s frail anatomy, so that he could successfully defend
against his cruel friends in future and in fact kick their ass if he so desired. All this happened in the space of an
instant, as Ricky’s cry of joy rang in the sky. (p110)
Every scientist is a mad scientist
Elsewhere in the building, a white-coated mad scientist stood in the center of a windowless laboratory, where he’d
created, with government grants, the most devastating chemical substances imaginable, for use in baby food,
drinking water, and perfumed towelettes. (p47)
The mad scientist paced back and forth in front of his cannisters. He’d spent years here, perfecting his secrets and,
owing to recent government legislation which would allow him to dump thousands of tons of chemical waste into a
nearby river, was on the verge of yet another significant breakthrough. (p48)
The mad scientist turned back toward his lab; he’d made many strange things for Ross Webster and sometimes it
was better not to know what their use would be; this was obviously one of those times. In any case, he could now
return to his research work on a nutritionless loaf of whole wheat bread made entirely out of recycled paper bags.
(p146)
Superman was escorted by a grateful staff into the laboratory of the company’s mad scientist who, deeply engrossed
in a study of bread mold growing on his own thumb, hardly noticed the Man of Steel behind him. (p207)
And then there’s the strange case of Minnie Bannister, from the school reunion scene:
“You really have grown,” Minnie said, her eyes remembering nothing, the most fragmented person Clark had ever
known. She’d been certifiably mad during his four years at Smallville and legend had it she’d always been openly
psychotic — yet here she was, teaching high school English still. (p54)
Characters who already hate each other somehow hate each other even more
Gus swiveled his head toward Vera, as she spoke: “Somehow,” she said, “your twisted little mind should be able to
figure out how to tap into the main computer at the Aerospace Center and reach Vulcan.” (p97)
While Lorelei’s hand was inside the desk drawer, Vera took the opportunity to ram her formidable hip against it,
thereby pinching Lorelei’s fingers in the drawer. Lorelei winced but made no sound as she couldn’t let Ross know
that his toad of a sister had scored a point. (p99)
“Oil?” asked Lorelei, rubbing some on herself to promote a healthy tan. “You’re such a hedonistic little slut,” said
Vera, who did not tan, owing to a tendency toward pink blotches. (p128)
Throughout their childhood, Vera had shown little aptitude for electronics, other than as a living transformer whose
toenails glowed when Webster plugged her into house current. (p194)
Craziest of all is the revelation that Vera deliberately iced the ski slope, in order to kill Lorelei:
Vera called for one of the maintenance men, told him to pour a few gallons of water on the ski slope. “But that’ll
turn it into a sheet of ice. Anybody gets on that they’ll go sailing —” The maintenance man looked toward the
distant edge of the penthouse terrace. “Don’t ask questions,” said Vera, for it would soon be Lorelei’s turn to take a
little ski trip, twenty stories to the street below. (p127)
Everyone is a swindler
The penguin salesman had stolen his penguins only the night before, off a boxcar in a little-used siding by the river.
(p10)
Clark Kent forked over the money and continued along with his burnt bird. Taken again, he reflected, as we all so
often do in great Metropolis. (p13)
As he strolled into the employee’s cafeteria, money was still on Gus’s mind. People were standing on line, waiting for
the regular company fare — some plastic french fries and a piece of rubber cake. Gus added a piece of vulcanized
bread to his plate. (p43)
“El Super Comerciante!” cried a local entrepreneur who, owning the crater and all the land adjacent to it, could now
open an overpriced resort. (p130)
“… we had fifteen more dancing lessons comin’ to us,” said Mrs. Stokis to no one in particular, referring to the
Autumn Harvest Dance Program she and Mr. Stokis belonged to in Metropolis, at a local dance studio noted for
swindling middle-aged couples into paying exorbitant prices for learning the tango. (p140)
Mayor Ed Fogarty was not looking for honors either. Having recently been indicted by the grand jury in a price-fixing
scandal, and with much to hide as regards certain construction contracts he’d recently awarded, Mayor Honest Ed
Fogarty sought only to draw attention away from himself. (p148)
The citizens of Smallville snapped to attention, including Mayor Fogarty, who’d served with valor during World War
II, lending money at 200% interest to fellow soldiers stationed in New Jersey. (p150)
Every random character is given a relentlessly negative backstory
Reading the book, it’s quite breathtaking to see the scope of Kotzwinkle’s generalized misanthropy. In addition to the
swindlers and the swindled listed above, every character who comes to the narrator’s notice is incompetent,
suicidal, filthy or worse:
They walked over to the DJ table, where the turntable was spinning, under the eyes of a discophile whose collection
of bad music went back twenty years and more. He scanned his discs now, looking for one of those great old tunes,
sung off-key by several aging delinquents. (p55)
The driver of this machine, a bored and possibly dull-witted farmhand, was lazily dreaming of corn liquor and sex.
Naked damsels as featured on the calendars at the local garage came to him, bearing large jugs. (p109)
The driver’s mouth fell open and his cigarette dropped into his filthy overalls. “Holy-o-corncakes,” was all he could
say. It would have been a day without pay had he threshed a good hound dog and a boy. There’d a-been ‘splanations
to make, and he hated ‘splanations like hell-fire. (p109)
Just outside that bank, a man was withdrawing his plastic bank card from his pocket and walking toward the Instant
Cash machine in the bank wall. He had exactly fifty bucks left in his account and was about to withdraw it in order to
engage in one last bout of reckless spending before jumping off a bridge with a horse-weight tied to his ankle. (p118)
Superman turned immediately upward, shocked by the shouts, the cheers, the banners, the cacophonous blaring of
the band, which had placed next-to-last in a six-state musical contest only the month before. (p147)
This cumbersome and useless object was presented to Superman along with a little gift from the Ladies’ Auxiliary —
a spiral-bound edition of their cookbook, whose recipes went back to the Revolution and had sped countless
Smallvillians into high blood pressure, gout, and early baldness. (p149)
The lynching at the end of this book
To wrap up, check out what Kotzwinkle does with the coal miners:
“Take it easy, Superman,” Gus said. “You’re a fine dude… even though you lef’ me here in West Virginia…”
He turned towards the coal miners, who had arms like coal shovels and little squinty eyes like cave bats’.
These are some hard-lookin’ crackers.
Probably crack me.
Carryin’ shotguns, no doubt, ‘cross the back of the cab in their truck.
Use an individual like myself for target practice in the mornin’.
“Well,” said one of the miners, “you got good references. So if y’all want that job —”
“Thing I actually want is the bus station,” said Gus.
Footnote:
The “Special Edition” badge is on about half the copies of the novelization on eBay; I think that they’re special
because they’ve got a 16-page insert in the middle of black and white photos. The copy that I got also says “Not For
Sale”, which was probably a good idea.
Superman III 4.31: The Other Worst Scene
March 4, 2023Superman IIIinterrobang, multiverse, nuclear, script, worst moment
It was never going to be funny, of course. “Funny” is not the issue; we’ve moved beyond “funny” as a concept.
And yeah, it was always going to be offensive, and insulting to the audience, and generally off-putting. That is a
matter of grim inevitability.
But at least it would have made some kind of motherfucking sense.
GUS
Listen up!
Gus would have said.
I’m here to tell you that God has given us
the greatest goddamn gift in the world:
nuclear power!
That’s what it says in the script, and somewhere in the endless multiverse, that’s the scene that people saw.
But if we don’t protect it, it’s our ass!
he would have continued.
And democracy’s ass!
And the free world’s ass!
So yeah, it would still involve talking about people’s asses. We’re not going to get around that; an infinite number of
universes isn’t enough to contain a variant of this scene that avoids the ass entirely.
Here’s the thing: remember the chemical plant fire at the beginning of the movie? In the script, that was supposed
to be a forest fire, which endangered a nuclear power plant.
The production scouted a location in a forest north of Edmonton, which they planned to use… but they weren’t sure
how they were going to get all the people and equipment there, and they weren’t confident that they could control
the fire.
So they found an oil refinery outside of Calgary, and they said, well, how about Superman saves an oil refinery
instead?
Which is fine, but the stakes aren’t very high; the whole idea of the nuclear power plant was that it could endanger
millions of people, if Superman didn’t keep it from melting down. That’s the drama of the situation.
So they decided, okay, it’s a chemical plant, and it’s full of dangerous chemicals that we have to keep in lockup. That
technically counts as a dramatic action sequence. Problem solved.
But you can’t just abandon a blazing nuclear power plant without some kind of consequences, as they discovered
when it came time to shoot Gus’ hilarious Patton speech.
It says in the script:
GUS
You people want to be able
to go to church on Sunday
and sit in the Super Bowl, don’t you?
But what about the
peacetime uses of nuclear power?
You all want some Ay-rabs in white robes
tellin’ you you got to pay through the nose
for their Cadillac limousines so you can get
enough juice to light up your Christmas tree??!
Not to mention the nice clean air
so the great American bald eagle can fly
without coughin’ himself to death!
Now, last week, half of this great nation
almost bit the bullet, nuclear-power-wise.
Wasn’t anything the military could do about it —
we were busy protecting our borders
at the time it happened.
So I say, thank the Good Lord
above for Superman!
That’s why Gus is dressed up as a general in this scene, because “nuclear power” sounds like something that the
military would be interested in. It’s still a stretch — nuclear power and nuclear warheads are different things — but
if you squint, you can see what they were trying to do here.
But that relatively sane version of the scene wasn’t possible to shoot, because in the movie, Superman saved a
chemical factory instead of a nuclear power plant.
That’s why the actual scene in the movie goes like this:
Gus: Now, listen up! I just came in directly from the Pentagon, and you better believe there’s a damn good reason
that I did! Because God has given us one of the greatest gifts in the world! Chemicals!
Which does not make any fucking sense.
Gus: Now, you people, you like to go sit in church on Sunday, dontcha? You like to sit and watch the Superbowl! Sit
on what? You sit on molded — plastic — seats! Molded to your well-fed behinds! Now, I don’t have to tell ya that
America leads the world in high-grade plastics! We cannot afford a chemical plastics gap!
And so on.
It’s especially bizarre, because there aren’t many clues to help the audience connect General Gus’ obsession with
“molded plastic” to the fire rescue sequence earlier in the film. It would help if he said “acid” or “fire”, which would
help to jog the memory, but he doesn’t.
And then he says,
Gus: Last week, half of this great nation of ours almost bit the bullet, if it wasn’t for this man here!
Which, again, doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It’s related to the line in the script: “Now, last week, half of this great nation almost bit the bullet, nuclear-power-
wise.”
A nuclear power accident could conceivably endanger “half this great nation” if it’s real serious and the wind is right,
but that crummy chemical plant fire was clearly not a “half of this great nation”-size problem. So what is he talking
about?
And then it gets even worse.
Here’s what happens in the script:
(There, glowing and gleaming
against the velvet background,
is a small statue in the shape of the
nuclear plant cooling tower we saw earlier.
We recognize its green glow immediately
as the Kryptonite we saw before.)
So that’s why Superman accepts something that’s glowing green — because it’s a replica of the nuclear plant cooling
tower. And that makes sense, in a way, because it’s related to the disaster that Gus has been yelling about. There’s a
clear thread from the nuclear power plant sequence to Gus showing up as a general, talking about nuclear power,
and then giving Superman a figurine of the cooling tower.
It’s not funny, per se, but at least the audience would have some kind of fighting chance to figure out what the hell is
happening on the screen in front of us.
But in the film, Gus Gorman dresses up in funny clothes, makes an impenetrable speech about molded plastic, and
then celebrates Superman’s heroism by handing him what can only be described as a chunk of Kryptonite cleverly
disguised in the shape of a chunk of Kryptonite.
So what can you even say? It just barely misses being the worst scene in the movie because it doesn’t involve
bowling, but it’s a near thing. I suppose we dodged a bullet; if they’d set this scene at the bowling alley, it might
have broken cinema completely, and everybody would just stay home and watch TV for the rest of our lives
Superman III 4.32: The Game… and How to Play It
March 8, 2023Superman IIIlong-overdue national conversation about race, merchandise, promotion, star wars
Luke Skywalker (Jedi Knight Outfit), Princess Leia Organa (Boushh Disguise), Admiral Ackbar, Squid Head, Chief
Chirpa, Logray (Ewok Medicine Man), Klaatu, Weequay, General Madine, Ree-Yees, Gamorrean Guard, Emperor’s
Royal Guard, Rebel Commando, Biker Scout, Lando Calrissian (Skiff Guard Disguise), Bib Fortuna for fuck’s sake, and
Nien Nunb.
That’s the list of 17 action figures that Kenner made in 1983 to tie-in with Return of the Jedi. There are at least four
figures in that collection that don’t even have proper names; they’re just like “Rebel Commando” and “Biker Scout”,
and Kenner expected people to buy them anyway, which we did.
You know who’s not on that list? Wicket W. Warrick, the cutest of an entirely cute species, an Ewok so adorable that
they gave him a middle initial. Kenner didn’t release a Wicket action figure until 1984. That’s how confident they
were, that they could keep Wicket in the tank, and hold onto him until next year.
Meanwhile, you know how many action figures they made for Superman III? Find out the answer after the jump.
The answer is none, of course. They couldn’t be bothered. And what would they have done with a toy line, anyway?
Superman’s the only character in the entire film with a costume. I suppose they could do a Gus Gorman (WheatKing
Disguise), and maybe even a Gus Gorman (Ski Jumper) with the tablecloth around his neck, but beyond that, there’s
not a lot of scope.
Warner Bros. made a big deal about all the merch opportunities offered by the first movie, including four dolls, a
lunchbox, a jigsaw puzzle, a wastebasket, an alarm clock, a shampoo bottle, a pogo stick and a computer game.
The trade ad pictured above for the Superman III merch is a bit more subdued; it looks like mostly T-shirts, and those
are mostly just the Superman shield. There’s a couple of Fisher-Price storybook-and-tape sets, an inflatable chair for
very small people, and a jar of Superman peanut butter.
But merchandise isn’t everything, except for blockbuster sci-fi movies where it obviously is. Merchandise, especially
toys, is a way for kids to engage with the film, broadening the experience to last longer than a couple hours on a
Saturday afternoon.
To make that work, you need some scenes of visual villainy, which Superman III struggles with. There are two visual
sequences in Superman III that would make sense on a playground — the Superman vs Clark junkyard battle, and
the final confrontation between Superman and the Big Computer. There are some minor rescues — saving the
drowning guy, getting Ricky out of the way of the combine harvester, picking up a lake to stop a fire — but they’re
not that much fun. Besides that, it’s mostly Gus tapping on a computer, three villains hanging around the office
plotting things, and Lana gradually realizing that she should move to Metropolis.
They don’t even put Lana in any kind of interesting visual jeopardy, which is nice for her fictional peace of mind, but
severely limits the kid-available surface area.
For the first movie, Pepsi made a nice set of promotional glasses, covered with images of Superman making daring
rescues — catching Lois when she falls, pulling her car out of the ground, pretending that he’s an adequate railroad
track — as well as Krypton exploding, the dam bursting, and Lois writing a front-page newspaper story.
For Superman III, 7 Up got the license to make promotional cups for Steak & Shake, and it’s clear that they didn’t
have a lot to work with. The movie-specific pictures are Superman getting strangled by the computer, and Superman
using his heat vision to fix the oil tanker that he damaged.
This is an especially weird image to build a restaurant promotion around, because Superman looks helpless, and he’s
clearly being choked to death, which isn’t a great look for a Steak & Shake meal.
But there aren’t a lot of heroic pictures that you can use for the computer fight, because it’s mostly Superman
getting attacked and then recovering from things. The Superman III lunchbox used the moment when he bursts out
of the transparent bubble, and look how that turned out.
But here come the Parker Brothers, with two games that actually engage with the substance of the film, minus the
expensive people.
The “Superman III Card Game: Where Heroes Are Made” involved both a deck of 52 numbered cards and a set of 25
Adventure cards, illustrated by comics artist Neal Adams.
Adams managed to find all of the active Superman moments in the movie — rescuing the drowning guy, picking up
Jimmy during the fire, carrying the frozen lake, stopping the combine harvester, fixing the oil tanker and making the
computer explode. There are two cards depicting Clark changing into Superman, one of them showing him jumping
out of the police car in the supersuit.
To fill out the rest of the set, Adams had to stretch a little bit. There’s a card where Superman re-breaks the Leaning
Tower of Pisa, one where he’s drying up the coffee beans with his eyes, and one where he turns a lump of coal into a
diamond. There’s also one that shows a deleted scene, with Superman rescuing a baby from a playground accident.
The game itself is basically blackjack for kids, plus some Superman stuff. “Try to get number cards that total 11,” the
instructions say, “or as close to 11 as possible without going over. You’ll need nerves of steel to decide whether to
add another card to your hand.”
If you win the hand, you get to turn over one of the Adventure cards which is laid out in a 5×5 grid, and you’re trying
to get five cards in a row, which is exciting if you like that kind of thing.
The Superman III board game is a bit more challenging, by which I mean that I can’t quite figure out the rules.
The playing piece has two sides, one with Superman and the other with Clark, and you have to flip back and forth
between the identities a ridiculous amount of the time. There are two tracks on the board, one blue and one yellow,
and you can collect a red chip the first time a person lands on a square in the blue track when they’re Superman,
and in the yellow track when they’re Clark. You flip your playing piece from one to the other every time you pass
over one of the chunks of Kryptonite, which happens every four spaces.
If you collect a red chip, you can add it to the area under the computer at the top left of the board, trying to get a
row of six red chips to reach from your color square to the top of the computer. But there are four green chips that
are the computer’s defenses, and if you land on a ZAP! square (and you’re in the correct identity for the track that
you’re on) then you can move the green chips one space to try and attack your opponent’s line of red chips.
There’s also a Junk Yard battle square where you can challenge an opponent to roll the highest number 2 times out
of 3, and there are two Telephone Booth squares where you can travel from one to the other if you land on it as
Superman, but it changes you back to Clark. There’s probably some kind of strategy involved that I find it difficult to
picture.
It’s the Power cards where you lose me, as a potential competitor. There are three different types of Power cards,
which you can use after you roll your die but before moving your piece, if your piece shows Superman and not Clark.
The “flying” card moves you to any space on the blue track, the “heat ray” card allows you to melt the Kryptonite
chunk and stay as Superman, and the “strength” card lets you move backwards on the track for one turn.
There’s a whole mechanic about whether your Power card is face up or face down, and you can flip one over when
you land on a special “Turn Card Over” space, and at that point, my mind starts to wander, and maybe the rain
stopped and we can go play outside.
The interesting thing is that the game board actually grapples with the Dark Superman storyline, with most of the
panels in the blue track picturing Superman with stubble. The mean Superman fights with Clark, punches a hole in
the oil tanker, straightens the Tower of Pisa and stands on top of the Statue of Liberty, plus two different panels of
him sitting in the bar with a bowl of peanuts.
The art is adapted from the card game, so we’ve also got Superman rescuing Jimmy from the fire and turning the
coal into a diamond. (The Dark Superman stuff might be in the card game as well, on the flip side of the Adventure
cards, but I can’t find any pictures of them.)
One thing you might notice is that these games portray specific scenes from the film, without using any of the
actors’ likenesses. Superman and Jimmy Olsen look like they do in the comics, and everybody else is a non-specific
version of their character. Ricky is just a generic kid with dark brown hair, and there are generic coal miners and bar
patrons.
The really curious thing is that Gus Gorman does not appear on a single piece of merchandise or promotional item
that I’ve seen, except for the novelization and the soundtrack album, which used the poster, and the trading cards,
which needed as many pictures as they could get.
I can sort of understand this for the two games, which don’t use any movie characters at all, because licensing
famous people’s likenesses can get expensive. But the Ziploc stickers show Chris Reeve, Annette O’Toole, Robert
Vaughn and Pamela Stephenson…
and the Thermos that comes with the Superman III lunchbox pictures six different actors, not including the famous
comedian co-star who dominates half the movie.
I would like to believe that maybe Pryor’s agent wanted an unreasonable amount of money to use his likeness, but I
think it’s more likely that they just didn’t want a racially integrated Thermos showing up at lunchtime, which is
shameful. We’re going to have to collect some more Power cards, and do something about this.