Superman III

This fan-made trailer for Superman III [1983] edited in the style of a horror movie is pretty cool! And it got me thinking about how that film truly holds up compared to the other three Christopher Reeve Superman movies.



I'm still fond of Superman III. People bash it for being too comedic due to Richard Pryor's character and for having a weak villain in businessman Ross Webster; or simply not having Gene Hackman return as Lex Luthor (whose role in Superman II was minimal next to the Kryptonian supervillains).

But I liked Pryor's Gus Gorman character and enjoyed Robert Vaughn as the villain. And while the comedic scenes are light in tone, I think their contrast with the dark tone of other parts of the film may artificially make the film seem "campy" to some.

The villain's sister (Annie Ross) being robotized by the super-computer scared me good as a kid, as evidenced in the video above. And while that scene may not scare me now, Clark Kent's fight with his "evil Superman" half in a junkyard is still creepy to watch.

Superman III has a number of memorable scenes and being a memorable film is, in my opinion, arguably better than being a "good" film that no one can remember anything about. While many such movies may be of the "so bad it's good" variety, most memorable scenes in Superman III are good.

While I'm not alone in thinking Superman II [1980] is the best of the Reeve films, a lot of people really only discuss the first two in such a discussion. That's fair enough, but in doing so, the third film often just gets lumped in with the fourth, which is just unfair. In spite of or because of Reeve's efforts in coming up with a socially relevant story about nuclear weapons, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace [1987] is just a bad movie.

Actually, I believe I like Superman III more than I do Superman [1978], if only because the latter's awful ending literally made most of the second half of the movie not matter. Which is even more of a shame due to how great the first half of the film is, from Kal-El's birth on the doomed planet Krypton through his years growing up in Smallville as Clark Kent.

Anyhoo...