It was some time in the early nineteen-seventies that Ilya Salkhind decided that after they had such hits like Three Musketeers that they needed a new project to tackle, he for whatever reason, decided to adapt the DC comic book character of Superman. His father, Alexandra Salkhind, didn't know about it and he asked his son if people knew about this character, he assured him they did, so Alexandra agreed and they, intentionally or not, made history.
So to get their superhero epic off the ground they sought the help of one of the greatest writers in Hollywood, none other than the Godfather writer himself Mario Puzo. Ultimately Puzo's script would mostly be scraped for the simpulan version of the script and after three drafts he said he was done and wished them luck. But the next challenge presented itself, who to direct?
They tossed around a lot of names but the job would go to the then recent Omen director Richard Donner. Donner shared their vision that Superman should be an epic and they seemed to gel on most things however he said that he would only sign up for the job if the script went through a rewrite, they asked what he wanted rewritten and he replied "all of it." Apparently Puzo's script was really corny, apparently it was the Superman equivalent of the Adam West Batman. So Donner brought in Tom Mankiewicz for script treatments and together they scrapped the corny and brought in the wit and charm, but also they were meant to work on two movies, Superman was conceived as two movies, remember that.
OK so the Salkhind's had their funding, a screenplay and a director who shared their vision but they didn't have a Superman. What to do? Who could play the man of steel convincingly? Well they looked ow my they looked, they auditioned just about everybody from James Caan, Dustin Hoffman, even their family dentist, none of them were Superman, just a celebrity playing dress up. They got close with Robert Redford for a while but he eventually turned it down as well. Eventually the Salkhind's realized that they couldn't hire a star to play the role because there was no star that could play the role, nobody would see anything else than the star they cast falsely put into the Superman suit, what they needed was an unknown.
Alexander Salkind was against the idea because how could they advertise an unknown? But Ilya was insistent that they needed someone fresh to sell the role of Superman. But still the duduk perkara was they needed a star, so the compromise was to give other key roles to big name stars and not Superman. So for the role of Superman's father Jor-El went to one of the greatest screen actors of all time Marlon Brando, keep in mind this was after Godfather so Brando was at the height of his popularity. As for the nemesis, the criminal mastermind Lex Luthor, Gene Hackman.
The part of the man of steel eventually went to the twenty six year old, Julliard graduate Christopher Reeve. Reeve had only ever stared in one other movie before he got the role of Superman (and that role was a supporting part at best). But the casting of Reeve's is one of the greatest moves in movie history. Reeve's is possibly the perfect Superman, he really was six foot four, and carried himself with all the grace and confidence that an invulnerable man really would. So now all the peaces were assembled, all they had to do was make the movie.
As the movie starts an issue of Action Comics opens and it shows the city of Metropolis then the camera zooms into the comic itself saying to the audience that it is going to take us into the world of the comic book where a man can fly. Then we are moved through the city up into the stars and we listen to the movies score.
The music is handled by one of the greatest of all movie composers, John Williams. John Williams had already done the Jaws theme and Star Wars and I admit-tingly get the two mixed up while I try to hum one or the other. But what the Superman theme has for it that Star Wars did not was that it has great buildup. It starts as a little rumble, then builds and then finally comes in with a slam. Richard Donner described it best when saying that you can literally hear the music say Superman in the chorus. Next time you listen to the theme music listen closely and you can hear the people saying "its a bird, its a plane, no its Superman!"
Then we see the planet Krypton as a living diamond, like it where the peak of civilization, and we see Jor-El sentencing three Kryptonian criminals to punishment. Kryptonian imprisonment is the Phantom Zone where they get trapped in a suspected alternative reality within a mirror, or to that end. Jor-El sends the criminals away into deep space and addresses the council as to the next great threat that the planet faces, it's total destruction. The script for the Krypton scenes is handled to be as Shakespearean as if it's trying to come off sophisticated, it works well. The counsel dismisses Jor-El's theories and so he must make his simpulan move to save at least one life, his son Kal-El.
Jor-El puts him into a crystal container and sends him to planet Earth, where (with the help of the yellow sun) he shall gain incredible powers. This is a poignant scene that is one of the most pivotal character building moments of Superman, where he has been given everything that one father could possibly give their son.
The meteor then arrives in Kansas in all places where simple, humble farm people Jonathan and Martha Kent (Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter) are driving by while the meteor lands next to the road their driving on. They investigate and they find a little lost boy inside the wreckage, they have their suspicions as to where he came from but after he lifts a toe-truck they have little doubt that he's not local.
Then we see that little baby grow up into a teenager and going through most of the hard times that teenagers go through, with dealing with jerks and being awkward around girls. But the thing is he's faster and stronger than any one of the players on the football team. Then comes another one of the scenes that I think is one of the most perfect and saddest scenes ever, Jonathan Kent talking to his son saying that Clark is here for a reason, and its not to score touchdowns. Then as they walk to the house Jonathan's arm has pain in it and Jonathan Kent says "oh no", then dies there. Then Clark is left even more alone and despite all his power he couldn't save the one he cared for the most.
Knowing now that he must follow his destiny he goes North (I don't really know why). But it is there that his fortress of solitude gets constructed and he meets his Kryptonian father, Jor-El, appearing as a ghostly floating head. Again comes one of the great scenes from the movie where Jor-El delivers him a message as to why he was sent to Earth of all places, why was this great powerful being sent to this planet where we have done so much wrong? He says "they can be a great race of people Kal-El, if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them, for this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you my only son." Batman represent the hopelessness and overcoming it anyway, Superman is the optimism, he is the shining example for the good that we can reach if we really want to.
So now he knows what to do, and how he can do it so he heads to the hustling, bustling city of Metropolis where he gets a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet. But not as the man of steel but as the mild mannered reporter from Kansas, Clark Kent.
Before in the comic books Clark Kent was a cowardly little man in the face of disasters and giant robots, in the George Reeves TV show he was an intelligent witty reporter whose only difference to Superman was the glasses, which just makes everyone around him seem like idiots. Christopher Reeve plays him a bumbling, clumsy fish-out-of-water country boy who is used to the wide open spaces and is always bumping into things in the fast moving, claustrophobic city of Metropolis. As Clark Kent he channels Carry Grant and is never above giving a smile to the audience, both figurative and literally.
For Superman Reeve's plays him more like an on-duty cop all business and no nonsense, does the job and moves on. Superman's first night of crime fighting has everything in it, all problems big or small he helps with, whether they be a master thief stealing jewels, a falling plane or even a simple girl unable to get her cat out of a tree. But still he doesn't make it overly macho, in the late seventies it was now considered OK for men to display gentleness and frailness, this was for the best, for if he was to play it macho he would have come off insecure, here you believe he's the real deal.
The movie, like any good Superhero movie waits and saves its reveal for the full view of its hero. We don't get a shot of Superman until over a whole hour into the movie. Until then we get scene after scene of character building, of the characters motivations and powers. Like the scene where Clark and Lois get mugged (by an oddly well dressed crook) and Clark is able to catch the bullet, the audience watches this scene and can do the math, he's both fast and strong.
Lois Lane is played by Margot Kidder and unlike the more dull reporters of the past incarnations of the Superman mythos she plays her as a cynical, hard nosed reporter that will get the story by any means necessary. She also plays it two ways, while shes around Clark shes the witty go-getta and when shes around Superman she swoons and turns into a little High School girl with a crush. That is a little sexist and it doesn't stand up in this day and age but for the time it came out and the fact that she is still a good reporter I'll let it slide.
The tagline of the movie is "You will believe a man can fly", and the crew delivered on that. Sure in this day and age they would just CGI the whole thing but for this there was no technology or other way of doing flying that they could use, they had to develop their own ways of pulling this off. They had to build huge rigs so that they could lift the actors up and down, lots of blue screen and to the crews credit you never see this strings. The role for the actors was very physically stressing but there was always Donner there to make it feel more fun than it was work.
Gene Hackaman plays Luthor as what Steven Spielberg referred to as a "Champagne Villain" a villain that knows he's a villain and loves it. A smug self indulgent villain that purposely surrounds himself with dimwits just so that he will always know that he's the smartest man in the room, speaking of which. Ned Beatty plays Otis, Luthor's bumbling henchman who plays it well for comedy. Whats interesting about this casting that both Hackman and Beatty where very well known for their serious acting but here their doing comedy. But they do it well. There is some negative criticism about Hackman's performance, admit-tingly there are better portrayals of Luthor but he has his moments of true menace, he really does enjoy doing evil, having the world under his thumb, the performance works for me.
Then Luthor comes out with his big evil scheme, he has hacked two nuclear missiles and will use one of them to sink California, and he can then build his own cities, so the greatest criminal mastermind has a real-estate scandal...hmm. Superman gets to him but Luthor has his Achilles heel, Kryponite. Which renders him weak. But still even when he gets it off there are still two missiles to take care of. He takes care of one by throwing it into space but the other one hits and Lois Lane (who's in the middle of a story) gets trapped in her car and Superman doesn't get there in time.
Then comes the moment that is the real test of your suspension of disbelief. Superman in his moment of desperation and defiance of both fate and his fathers orders takes to the sky and spins counter rotation so fast that he literally turns the world backwards and thus reverses time. This scene has either been the breaking point for some audiences or others have just gone with it. I asked my physic teacher once what would happen if this would really happen, and he said that the amount of heat energy that Superman would generate to fly that fast would burn up the oceans first before the world would turn back one inch. My friend came up with an interesting theory for this scene, its not Superman flying that turns the Earth back, what is happening is that he's moving so fast that he's pushing through time and space itself. Here are two comments that have been brought up that have gone unnoticed in previous years, 1) Superman is flying so fast that he could have easily caught each of the nuclear war heads, no duduk perkara 2) when he does go back in time and make sure Lois is OK there should be another Superman flying around somewhere, wheres the other Superman? This is a huge paradox in the space time continuum. As for me I love the scene, its so Silver Age.
Superman made history with its characterization, writing and epic scale special effects to a previously poorly handled medium with full length features. It went on to gross three hundred million from a fifty million dollar budget.
This is the standard of Superhero movies, with the epic scale, fun pace and great special effects (that still stand up to this day). The pahlawan is placed into the real world and each scene serves to build on him and what he stands for. There are those (mostly adolescents) that say to hell with Superman, Batman's cool, well that just shows how immature they are. Superman is honest, good and true, whats cooler than that.
