Superman III

Look at this movie poster for a little bit. Does that look like a serious action film? I don't think so. So it should be no surprise when I don't give this a very high score. In fact, I'll be giving this movie the lowest possible score. Superman III came out in 1983 and returned director Richard Lester, best known for working on the early Beatles films and nearly destroying Superman II. Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, and Jackie Cooper star in this film that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a comedy or an action film.

Richard Lester was very excited to get legendary comedian Richard Pryor on board, and decided to feature him a little too much for my liking. Before the opening credits and familiar Superman theme, the movie starts with Pryor complaining about unemployment in a completely non funny way. From there, we go into an extended slapstick gag scene complete with pies in faces and a man with a bucket stuck on his head. In the first Superman movie, we saw a Metropolis that needed a Superman because of the rampant crime in broad daylight. In this one, we see a Metropolis that needs protection from its own idiocy. The entire city was almost destroyed because a pretty lady walked down the street! It really took about two minutes before it actually started to a resemble a Superman film. If I was watching this movie in the theater in 1983, I probably would have wondered if I was in the right movie. "Is this theater 4? I'm sure she said it was to my left ... oh, here's the title. I guess this really is Superman."

Speaking of Richard Pryor, he was painfully unfunny. Maybe his humor was better in 1983, but today, I only found his antics annoying and anything but humorous. His character also didn't make much sense. He's an unemployed unskilled bum for 36 weeks straight who happens to discover he's good at computers. Well, that's one thing, but he was making computers do impossible things and he didn't even know how he was doing what he doing. He then works with the bad guys and tries to kill Superman, but at the end he quickly and randomly changes his mind, and all is forgiven because he's the sweet, lovable comic relief. I really think Richard Lester should have done a non-Superman movie with Richard Pryor playing basically the same character. It would have made a fair comedy and everyone would have been happier. Instead, we ended up with a movie that isn't a good comedy or a good superhero movie.

Superman's first main bit of action was saving a burning chemical plant on his way to Smallville. This was a rather lame scene filled with a lot of bad acting and the resolution of Superman freezing a big chunk of a nearby lake to carry over to the fire, which would turn into ran and extinguish the flames. If he could freeze the lake, why couldn't he put out the fire with his super breath? That would have been a lot easier.

I did like the idea of Superman returning to Smallville and meeting Lana Lang, who is one of the staple characters of the Superman mythos, but I was kind of sad with how they treated Lana. She wasn't bad or anything, she was just a carbon copy of Lois Lane. Of course, this happened because Margot Kidder, upset with how Superman II turned out, didn't want to be in Superman III. The producers eventually convinced her to make a brief cameo at the beginning and the end, leaving themselves with the task of hastily finding a new love interest for Superman. Instead of taking the time to create a distinct character, they made a Smallville version of Lois. The way Lana talked really fast to Clark while doing a million things and not looking at him was straight from Lois. I wouldn't take a point off for this, but it doesn't matter — I have and will continue to take off way too many points from this poor movie.

Similar to Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman right out refused to be in this movie and couldn't be persuaded otherwise. So that left the producers with another gaping hole, which they hastily filled with Ross Webster, a near-perfect Lex Luthor clone. Except this time, his cute girlfriend is secretly smart, and bumbling Otis has been replaced with Ross' shrewd and ugly sister, Vera, who makes her appearance with the awful line, "Pay attention, I'm about to take a human life!" Seriously, why did the villain have to Luthor or Luthor-ish? Didn't Richard Lester know that Superman actually has a lot of interesting villains to choose from? Oh, that's right. He didn't.

Lester made another goof when he had Clark Kent help out Lana's boy at the bowling alley. He "sneezed" and caused the bowling ball to explode and shattered all the pins. Superman wouldn't do that! Yes, he would help little Ricky, but he wouldn't make a big scene out of it and destroy everything. Just give the ball a gentle nudge — no need to break anything. Also, what is that kid going to think the next time he bowls and can't destroy all the pins?

In one of the more important scenes of the movie, Richard Pryor creates an incomplete Kryptonite (because that was apparently easier than finding the real thing) and presents it to Superman with a long-winded speech that I suppose was intended to be funny. Maybe for little kids. Anyway, this fake Kryptonite looks exactly like real Kryptonite. Why would Superman allow anyone to hand him anything that was green and glowing? He should have said, "Sorry, general, but that green rock actually is toxic to me. While I appreciate the gesture, I'm afraid I cannot accept your gift." Then we would have had a much shorter movie, which probably would have been a good thing.

So the fake Kryptonite didn't hurt Superman, but it did turn him evil, which is actually a really good idea. However, Evil Superman didn't really do anything evil. Let's see ... he pushed the Leaning Tower of Pisa upright. Monster! He blew out the Olympic flame. Barbaric! Then he ... uh ... broke some mirrors. Heathen! And then, Superman himself committed the worst sin imaginable to mankind. He created an oil spill! NOO!! We're all doomed! This is definitely worse than Luthor's nuclear missiles or General Zod conquering the White House!

But the Evil Superman did have one good moment. When annoying little Ricky called out to him in innocence, that triggered the good in Superman to come out in the form of Clark Kent to battle Evil Superman. Christopher Reeve did an excellent job of playing two completely opposite personalities of the psychological fight between the two egos. One representing power and greed, the other humanity and morality. Although this is the best part of the movie, it kind of hurts it in the same way the tender scenes with Alfred hurt Batman & Robin. Without this intense and deep scene, you probably could have written Superman III off as a comedic spoof. But since it's in, then this movie can't be a comedy and is really just a lame action movie. So sad.

At the end, the bad guys set up a super vague super computer that can defend itself against anything, apparently. The evil plan here is to lure Superman out to the computer and use its defenses to destroy him. But for some reason, they decided to take the time to design the defenses to look exactly like a Nintendo game, complete with high scores and game overs. The game, by the way, made no sense because Webster would randomly get score from 100 to 500 for exploding missiles that didn't even hit Superman. Seriously, what was the point of that?

Oh, and did I mention that the super computer was stupid? After randomly turning good, Richard Pryor tried to destroy his creation, but couldn't because "it wanted to live." Then, in a rather disturbing scene, the computer randomly decided to turn Vera into a robot. Luckily, Superman was able to outsmart the smartest and most powerful computer in the world, which apparently didn't know anything about the jar of acid he had. They probably could have done a fair job with Brainiac, instead they kept things safe with the formula they knew, but wasn't necessarily good.

Technically, this movie would get a negative 3, but my official score will be a little more merciful. The moral of the story is: While some humor is good for Superman, too much is deadlier than Kryptonite.

Final score: 0