Review of Superman III (1983) by Tonto — 18 Jun 2021

This was the third of the original Superman series, and definitely a step down from the of greatness its predecessors. It's certainly not a bad film, but relies too much on camp and comic relief (even some slap stick) and gives Richard Pryor too big a role although he is entertaining.

In this one Richard Pryor works as a computer engineer for a corrupt company, and is caught stealing from the company in a sneaky way. Instead of firing him, his boss, the sleazy executive uses him to achieve his goals, which are often illegal or unethical.

Lois is seen briefly at the beginning of the movie but says she is going on vacation to Bermuda. Clark visits Smallville and reunites with Lana Lang. At some point Superman is exposed to some sort of synthesized, bizarro Kryptonite which affects his personality in a negative way.

Superman becomes selfish and mean-spirited, committing vandalism, getting drunk, banging floozies, and does the bidding of the evil businessman by doing damage to a trade ship so that he can bang the evil executive's ditsy yet sexy mistress.

Eventually Superman overcomes whatever is possessing him in a climactic battle between Clark and Bad Superman. Superman ends up battling a supercomputer android that is sort of similar to Brainiac. It turns out that Brainiac was originally supposed to be the main villain in the movie.

I kinda wish they had gone there and actually introduced Brainiac. What we ended up getting in this movie in terms of adversaries were close to Bizarro and Brainiac, but they weren't officially in the movie.

The special effects were good for the time, though a downgrade from the previous flicks.