PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical, cosmological*
The most interesting thing about watching the DVD of SUPERMAN III is listening to Ilya Salkind's reminiscences about the script treatment he submitted to Warner Brothers. Though I can see why the studio nixed it, the idea of having Superman deal with the advent of Brainiac and Supergirl had real possibilities for expanding the cinematic film-franchise. (I'm a little less sanguine about his notion of introducing Mister Mxyzptlk to the movies.) Salkind said WB didn't want the script because it was too "far-out," which probably meant, "too expensive," particularly for a franchise that might not make as much money in its third iteration. Salkind mentions the fact that his treatment included a little love-interest between the hero and his cousin, but he doesn't seem to apprehend that this would have been taboo to Americans doing a kid-focused property, even if the relationship never went beyond a brief flirtation. (Luke and Leia get away with it because no one, possibly not even George Lucas, suspected their relationship in the first movie.) I wouldn't have minded it, particularly because the comics themselves occasionally communicated a similar vibe. And certainly Brainiac-- who would have been responsible for Superman losing his sense of morality, as he does in the finished Number Three-- would certainly have been a villain to conjure with. (I suspect that he makes a covert appearance at the end of SUPERMAN III, when Annie Ross' character Vera-- seen above-- is briefly changed into a cyber-being to serve a super-computer.)
Though WB turned down the treatment, Salkind obviously gave a copy to David and Leslie Newman, the two credited writers of SUPERMAN III. Possibly they too were under an injunction to keep things more down-to-earth and thus less expensive, and I don't excoriate them for that. But I grade this film as poor because all the Newmans did was to recycle their one big contribution to the previous SUPERMAN films-- the conception of Superman's villains as a bunch of maladroit cornballs, like the ones from their stage musical (and later telefilm) of the superhero's career. Given the acrimonious separation of the Salkinds from Richard Donner, I'm not surprised that the producers couldn't get any help on the script from Donner's script consultant Tom Mankiewicz-- but did they really think that they just had to use the Newmans again, or that the writing-duo had contributed anything that had made the first two films successful? Then again, from what I've read, the Salkinds were highly susceptible to "star power." That's probably why they accepted the Newmans' script, and why they were so enthused when big movie-star Richard Pryor announced his desire to do a Superman film on the Johnny Carson show.
I'm not a big fan of Richard Pryor, so I won't dwell on my opinion that his humorous persona didn't work in the context of a big-budget Superman film. If I'm right about my "recycling" theory, then Pryor's Gus Norman is basically a retread of Otis from the other films: the innocent-seeming stooge who doesn't quite know what he's gotten into. Similarly, Robert Vaughan's billionaire-villain Ross Webster is another quirky mastermind like the Newmans' Luthor. The third member of the original trio, the sultry Miss Teschmacher, is split into two opposed characters in SUPERMAN III: Ross's sultry "psychic instructor" Lorelei and his sister Vera, who is an unattractive virago who doesn't like sex in any form. The biggest difference here is that Gus actually has some talent-- that of being an innate computer-wizard-- that Ross can use in his mad plans, which reference both the 1970s "oil crisis" and the growing power of computers in civilized life. Both of these "hot topics" of the period badly date the film today, while the first two in the series remain fresh and universal in their appeal. I will note that the Newmans finally provide a reasonably logical method for the villains to get ahold of kryptonite, but maybe this was an idea that just got left out of the 1978 film, when Luthor had to do the exact same thing.
In many respects the Newmans' script matches the talents of Richard Lester, who did his best work with zany comedies like HELP! and THE KNACK-- AND HOW TO GET IT. But the focus on comic bits-- even when Pryor's not around-- undermines any sense of drama in the proceedings. This includes the romance-scenes, in which Clark Kent re-connects with the girl he loved in Smallville, Lana Lang. I don't mind the script putting Lois Lane to one side (whatever the behind-the-scenes motivations). Lois' character-arc, after all, had been given a pretty strong conclusion in Number Two. But the script is heavy-handed about establishing that Lana likes Clark more than Superman, putting forth an over-obvious reversal of the Lois/Clark/Superman triangle. The romantic scenes are slow and ponderous, which surprised me given that the 1976 ROBIN AND MARIAN showed that Lester could direct romance ably.
The action, scoring and FX scenes are all creditable enough, but the only long scene that works well is the big fight scene. Superman-- corrupted by the film's version of "red kryptonite"-- splits into two beings: one his costumed, Kryptonian self (almost indistinguishable from Zod and his decadent partners), the other a super-powered version of Clark Kent, who is implicitly the moral side of the character, nurtured in the ethos of Earth. Lester handles these action-scenes as well as anything Donner did, though I didn't care for the fight's conclusion, in which Clark simply strangles his doppelganger to death. Similarly, the concluding battle between the hero and Gus's super-computer is badly paced, with the computer ratcheting itself up to self-awareness abruptly. A slower metamorphosis, along the level of a film like COLOSSUS THE FORBIN PROJECT, would probably have made the last section more suspenseful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comparisons, and I definitely agree with your estimations on #3 and #4. Though #3 is a low-cost reworking of an idea for introducing Brainiac, it does indeed seem like a less science-fictional Superman tale, in which some crooked crime boss gets hold of a doohickey that gives him a hold over the Man of Steel. And the cheesiness of #4 fits in with the over-the-top associations I hold for a lot of eighties cinema.
ReplyDeleteNow, Seventies Superman OUGHT to have been influential on the movies, insofar as you might think the writers would be paying attention to the current comics. But remember that three of the credited writers, Benton and the two Newmans, turned in a campy script that partly drew on the stage play that two of them worked on, It's a Bird It's a Planet, etc., while Mario Puzo's work was allegedly barely used. The uncredited Tom Mankiewicz has been cited as havingjettisoned a lot of the camp stuff, in line with Donner's desire to play things generally straight. By accident or design, there are large parts of 1 and 2 that, for me at least, capture the essence of the early 1940s Superman by Siegel and Shuster, which gave the Man of Steel a more sexual vibe and didn't pay close attention to continuity. When in #2 Superman suddenly reveals that he can peel off the "S" on his chest and use it like a discus, it's really silly, but it's also a lot like Siegel suddenly revealing in one story that Superman can remold his features as if he were Plastic Man!
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteOh, yeah, Superman would get a lot of temporary powers from red kryptonite or similar sources in the Weisinger sixties-- getting the head of an ant, or growing a third eye-- but they were always gone by the end of a given story. Weisinger seems to have been the one who really locked down the specifics of what Kryptonians could or could not do. For instance, I think Siegel used to claim that Superman melted things with his X-ray vision. Under Weisinger's total control, writers distinguished between X-ray vision, which was only for looking through things, and heat vision, which was for melting things.
ReplyDeleteThere are only a smattering of big fight-scenes in Superman pre-1947 (the year Siegel and Schuster left), because Siegel didn't develop a lot of villains for the hero. In fact, Luthor gets powers in a story called "Battle of the Titans" and the enemies duke it out in the streets, the same way a millon Marvel comics would later on. At the same time, Superman wasn't as utterly invulnerable to everything as he was under Weisinger, so a scientist with a paralysis ray could sometimes take out the Man of Steel. And in any case, Schuster and his assistants usually emphasized the visceral thrill of the hero "taking out the trash" even if his opponents were mere mortals. The debut cover, in which Superman wrecks the car of some fleeing men, is emblematic of that tendency in my mind.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt would be interesting to know how the producers (including the writers) thought about approaching the big fight scenes in SUPERMAN II. That's one element that the stage Superman couldn't duplicate, though there is a campy fight scene at the end of the televised version of the Benton musical. STAR WARS had just come out when SUPERMAN was still in the planning stages, so it's not like there were a ton of movies beforehand to map out how one approached the dynamics of a fight between flying, super-strong people. The comic books would have been the only real guide, and for all we know they might have paid a lot of attention to the way Marvel Comics handled the matter. There were a few times in the sixties that creators at DC tried to amp up the fight-scenes for the Big S-- Jim Shooter was a particular contributor there-- but Julie Schwartz, who took over the main Superman books when Weisinger left, didn't go out of his way to promote the fight-scenes. They were worked in where possible, and they were more dynamic at times than most of what appeared in the sixties. But Schwartz's main priority in those books, as in everything else he edited, was "gimmicks" that sold the book, often on the basis of the cover situation.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete