SummaryAn adventure re-told, spanning the Man of Steel's life from his Krypton infancy and Midwest boyhood to his career as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent and through his titanic struggle with archnemesis Lex Luthor. [Warner Bros.]
SummaryAn adventure re-told, spanning the Man of Steel's life from his Krypton infancy and Midwest boyhood to his career as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent and through his titanic struggle with archnemesis Lex Luthor. [Warner Bros.]
This Superman alludes explicitly to its origins in the Depression-era comics, and Clark has a quaint 30s habit of using the phrase “Swell!” from his boyhood. Maybe now this movie looks quaint in the same way. But there’s still a surge of adventure and fun.
Estimates of the movie's costs range between $35-and $70-million; whatever the price, it was not too much to pay. As gods go, Superman is one of the godliest; his movie is one of the best.
The best Superman adaptation, period. It shows that Warner Brothers has always been the problem. When they even fired Richard Donnor. Who clearly knew how to use Superman.
It’s the First Live-Action Movie of The Superman Franchise
It’s got Action, Adventure, Drama, Romance and Sci-fi in it
My favourite Scenes are Superman saves people, hangs out with Lois Romantically and Saves everyone from the Sean Andreas Earthquake
I’ve watched it so many times
I give the movie 10/10
Effective both as Superman and as the bumbling Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve still seems ideal for the part, if for no other reason than his ability to summon up a convincing sense of intensity when charged with saving the world.
The film allows naiveté and knowingness to coexist. Only when it goes all out for cold Batmanesque villainy in the second half does it narrow its focus and lose its way.
Superman doesn’t have enough conviction or courage to be solidly square and dumb; it keeps pushing smarmy big emotions at us—but half-heartedly. It has a sour, scared undertone.
Superman may be corny and cheesy to some people, but for those who grew up with it it is as original and as exciting as it was 30+ years ago. The spectacle of the film is terrific, the cinematography is wonderful and the special effects are dazzling. In terms of effective scenes, the scenes with Clark and Lois are cute and don't take up too much of the film or harm it in any way, while the confrontation between him and Lex Luthor is suitably bright and breezy and the opening is wonderfully elegiac. The score's main theme is iconic and just superb, John Williams has done some wonderful scores before, this score is no exception. The direction is innovative and the script is sophisticated enough. I also much enjoyed the acting. Christopher Reeve is perfectly cast as Clark/Superman while Gene Hackman is superb as the calculating yet comic Lex Luthor. Overall, just terrific fun! 10/10 Bethany Cox
It's A Bird. It's A Plane.
Superman
Donner's one big sloppy kiss on the comic world is both fun and wet. The epitome of a commercial blockbuster with antics that still our superhero features thrive upon, unfortunately fails to stay rosy after decades. The primary reason is it's inadequacy on being through and through of its logistics. Nevertheless, its limited staged wider range reach by glorifying each characteristics of the characters is something that warps you back to your childhood salivating for more. Unlike your usual superhero, the protagonist is explored with a macho-like ruggedness that is drawn from emotions rather than those steely-blue-eyed broad-jaw-line face.
Ticking for more than two hours, it barely offers other characters to factor in, from Brando's cameo to Hackman's barely touched negatively charged character which is annoyingly one dimension to create any depth on the storyline. What it does get right somehow, is to introduce the gravitas of the characters in narration, the build up of these sequences is something to rely upon. Among many humorisc and intriguing conversations, the interview between Kidder and Reeve is definitely the highlight of the show. Reeve charging on the film with his behemoth persona may feel short handed on performance, but as far as picking up a car or rescuing our beloved characters is concerned, he is the right man for the job.
Aforementioned, Brando has very little to do, Hackman lags behind only for its thin material and Kidder, the one with the most involvement on storytelling remains convincing and genuine. As much as this light tone is appreciated in narration, the antagonist's troops bubbling up the humor forcibly on screen shucks out their integrity to breed the essential threat to its audience. Superman works as much as it plays on the "human" field, it is not that the "superness" isn't tenable, it just isn't fun.
This is a different kind of movie, is not a classic to me nor better than Man of Steel. It looks like an expensive tv movie. The cast and acting are fine, but none of them are great, except Marlon Brando. I like John William's music. This is to me mediocre.
Comic strips in newspapers or magazines have often been used as the bases of films, but never on such a big scale as in Richard Donner’s Superman – the Movie. The scenes look as if no money has been spared on them, nor ingenuity, for that matter – both very desirable in an elaborate fantasy lasting over two and a quarter hours.
For those who know Jerry Siegel’s and Joe Shuster’s comic strip, which has been running since the ‘30s, no introduction to their hero will be needed. Others will be glad of the opening sequence, which is a prologue showing how Superman came to be launched towards Earth from the planet Krypton.
Marlon Brando, the only well-informed member of Krypton’s council, ruling from a cast concrete capital in a landscape of ice, predicts the planet’s destruction within 30 days.
When this is not heeded by such experienced colleagues on the council as Trevor Howard or Harry Andrews, he and his wife (Susannah York) decide to launch their baby son earthwards in a spacecraft that looks more beautiful than practical – like a starfish in pale pink ice.
Krypton duly blowing up is suitably spectacular; and when, after a long journey, the baby arrives, he’s a little boy capable of holding up car with one hand when the wheel-jack fails. The middle-aged childless American couple with the car who pick him up in a field naturally adopt him, and by the time he’s in his late teens he’s kicking footballs over the horizon and outrunning fast trains, such are his powers.
Only these feats are not, evidently, what he’s here for; and he is summoned northwards to hear words of wisdom nobly delivered, from a reincarnated Mr Brando, speaking from a lovely crystalline building that recalls Ibsen’s Temple of Ice.
His next appearance is in what looks like New York but is called Metropolis, to work, of all places, as a reporter on a newspaper. It’s called, most appropriately, the Daily Planet, with Jacki Cooper as a nice old-fashioned news editor and Margot Kidder as pretty little Lois, the “ace” reporter.
Dressed in a dark city suit and wearing horn-rimmed specs, Superman seems frightfully shy and square; but this is only a disguise, and he has just to put on a red cloak and boots to become another being who can fly through the air – well, rather too much like Batman, who also came from a comic strip, I often found myself thinking.
It seems he is here “to fight for truth and justice in the American way,” which brings him into conflict with one, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). He describes himself as the best criminal brain of his time, working from luxurious headquarters with a pretty secretary (Valerie Perrine) and a silly side-kick (Ned Beatty).
When it eventually gets to the Planet that someone is actually flying around at night, obstructing criminal activities, the news editor naturally puts Lois on to the job; and it is to her, for romantic reasons, that Superman first displays himself in a rather charming and also funny scene, for he has X-ray eyes, and while he can assure her that her lungs are not suffering from smoking, he can also tell her the colour of her underwear.
A subsequent scene when he saves her from a crashing helicopter is good cliff-hanger stuff which ends romantically when they seem to be waltzing away together through the night sky, and one is only sorry when he has to turn to more serious business, such as substituting for an airliner’s dud engine.
These feats, and the actual flying, are arranged by the special effects department with equal gracefulness and naturalness, and superbly photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth; so the film picturesquely and gradually winds up towards the great confrontation and battle of wits between our hero and Luthor, who intends to use a doctored nuclear missile to destroy the whole of California – it’s just part of a deal in real estate.
What with bridges going down, dams bursting and cars piling up on motorways following some big explosion, the film seems for a time to become mere destruction drama, but happily the lighter touch is eventually restored with Superman’s arrival in the nick of time, to save his Lois and civilisation.
All this makes a highly entertaining, though undemanding mixture, of sci-fi, romance and comedy, which could hardly have come off at all at any lower artistic level, nor without such a happy choice for the central part as Christopher Reeve. He manages the two sides of the character, the super and the shy, wonderfully well by bringing to both just the slightest suggestion of burlesque, as if, in fact, he was inwardly enjoying rather a good little joke.