SuperMan: The Movie
Directed by Richard Donner
Written by Mario Puzo
Starring Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Marlon Brando, and Gene Hackman
Film snobs always talk about Movie Magic. It’s the celluloid equivalent of je ne sais quoi. That strange thing that will not let you advert your eyes. The touch of Midas. God’s smile. An argument for personal taste is irrelevant in the face of such wizardry. It just clicks. It refuses to be denied.
In spite of a lengthening filming schedule, immense budgetary fluctuations, an unknown lead actor,
on-set feuds and effects work that had never been perfected at that time…Superman: The Movie refused to be denied.
I wasn’t even a sperm cell when Superman: The Movie came out in 1978. I ended up catching the movie, almost 16 years later at the age of thirteen. It was 1994 and film had already begun to shed the
Laser Disc and embrace the DVD era. This advent would soon mark the end of the late night movie on regular television. A practice that I wasn’t aware of until the summer of 1994 when I first saw Superman.
For me, the film holds particular because the viewing in itself seemed assisted by the Movie Magic Gods. I had dragged my family to see, Brandon Lee’s swan song,
The Crow earlier that day. It was a rare moment where both my, estranged, mother and, re-married father, were in the city at the same time. My intention, like always, was to go to the film solo but my Mom, annoyed with the lack of familial bonding, got us all to go together.
The Crow, like SuperMan , is a comic book movie. And like Superman it’s lead actor would forever be linked in death and irony to their respective roles. The Crow however, unlike Superman, is not a family film. My parents shifted uncomfortably in their seat for 102 minutes as rape, suicide, drug use and decapitation flickered on screen. My 14-year-old brain, raised on X-Men and
All That, couldn’t process the aggression. I walked out a little uneasy about the whole experience, trying not to let on to my dad that in my head I had just seen a horror movie. The ride home was silent (normal). My Dad went to his wife, my Mom went elsewhere, and I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I opted to spend time with my parent, the television. I didn’t channel surf very far when I caught SuperMan: The Movie on regular TV at 1 O’Clock in the morning.
The summer was still, every window in the house was open to avoid paying for air conditioning, the late night breeze from outside would occasionally brush the window’s blinds aside. There were no cars on the street to distract from John Williams score. There were no parents in the house to realize I was watching TV to late. It was just me and SuperMan: The Movie. So random and yet so ideal that it almost seems like the night didn’t happen.
SuperMan? I knew who he was. Every kid knows the story without ever reading a comic. He’s the ultimate proof that comic books are folklore, because his origin is passed on to every child, sight unseen. But I never actually paid attention to him. He always seemed kinda gay. Not in a homosexual way. Just not in a cool, X-Men way.
And yet, here I was (not even feeling a tinge of sleep for fear of Brandon Lee chopping my head off) watching SuperMan: The Movie. I remembered
Zod and Ursala from SuperMan II. I remember Margot Kidder and Christoher Reeve flying together but that could have been any of the 4 films to my adolescent knowledge. I had a sad familiarity with
SuperMan IV because I was the appropriate age and it was always on HBO. But I don’t remember this.
I don’t remember Marlon Brando as Jor-El. I didn’t even realize Zod was in the first movie. I don’t recall Pa Kent dying of a heart attack. I didn’t recall Lois falling from a helicopter above the Daily Planet. Superman holding up California with his bare hands! Wait! What?! Lois dies?! I never saw this movie before!
SuperMan: The Movie became an entity unto itself that night. Movie Magic had been achieved.
Yesterday, HBO hosted
Screen on the Green, here in Washington, DC. Its film choice for August 11th was, of course, Superman: The Movie. Last night I was able to take that which was denied me for not existing in 1978. I got to see SuperMan on the big screen. Hell, not just the big screen, but with The National Monument and The Capitol bookending the big screen. Me and a swarm of people sat outside on the National Mall, sandwhiched between the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum, the half moon resting above the screen and stars escaped the film’s opening credits and nestled into the District sky. A bunch of us clapped and cheered for 3 hours as if we were trying to revive Chris Reeve’s. As if he’d confirm to us a man could fly.
My girlfriend fell asleep. But that’s okay because just like in 1994, the Movie God’s smiled on us, as the whole night didn’t seem real.
Nevermind all the obvious statements that are constantly made about the film. Yeah, it defined the Superhero film genre, yes, it is epic, yeah, Brando got paid handsomely for his brief role and, yes, Reeves is still ideal as the main character. That’s not what makes the film such an exception, even today. SuperMan achieves what no other comic film has (yeah, I’m talking to you Dark Knight, Iron Man and Spider-Man 2). It is as much a movie as it is a faithful adaptation. It never feels like the comic book elements are being forced into the film to please fans. It’s never weighed down by its expectations that it cannot be a movie unto itself. In fact it transcends the genre it created and became an American movie classic. That’s the brilliance of the script. The effects may be as antiquated as the late-night movie, but the script is so steady. It builds and builds into an explosion of superheroics. Each action sequence, each revelation, each joke is carefully placed so that it out-does the previous one.
It also manages to never alienate the soberness of its origin story with the comic book elements that motivate the films 3rd act. A problem that marks plenty of modern comic book movies.
There is a precision to Superman that was never repeated by its sequels or Richard Donner’s later films. All you need to prove that is the synonymous casting of Christopher Reeves. Unlike SuperMan Return’s Brandon Routh, he manages to remain personable and never alien…despite being an alien. In other incarnations of SuperMan (even the comics) you’re left wondering who Kal-El really is. Is he sure-footed Superman? Or is Clark Kent, with his two left feet? Reeves and Donner play him as D) All of the Above. It’s Reeves openness that allows that catch-all and also never makes you question him. Reeves understand that he’s playing SuperMan, and you need to trust him instantly.
Playing, the dismissive, Lois Lane can easily deteriorate into playing a “bitch” and Kidder manages to walk dangerously close without tipping over. Her inevitable love story with SuperMan brims with sexual innuendo. It’s that decision that allows it to push forward where most love stories fail. Kidder plays Lois Lane’s infatuation with SuperMan like a heated high school crush. She’s the girl who punches the boys to let them know she likes them. It’s written all over her face when she interviews him for the Daily Planet; dancing around the concept that…yeah…they want to sleep together (a subtlety that is ruined when they actually get it on in the sequel. Ugh). It’s a maneuver that could only exist in the un-PC 1970s.
Even Gene Hackman's (often underappreciated) Lex Luthor is alot of fun. He’s allowed to be every supervillian stereotype possible: He has no appreciation for life, a superiority complex, is motivated completely by greed, possibly beats women and brags about his diabolical plans. He may not hold a knife to Heath Ledger’s Joker, but Hackman was born with just the right snarky expression to make it all click.
Finally, no one has surpassed the visual effect and freedom of flight in the way Reeves, Donner, and their effects team have here. There is something quite astonishing when Reeves zips through Metropolis to California or when, hand to hand with Kidder, flies her from her apartment to New York and back. Maybe it’s in the way his cape flows, or the fact that Reeves (a pilot) understands aerodynamics. Maybe it’s just my imagination or maybe it’s that damned movie magic again.
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