Superman II

In my opinion this movie is still not quite as good as the first movie, it still manages to keep the flavour and charm of the original.

For me what really stood out about this movie was the villains, which are Zod and his gang and Lex Luthor. Terrance Stamp stole the show as General Zod and really sold me on the character's arrogance in relation to Earth. This arrogance was best depicted during the whitehouse scene when upon learning that superman would challenge him, he merely retorts "Who is this imbecile?". What I liked about the Kryptonians in this movie was that all 3 of them were their own character with differing personalities, something which I felt was lacking in Man of Steel (No disrespect to Michael Shannon). Gene Hackman once again is brilliant as Lex Luthor, although for me he was overshadowed by Zod (Which is OK as Zod is the main villain of the movie).

Ken Thorne's score is great and manages to hold up next to the John Williams score of the original.

The special effects, while appearing dated by todays standards are very good for the time and still look very believable. These effects stood out during Superman's fight with Zodd in Metropolis and with the depiction of the Phantom Zone at the beginning of the movie.

Unfortunately this is the last of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies that was of high quality. If you're planning on watching these movies I would recommend that you watch all 4 at least once, but for every subsequent viewing just watch the first 2.

Also RIP Mr Snake, all he wanted to do was say hi

It's really a shame that those jerks the Salkinds fired Richard Donner after he made the first Superman movie into a smash hit. For one thing, the 2nd one could have and would have been better with Donner still at the helm and, quite possibly, "Superman III" and "Supergirl" may not have sucked. The only thing in the movie that Richard Lester really deserves any credit for is directing the 12 minute fight in Metropolis between Superman, General Zod, Non and Ursa. That scene is still fun to watch, even with today's overblown CGI.

Well, #2 is the love story entry in the series as Lois Lane discovers that Superman and Clark Kent are the same guy and she lets him know about her infatuation with him. They go steady in his Fortress of Solitude, he gives up his powers so he can live a normal life with her (which the comic book Superman WOULD NEVER DO) then he has to get them restored after he finds out that the villains General Zod, Ursa and Non are raising hell and taking over the planet. Lex Luther is also back for the 2nd go around.

People keep complaining that the film doesn't explain how Superman got his powers restored. Well, I have an old copy of an ABC Sunday night showing of "Superman II" and, mind you I still haven't bought the DVD, the TV showing implied that Superman used the green crystal - the same one that started off his awakening in the first movie and built the Fortress of Solitude - to restore his powers. And according to an interview I read with Richard Donner, the whole idea was that Superman restored his powers by draining all the crystals in his Fortress of Solitude and lost the ability to contact the ghosts of his parents in the process. Another plot hole I can't get over is how Superman ever fell for the Margot Kidder version of Lois Lane - she's an illiterate, chain smoking scatter brain! Gene Hackman still gives the worst performance of his career as Lex Luther, but hey, it's Gene!

Legend has it that Hackman refused to do "Superman III" because he was outraged over the way the Salkinds had treated Richard Donner.

Christopher Reeve is still a good Superman though, and here he actually has a real threat in the form of cold blooded Terence Stamp as General Zod, who is helped by Jack O'Halloran's mute hulk Non and Sarah Douglas's misanthropic Ursa (she later played the evil queen in "Conan the Destroyer"). And as mentioned above, the fight between Superman and Zod's trio is a knock out. Don't miss Christopher Reeve/Superman throwing Terence Stamp/Zod into the giant neon Coke sign!

This film can be summed up in two words. Superman Trouble. That is the case. There are two versions of the film "Superman II." One is the vision of acclaimed director Richard Donner, full of color flourishes, and camera work by the late Geoffrey Unsworth. The second, is the vision put on director Richard Lester, by choice of the film's producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind. Both the films contain the same story and characters, but each was shot with a different tone, different dialogue and footage, which clash with intention. So in the end, footage from each are woven into one movie which film buffs all over the world will notice is somewhat difficult to grasp. Due to the different directing styles of each director, the final cut of Superman II ends up being a cliche work of special effects, mismatched character analysis, and central themes. The film deals with Superman and Lois falling in love, and the three super villains from the prologue of the first film landing on earth and ultimately trying to take over. Very intense stuff. But this is where we as an audience need to know all the facts, and here they are: The first version of Superman II, known as "Superman II: The Adventure Continues" was directed by Richard Donner and supposed to be straight forward with serious tones and action packed sequences. This version was shot simultaneously with the original "Superman" in 1977-78. Originally to be released back to back with the original, "Superman II" was filmed with vigorous explosions, dangerous situations, and tense, irrefutable drama. In the opening, a female liberation symbol, Lois Lane, tries to prove that Clark Kent is Superman by throwing herself out a window, knowing that Clark(Superman) will fly out and save her. In another scene, Superman gives up his powers and nearly kills himself, only to get them back later on, nearly killing himself again. This nailbittingly tense script brought back old characters and was to bring the original "Superman" to a full closure. All actors are fully concentrated and the print is a paragon. 80& of this film was finished when the producers fired director Donner due to some arguments that are still unknown to this day, and replaced him with director Richard Lester, and thusly, "Superman II: The Adventure Continues" was culminated. This is where the Richard Lester vision of the film comes into place. Simply titles "Superman II", the Richard Lester version is full of clumsy comedy, amateur plotting, and is nowhere near as affective as the Donner version. Lester is a comic director, whom had worked on the previous Beatles films, "Help" and "Hard Days Night" and had no experience directing any international blockbusters. To give him more credit than Richard Donner, the producers rewrote most of the footage that Donner shot and went in with the actors for re-shoots...even though Donner had already taken care of this! The villains are portrayed here as careless and comic, whereas in Donner's version they were cold as steel, and not to be messed with. In one re-shot scene, we see three villains who are Superman's foes land on earth and take interest in a snake. The snake bites the female villain and instead of showing her wrath on nature, as was seen in Donner's moon scene which she kills an innocent astronaut in cold blood, she sets the reptile on fire and giggles about it! Central themes of love and home were lost because of this as well. Because of budget problems and deadline, the producers could not finish the re-shoot and "Superman II", and had to fill the gaps with Donner footage from the vault, making "Superman II" confusing and abstruce, and that is what made "Superman II" an atavistic failure. 70% of the film is clumsy, contrived comedy and useless violence, while 30% of the film is straight forward, full of munificent morals and such. The final cut has one scene showing the villains breaking into the white house and consequently taking over the world, with sheer John Williams music, the next scene you see them bored and incoherently complaining about being on a world where "mankind doesn't even resist." The first film "Superman" had morals of justice, and the American way, while the second film was supposed to show morals of love and home, and earthly pleasures that remind people of the good in the world-in a sense, taking along with the "truth, justice, and the American way." This message was lost between the footage by raconteur Donner and comic Lester. Nonetheless, the film was a box office success, and many critics, including the late Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert praised the film for it's portrayal of good versus evil in the modern day society. Some of the footage shot by Donner that was not put into the final cut of the film has since been seen on network television showings and bootlegs, but not all of it. The original opening which gave the film a better sense of dangerous excitement, scenes involving Kal-El and his father were scrapped(Due to the Marlon Brando court case) and the full original ending have all been locked away in London vaults and never before seen by anyone. So on the all in all level, "Superman II" fails because it is nothing more than two films put together, one a comedy, one an action drama, and this keeps "Superman II' from being anything close to what the original has become.

I have a confession to make. I love Superman II. Such innocent, almost niave, filmmaking, it personifies the term "family entertainment" and is, simply, great fun to watch.

Other superheroes have floundered at the box office, and maybe this is to do with lack of affinity between the makers and the source material. Certainly, the Superman films are tongue-in-cheek but never so that they're disrespectful to their content or their audience. The Crow was a good example of the "graphic novel" set, and the Batman series did well under the underrated Michael Keaton, but floundered under the flat Val Kilmer and increasingly childish set-pieces. The less said about "Batman and Robin" the better.

Of course, Superman had his own "Batman and Robin" in the guise of "Superman VI: The Quest For Peace", a movie made four years after the third and with seemingly a fraction of the budget. But Superman II was the series at its' peak. The theme music, a startling Star Wars sound-a-like by John Williams, fades to edited recaps of the previous film. These involve Superman as a baby being sent from the destruction of his home planet and are cleverly spliced together so as to avoid having to pay Marlon Brando any more royalties. (Yet we do see Brando's hand. Surely that's worth half a million?). 20% of this movie was shot alongside the 1978 vehicle and so we get reminded in this sequence of the three Kryptonian villains, about to be accidentally released by Superman in a h-bomb explosion.

This was still in the days when films were properly constructed to allow for a genuine build-up, a fully-formed middle and a proper end. Even minor players, such as Perry White (Jackie Cooper) have great lines and characterisation thrusted upon them. This may be just a "fun" movie, but it is lovingly put together, not "thrown together" as many films are. All the actors are wonderful, Christopher Reeve is just right as Superman, Margot Kidder is the definitive Lois Lane (despite almost drowning in soft focus for her close-ups) and Gene Hackman is, of course, absolutely hilarious as Lex Luthor.

But my favourite player in this sequel is Terence Camp as General Zod. Terence plays Zod exactly the same as he plays Bernadette in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and makes great work of the lead villain that must be, in Hollywood circles, always English. "Why do you say these things when you know I will kill you for it?" he minces to Hackman with great effect.

Of course, now twenty years old, this film is less "You'll believe a man can fly" than "You'll believe a man can swing on wires in front of an unconvincing backdrop" but this is still wonderful entertainment. Maybe the middle section, with Clark getting cut to ribbons after being thrown through a plate glass window is a little violent, as is the confrontation between Superman and the trio of villains. There's also the nagging feeling that this section is the biggest single example of product placement ever seen on film. Or is it coincidence that a Superman who featured in a comicbook anti-smoking campaign (against "Nick O'Teen", no less) is continually thrown into a Malboro van? Even Zod gets to know "things look better with Coca-Cola" as he is unceremoniously hurled into a neon sign for the corporation.

But these are minor gripes, and how anyone can hold them against such a harmless film is beyond me. Superman II isn't Citizen Kane by any means, but I defy you to sit through this movie and not love it.

Superman II (1980)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Very good sequel has Superman (Christpher Reeve) giving up his powers so that he can be with Lois (Margot Kidder) but once he does this the planet comes under attack by three Kryptonian bad guys. I might be the only person in the world to think so but to me this sequel actually surpasses the original film and I think by a rather large margin. Everything that was good in the original is pretty much carried over to this film where it's done even better. I think the big benefit here over the original is that this sequel doesn't run too long and instead it has a much better pacing to it. However, what really makes the film tick are some incredibly action sequences, which includes a hilarious one at Niagra Falls where Lois plans to test Clark to try and see whether he's really Superman or not. The way this entire scene plays out is incredibly funny but also contains some great action. Humor is something that is also much better this time around and especially during the scene where the three aliens wreck havoc on a small redneck town. This here is a pretty long sequence but the laughs really don't stop at any point. I think another major plus with this sequel is that we're given not only a great villain in Luthor (Gene Hackman) but the aliens are also a lot of fun. The three of them make for a great group to root against but at the same time you really love to hate them. As with the previous film, the performance are all extremely good with Reeve once again leading the way in his dual role as both the superhero and the nerd with glasses. I think it's safe to say that the actor really just had something special in him that allowed him to perfectly fit into both roles. Both Kidder and Hackman are good in their parts as is Jackie Cooper, E.G. Marshall and Ned Beatty in his one but funny scene. The action scenes are all extremely good and the special effects this time out are even better. SUPERMAN II is a rare case where the sequel is actually better than the original.