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superman-the movie
director: richard donner
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Let me just start by saying this is a great movie. I hadn't watched this in it's entirety in over 15 years and I have to say that I like it more now than I did when I first saw it a the tender age of ten. The main difference between this movie and the Batman series and the dreck that inspired is this movie is a class act. I have often said that the seventies is my favorite film era, I mean even their blockbusters were intelligent (look at Jaws and CE3K). One of the reasons I think this movie works is because even though throughout the thing they are making references to the city of Metropolis it is apparent that this is happening in New York City. It's happening in a place we recognize and that is a part of reality. In the Batman movies you are constantly aware that everything is a set, there is nothing organic about it. Superman is big; it's an epic of old school proportions. Just the fact that you don't even see Superman until you're over an hour into the film is a testament to its ability to tell a story that you care about.
Let's look at what went into this.
First of all there's a script that passed through the hands of Mario Puzo and Robert (Chinatown) Benton. There's the talent on the screen, Gene Hackman is a terrific villain and watching it this time I realized how great Christopher Reeve is in this: he is really playing two very different characters. You had old school titans like Glenn Ford as Pa Kent and child star Jackie Cooper as Perry White, this thing is chock full of gems. The film has a timeless look about it; you are aware that it's set in the seventies but at the same time the style of dress and the snappy dialogue is evocative of a screwball comedy.As for the DVD release of this film, in short it is the bomb. If you can get past the god-awful packaging (rainbow streaming through a silver S…..c’mon) and really pull this apart, this is chock full of gems. There are three different documentaries about the making of the first two films that are really compelling (I didn’t know that they shot I and II at the same time).
There are a few deleted scenes and it’s a lot of fun to see Christopher Reeve’s screen tests. In one of the commentaries someone says that the film would not have worked with an established actor, I strongly agree with this. There’s been a lot of talk over the past couple of years about making another Superman film or re-starting the “franchise” as it were. I think that would be a big mistake, as my buddy Tony said, “Do we really want to see Superman in black leather listening to techno.” I remember when they were going to make a new film a few years back and they had cast Nicholas Cage as the man of steel. There was this whole dilemma about first they didn’t want to use the cape, and then they didn’t want to use the red underwear.Christopher Reeve is so natural and the film is so damn good it never crosses your mind how ridiculous this should look. Do we really need to see a Superman in a rubber body suit with fake muscles? My vote is no.Just a little anecdote, when I was through watching this DVD and I had been thinking a lot of things I wrote here; I turned of my player and what was on TV but Batman and Robin (you know, the one with Clooney). I chuckled to myself as I thought I had just watched the one that got it right and now I was watching the one that got it so wrong. |
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reviewed by: JohnLawton |
May 2001 [link] |
recommend
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