Superman III **½ (Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Annette O’Toole, Annie Ross, Pamela Stephenson, Robert Vaughn, Margot Kidder) – Classic Movie Review 2241

Christopher Reeve returns for his third outing as Superman who this time finds himself having to fight the rotten trio of mischievous computer keyboard genius Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) and evil siblings Ross and Vera Webster (Robert Vaughn and Annie Ross).

Gorman decides to help wealthy businessman Webster with his schemes for economic control but his synthetic Kryptonite fails to kill Superman and turns him in an evil incarnation of his former self. [Spoiler alert] Superman battles a super-computer and eventually vanquishes the evil version of himself in a scrapyard scrap.

Annette O’Toole takes over from Margot Kidder (who appears only briefly as Lois Lane) as Clark Kent’s love interest, Lana Lang. Jackie Cooper revives his gruff newspaper boss Perry White and Pamela Stephenson takes a bow as Vaughn’s daffy girlfriend Lorelei, while Marc McClure plays Jimmy Olsen. So the casting is fine, apart from Kidder’s demotion and the director is the right one, too.

After his success with Superman II, director Dick Lester takes the reins once more for the second time for this all-too-jokey third movie in the series. Jokey might be fine but alas Lester’s visual and verbal verve and comic-book invention are often lacking this time. Though the actors’ vaudeville-style performances aren’t too far off the mark in terms of entertainment, screenwriters David Newman and Leslie Newman’s rather daft tale is a grounded downer that just won’t really take flight. The problem is that it is a goofy farce instead of the grand adventure the audience is hoping for after the first two movies.

The film may be funny at times but its lightweight comedic and campy tone tips it over into silliness, betraying Superman. Conversely though, Reeve keeps the movie actually grounded as well as flying in his much darker performance as the corrupted Superman, providing some balance for the otherwise comedic tone. And Pryor is amusing, in a performance that led to him signing a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures worth $40 million.

The film took a relatively small $70 million worldwide but still managed to recoup its budget of $39 million, though it was much less successful than the first two Superman movies, critically as well as financially.

After the lukewarm reception for this, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided the films had run their course, and sold the franchise to Golan-Globus’s Cannon Films. And the limp Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) duly followed, ending Reeves’s reign as the Man of Steel and putting the franchise into long hiatus. Director Bryan Singer credited the 1978 Superman: The Movie as an influence for his Superman Returns, released in 2006, and even used restored footage of Brando as Jor-El. Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut also was released in 2006. The Superman franchise was rebooted as Man of Steel in 2013.

Superman III was released on June 17 1983 with a running time of 125 minutes but an extended cut was first shown on ABC television in 1985 with an extra 16 minutes of added footage.

Reeve noted that Lester ‘was always looking for a gag – sometimes to the point where the gags involving Richard Pryor went over the top. I mean, I didn’t think that his going off the top of a building, on skis with a pink tablecloth around his shoulders, was particularly funny.’

Kidder publicly disagreed with the decision of producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to replace Richard Donner as director of 1980’s Superman II. It was reported that it was a result of this that Kidder’s role in Superman III is less than five minutes, though the producers have denied this. Still, her role in 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is much more substantial.

O’Toole later portrayed Martha Kent on the Superman prequel TV series Smallville.

RIP Robert Vaughn, 11 November 2016.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2241

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