Superman III (1983)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie Superman III (1983).

I said in my last post that this movie is first of bad Superman movies. After watching this I can't say that this is worse than first two. This is as good or as bad as first two. In Superman II we saw what Superman and Lois Lane could have had. In the end there was reset and Lois forgot everything that happened. This time romantic subplot is with Clark's teenage crush Lana Lang. Compared to Lois Lana is more down to earth type and and romance is more adult themed than princess fantasy of Lois Lane.

Movie is more down to earth than first two. This time there is no time travel or transportation. There is frozing the lake and dropping that to plant and blowing oil back to tanker. First would have destroyed the plant and second can't work in any realistic way. Turning back tine would have been more realistic and that happened in first movie.

This movie thinks computers can do anything. Half cent thing could work if there was company whose system rounds salaries downward and programmers can get their code to straight to production. I don't think there are many companies where both applies. At least not as large that you could make as much money that Richard Pryor made in this movie. I don't know enough about history of internet to know how realistic Smallville hacking scene was. I have hard time believing that you could connect to banking and traffic control systems when you are trying to connect to weather satellite. Even if you are drunk. And it is even harder to believe that oil pumps could be remotely controlled. Do I need to say something about controlling weather with weather satellites?

Time to go to great lost opportunity of this movie. During movie Superman is given piece of "almost kryptonite". This makes Superman selfish jerk. World doesn't react to this in anyway. Everyone just goes on with their lives and probably hope that Superman doesn't hurt them. Probably because everyone acts like Superman is normal drunken person. People drink in bar next to Superman like he couldn't destroy the whole city if he felt like that. Authorities don't do anything. In real life people would hide and authorities tried to stop Superman. Even if Superman is on their side this time it would be wise to have plan for when he is not. In this movie everyone is like Superman is normal man who has bad day. Then when he gets back to normal everyone is like nothing ever happened.

That is my problem with Superman. Character gives change to show how people react when they have super powerful entity among them. But Superman stories doesn't explore that. Superman is always character with ideal moral character and normal people accept him always to be on their side and never turning against them. Irredeemable showed us what my kind of Superman story could be. Irredeemable's problem was that it burned too bright from get go.

I liked how this movie had more adult oriented themes in middle of all comical stupidity. Lana Lang was regretting choices she made as teen and dreamed of better future somewhere else. Richard Pryor's character was good willing small time con-man who ends up in bigger circles and doing things he doesn't like. I also liked evil guy's bimbo acting secretly smart blond secretary/girlfriend/something. Those three were the most interesting characters of this movie. Too bad evil Superman angle wasn't used better. Christopher Reeve showed in junkyard fight that he could have been more extreme evil Superman if director had wanted it.