Trailer:
“I ask you to kill Superman, and you can’t even do that one simple thing.”
Oh…so this where the curse of the third superhero film began. Ten days in and we are reunited with the character of Superman once again. I wish it was a happy reunion, but Superman 3 is one giant mess of a movie.
While we are conveniently on the topic of reunion let’s get down to this poor excuse for a plot. Remember that awesome opening credit sequence in the original as it flies through space. It gave a since of the giant scope of that film. The credit sequence in this film also gives an accurate depiction of the scope of the movie with people walking around blindly running into walls. I find it to be very metaphorical of the direction they chose to take.
After we get through the opening shenanigans we move on to meet Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor), a bum who cannot hold a job when he suddenly realizes that with no previous training, he’s actually a computer genius. Happy day! Next thing he knows he gets recruited by a corrupt family business hoping to use his skills to control the coffee and oil trade. How will they do this? Well by using a weather monitoring satellite to create weather of course. This just gave me full confidence that in 1983 people still didn’t quite understand the extent of what a computer could and could not do.
Anyways the title is Superman, right? Well sure, but a more accurate one would be The Further Adventures of Superman and Richard Pryor. Being on the rise as a popular comedian at the time, much of the film (and the character of Superman) was sacrificed in order to create more screen time for their big name comedian who is horribly misused anyways. Pretty much all that Pryor does is walk around the entire film acting like a bumbling idiot in clumsy slapstick scenes.
Back to the title character though. Superman decides to head off to Smallville to attend a high school reunion where he bumps into his old crush Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole, who also plays Clark's mother in Smallville). Then pretty much Clark Kents scenes deteriorate into a series of dances and picnics. I was really at the edge of my seat during this part (<-please note sarcasm).
Finally we get to the part where Superman is somehow turned evil by Kryptonite, rather than being killed by it. From there the film falls apart into Superman doing such horrific things as straightening up the Leaning Tower, Drinking in a Bar, and arriving to accidents late. HOW DARE HE?! All this builds up to him somehow fighting his “evil” doppledanger in a scene that makes zero coherent sense. I wasn’t sure if it was trying to be metaphorical, an illusion, or some weird krypton magic of some sort.
Overall throughout the film there is really no threats from the villains at all, that don’t pose any real menace to superman. The final battle with the living supercomputer consuming all the worlds’ energy was satisfying considering the lousy build up to it. All this compounds into the film lacking any emotion at all. The relationships between characters are stale and there is no real sense of drama.
In the end Superman 3 is just the beginning though in both a series of mediocre to horrible sequels and as the first film to kick start the curse of the third superhero sequels. So thanks for nothing, I feel no guilt blaming any superstition on this disaster.
FINAL RATING: 2/10- 20%
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