The New Superman II

In one of the odder, but also most intriguing, moves surrounding Superman movies, a new version of Superman II is about to released on DVD. This is Richard Donner's cut of the film. Donner was the director of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film, and started off on the second one but was replaced by Richard Lester partway through, due to some weird maneuverings by its producer, Alexander Salkind. You can read screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz's accounting of it but suffice to say that Salkind was responsible for bringing Lester in, and Lester brought in some of the sillier aspects of the second film: wacky Kryptonian powers that came out of nowhere, like power beams from fingers and things like that. For a few years, as a teenager, I counted Superman II as my favourite movie of all time, largely because it showed what was, up to that point anyway, the most amazing fight sequence involving superbeings: Superman vs the three Phantom Zone villains in downtown Metropolis. Who can forget that bus being thrown around?

But as I grew older, the flaws and warts of the movie started to weigh on my mind more, and it slowly slipped right off my list of favourite movies. It's certainly been eclipsed in recent years, in terms of cinematic fight scenes, by a couple of Spider-Man movies, and possibly even by the X-Men franchise. Bryan Singer's recent Superman Returns failed to deliver in this regard, which is almost criminal considering the Man of Steel's position atop the superhero hierarchy.

And now there's a re-edited version of Superman II from Richard Donner, featuring scenes-from-the-cutting-room-floor, and a story that's closer to what Donner had wanted. Clearly I'm going to want to see this version, to judge for myself whether it's a drastic improvement or just a publicity stunt. I'm not sure if I want to buy it on spec, though, as it's probably the wrong message to send if it's not very good. The good news is that I don't have any of the Reeve movies already, so at least I wouldn't be ending up with two versions of a film that's lost much of its allure for me. The one review I've read of it by someone who got a preview copy was very positive, but how much of that was simply love for the original material?

It's great to have such interesting decisions, though. There's certainly never been a period like this before, in terms of popularity of comics and comic characters in the mainstream.