No careless product of wild imagination

Superman (1978)

Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman is still the best by a long shot, and not only is it the best Superman movie, but possibly the best movie based on a comic book, and the first that both took seriously while thoroughly embracing its comic book origins. In fact, the movie opens with a shot of a comic book. Black and white stage curtains pull open to reveal a tiny old Academy Ratio theater screen with a shot of a copy of Action Comics on it. A young boy reads lines from the classic Superman radio serial opening about ‘the great Metropolitan newspaper, The Daily Planet.’ and a distant, tiny blue title hurtles up from the background until it springs right through the screen within a screen to fill up the wide ratio and that memorable, majestic John Williams score kicks in. Notable in the credits – Story by Mario Puzo. That still boggles the mind. The Godfather‘s Mario Puzo wrote Superman. That’s like when Roald Dahl wrote a James Bond movie (the very best one, in fact).

Anyway, at credits end we reach Krypton, which is all ice/crystal structures. Very cold and white. Marlon Brando speaks the first dialogue of the film and it almost seems like it’s still voiceover: ‘This is no fantasy,’ he says, ‘no careless product of wild imagination.’ Brando plays Jor-El, here acting as prosecutor for three notorious Kryptonian criminals led by Terrence Stamp’s furious General Zod. As Jor-El passes his sentence, Zod avers ‘You alone will be held responsible by me!’ and as Jor-El walks away he screams after him ‘YOU WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME! BOTH YOU AND THEN ONE DAY, YOUR HEIRS!’ Well, that just might be an issue somewhere down the line, but maybe Jor-El doesn’t worry about it because the world’s coming to an end and they’re going to be trapped for eternity anyway in The Photoshop Effect – er – The Phantom Zone.

Notably, Jor-El wears the famous S symbol on his chest, apparently it is a family crest of some sort, because everyone on the council has similar emblems. Jor-El is speaking to them about what he sees as the imminent destruction of Krypton, but nobody believes them. Woe be to Al Gore-El, nobody will believe the crisis real, nobody how many facts and figures he throws at them, they interpret the data differently. He says the planet must be evacuated immediately, because it will explode within thirty days. The council disagrees and forbids him to tell anyone or leave himself, which seems not that advanced in terms of thinking, certainly when one of the next things we hear when Jor-El is about to send his infant child, Kal-El to Earth. His wife asks ‘Why Earth, dear? They’re primitives, thousands of years behind us!’ Timeframes being what they are in this movie, well, it’s hard to say, but they expect this will be advantageous to Kal-El, that he will be an outsider and ostracized, and his power will help him survive.

Right about then, the planet starts blowing up, so Jor-El launches off the strange crystal ship and we witness the graphic, explosive end of Krypton, with people falling all over the place to their grisly demises before the whole thing erupts into a giant ball of sparks. Well, that’s that. So on his journey to earth, Kal-El learns Kryptonian wisdom via video crystals in the spacecraft starring Marlon Brando. Big budget! ‘It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history,’ he says, but come on, isn’t it he who is interfering with human history, sending Kal-El there? I mean, let’s be fair, he knows full well that he’s sending a super-powered child to a world he considers primitive and unable to comprehend him, knowing that he’ll be an outsider all his life, and not only that, his own planet just totally blew the hell up, which, had they had someone with power like his son’s would be on Earth, would have possibly been saved. Anyway, Kal-El’s craft crash-lands in Smallville, right next to the truck of Martha and Jonathan Kent. He steps out, having aged a couple years since his spaceship was sent away, already with that distinctive hair (and nothing else on) in a smoking crater in a field. After he saves Jonathan from having a truck fall on him, they adopt him as their own.

Flash forward to his late teens, as he is being ostracized and picked on, as the waterboy for the football team. He’s clearly got a thing for the lovely Lana Lang, which comes back a couple movies later with disastrous results. Anyway, after being picked on by the football dudes, he kicks the football out of the universe and goes running alongside a train where a very young Lois Lane sees him and is called a liar. The special effects are pretty spectacular in this movie, all in-camera effects and very impressive. Nothing has the taint of poor projection or matte shots and there’s a physical weight to it that’s missing from digital effects. Things like the shot of him racing the train are still impressive and convincing today. Also fabulous is the photography, lushly shot by Geoffrey Unsworth, the movie just looks gorgeous and dreamlike, they make even the shot of a Cheerio’s box epic and beautiful.

So Clark leaves Smallville when his adopted father dies and he discovers buried in the barn the learning crystals from his ship. He decides to complete his super-education and set to making his powers a force of good in the world. We’ve been shown how much he aches to use his power, and now we see the moral/emotional obligation he feels toward their usage, and it’s all done with simple, visual storytelling. He travels to the North Pole, establishes the Fortress of Solitude and heads to the city to do good. One of the things Jor-El says on the crystals is that ‘I will have been dead for many thousands of your years.’ Really? How does that work? Kal-El wasn’t in suspended animation, we watched him growing. Later on, Superman says Krypton blew up in 1948, it’s a key plot point that leads Luthor to the usage of Kryptonite. No, no, nothing about this adds up at all. Well, it is during this psychedelic space journey thing, so maybe we’re supposed to get stoned at that cue and not notice.

Now, Christopher Reeve is absolutely perfect as Clark Kent and as Superman. It is a bravura dual performance. As Kent, he is funny, awkward, shy, and scattered, very eager to please and make friends but inept at doing so, and as Superman he is completely smooth and confident, and he is remarkably playful with the boundaries in between. When he and Lois are mugged, he acts cowardly and urges her to give up the purse, but when the mugger shoots and Lois’ back is turned he catches the bullet then pretends to faint. As she walks away, he smiles to himself and tosses away the bullet. Then, he offhandedly guesses the exact contents of Lois’ purse, showing his sense of fun playing with his ability.

While we’re at it, Margot Kidder is damned impressive as Lois Lane as well. Like Phyllis Coates’ Lois, she’s tough as nails, but she’s also now a lot faster-talking, a slick, smart reporter, and brassy as hell. Clark is out of his depth dealing with her and as much as her hero worship admits it, she even holds her own pretty well with Superman.

Heck, the whole cast is fantastic. Jackie Cooper does a great job at being the crusty editor Perry White. When Jimmy Olsen walks into his office, he yells, ‘Olsen! Why am I paying you $40 a week when I should have you arrested for loitering?!’ Then there’s the delightfully bumbling, comic performance of Ned Beatty as Otis, Luthor’s main henchman, and of course, Gene Hackman’s weird take on Lex Luthor which is both campy and utterly menacing and evil. As Otis approaches the lair, followed by police, Lex remarks, ‘It’s amazing that brain can generate enough power to keep those legs moving,’ then nonchalantly pushes the detective to a horrible death under a subway train.

Lex surrounding himself with ineffectual fools is curious. He is a criminal genius, so why the boobs? Well, for Miss Teschmacher indeed, and the for the other, Otis is just a big goofy dog of a person, he’s endlessly loyal no matter how bad Lex is to him.

So for the first big Superman moment, we have a helicopter crash involving Lois Lane. The scene first of all shows just how tough Lois is, as even with her hanging off the building in the helicopter, she undoes her seatbelt and makes to climb out until it starts falling. There’s a couple pretty great gags as Clark changes into Superman, first taking a glance at the phone-stall (not a phone booth) and thinking better of it, then after changing in the same revolving door that confounded him as Clark Kent, he runs into a hip black dude on the street who comments on his outfit. Superman holds up a finger and says ‘Excuse me’ before flying up to catch the falling helicopter. Of course, saving Lois Lane was such a great feeling that he just goes on a little crime-stopping spree, giving a happy little wave as he sets out. Speaking to Jor-Elogram later, he’s asked ‘You enjoyed it?’ ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he admits, ‘I just got carried away.’

The scene where Lois interviews Superman is wonderful, witty, and charming. Margot Kidder plays Lois both nervous and off her guard, but still pushing back a bit. When she asks him about his bodily functions, she looks startled with herself for a moment, but she also slyly asks him later what colour her underwear is to throw him off balance. It’s a great scene, although it is then followed by them flying, which features that truly horrendous poem which is a painful moment. Anyway, Superman drops her off and almost instantly appears at the other door as Clark. When she goes into the other room to change, Reeve shows off in one scene how perfect he is as Superman, going through the transformation process from Clark to Superman just by taking off his glasses, straightening up and changing his tone of voice, and it’s thoroughly convincing.

So, anyway, with the interview revealing enough of Superman’s secrets for Lex to set his big evil plan in action, it is endgame. Luthor reprograms the missile, diverting attention by faking a car crash with Miss Teschmacher (ah, casual sexism – ha ha, it’s funny, the military general is taking advantage of an unconscious, injured woman! Hilarious!) while Jimmy and Lois are investigating the land he’s bought up that he’s going to make waterfront property by destroying most of California. The added scene from the 2000 extended cut of Superman getting into Luthor’s lair is great, as he strolls nonchalantly through each obstacle. When he breaks through the door and Luthor tells that his threat of poison gas was only an idea and not real, Superman asks ‘Is that how a warped brain like yours gets kicks, by planning the deaths of innocent people?’ and Luthor answers, in a chilling turn from joking to real menace, ‘No. By causing the deaths of innocent people.’ Then he tells about the plan already in progress, missiles on their way to their targets. ‘Even with your great speed, you couldn’t stop both of them,’ he says, which is probably not true, considering what happens after he does fail to get both of them, but okay, it makes for dramatic tension, fine. He gets one more really evil moment when, after revealing that the second missile is headed for Hackensack, New Jersey, Miss Teschmacher says, ‘My mother lives in Hackensack,’ and he just looks at his watch and shakes his head.

Anyway, after everything, Lois dies anyway, so Superman goes and flies around the world so fast it makes time run backwards, after a very powerful and impressive moment of grief. Like the Death Star destruction in Star Wars, this was intended as the close to a later movie but moved into this one to make the first film bigger. It’s unfortunate that this was moved here, because it takes a lot of pressure off for the next film, given that we know Superman can simply undo death. Anyway, the end. It’s a damn good movie, still charming and very well-made with only that one tragically bad scene with the poem, and a note-perfect cast. All downhill from here.

Favourite Character: Superman. As charming as Superman ever was and probably ever will be. Christopher Reeve is perfect in the role.

Favourite Scene/Moment: Probably the interview. ‘Pink.’ ‘What?’ ‘Pink.’

Favourite Line: ‘Thanks a lot, Superman! Put me on a road in the middle of nowhere during an earthquake, no food, no water, snakes everywhere!’

~ by jshopa on June 16, 2008.