Controversial Opinions (For Everything Other Than DC Comics)

[newparisian]

Is it possible that Superman, the Movie is looked upon better by those of us (like me) who saw it on the big screen during its initial release?

I'm in my late 30s, so I've only ever seen it on TV. It's just hokey and no characters really stand out. It's not just dated SFX or old timey or whatever, cuz the Star Wars trilogy and Star Trek 2 hold up just fine. Just never cottoned to Superman the Movie.
Superman II is better, I'll grant you.

[The Darknight Detective]

It's a very good movie for the time, but it is very dated. It doesn't hold up as well as one might think it should.

As someone who was awed by it back in '78 as a young teen, I reluctantly agree. I still enjoy it and also the second one (the other two are dreck, except for Lana in the third), but they don't do it for me like the Star Wars films or Indiana Jones from that same era. Even then, I had a problem with the Supes on screen not fully matching the one in the comics at the time (don't get me started with Lex, despite the great Gene Hackman portraying him - Eisenberg's Luthor is unquestionably closer to the source material than that one). It also spawned the Big Blue Boy Scout mystique that wasn't there earlier.

[Kirby101]

I have to disagree with you Darknight. Hackman's Lex was close to the occasionally goofy Silver Age Lex. The genius industrialist is more a creation of the Byrne revamp. And Eisenberg, except that he had a big corporation, is not close to any source material. The absolute worst Lex in any medium.

[The Darknight Detective]

I have to disagree with you Darknight. Hackman's Lex was close to the occasionally goofy Silver Age Lex. The genius industrialist is more a creation of the Byrne revamp. And Eisenberg, except that he had a big corporation, is not close to any source material. The absolute worst Lex in any medium.

Kirby, Lex was never, ever the huckster he was in the films in any GA/SA/BA comic I have ever read. He would have been right at home on Batman fighting Adam West's Caped Crusader, but not in any DC publication. Show me a story where he would have ever suffered someone like Otis? Say what you want about the Snyderverse Luthor, but at least I can some of the guy I remembering hating Superman with a passion in Action Comics and Superman. Hackman's version is a lot of fun, but he\s closer to Egghead or King Tut than the guy from my childhood.

[DrNewGod]

Is it possible that Superman, the Movie is looked upon better by those of us (like me) who saw it on the big screen during its initial release?

IMO, it hit those of us who saw it in first release harder because no one had every taken a comic book property seriously enough to give it the treatment Superman got in STMP.

[CaptCleghorn]

Kirby, Lex was never, ever the huckster he was in the films in any GA/SA/BA comic I have ever read. He would have been right at home on Batman fighting Adam West's Caped Crusader, but not in any DC publication. Show me a story where he would have ever suffered someone like Otis? Say what you want about the Snyderverse Luthor, but at least I can some of the guy I remembering hating Superman with a passion in Action Comics and Superman. Hackman's version is a lot of fun, but he\s closer to Egghead or King Tut than the guy from my childhood.

There was a definite tinge of Batman '66 in Superman '78. We can (and do) often imagine our idealized version of a character against the version portrayed in a certain media production. But like most historic productions, there is a difference between experiencing it at the time, and seeing it later on. There's also the possibility of it being a good movie, even if it changes source material. The Superman movie was about the effects. "You'll believe a man can fly" was the tagline and the effects were far and above anything seen up to that time. But the movie itself concerned easily identifiable good guys and bad guys.

This was the parent of the big screen superhero movie. Is it flawed next to Avengers Endgame? Sure, but the first try vs. one where there were dozens of chances to hone skills isn't a real apples to apples comparison. Brando and reimagining Krypton and introducing Zod, Non, and Ursa was something very MCU like. Big picture universe building. I love watching old horror films on Svengoolie and appreciate the lack of quality effects as well as the innovation often used to pull off something that isn't half bad. I can even appreciate Jone Fonda writhing around on a clean table to simulate zero gravity as an effect.

Some stuff holds up quite well. Other stuff ages very badly. Otis and the cartoonish Luthor were pretty much born dated.

[godisawesome]

There are many older movies young people don't find as interesting as we older cinema lovers do.

I think it’s a weird two-way street: there are some people who suffer too much from a “grandfather clause” of quality when they watch old films just as there are some people who suffer a “old = eww” syndrome when they watch old films.

It’s hard to pinpoint what will actually make a movie seem timeless even as significant time goes on, or what films may benefit a bit from the nostalgic haze making them a “grand old film” rather than a “good for its time” film.

For instance, I love The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Red River and The Third Man, all of which would qualify as very old films to most people. But...

- The Third Man feels timeless to me: the archetypes and performances mix with the cinematography to make for a more surreal and “applicable” kind of experience (Orson Welles’s entrance remains something that even modern actors would salivate for.)

- The Wizard of Oz and The Adventures of Robin Hood feel like “grand old films”: there’s a reason they don’t “make ‘em like the used to” that is valid and accurate... but these films also have the ineffable “movie magic” that makes their old limitations and foibles charming and loveable in a way that some modern films couldn’t.

- And Red River is a “good for its time” film: the passage of time has definitely robbed it of some luster, and it’s not really magical, but get in the appropriate era’s headspace, and it still packs a serious punch.

[Kirby101]

Kirby, Lex was never, ever the huckster he was in the films in any GA/SA/BA comic I have ever read. He would have been right at home on Batman fighting Adam West's Caped Crusader, but not in any DC publication. Show me a story where he would have ever suffered someone like Otis? Say what you want about the Snyderverse Luthor, but at least I can some of the guy I remembering hating Superman with a passion in Action Comics and Superman. Hackman's version is a lot of fun, but he\s closer to Egghead or King Tut than the guy from my childhood.

I agree Otis made it goofier than the comic. I found Hackman close to the criminal genius from the SA.

I haven't watched StM in years. But I saw it opening week in 78 and it was spectacular then.

[Kirby101]

How do people find Ray Harryhausen. I think his movies still stand up and the stop motion FX doesn't feel dated to me. Even with the flawless CGI we have today.`

[babyblob]

How do people find Ray Harryhausen. I think his movies still stand up and the stop motion FX doesn't feel dated to me. Even with the flawless CGI we have today.`

That man was a genius. We would not have many of the movies we have today if not for his work. Maybe a little dated but that is only when you look at CGI and all of that stuff.

[The Darknight Detective]

How do people find Ray Harryhausen. I think his movies still stand up and the stop motion FX doesn't feel dated to me. Even with the flawless CGI we have today.`

Ray and Willis O'Brien are still gods to me. I'm an certainly not a Luddite when it comes to CGI, but I have been a fan of stop motion for 50-something years (since Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) and still enjoy their work today.

[Jim Kelly]

This would seem to be one of those D.C. topics we're not supposed to talk about--but . . .

I rewatched SUPERMAN (1978) yet again, just recently. I've lost count, but this must be like thirty times I've watched it by now. It remains one of my all time favourite movies. And Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography is magnificent. He should have got an Oscar for his work on that movie. He did get the Oscar (posthumously) for TESS the next year, but the work he did on SUPERMAN was far more challenging and shows the range of his abilities as a director--from the farm fields of Kansas (actually Alberta) to the cold, colourless realm of Krypton to the spires of Metropolis.

I think that practical effects age better than digital effects. Practical effects are real--they are things actually happening in front of the camera. Digital effects attempt to replicate that but they never can completely (as yet) look like a practical effect, like something that was real in front of the camera. And because digital effects creep every year toward better replicating a practical effect, a movie only one year old can seem wrong to us.

But all movies are authentic to their time. To call them dated is an empty criticism. It points out the obvious--that a work of art is an artefact of the time in which it was created. That's why art is so interesting to us--because we study it for what it says about us at that point in time. I doubt that there's much art that isn't authentic to the time it was made.

However, as far as the "Say Jim" line that was inauthentic at the time I saw it in December 1978--and it's been just as tone deaf and offensive each time I've seen it since. And I'm not the only one in 1978 who felt that way. A great many people pointed to that brief scene as howlingly inappropriate. It nearly kills the whole sequence, which is one of the most impressive sequences in the movie--it's just that everything else is so good, you almost forget how bad that hiccup is.

Passing off tone deaf scenes in movies and T.V. shows as just representing the period in which they were made is a terrible excuse. It's not that people didn't know better. 1978 isn't the 8th century. The world had gone through wars, genocides, fights for civil rights, equal rights. To claim that the people who wrote those lines, cast the actors, clothed them, directed them and made the decision to leave that in the final cut--that they didn't know any better is bending over backwards to give people of privilege a pass for knowingly doing things that were glaringly wrong.

It's the kind of excuse that you hear from old, straight, white males all the time--"I didn't know any better." Like they weren't alive and awake through all the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s and were somehow oblivious to the issues of the disenfranchised. As if they should be forgiven for being ignorant in a time when these issues were all around them.

And it's an offence to all those good people that did know better and made movies and T.V. shows that were authentic to their time and showed people of colour as they really are and not according to moribund stereotypes. The thing of it is, I continue to see new movies that have just as much tone deaf and offensive content--so what's their excuse?

[Jack Dracula]

How do people find Ray Harryhausen. I think his movies still stand up and the stop motion FX doesn't feel dated to me. Even with the flawless CGI we have today.`

I love Harryhausen movies specifically because of the stop-motion effects.
The same way I love old Godzilla movies because of the man in the rubber suit and toy tanks.
They’re just a lot of fun.

[Jim Kelly]

There are a series of videos on Youtube that redo the Harryhausen stop motion with a higher frame rate, so the movement seems more fluid. Kind of amazing to think that that's all the animation needed at the time. Like how silent movies are shown at the wrong speed, so the motion looks herky jerky but if you just adjust the speed, they look more realistic.

But like ChadH, I like the Harryhausen stop motion just as it is because that movement gives it a certain flavour I've come to enjoy.

[DrNewGod]

How do people find Ray Harryhausen. I think his movies still stand up and the stop motion FX doesn't feel dated to me. Even with the flawless CGI we have today.`

They're fun. Sure, they don't have as slick an image as what you can do today, but I still marvel at the meticulous work that must have gone into them. Jason and the Argonauts murderous skeletons scene is still a fave for me.