Review of Superman III (1983) by Ted O — 26 Feb 2009

Superman III could have an aptly named second title: "The Richard Pryor Version.".

The film opens in Metropolis, where apparently all sorts of goofy things happen (a five minute blind guy gag... really?) Oddly enough the story centers not around Superman, but Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor.) A factotum and unable to hold a steady job, Gus is denied a continuance with his unemployment benefits. He later finds that he has a knack for computer programing; an idea he gets from a book of matches. (I shutter to think what kind of a direction this movie would have gone if the matchbook ad was for exotic dancers.) The new gig pays the bills, but Gus wants more of a piece of the action and starts to funnel all the company's remainders (fractions of cents) into his paycheck. (You might remember this scheme from "Office Space.").

Meanwhile, Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) prepares to go on assignment to his class reunion in Smallville. Lois Lane (back to a rather oblivious state after her mind wipe in Superman II) is going on assignment as well. To where? Who cares? There's nobody else who seems to. Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, is written out early as well. This leaves Clark some time to walk down memory lane and make a half-hearted pass at "the prettiest girl in school," Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole.).

As Clark bumbles around Smallville and pops in as Superman every once in a while, Gus gets busted. His boss, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn,) blackmails him into hacking into a government satellite that not only observes the whether, but somehow can alter it. (I don't know... it shoots lasers into storm clouds or something.) Superman easily thwarts this and Webster sees that he needs to dispose of Superman before he can monopolize most common goods.

If Webster is the villain here, then he lacks all of Lex Luthor's diabolical nature. He simply views Superman as a road block and his schemes are fairly mundane by Luthor standards. In the first film, Luthor planned to blow apart half of California. In the second, he tried to sellout the world to General Zod for control of Australia. Now, Ross Webster wants control of the coffee and oil markets? This is a sense of realistic pragmatism that we just can't accept in a Superman villain. And with all the unexplored characters in the DC rogue's gallery to choose from, why cobble together a lack-luster stand-in?

Webster turns his sights on Superman and orders Gus to find the recipe for Kryptonite. Using the magic satellite, Gus points it at Krypton's debris and determines 99.5% of Kryptonite's composite elements. He substitutes "tar" for the last .05%. Now if I'm up on my Superman lore, the traditional green Kryptonite can kill Superman and red Kryptonite turns him evil. Apparently incomplete Kryptonite turns Superman into kind of an asshole. So we have our Man of Steel straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa, blowing out the Olympic Torch and drinking Johnnie Walker in the middle of the day and then trashing the bar instead of saving the hapless citizens of Metropolis. Okay all of these are dick moves for sure, but by no means evil. This all culminates in a rather pointless battle between the Asshole Superman and mild-mannered Clark Kent. This is either imagined or through some reaction to the Kryptonite, he's literally split into his two alter-egos. I suppose you could look at this as a metaphor of the internal struggle between his own desire to do good and the desire to use his abilities for his own gain and amusement. In the end this is pointless: we know Superman is going to choose to be good. The whole scene seems like an unnecessary after-thought anyway. It's an attempt to keep Superman from being upstaged by Richard Pryor's story arc which is closer to the main conflict of the story.

With Superman drunk and distracted, Webster makes a play for the world's oil supply and Gus proposes building a super computer in the Grand Canyon (because, I suppose by this time, the writers realized that their villains haven't been diabolical enough.) They also build missile batteries for when Superman eventually snaps out of it. So now we have a Brainiac stand in. This is the closest we get to any of Superman's major villains, besides Lex Luthor, in any of the Christopher Reeve entries. Brainiac is an sentient, alien super computer that, according to different adaptations of the Superman story, is either responsible or complacent in the destruction of Krypton. In many ways, Brainiac is the most dangerous of all the Superman villains. The stand in, however, is just Gus's cobbled together design and easily thwart-able by comparison.

This more than anything else seems like a stretch. Yes it really hasn't been the most plausible ride thus far, but Gus started out as a sort of an idiot savant and, now towards the films' end, is somehow a computer genius. And now that Superman's been able to shake off his weird Kryptonite hang-over, he does battle with the missile batteries and the super computer. Gus, now seeing the error of his ways, helps Superman beat Webster and the super computer.

The whole movie seems like a bad re-write. If you take all the stand-ins (Webster, Asshole Kryptonite and Gus's super computer) and replace them with their counterparts (Luthor, Red Kryptonite and Brainiac) the story makes a bit more sense. As is, it's a fairly innocuous threat to the Man of Steel in a story where, for all extents and purposes, he is not the main character. This, however, is not the worst thing that could happen.

With the first two movies, the usual schtick has run its course. We've gone as far as we can go with the Superman/ Lois Lane angle and the Clark Kent bumbling around has been done to the point of ad nauseam. A different perspective does give the world of Superman a new dimension and new life. But they needed to go all the way with this. To do a "day in the life" story as a sequel, we need recognizable characters and settings. Gus's journey should've taken him from the Daily Planet to Luthorcorp, to Lex Luthor's understudy, to thwarting Superman with Red Kryptonite, to the Fortress of Solitude, to unwittingly unleashing Brainiac and inevitably turning on Luthor and/or Brainiac to help Superman. The two would then have a heart-to-heart about the seduction of greed and villainy, and then it's back to the Daily Planet.

With a familiar story, you can either add to it with new characters and conflicts or navigate the established world with a fresh pair of eyes. This Superman installment tries half-heartedly to do both. As a result, the entire movie is more or less an after-thought of a Superman story rather than the genuine article.