Here's a novelty: a big budgeted, English language superhero film which is actually pretty damn good; a film that knows how to have fun - a film that knows how to depict people and their actions, rather than just depict action and have the people sort of fill into the frame. At its core is an interesting hero; a strong villain, a good love interest and some imagery that is genuinely powerful. To an extent, it is a love story but it is its strange concoction of romance; screwball comedy and horror that makes the film so appealing. We've seen films many times before with plots at the centre of them revolving around evil people attempting to destroy the world (or at least part of it)– when we see it here, we don't mind it so much out of how well the film nails all of the other stuff. Take a scene much later on when the villain outlines his plan to our hero, a scene which is cruelly undercut with the villain's hapless sidekick attempting to muscle in by staking his own claim on things. Angry at his minion's grab for glory, he berates him, and continues his threats. Such a sequence, while featuring in a film buried deep within a canon of American cinema from an era when treating terrorism as one big joke was the norm, encapsulates perfectly the deftness of director Richard Donner's ability to hop between genres and codes and yet still maintain an eye on the prize.
We begin as if the whole thing was one large soap opera set on another planet entirely, furthermore located within another solar system and playing out to an entirely different set of social dynamics. A being known as Jor-El (Brando) is busy addressing matters in relation to the punishment of three of his own species whose ideas of inter-planetary mutiny are scorned upon. Once that has been dealt with, we learn that this planet, named Krypton, is millions of years ahead of Earth in its spiritual and technological development in spite of the fact its general inflection reminds us of ancient Greece. Perhaps that is the point. Despite these advancements in years, the people thereon are unable to tell the difference between a "routine orbital shift" and their own planet's destruction. When the planet does destroy itself, it kills all who inhabit it but for Jor-El's son Kal-El - someone who is ejected from the planet and crash lands on that of Earth in the 1950's. He grows up to become the titular Superman under the homo-sapien guise of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve.
But Donner is still far from playing his hand. Before an adult Clark ends up as a newshound in the fictitious metropolis of . Metropolis, there are some amusing sequences set in an additionally fictional locale named Smallville, a small rural town set in an unspecified state, although most likely shot in New Mexico. It is during this stretch that Clark grows up with his adopted parents; shrugs off bullies; feels aggrieved that he doesn't get a girlfriend and hides his extraordinary powers made possible through Earth's gravitational sciences in comparison to his home planet's. These segments might very well have inspired a film all on their own: the ultimate concept piece of a superhero from beyond the stars stuck with an (un)enviable ability to boot a football the length of a the pitch lest he join he football team when he isn't out-running an express train lest he partake in high school track and field. Years later, in 2008, director Peter Berg produced "Hancock" whereby the central idea read something along the lines that a human-like creature with Superman-esque powers was stuck on planet Earth but kept falling afoul of everyone out of his mismanagement of them.
It is Metropolis wherein things take shape in this young man's life, someone who infiltrates a newspaper Bureau as a typist whose off screen speed and ability to do such a thing impresses an editor. Reporter Lois Lane (Kidder) adopts the role of the love interest, somebody besotted by Superman when he saves her life but oblivious to Clark Kent's actual attraction to her. These scenes carry such weight in dynamism that it's difficult not to enjoy them, with the idea that Clark is trapped in Earthly conditions alien to him combining with the fact the film is essentially the tale of a farmhand coming-good in the big city with an unrequited love to boot. It makes for wonderful viewing and there is a real flair and energy behind these scenes that is never sugary nor overdone.
Gene Hackman's villain, Lex Luthor, is one of the slimier 'event movie' villains; not someone especially brash and quite obviously insane, but someone whose introduction is both at once funny and sadistic and whose on screen presence merely carries on from there. While in no way a physical match for Superman, the fascination lies with observing a twisted, criminally opportunistic Earth brain going up against extra-terrestrial brawn. It isn't good enough to have these two people merely meet up and slug it out: it would be a no-contest. They must, therefore, speak and match one another verbally – something which requires skill in the writing and patience in the viewer. This is a really romping, cracking adventure depicting people meeting; bonding; clashing and ultimately dealing with one another, a film that allows the bad guys to occasionally win; the superhero to appear vulnerable and is assertive enough to take its time (through its runtime) in dealing with characters regardless of what its audience's attention span may be. If there were more films of this nature that were of this nature, the multiplex would be a nicer place to frequent.
We begin as if the whole thing was one large soap opera set on another planet entirely, furthermore located within another solar system and playing out to an entirely different set of social dynamics. A being known as Jor-El (Brando) is busy addressing matters in relation to the punishment of three of his own species whose ideas of inter-planetary mutiny are scorned upon. Once that has been dealt with, we learn that this planet, named Krypton, is millions of years ahead of Earth in its spiritual and technological development in spite of the fact its general inflection reminds us of ancient Greece. Perhaps that is the point. Despite these advancements in years, the people thereon are unable to tell the difference between a "routine orbital shift" and their own planet's destruction. When the planet does destroy itself, it kills all who inhabit it but for Jor-El's son Kal-El - someone who is ejected from the planet and crash lands on that of Earth in the 1950's. He grows up to become the titular Superman under the homo-sapien guise of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve.
But Donner is still far from playing his hand. Before an adult Clark ends up as a newshound in the fictitious metropolis of . Metropolis, there are some amusing sequences set in an additionally fictional locale named Smallville, a small rural town set in an unspecified state, although most likely shot in New Mexico. It is during this stretch that Clark grows up with his adopted parents; shrugs off bullies; feels aggrieved that he doesn't get a girlfriend and hides his extraordinary powers made possible through Earth's gravitational sciences in comparison to his home planet's. These segments might very well have inspired a film all on their own: the ultimate concept piece of a superhero from beyond the stars stuck with an (un)enviable ability to boot a football the length of a the pitch lest he join he football team when he isn't out-running an express train lest he partake in high school track and field. Years later, in 2008, director Peter Berg produced "Hancock" whereby the central idea read something along the lines that a human-like creature with Superman-esque powers was stuck on planet Earth but kept falling afoul of everyone out of his mismanagement of them.
It is Metropolis wherein things take shape in this young man's life, someone who infiltrates a newspaper Bureau as a typist whose off screen speed and ability to do such a thing impresses an editor. Reporter Lois Lane (Kidder) adopts the role of the love interest, somebody besotted by Superman when he saves her life but oblivious to Clark Kent's actual attraction to her. These scenes carry such weight in dynamism that it's difficult not to enjoy them, with the idea that Clark is trapped in Earthly conditions alien to him combining with the fact the film is essentially the tale of a farmhand coming-good in the big city with an unrequited love to boot. It makes for wonderful viewing and there is a real flair and energy behind these scenes that is never sugary nor overdone.
Gene Hackman's villain, Lex Luthor, is one of the slimier 'event movie' villains; not someone especially brash and quite obviously insane, but someone whose introduction is both at once funny and sadistic and whose on screen presence merely carries on from there. While in no way a physical match for Superman, the fascination lies with observing a twisted, criminally opportunistic Earth brain going up against extra-terrestrial brawn. It isn't good enough to have these two people merely meet up and slug it out: it would be a no-contest. They must, therefore, speak and match one another verbally – something which requires skill in the writing and patience in the viewer. This is a really romping, cracking adventure depicting people meeting; bonding; clashing and ultimately dealing with one another, a film that allows the bad guys to occasionally win; the superhero to appear vulnerable and is assertive enough to take its time (through its runtime) in dealing with characters regardless of what its audience's attention span may be. If there were more films of this nature that were of this nature, the multiplex would be a nicer place to frequent.