After watching and rewatching James Gunn’s Superman trailer in recent weeks, I’ve been on a Superman high. To continue, I decided that while I was building Lego over Christmas break, I would rewatch all of Christopher Reeve. Superman movies. Movies I’ve seen—I’m old enough to see them IV in theaters—but in decades they haven’t watched it in sequence. What I got was one of the fastest declining franchises I can think of, although I believe history has two films back to back.
Everyone can agree that it is Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman it’s an old thing. It’s so funny and full of memorable scenes that it still stands as one of the best superhero movies of all time. Obviously, it is the best of all. Superman II it’s a step down for sure but it wraps up the story of that film nicely, giving us a full circle with the characters of Clark Kent and Lois Lane and wrapping everything up in General Zod.
And then I came Superman III and I soon realized that it was a bad decision. It begins with Richard Pryor’s character at the unemployment office. Then, magically, he becomes the greatest computer hacker in the world. Clark Kent returns to Smallville and develops a strange bond with an old classmate. Pryor and his evil boss make fake kryptonite out of cigarettes and it turns Superman into an ass. Then we have to watch him be a dunce for a very long time. In the end, Superman fights back, becomes normal again, and fights off computer hackers while inexplicably forgiving Pryor’s character. It is, to put it bluntly, a big piece of shit.
Superman III he actually pissed me off. If I wanted to watch a Richard Pryor movie, I would have. This was apparently Richard Pryor playing in a Superman movie, not the other way around. It doesn’t understand the characters, it never develops an amazing plot, it’s filled with all kinds of out-of-place villains, and it works better as an anti-smoking ad than anything else. This worried me a lot because I had seen it before Superman again Superman II several times in recent years, I did not remember III or IV like that. All I could remember was, I thought, IV it was too bad for the crowd. So when I started it, I was skeptical.
Going in with the unexpected, I actually got it Superman IV: The Quest for Peace being too big Superman III. It’s still bad—let’s not forget that—but at least it’s trying to be— Superman the movie. He also romanced Lois Lane, and Margot Kidder returned throughout the film. Lex Luthor has a new scheme and Gene Hackman is back for the rest of the movie. Superman must fight an alien supervillain in Nuclear Man. And the character works to improve the whole world. These are all things that feel important, in one way or another, to the DNA of Superman the movie.
Of course, all of this happens with ease, and none of the characters—except the ever-different Reeve—care one iota about what they’re doing. Superman IV it forgets the events of the other movies, looks bad, feels somehow too small to be allowed, and the action set pieces are scary. Bad, bad movie. But it is a step up from the previous abomination.
As the film ends (Superman IV it’s also 45 minutes shorter than the previous three, mercifully, although there are many reasons for that), I felt more confident in my estimates. One is one, two is two, four is three, and three is four. It honestly felt like an almost flawless list. So, when I looked at Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes I saw that Superman III he is regarded better—if not more—than IVI was a little surprised. Obviously that’s the narrative I had in my head going in but watching two bad movies back to back, after the first and the second good, I felt like history was wrong. Superman III bad in every sense of the word while Seeking Peace bad, while at least trying to be a Superman movie. And that put it on top.
Thankfully, Warner Bros. has the perfect palate cleanser for these two atrocities. No, not an unauthorized sequence Superman Returns since 2006. We say Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Storya wonderful documentary about a man and a character. That it might actually be the best Superman movie out there.
All these movies are now streaming on Max.
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