Marval Movie

The Superman movies are infamous for taking a sudden dive in quality. They had two movies under their belt that had reached previously unreached heights for superheroes in movies, but then something happened and the quality just took a nosedive and got virtually unwatchable. The not very subtle transition started with Superman three.

As soon as the movie starts, it is clumsily handled and unfunny. It works by having one thing leading to another, its pointless, it says nothing about the movie itself and the comedy doesn't work because there's no flow or grace to it. Already there are bad signs.

Next we see the next big duduk kasus with the movie, Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor plays Gus a funny (not really) out of work bum that want the money and doesn't want the work. The duduk kasus with Pryor is the same duduk kasus that sometimes comes with Robin Williams, he's funny yes but he still needs direction and if you just let him go off then we have meaningless compensation. Another is that, I guess Richard Lester fell in love with him so much that he forgot about Superman and just directed most of the attention of the movie on Pryor. He also has the ability to use computers really well, how? Hell if I know, because the plot needs him too. He clearly doesn't really know anything about computers, its all for the plot and no thought went into character.

Later, at the Daily Planet Lois Lane goes on vacation too Bermuda and Clark goes to the old home town of Smallville. Fun fact the reason Lois Lane is hardly in the movie is because Margot Kidder hated how the producers kicked off Richard Donner from the second movie. When Clark gets to Smallville he finds a familiar face from his past, Lana Lang his old childhood crush. Lana Lang is played by Annette O'Toole who is quite good, she's rather lovely and warm to watch as she personifies the old love interest that we really want to go back too. Shes one of the highlights of the movie, and there are so few.

Later Pryor gets a job working for a big computer company and he is reveled to be a computer prodigy and the bad guy (I don't care what his name is) hires him to use a weather satellite to affect the weather and take out the competition, a field of coffee crops in Columbia. Computers dont work this way and clearly the writers didn't care how they worked they just needed a plot.

But of course their plan fails because... hey remember that big blue guy? Of course Superman saves the people from their evil plot. So clearly they have to get Superman off their backs so they remember that more charismatic, more well developed evil mastermind Lex Luthor used kryptonite and got pretty close too him (he failed but he got close). So they find some but when they do there is an unknown element in it, when they give it to Superman there seems to be no effect, he doesn't weaken at all or anything. However the effects take time and eventually Superman becomes lazy and selfish. You may be thinking that it was red kryptonite that did this and you'd be correct but it isn't red kryptonite, its green. Why? why not red kryptonite, it should be, red kryptonite was around long before this movie came out so why not? there is no good reason why. Perhaps either the filmmakers were lazy or they assumed the audience were really stupid.

Even though at this point in the movie I don't care about hardly anything anymore Christopher Reeve does actually play a good evil Superman. Reeve plays both Supermen really well, he is truly a despicable evil Superman when the kryptonite takes hold of him, there's also a nice touch with the costume literally getting darker and darker with his personality. There is actually a scene where he downs some, whiskey I assume, and he then staggers out of the kafe and when I saw that I said "Ow my god Superman's wasted".

When this movie was in development Braniac was going to be the villain. First of all that would have been awesome (although they probably would have screwed that up, so it was probably for the best). Knowing that you can sort of see that within the bizarre simpulan version of what the movie has become. The computers and in the end the computer does come alive, sort of. Braniac is a Superman villain that has never seen the big screen and it was probably for the best that his name was not tarnished by this movie.

There is however one joke among all the other failures that does actually stand out as a really funny joke. Its when the bad guys assistant is all alone and is reading a book and actually comes out with a really intellectual theory after reading it and when others enter the room she puts on her dolly voice and acts like a duns again. There is actually something too think about here, about how society appreciates and accepts a pretty blondes who are stupid and does not accept one that's actually smart. Am I over analyzing? possibly. But frankly that's the only hope that I have to stretch out and grab on to.

Superman three is everything that was wrong with Superman two, accept that Superman two's flaws were small and nitpicky. Superman three takes those flaws and blows them up too huge heights and makes then the main focuses of the movie. Is it entirely bad? no there are some good moments with Lana and Richard Pryor is good at some small points. But this is a weak follow up to a movie series that had high production values too it's name and I'm certain that it was only based on the reputation of Superman one and two that led to this being a financial success.

Rating: 2 stars out of 4