Review of Superman III (1983) by Andrew E — 23 Nov 2014

The problem with most Superman films is that they refuse to show any kind of vulnerability in Superman. Coupled with that, it's very hard to come up with anything truly original for a Superman film, and believe it or not, that's not the worst part about this movie in particular.

The story itself is a blatant joke, but the only reason it could seem like more is because the producers have added bits to the script that only serve to make the film more of a self-indulgent affair, as if Superman himself wasn't enough of a jaded relic.

It should be worth noting that, perhaps after exhausting the potential of the last two Superman movies, this outing takes on a particularly camp attitude. While it's not as campy as the 60's Batman movie, it's still impossible to take this movie seriously, especially with the notoriously poor decision to cast Richard Pryor as a bumbling computer hacker.

All shady colonialist undertones aside, Pyror's performance in the film is characterized by terribly outdated dialogue and utter debasement. The film's main villain is a terrible replacement for Lex Luthor, and if that wasn't enough, the vast majority of the plot makes absolutely no sense.

The production values are very deceptive, as it can appear to have the look of a high-quality film, but in some scenes, the production values seem to take a dive at complete random, often resulting in scenes looking much worse than they really are.

The special effects aren't even bad, but then again, they're in the same film that has at least one scene that I swear looks like stock footage. Overall, Superman III is a complete disaster in every possible way.

Not even the later Superman movies could fix the mess that it made, and it's probably better that Superman IV isn't mentioned.