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by Mischief Messiah 08/19/2012, 7:17am PDT |
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Finally Got around to watching this.
For those who aren't aware, Superman 1&2 were written and filmed (mostly) at the same time and intended as a 2-part story ala. Kill Bill. Filming of Superman 2 was put on hold (something like 70% of the film already complete) while Superman 1 was released to theaters. Unfortunately the Salkinds were a little shady as producers go (I highly recommend giving Gangster/Actor Jack O’Halloran's interview on the HTTGM podcast a listen). They "owed" director Richard Lester a movie to settle a dispute and decided to yank Richard Donner from the nearly-complete Superman 2 and put Lester in the chair. Union rules required that someone direct at least 50% of a movie to get director's credit, so several Donner-filmed scenes were cut and refilmed by Lester, and the Salkinds decided that all of Brando's scenes should be cut so they wouldn't have to pay him royalties. This turned out to be even worse than it sounded because Lester was a "comedy" director and his constant silly "comic relief" scenes completely threw the tone off for the film, which screenwriter Mario Puzo (who wrote "The Godfather) envisioned as a greek tragedy.
Then in Superman 3 we saw Lester with complete artistic control and bringing to the world of Superman broad slapstick, Richard Pryor (playing Richard Pryor) as a super-villain, and a variety of Kryptonite that turns Superman into a douchebag.
Years later, a huge grassroots fan movement resulted in the leftover rough cuts and deleted scenes from Donner's original cut being gathered and spliced together with edited-down bits of Lester footage as connective tissue. The end result feels like a fan edit. Some of the scenes start and end very abruptly, some of the scenes are rough cut screen tests that just scream "sound stage" and aside from one quick CGI cut, there aren't any additional special effects you haven't already seen in Lester's version. All that said, despite those flaws this is the superior version of Superman 2, less a turn-your-brain-off special effects popcorn movie, but a character driven tragedy that happens to feature summer blockbuster-quality special effects.
I'm not a comic book nerd, but as a video game nerd I get enough exposure to know about the whole "Superman is Boring, Batman is the cool superhero" thing where everybody wonders aloud why Superman is such an enduring cultural icon. I'd say to that that while Batman is the more fascinating character, Superman is more relatable. What's the most enduring image of Superman? Is it him flying through the air? Is it him punching something from space? No. It's Superman wearing the Clark Kent glasses and his work clothes in the process of pulling his dress shirt open and revealing the "S" underneath. A lot of people, nerds especially, feel we need to dial ourselves down or otherwise put on a mask to make the other people in our lives comfortable, but secretly wish for a situation to come up where we are "forced" to shed our mask and let the weird things we're truly passionate about shine through. Oh how the nerd who takes kendo classes on the weekend longs for a sudden ninja attack at the office.
Mario Puzo clearly understood this dynamic, and its this understanding that makes the Richard Donner cut so much better...
*SPOILERZ FOLLOW*
The biggest head-scratcher for me in the original was why Superman was willing to give up his powers for Lois Lane. Clearly he thought she was hot, but in Lester's cut that's pretty much it. In Superman 2, however, it's blatantly clear why he's head over heels in love with her. She sees through the glasses! Right at the start, she begins confronting him over the fact that a pair of glasses and a dorky haircut can't hide the fact that he's Superman underneath. THAT'S what makes her his dream girl! For most of the first 3rd of the film the two play a cat-and-mouse game where Lois tries to trap Clark into admitting his Superness and when she finally does outsmart him, he acts all indignant for a minute, but finally relaxes and smiles. Paired with the first film, you see how all his life he's been pressured by both of his fathers to keep his specialness a secret, but now not only has he told Lois the truth, he showed her the whole damn Fortress of Solitude she didn't go "Aack! I can't handle this shit! You're too weird!" Of course he'd be willing to give up his powers for that.
If anything, I'd say the biggest betrayal of Lester's Superman 2 is that at the end Lois Lane does exactly that, saying "Aack! I can't handle this shit! You're too weird" and prompting Superman to give her the amnesia kiss.
The scenes with General Zod and company tearing their way across the country and through the military feel the most abrupt because they cut out Lester's comic relief from them, but it makes the scenes better IMO. Jack O’Halloran's mute Nod never gives a single puppy-whine, he's just a destructive force of nature the whole way through. I forget, but did the Lester cut of Superman 2 have a scene where Zod picks up an assault rifle and starts blowing people away and laughing? The world freaking NEEDS Superman against these 3, and Superman has no choice but to let Lois go.
The other big help of this cut were the restored Brando scenes, in particular the one where Superman gets his powers back. You saw the green crystal glowing in the Lester cut, but what actually happens in the Brando cut is that Superman gets his powers back by draining all the power out of the green crystal that itself powers Holo-Brando. Just like in the first film Pa Kent tells Superman to keep his powers secret from the world, then punctuates that by dying of a heart attack, here Jor-El tells him the same thing, then dies again.
Now I've heard people complain about this movie re-using the "reverse the Earth's rotation to turn back time" trick of the first one again, and I agree somewhat, but disagree more. In the first movie, turning back time to save Lois Lane's life was Superman acting in defiance of both his fathers, "You were sent here for a reason," and "It is forbidden to interfere," echoing in his ears the whole time. In this movie, after defeating Zod and demolishing the fortress of solitude (itself making more sense in this cut, since Jor-El is no longer there), Superman flies Lois back to her apartment and she promises him that his secret is safe with her, only to make a beeline for her typewriter once he's out of sight. This is what Superman would have wanted all along, but after defeating Zod and losing Jor-El he's resigned to his fate and this time uses the turn-back-time move in deference to the duty placed on him by his fathers. On one hand the destruction wrought by Zod on the world is erased, but the damage done to the character of Superman is lasting. In the final scene, he's back at the Daily Planet, back in Clark Kent mode, and back to being treated like a yutz by Lois, resigned to wearing the mask.
I'd bet money "The Last Temptation of Christ" was Puzo's primary inspiration behind these screenplays.
*END SPOILERZ*
Anyone here who is a comic book NEEEERD, a question. We all saw in The Dark Knight the whole dynamic where the Joker "needs" Batman, do the Superman comics ever go into a dynamic between Superman and Lex Luthor? Where Superman subconsciously "needs" Luthor to provide the excuses to come out of his shell? Like a scene where he's at the Daily Planet getting chewed out by Perry White and secretly thinking to himself, "Please, Luthor, I need a giant robot on the rampage right now." |
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