Marval Movie

With the huge disputes that erupted during the filming of of the first Superman movie Richard Donner was shoved off the project and Richard Lester was brought in, even though most of Superman two was shot and bringing in a new director could not have been the most efficient move to make, both financially and for time. Some of what Donner shot was used in the selesai movie, other clips were re-shot so that Lester could have legal claim to the role of director. Most of the movie was stored away.

Ever since the advent of the DVDs it has been made possible for filmmakers to go back and put in what was lost in their movies. Lester's version had been criticized for relying on comedy over the core drama from Donner's version, so the fans sent their E-mails, their letters, sighed their petitions and so Warner Brothers rummaged through their vaults and found Donner's footage and with the help of Michael Thau they cut the movie.  And thus we are given Richard Donner's selesai version of Superman two, or as close as we will ever get to it. According to Wikipedia eighty-three percent of the footage is Donner's footage.

When the credits start we get an appropriate tribute to Christopher Reeve, and then Richard Donner's name as director, where it should be. Then the movie begins and already the movie starts differently from the first, with it more skilfully weaving together with the first movie. One of the nuclear missiles that Superman throws into space hits the Kryptonian villains in their phantom zone prison and unleashes them and they head towards Earth shouting "FREE!" This works better than the frankly poorly handled scene with the Eiffel Tower, however it does have its faults. It works with weaving Superman one and two together, but for the audience who had to wait a year for Superman two I don't think this would have flowed super well and still there's the persoalan that in all the cosmos that particular nuclear missile hit that particular space where three entrapped super criminals were drifting, I don't care if its a nuclear explosion space big pretty huge.

Next we rejoin Clark, Lois and Jimmy in the Daily Planet. Lois pieces together that Clark is in fact Superman (took her long enough) and then she proceeds too trick Clark to revealing his true identity. So she jumps out the window, she sounds stable. Seriously though I really like this scene but remember to go into it with high suspension of disbelief. Anyway, she jumps out saying that "you'd never let me die Superman" and while she falls, Clark speeds down to the sidewalk softens her fall with super-breath, activates a canopy, softens her fall again and then speeds back up in the office. I love this scene, its like something out of All-Star Superman and it really is like something out of the comics. It also works because it shows how Lois Lane can even make Superman work hard.

One of the most interesting things about watching Superman two and then moving on to Superman two: The Richard Donner Cut is that we are seeing the same movie, essentially. They are the same movie, where they have the same plot but each director goes about telling their story in different ways, we really do get to see how important a director is with two completely different people being handed a plot to a movie and they each produce a very different movie.

One of the most prominent and frankly in my opinion the best changes to the movie is the inclusion of Marlon Brando as Superman's father Jor-El. Jor-El may be my favorite role that Brando has ever performed and I consider it a great shame that Lester decided to cut him out of the movie. It is a real gem to see Brando come back as Jor-El, transmitting his consciousness to his son. Funny enough this is much like the situation for Brando, his performance being transmitted to us (the audience) after his death.

Being that this is Donner's footage being used (as much as is possible) we are literally seeing a re-cut movie from the ground up, what we might be seeing are retakes of certain scenes and deliveries of lines. It makes watching the movie through a microscope an interesting experience and makes almost each shot interesting to think about. Is this a Donner shot or a Lester shot?

Another one of the best changes to the movie is in how Lois reveals Clark's secret identity. Clark enters Lois's hotel room and after some light banter she pulls a gun on him and pulls the trigger, again Christopher Reeves genius is shown here because he literally transforms from the mild mannered reporter to Superman, all through body language. After the truth is out Superman says "you know if you were wrong, you would have killed Clark Kent" to-which she reply's "how with a blank?" it is a very charming, well-thought-out and very well executed scene that is head over heels above the stupid clumsy reveal in the Lester version where Clark's hand falls in the fire. Whats most interesting about this scene is that they never really shot it, or at least officially. What you see is rough practice/test footage that they did before the official shoot began. You may notice that when Christopher Reeve walks off camera and it cuts to a close up he suddenly drops a few pounds, when he walks back in he has much longer hair and is a few pounds heavier again and the lighting is sloppy and the characters are a little out of focus. Even as test footage this is amazing to see, the actors gave their all in this performance where they were meant to take it a little easier.

This version of the movie is actually about ten minutes shorter than the original Lester version, even though they frankly had to bite the bullet and use what footage Lester gave them they still cut out parts of that footage. They cut out all of, or at least most of the punchlines that Lester wrote into the movie, this works because now we get a more mature feeling, streamlined movie.

However some of the problems with this cut are the fact that they do take out some of the funny lines of the Lester cut, if I had my way the perfect version of Superman two would be just a few minutes longer with a few of the punchlines that were in the Lester version, because there were some good ones in there. Another persoalan with the two versions is that the clip were Superman and Lois are in bed together, embracing each-other after clearly having had sex is that now it comes before Superman makes the decision to become human. That just strikes me as wrong. Superman is an alien after-all so even if he wanted to, he probably cant mate the way normal humans do so the fact that he does it now just doesn't coagulate with me, maybe its because you just don't accept your childhood heroes having intercourse or there is some truth in what I'm saying, either way its wrong to me.

The other part that I feel doesn't work in this version is the ending and unlike the nit-picky, persoalan I had with Lois and Superman having sex, where you can make arguments for either way this is not, this is a bigger persoalan overall with the movie. In this ending of the movie they cut the scene where Clark erases Lois's mind through powers that he never demonstrated before, instead they reuse the spinning the word backwards move that they pulled at the end of the first movie and use at the end of this movie as-well. This is wrong, for many reasons, for plot, for character, for the audience...lets go over why.

First of all, in the first movie Superman did this because Lois was lying dead in his arms and he couldn't save her and he did it out of the spur-of-the-moment and desperation, here it seems like he was just lazy and didn't want to deal with the consequences, OK so you could say that some of the reason to it was that he was sparing Lois some of the pain of not being able to be with him but the mind erasing scene works just as well. Another is that nothing is accomplished, everything from damage being done, to Zod, Ursa and Non still being out there (although that does mean that Superman didn't kill anybody) to Superman's Fortress of Solitude being spick and span. OK you could say that this means the villains could come back for a sequel, but what does that really mean? It just means that if they ever get out again the same thing will happen or Superman can just spin the Earth around again and hey presto nothing to worry about. All the stakes are taken out of it and we are left with a world that we don't need to worry about anymore. As much as I loved the spinning the world backwards in the first movie because of its childlike science and sliver age logic this time it just comes off as lazy.

I also hate the ending because if there was anything that made Lester's Superman two worth its salt was the scene where Lois and Clark sit down and have to let each-other go, that was a great scene, this was not a great move. But honestly everything else that is added and taken away makes for a much more better movie and does this change hurt me, yes. But the rest more than makes up for it.

Is Superman Two: The Richard Donner Cut the perfect definitive version of Superman two? No, I don't think so. But it is damn good. Superman two: The Richard Donner Cut is still the definitive version of the movie to me. It is the smarter, less silly version of the movie. In truth I recommend both of the movies, especially seeing them back to back. Each of them have their drawbacks but both are solid movies, only thing is one of them is very good and the other is great.