Superman III: Love and Robots

So…Superman III. It had its moments?

It was flawed with a wide range of problems. The first being that from the jump Christopher Reeve didn’t even want to do this one. They were literally testing new actors to take the role. If I remember correctly, think John Travolta was up for the role. But, after some corporate finagling, they managed to get Christopher Reeve back for the third movie.

Negotiations didn’t go so well for the other actors. Margot Kidder was still under contract to appear in the third, but she was one of many that were vocal about the firing of Richard Donner from the second movie. She was unable to get out of being in the third, so she was just in a couple little scenes at the beginning and end and disappears for the whole movie. Producers didn’t mind, claiming that the Lois and Clark bit was done…clearly they never read a comic.

Same went for Lex Luthor actor Gene Hackman. Greatest actor of our time. He didn’t want to do a third either so they turned the villain into 80s business tycoon Webster and his team. While these things affected the script and production, it’s not where this movie went wrong and it took a few turns into wrong. It went wrong with, and I hate to say it cause I love the guy, bringing in Richard Pryor.

Turning a family action adventure superhero movie into, for the most part, a full blown comedy is where it really went off the rails. Buckle in gentle reader as we descend into the madness of the lowlights and highlights of Superman III: Not So Brainiac.

Superman WIKI

Instead of beginning our film traveling through the dark recess of space with the pump you up Superman theme we begin where all great movies should begin…the unemployment office. We meet Pryor’s Gus Gorman. Yeah, not even starting off with Superman or Clark or peril. He’s his schticky self as he begs for another week of unemployment.

Then we begin what can only be described as a weak Superman score as the credits roll over the streets of Metropolis with a Monty Python-esque unfortunate incidents starting with a guy crashing into a pole as he gets a good eyeful of one of our attractive villains. It’s a long, excruciating opening that shows this is gonna be a comedy, but a little bit Superman too. With him helping a guy out of a car that’s flooding with water, whilst ignoring the bank robbers that JUST got away. There’s a mime, blind guy who lost his dog, it was just too much and not what the start of a Superman should be.

REDIT

Gus learns computers and seems to be some kind of idiot savant when it comes to the growing technology while Clark tries to convince Perry to let him write a story on his high school reunion. Lois Lane is heading off to Bremuda…because Kidder didn’t want to be part of the movie.

Remember that scene in Office Space, when the guys came up with the plan to steal from the company by stealing a fraction of a penny? This is where that came from. He manages to hack into the payroll system and get all those fractions into an expense paycheck.

As Clark and Jimmy head to Smallville, Chekhov’s acid comes into play. The bus is detoured due to a huge fire at a chemical plant. Jimmy decides to get some pictures and Clark changes into Superman in the back of a police unit…with a cop in the car. Please, make that make sense. Clark’s WAY smarter than that and this is after they’re ducked beside the car with a cop staring at them as Jimmy tells Clark to distract the cops so he can go get some photos. He goes into Superman mode: saves some people trapped on a ledge, learns about an acid that if it heats up would eat through anything (cough cough), saves Jimmy who put himself in harm's way to get a good picture.

Upon rewatching, why couldn’t Superman use his superbreath to blow out the fire near those chemicals? The giant ice sheet was fun to see and all, but it wouldn’t heat up and turn to water that fast AND would have needed a lot more water to put out the fire. But the day was saved and Clark got to head to his Class of ‘65 reunion.

This was one of the better parts of the movie in my opinion. I enjoyed the Smallville stuff. Except for Brad (bully from Clark’s youth who’s a drunk). Plus, it introduced me to Annette O’Toole (future Martha Kent on Smallville) as the lovely Lana Lang. They dance and you can really feel the chemistry between the two of them. Even a little more than with Lois. He helps her the next day with clean up as they talk and learn about where they are in life. She’s got a kid named Ricky (great name by the way) and she wants to leave the small town but feels she can’t, wondering if Clark was the one that got away.

Back in Metropolis GUs gets his check...for $87K and of course once you steal from the company, you’re going to be smart and try not to call attention to yourself. As Webster (our Luthor replacement) said, only a moron would draw attention to themselves…as Gus arrives to work with his new fancy car. Webster now has his eye on Gus.

Gus makes a deal with the devil, help Webster get rich by helping him be the number one supplier of coffee by destroying the coffee crop with a weather satellite…cause that's a thing. It monitors weather, but they want him to reprogram it to MAKE the weather.

Storylines collide as Gus heads to Smallville! Clark bumps into him (literally) as Clark, Lana, and young Ricky have a nice picnic. Clark eats dog food…cause that’s where we are. Buster the dog runs into the wheat fields (looked like it, should be corn, but whatever) while Clark turns up the charms on Lana. Clark hears Buster whimpering (but not gunshots and a robbery at the beginning of the movie) and he flies off to save Ricky who fell and hit his head with croppers ready to mow him over.

The Mind Reels

Gus meets Brad who’s working security for Webster’s Smallville location. They get drunk so he can access the computers to take over the satellite. Now, this is where once again, things get a little too comical. Superhero movies do need a balance of serious tone and humor. The problem is with this movie, it ventured way too far into slapstick that would make Deadpool turn to the fourth wall and say, “Maybe that was a touch too far.”

Superheroes Every Day

He tries to get into the satellite, but since Gus is a lot drunk, his commands aren’t exactly going through the way he wanted: an ATM keeps spitting out money to one guy, a Bloomingdales charge is sent to a husband for over 100K, a traffic/pedestrian light goes so off the rails they fight each other…THEY FIGHT EACH OTHER!!! What the heck?!

He finally gets in, targeting Columbia. The weather starts getting dangerous. Storms, tornados, hurricane force winds. Webster cheers on the news report, his scary looking sister suggests attacking the oil reserve next. Gus shows up and lets them in on the bad news Superman stopped everything, equipped with his over the top story telling skills intercut with Superman doing what he’s describing the heat vision and unraveling a tornado.

Webster’s not so dimwitted girlfriend suggests Kryptonite to stop him from meddling with their future plans. As Gus tries to finagle more money, he skis down a slope on the roof and falls to the ground and somehow survives. To work he goes to find where Krypton used to be to find kryptonite debris, but there’s a small percentage of Unknown Element. He substitutes it with tar and Webster’s company goes to work to make synthetic kryptonite.

Clark’s working on his story when Lana calls, Ricky lied and said the Man of Steel was coming to his birthday party. So, Clark being the nice guy, agrees to help him out. There’s a big to-do, when he shows up so does Gus (Pryor’s comedic chops on display once again). He puts on quite the show to present him with the synthetic kryptonite. Now, if I were Superman, I would have been slightly hesitant to take the big chunk of green rock after what Luthor did in the first one.

CBR

At first, it had no effect, at least no the effect they were hoping for. After Ricky’s party, Superman gets light headed and starts flirting with Lana while a truck crash is happening that needs his attention. He wants to “relax a little.” It takes a moment for him to shake out of it and heads to save the day…a few seconds too late.

What follows is one of the other high points of the movie. Superman turning evil. He starts small as one would when causing chaos. Straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a very boy scout gone bad thing to do. He keeps getting worse as the effects take hold, blowing out the olympic torch just as the runner was about to light the flame.

Webster gives Gus his orders now that Superman is evil. Command tankers to sit in the middle of the ocean, stop the pumps from pumping so only Webster’s oil company is supplying oil. Before he agrees, Gus wants him to build a supercomputer that can do anything Webster wants it to do. Now, how he came up with the concept of this supercomputer that can do anything is beyond me.

This whole movie was a warning about machines and computers and technology, but it forgot to be a superhero movie. That’s kind of where it really fell apart. It became too obvious that it was warning people the dangers of people hacking computers.

Webster’s girlfriend seduces Superman (who’s now in a darker outfit) to destroy the one tanker in the middle of the ocean ignoring the orders to do nothing. He rams through it and causes an oil spill and heads back to her place to get his reward. Yeah, Superman got some again and it wasn’t Lois Lane or Lana Lang. The seductive sax music was a tad much, but at this point, it fits the tone the movie is going for.

Gas is running low and people are going nuts. Webster’s rolling in the money and builds Gus his supercomputer in the Grand Canyon…cause where else are you going to build it? This whole story would have been more interesting if it had been Brainiac or something similar.

As things get worse, Superman’s drunk! Even though he can’t get drunk, its physically impossible. As he stumbles out of the bar, young Ricky still believes in his hero and shouts his support. The voice stirring something, starting to overpower the darkside. What follows is what the movie was almost called: Superman vs Superman.

He splits into two, Good Clark and Evil Superman. They go toe to toe in a scrapyard for their fight. Clark gives as good as he gets, pushing him into acid. No effect obviously, but a handful sure did ruin Clark’s nice suit. 

The duality of it is what made this complex because the darker Superman is a part of him. Granted it’s a side of him he tries to keep under control. With his powers, the one thing he could never do growing up was lose his temper because he could hurt someone. He chooses to be good, sacrificing his selfish wants and desires. He could do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t. He helps people. He fights crime and saves kittens in a tree. That’s who he is. That’s who he wants to be, but that small little part of him that feels those dark feelings are always there. He just overcomes them to be the hero the world needs him to be.

Good Clark manages to defeat Evil Superman and rips open his shirt to reveal the lighter toned red and blue before flying off as the theme plays. He undoes the oil spill and heads to the Grand Canyon for the climax. Webster, his sister and girlfriend descend into the cave of the Canyon as Gus rides a donkey down...cause that’s the tone of the movie. And keeps Gus from getting there first.

Superman flies in. Missiles. A video game. Explosions. Excitement? Think they wasted half the budget on this part. The computer and the FX couldn’t have been cheap. The giant computer looked good. Giant and imposing.

Evil sis starts attacking him, first with a plastic bubble that trapped him for all of 30 seconds. The computer scanned him and figured out how to hurt him. HItting him with a beam of kryptonite. Gus finally grows a spine and a conscience and tries to turn off the mechanism that's hurting Superman. After Gus kills the power, it becomes self aware and starts pulling in power so it can live…Artificial Intelligence.

Now, how something on the WEST coast turns off power on the EAST coast is still beyond my understanding, but again…tone of the film. Gus saves Superman from his machine and it doesn’t take that too kindly, blasting him with a beam and knocking Gus out. Superman flees to get Chekhov’s Acid.

While he’s doing that the computer takes over Webster’s sister and turns her into a literal terminator, the computer uses her body as a vessel. The thing she became haunted my dreams as a kid. The stuff of nightmares really. Superman arrives and as the acid starts warming up, the computer tries to kill Superman again. The acid destroys the computer, the world is saved.

Everyone crawls from the rubble and Gus gets a soul brother handshake from Superman. He flies Gus to a coal quarry on their way to Metropolis so he can make a giant diamond and try to help Gus get a job there. 

REDIT

Clark arrives to visit Lana at her hotel room to take her to dinner and give her that huge diamond (she had to pawn her diamond ring). He also managed to get her a job at The Planet as Perry’s new secretary. Lois and Lana meet…and Lois is a little jelly of Lana and Clark.

As we finally get to the end of this schlock fest, Superman fixes Pisa and as the theme plays he does what he does best…flies around the earth, smiles for the camera, flies into the next movie.

Superman IV: The Quest for a Good Movie…this one REALLY ain’t it.

This movie was not great. Even though this was one I watched all the time as a kid, it was never as great as the first two. It had elements of a great movie. I liked the Smallville stuff, meeting Lana and Ricky, Superman going evil was a bold choice and let Reeve do more than goody Clark/Superman.

While I love and appreciate the work of Richard Pryor, making Superman III a comedy was the absolute worst decision they could have possibly made. That is where the film failed the hardest. The “jokes” were way too over the top and even though it IS a Superman movie a lot of the comedic bits were just too much and didn’t fit in with the tone of what should be a superhero movie. You want some humor to balance the action, but half of it needed to be doused with hot acid.

This didn’t have the heart of what I knew a Superman to be. Not fully anyway. Lester was not a great director for this movie. However, as bad as this one was, it wasn’t nearly as awful as the next one.

Stay Tuned for The Quest for Peace. The film that pretty much killed the franchise and hurt Reeve’s career. It’s also the last time we see him suit up and it’s not how it should have ended.