| Superman III | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Richard Lester[1] |
| Produced by | Ilya Salkind Pierre Spengler |
| Written by | David Newman Leslie Newman |
| Based on | Characters by Jerry Siegel Joe Shuster |
| Starring | Christopher Reeve Richard Pryor Jackie Cooper Marc McClure Annette O'Toole Annie Ross Pamela Stephenson Robert Vaughn Margot Kidder |
| Music by | Ken Thorne John Williams (themes) Giorgio Moroder (songs) |
| Cinematography | Robert Paynter |
| Editing by | John Victor-Smith |
| Studio | Dovemead Cantharus Productions |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | 16 June 1983 (Spain) 19 July 1983 (United Kingdom) |
| Running time | 125 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $39,000,000 |
| Box office | $59,950,623 |
Superman III is a 1983 superhero film and the third film in the Superman film series based upon the long-running DC Comics superhero. Christopher Reeve, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure and Margot Kidder are joined by new cast members Annette O'Toole, Annie Ross, Pamela Stephenson, Robert Vaughn and Richard Pryor. The film was the last Reeve/Superman film produced by Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind. It was followed by Supergirl (produced by the Salkinds) in 1984 and the non-Salkind produced sequel Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987.
The film was less successful than the first two Superman movies, both financially and critically. While harsh criticism focused on the film's comedic and campy tone, Reeve was praised for his much darker performance as the corrupted Superman. Following the release of this movie, Pryor signed a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures worth $40 million.[2]
Series producer Ilya Salkind originally wrote a treatment for this film that included Brainiac, Mister Mxyzptlk and Supergirl, but Warner Bros. did not like it.[3] The treatment was released online in 2007. [4]
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August "Gus" Gorman (Richard Pryor), an unemployed ne'er-do-well, discovers a knack for computer programming. After embezzling from his new employer's payroll (through a technique known as salami slicing), Gorman is brought to the attention of the CEO, Ross Webster. Webster (Robert Vaughn) is obsessed with the computer's potential to aid him in his schemes to rule the world financially. Joined by his sister Vera (Annie Ross) and his "psychic nutritionist" Lorelei Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), Webster blackmails Gorman into helping him.
Meanwhile, Clark Kent has convinced his newspaper to allow him to return to Smallville for his high school reunion. En route, as Superman he extinguishes a fire in a chemical plant containing vials of acid that can produce clouds of corrosive vapor when superheated.
In Smallville, Clark is reunited with childhood friend Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). Lana is a divorcée with a young son named Ricky (Paul Kaethler). Clark and Lana begin to share affection for each other, though Lana's former boyfriend Brad (Gavan O'Herlihy), Clark's childhood bully and now an alcoholic security guard, is still vying for her attention.
Meanwhile, Webster schemes to monopolize the world's coffee crop. Infuriated by Colombia's refusal to do business with him, he orders Gorman to command an American weather satellite named Vulcan to create a tornadic storm to decimate the nation's coffee crop. Webster's scheme is thwarted when Superman neutralizes the tornado and saves the harvest. Webster then orders Gorman to use his computer knowledge to create kryptonite, remembering Lois Lane's Daily Planet interview from Superman, during which Superman identified it as his only weakness. Gus uses a computer to order Vulcan to locate Krypton's debris in outer space, but after the computer fails to analyze an "unknown" element in kryptonite, he improvises by replacing the unidentified element with tar, garnered from a pack of cigarettes.
Lana convinces Superman to appear at Ricky's birthday party, but Smallville turns it into a celebration. Gus and Vera, disguised as United States Army officers, give Superman the kryptonite as a gift, and are dismayed to see that it appears to have no effect on him. However, the compound begins to produce symptoms. Superman goes through a descent into darkness as he becomes selfish, focusing on his lust for Lana, which causes him to delay rescuing a truck driver from his jackknifed rig. Superman begins to question his own self-worth, and, as the Kryptonite takes effect, he becomes depressed, angry, and casually destructive, committing petty acts of vandalism such as blowing out the Olympic Flame, straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ripping open the hull of an oil tanker, causing the contents to spill into the sea.
With Superman distracted, Webster furthers his plans by controlling the world's oil supply, ordering Gorman to direct all of the oil tankers to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and having them sit there until further notice. Gorman moans that Ross gets his own way all of the time and that he feels unappreciated. He then gives Webster a series of crudely drawn blueprints for a supercomputer. Ross makes a deal with Gorman, agreeing to build his supercomputer in return for sorting out the oil tankers.
Superman assuages his depression with a drinking binge, but is eventually overcome by guilt and undergoes a nervous breakdown after Ricky calls out to him, urging him to fight against his descent into evil. After nearly crash-landing in a junkyard, Superman splits into two personas: the immoral, selfish, corrupted Superman and the moral, righteous Clark Kent. They engage in an epic battle across the junkyard, with the evil Superman repeatedly trying and failing to kill Clark by crushing him in industrial equipment. The battle ends when Clark bursts through the walls of a car crusher and strangles his evil identity, vanquishing him for good. As a battered but unbowed Clark gazes up at the heavens, he pulls his shirt open to reveal his crest. Restored to his normal heroic self, Superman sets off to repair the damage his evil counterpart had caused.
After defending himself from numerous rockets and an MX missile, Superman confronts Webster, Vera and Lorelei, and is forced into a battle with Gorman's supercomputer, which severely weakens him with a kryptonite ray. Gorman, guilt-ridden and horrified by the prospect of "going down in history as the man who killed Superman", destroys the ray with a firefighter's axe, whereupon Superman flees. The computer becomes self-aware and begins to defend itself against Gus's attempts to disable it, draining power from electrical towers, causing massive blackouts. Ross and Lorelei escape from the control room, but Vera is pulled into the computer and forcibly transformed into a cyborg. Empowered by the supercomputer, Vera attacks her brother and Lorelei with beams of energy that immobilize them.
Superman returns to the battle with a canister of the Beltric acid from the chemical plant he saved earlier; the intense heat emitted by the machine causes the acid to turn volatile, eventually destroying the supercomputer, which also reverts Vera back to normal. Superman flies away with Gus, leaving Webster and his cronies to deal with the authorities. After dropping Gus off at a coal mine, where he gives him a job reference, Superman returns to Metropolis and reunites with Lana Lang, who has relocated to the big city and found employment as Perry White's new secretary.
Superman III was released on June 17, 1983 (one month after the release of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi) with a running time of 125 minutes. An extended cut was first shown on ABC in 1986 with an extra 16 minutes of added footage (thus, making the running time 141 minutes). Just like with the previous two Superman movies, the television edition of Superman III was produced by Alexander Salkind's company. Until recently, this version had been distributed in American television syndication as part of Viacom's Superman syndication package which also features Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (later distributed through Paramount Domestic Television, full rights have since reverted to WB). In the United Kingdom, the extended version has been shown about two or three times in the late 1980s.
The total domestic box office gross (not adjusted for inflation[5]) for Superman III was $59,950,623.[6] Despite poor feedback from the critics, the film was highly successful internationally, much like the Supergirl film the next year. In fact, the film still became one of the highest grossing films of 1983 and #1 at the box office.
In July 1983, ITV showed the Royal Premiere of Superman III. This show included interviews with actors in the film, who had flown to London for the United Kingdom and European premiere. Some clips from the film were shown, including where Superman is flying Gus to the coal mine and explaining how he used the acid to destroy the supercomputer, thus revealing the ending of the film.
Reviews for the film were mixed from fans and mostly negative from critics. At Rotten Tomatoes, only 24% of critics have given the film positive reviews, based on 41 reviews.[7] A frequent criticism of Superman III was the inclusion of comedian Richard Pryor. Film critic Leonard Maltin said of Superman III that it was an "appalling sequel that trashed everything that Superman was about for the sake of cheap laughs and a co-starring role for Richard Pryor." After an appearance by Pryor on The Tonight Show,[8] telling Johnny Carson how much he enjoyed seeing Superman II, the Salkinds were eager to cast him in a prominent role in the third film.[9]
Audiences also saw Robert Vaughn's villainous Ross Webster as an uninspired fill-in for Lex Luthor.[8][10] Gene Hackman, along with Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), were angry with the way the Salkinds treated Superman director Richard Donner, with Hackman retaliating by refusing to reprise the role of Lex Luthor entirely[11] (though he would later be persuaded to come back for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987, with which the Salkinds had no connection). After Margot Kidder publicly criticized the Salkinds for their treatment of Donner,[8] the producers "punished" the actress by reducing her role in Superman III to a brief cameo.[9][11]
In his commentary for the 2006 DVD release of Superman III, Ilya Salkind denied any ill will between Margot Kidder and his production team and denied the claim that her part was cut for retaliation. Instead, he said, the creative team decided to pursue a different direction for a love interest for Superman, believing the Lois and Clark relationship had been played out in the first two films (but could be revisited in the future). With the choice to give a more prominent role to Lana Lang, Lois' part was reduced for story reasons. Salkind also denied the reports about Gene Hackman being upset with him, stating that Hackman was unable to return because of other film commitments.
Fans of the Superman series also placed a great deal of the blame on director Richard Lester.[8] Richard Lester made a number of popular comedies[8] in the 1960s - including The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night - before being hired by the Salkinds in the 1970s for their successful Three Musketeers series, as well as Superman II. Lester broke tradition by setting the opening credits for Superman III during a prolonged slapstick sequence rather than in outer space. Superman III is commonly seen as more or less a goofy (albeit uneven) farce rather than a grand adventure picture like the first two movies.[8]
On Richard Lester's direction of Superman III, Christopher Reeve stated:
[He] was always looking for a gag - sometimes to the point where the gags involving Richard Pryor went over the top. I mean, I didn't think that his going off the top of a building, on skis with a pink tablecloth around his shoulders, was particularly funny.[12]
The film's screenplay, by David and Leslie Newman, was also criticized.[8] When Richard Donner was hired to direct the first two films, he found the Newmans' scripts so distasteful that he hired Tom Mankiewicz for heavy rewrites. Since Donner and Mankiewicz were no longer attached to the franchise, the Salkinds were finally able to bring their "vision" of Superman to the screen and once again hired the Newmans for writing duties.[11]
Despite such harsh criticisms, Superman III was praised for Reeve's performance of a corrupted version of the Man of Steel, particularly the junkyard battle between this newly-darkened Superman and Clark Kent.[7] One of the film's positive reviews was from the fiction writer Donald Barthelme, who praised Reeve as "perfect" and described Vaughn as "essentially playing William Buckley - all those delicious ponderings, popping of the eyes, licking of the corner of the mouth."[13]
As with the previous sequel, the musical score was composed and conducted by Ken Thorne, using the Superman theme and most other themes from the first film composed by John Williams, but this time around there is more original music by Thorne than the Williams re-arrangements. To capitalize on the popularity of synthesizer pop, Giorgio Moroder was hired to create songs for the film (though their use in the film is minimal).
A video game[14] for Superman III was planned for the Atari 5200[15] but was never released. The game (perhaps intended to be like Missile Command) would've been loosely based on the plotline for Superman III.
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