Review of Superman III (1983) by Robert C — 10 Jun 2013

I have a question for you. Which of these does not belong in a Superman movie? Richard Pryor & a super computer as a villain, Kryptonite made from tar, or Superman going to a kid's birthday. If you have answered, "All of the above" then you are right because none of these should be in here at all but they are. It's Superman 3 and they should have called this one "Downhill Slope" because this is what this franchise has turned into. One big disaster after another. I guess that more emphasis was focused on comedy which is why you see Richard Pryor in this movie. And for those of you who have already seen this film, it sucks major donkey infested balls. I have nothing more to say so let's just get this over with.

So this time around, the movie focuses more on Superman's personal life when his alter-ego, Clark Kent, comes back to Smallville for a high school reunion. Annette O'Toole plays Lana Lang and the new 'love' interest in this movie, because apparently the producers must have thought they were just done with Margot Kidder. I'm not kidding, Margot Kidder is only in this movie for 10 minutes and yes I did time this. Her only scenes are at the beginning and the end of the movie. Any who O'Toole was okay for her role, but I couldn't say the same for everyone else. Richard Pryor plays Gus Gorman a down and out bum who takes up a job at a corporation and instantly becomes a computer hacking genius. He is pretty much the main star of this movie and spends a majority of this chewing up a lot of scenes with a bunch of jokes and comedic situations that are not really funny at all. After doing a little research about why he is even in here in the first place, it turns out that (in the original script) Gus was suppose to be in disguise as the super villain Brainiac in which he could live among humans. Under his Gus persona, would then set about his evil deeds using the supercomputer which appears at the end of the film. The filmmakers rejected the idea and kept Gus as the comedic relief. Boy that sure would have been a little bit better of a plot than this. Instead of Brainiac, we get three billionaire villains. Robert Vaughn as Ross Webster, written similar in tone to Lex Luthor; and Annie Ross as Vera Webster. Also there's a blonde bimbo as well, but I forget her name because she had no real purpose other than one scene with the 'evil' Superman. Oh yeah, that's another thing, Superman becomes evil after being exposed by a new type of Kryptonite that has all of the elements except for this one unknown compound so the bad guys decide to put tar in it. I think it was some way of telling the general audience that cigarettes are for you or something like that. Overall I did not like this movie from the very first ten minutes. Richard Pryor was awful in this, the special effects get a lot weaker, and the minor characters don't serve any real purpose at all. I give it only one star and that is only because of Christopher Reeve holding his own ground.