Semaj's Blog your Blog: Superman III

Superman III

Whoa, who's bright idea was this piece of crap? Despite all the major behind the scenes battles over the creative control of the first two Superman movies, the first two films were major hits across the world. Even though WB wasn't happy with the infighting between Donner and Salkind family, they greenlit Superman III right away. Back when the first two movies were in preproduction, Donner brought his own writer to re-write the then campy scripts to I and II. The Salkind's wanted a campy Superman movie, but WB backed Donner and his vision succeed. After Donner was fired, Robert Lester got to oversee Superman III without any of Donner's creative involvement. What we got was a really bad parody of Superman. However, something far worst destroyed Superman III, and that was the character named Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor).

Richard Pryor was brought in to bring a bigger audience to the Superman franchise, because he was already making hits with his starring roles in comedy movies. However, Pryor and Superman never mixed too well together. Pryor seems lost in the part. We don't know if the film was supposed to be completely on it humor or taken seriously. When watching the first two movies, we see serious characters and a love story that many people liked. None of that magic was in Superman III, and it shows. Lois Lane was a but erased from Superman III, thus making the entire Lois/Clark chemistry built up from I and II inert. All the breathtaking FX stuff of the last two movies were narrowed down to comedy gags, and poor FX shots. John Williams left after Part I, and they used a different composer to reuse the main themes from Williams' far superior Superman score. The music was watered down and doesn't have the feeling and scope of the first film, then again you can say this about every aspect of the movie.

Most people believe that Pryor stole screen time away from the very well written Superman is Evil plot line, and I tend to agree with them. The junkyard fight between Evil Superman and Clark was probably one of the best scenes in the movie. It took the production team a long time to film that scene and it shows. In the end, Superman III was mere shadow of the first two movies and the drastic turning point for the Superman movie franchise. (The Batman movie series had a similar path as well.)

Grade: D+