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III's actually one of my favourite movies to watch. The Smallville scenes are all brilliant, the Lana interactions are wholesome and uplifting, the comedy is actually funny("let me tell you something...I CAN'T SKI", the tower of pisa and the model maker's reactions) and it has some very dark moments that scare me even now. The Junkyard scene is still a classic, and the final battle with "Not Brainiac...Honest" has a great pay-off and is full of tension with every loose end in the movie coming together. It's all in all a very complete and capable bit of entertainment. Any real faults it has aren't really faults in the context of when it was made. There was much dumber stuff going on in the comics at the time.
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[QUOTE=Xhatch;522469]Just want to put this in here, but I thought Superman IV's Nuclear Man was awesome when I watched it as a kid. And remember, through the eyes of a little kid these "terrible" movies are actually quite entertaining.[/QUOTE]
Yeah - I loved Howard the Duck at the time. Five years later I tried again and realised how terrible it was.
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I still like Superman 3 - probably more than the first two. It's not better as such, but it's more fun and has a villain much closer to Luthor than we got in the first two films.
IIRC I read something about Superman IV (possibly in The Big Book of Scandal from Paradox Press) whereby basically someone basically stole most of the money and they had to make the film on what was left. Don't hold me to it though - my memory is sketchy.
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I have a similar feeling towards Batman Forever. Not nearly as strong as the first 2, but its got some potentially strong bits, interestingly enough, both of which deal with character introspection. They both make for decent trilogies and are both followed by fourth films that were terribly wacky, over the top messes that killed their franchises.
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The original draft of Superman III had Braniac, Mxyzptlk and a version of Supergirl. Lana would replace Lois as the Planet's star reporter, Supergirl would be Superman's lover and time travel was involved heavily. This was before they decided to make a standalone Supergirl film instead.
[URL="http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/UltimateSuperman/news/?a=39421"]http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/UltimateSuperman/news/?a=39421[/URL]
[URL="http://thecomicscode.weebly.com/superman-vs-superman-what-if.html"]http://thecomicscode.weebly.com/superman-vs-superman-what-if.html[/URL]
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[QUOTE=Thor2014;543503]Supergirl would be Superman's lover[/QUOTE]
Presumably not related, then?
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The movie Salkind wanted to make would have been a mess of epic proportions. The Superman III we got was ultimately better honestly. It works if one approaches it as a stand alone Superman adventure or an issue of early 80's Superman comics brought to life. It's not great by any means..but it has charms of it's own.
I do find it interesting both made an excuse to write Lois out early in both movies and replace her with Lana. It sounds like The Salkinds were none too happy with Margot Kidder's vocal disapproval with the firing of Richard Donner during the build up to II.
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[QUOTE=dancj;534360]I still like Superman 3 - probably more than the first two. It's not better as such, but it's more fun and has a villain much closer to Luthor than we got in the first two films.
IIRC I read something about Superman IV (possibly in The Big Book of Scandal from Paradox Press) whereby basically someone basically stole most of the money and they had to make the film on what was left. Don't hold me to it though - my memory is sketchy.[/QUOTE]
The film rights for IV ended up with Golan & Globus of Cannon Films. I don't remember the why, but Golan/Globus took the budget and invested a majority of it in a bunch of other films they were trying to get finished at the time. This resulted, as you said, with IV having very little money to work with.
As for III, along with the scenes mentioned here (High School Reunion is awesome, Clark vs Superman, etc), I really enjoyed the chemical plant fire and the way that Clark was more of a real person, instead of the charicature-cartoon Reeve made him in I & II.
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[QUOTE=Clark_Kent;544950]The film rights for IV ended up with Golan & Globus of Cannon Films. I don't remember the why, but Golan/Globus took the budget and invested a majority of it in a bunch of other films they were trying to get finished at the time. This resulted, as you said, with IV having very little money to work with.
As for III, along with the scenes mentioned here (High School Reunion is awesome, Clark vs Superman, etc), I really enjoyed the chemical plant fire and the way that Clark was more of a real person, instead of the charicature-cartoon Reeve made him in I & II.[/QUOTE]
Yeah his Clark Kent was near perfect in SIII. Still mild mannered yet not the stumbling cartoon he was in the previous films. I think that was intentional as Chris wanted to show that Superman was more comfortable in his "act" as Clark. I'd go as far to say SIII is Chris' best performance in the series. I also think he was in top physical form there and was the first (and only) of the films that he looked consistant in the weight and shape department. His weight and look fluxuated quite a bit in the first one and particularly the 2nd one (as production of that film was over the course of 4 years or more). In IV he wasn't that built up at all.
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Reeve looked great physically & probably bigger than in the 1st film. The lack of really black hair always bugged me though.
The shirt opening scene is one of my favorites from all the films & I love the musical score for III. There was potential to be a really good film but I enjoy it as is.
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My sense is that the producers were willing to invest a lot of money in the first movie to establish the brand, but then they just wanted to milk that for all they could get, without putting a lot more money into the enterprise for each new movie. Kind of like they spent all the money on building a factory and hoped to keep getting money out of that factory rather than buidling a whole new factory.
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I consider [I]Superman III[/I] to be the best film in the series.
[i]Superman[/i] and [i]Superman II[/i] both have a lot of problems with them, chief among them being the immature relationship between Lois and Superman, the cheesy, clownish Luthor played by Gene Hackman pretending his real hair is a wig, the two-dimensional Clark Kent, the powers Superman never displayed before or since, and a few truly glaring plot holes. I'm not going to get into how disappointing I think Krypton is compared to the comics because we could be here all day.
By contrast, [I]Superman III[/I] has a much more mature, adult seeming relationship between Lana and Clark, a fourth-rate Luthor who doesn't piss me off because they don't try to pass him off as [i]actually[/i] being Luthor, a much more fully-developed and respected Clark Kent, consistent powers on Superman's part, a Jimmy Olsen who intentionally risks danger to get the shot, and yes, a really mediocre performance by Richard Pryor working off a truly mediocre script.
So it's not perfect by any means, but I like it a lot more than any of the other movies- not that they don't have good points of their own. [i]Superman I[/i] is very charming in its own way and began the trend of not having Superboy hang around in the modern era, [i]Part II[/i] has General Zod and a couple of really cool fight scenes. [i]Supergirl[/i] has really nice flying effects, and even [i]Quest for Peace[/i] has the basic premise of Superman supporting global nuclear disarmament and a relationship between Superman and Luthor that I think reflects how they were in the comics at the time more than the other two Lex movies.
Still, overall I think [i]Superman III[/i] holds up as a the best of the bunch.
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SM3 does have a great nightmare fuel moment.... When Vera gets "Borged".
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[QUOTE=beetee;574856]SM3 does have a great nightmare fuel moment.... When Vera gets "Borged".[/QUOTE]
Naw, she was upgraded in to a Cyberman! lmao
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[I]"I was born rich, never worn the same pair of socks twice."
"What do you do with your socks?"
"I don't know, they're laundered and sent to some charitable institution, I think. Actually, I don't know what they do with them. Maybe they turn them into dust rags or pen wipers or something like that."
"Or maybe socks."
"Yes, I hadn't thought of that."[/I]
I love Superman III (I even took my screen name from it). It was great for what it was. I put it in the same [I]Fun 80's Comedy/Scifi[/I] category as Ghostbusters and Back to the Future.
In fact, I'd like to see DC lease Gus Gorman out to IDW Comics. Let's see a Gus/Ghostbusters/Doc Brown crossover.