A Review of "Superman III"

"Chris, I know you love method acting--but flying me forty miles from the set just to
help me pick up my pizza is a tad overdoing it!"

After the triumphant ending to the theatrical release of Superman II, that is Richard Lester's Superman II, the end credits open by telling us "Coming Soon, Superman III". So basically, they were like "You want more of this? Well we won't give you more of this, but we'll give you a big old punch in the nuts and call it Superman III." Superman III is bad. Very bad. It's such a farce and a lame-brained attempt to cash-in on the comedic prowess of legendary actor and comedian Richard Pryor that you even wonder what fucking Superman himself is even doing in the movie. This movie started out as a stand-up routine by Richard Pryor called "SuperN*gger" where he acts out a bank robbery thwarted by an African-American Superman from the ghettos of America's slums. When asked what provoked such a routine, Pryor jokingly said that he always wanted to be in a Superman movie. I repeat... he jokingly said that. Well, Ilya Salkind was such a numbnuts that he took it seriously and saw an opportunity to not only cash in on Pryor's fame but to keep his superhero franchise alive...and for all intents and purposes, Superman III sucks ass. Christopher Reeve even was so humiliated by the outcome that vowed to never play Superman again, but we ALL KNOW WHERE THAT WENT HAHAHAHAHA. So let's dive into this shit heap and figure out why we went from Richard Donner's epic masterpiece to... I don't know, whatever the fuck this is.

No, I didn't pull this from another Richard
Pryor movie. This is from Superman III.

Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor), a chronically unemployed ne'er do well, discovers a talent for computer programming, and is hired at the Metropolis-based conglomerate Webscoe. Gus embezzles from his employer through salami slicing, that is taking fractions of a cent that the computer rounds off in electronic transactions and stores them in a bank account. The same plot device used in Office Space, because as they said in Office Space,"...it's just like Superman III". The embezzlement brings him to the attention of CEO Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn). Webster is intrigued by Gus's potential to help him rule the world financially. Joined by sister Vera (Annie Ross) and "psychic nutritionist" Lorelei Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), Ross blackmails Gus into helping him. So you're probably wondering "What the hell does any of this have to do with Superman?" Well it doesn't. But hey, Superman's in here somewhere. Stick around.

Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) convinces his Daily Planet boss, Perry White (Jackie Cooper), to let him return to Smallville for his high-school reunion. En route, as Superman, he extinguishes a fire in a chemical plant containing unstable Beltric acid, which produces corrosive vapor when superheated. The fire at the chemical plant is actually pretty decent and a fun sequence. You wonder why the whole movie couldn't be like this. At the reunion, Clark is reunited with childhood friend Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole), a divorcée with a young son named Ricky, and harassed by Brad Wilson (Gavan O'Herlihy), her ex-boyfriend. So you're probably wondering "what does this high school reunion shtick has to do with Superman?" Well, it doesn't. Back aboard the boredom express, Ross is infuriated by Colombia's refusal to do business with him, so he orders Gus to command Vulcan, an American weather satellite, to create a tornado to destroy Colombia's coffee crop for the next several years. Yeah... you read that right. Your vision is working just fine. Gus then travels to Smallville to use the offices of WheatKing, a subsidiary of Webscoe, to reprogram the satellite. Though Vulcan creates a devastating storm, Ross's scheme is thwarted when Superman (of all people) neutralizes it, saving the harvest. Superman in a Superman movie? Get fucked! Ross orders Gus to use his computer knowledge to create Kryptonite, remembering Lois Lane's Daily Planet interview with Superman from the first movie... even though there was absolutely no fucking mention of Kryptonite in that interview. Good God, did the producers even watch the first Superman movie? Gus uses Vulcan to locate, scan, and analyze Krypton's debris. He discovers that one of the elements of Kryptonite is an "unknown" compound, and substitutes tar.

"Lana, I've been nervous to say this but... will
you go to the prom with me?"
"Clark, we're in our mid 30s--"

Meanwhile, on this week's episode of fucking Dawson's Creek, Lana convinces Superman to appear at Ricky's birthday party, but Smallville turns it into a town celebration. Superman, a man known for stopping runaway missiles and thwarting Kryptonian villains just as strong as he is, now makes public appearances at children's birthday parties. I'm getting a very "Batman & Robin" vibe from this crap. Gus and Vera, disguised as Army officers, show up and give Superman the Kryptonite, though it appears ineffective. Superman soon becomes selfish, focusing on his lust for Lana, causing him to delay rescuing a truck driver from a jackknifed rig hanging from a bridge. Superman becomes depressed, upset, and casually destructive, committing petty acts of vandalism, such as blowing out the Olympic Flame, and straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's basically the effects of the Red Kryptonite in the comic books, but it's still green so...go figure. Also, these aren't really acts of vandalism...he's kind of just being an asshole. It's almost hilarious.

A proverbial shot of the post-movie reaction: Christopher Reeve
beating himself up for being in such a pile of pigshit.

Gus, feeling used, gives Ross crude plans for a supercomputer he's designed and Ross agrees to build it in return for Gus creating an oil embargo by directing all oil tankers to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean until further notice. When the captain of one tanker insists on maintaining his original course, Ross has Lorelei seduce Superman into waylaying the tanker and breaching the hull, causing a massive oil spill. The villains decamp to the computer's location in Glen Canyon. Sigh... what is even happening in this movie? Could we get another hilarious moment? Sure, let's just watch Superman go on a drinking binge, become overcome by guilt, and suffer a nervous breakdown. That's...funny? Well, he lands in a junkyard where he splits into two personas: the immoral, corrupted Superman and the moral, righteous Clark Kent. How? Why? Who fucking cares. They don't explain it. It just happens, like a magical take on cellular mitosis. They engage in a pretty semi-decent battle, ending when Clark strangles his evil identity and kills him. Restored to his normal self, Superman repairs the damage his counterpart caused. I don't know how we'll get this derailed plot back on course, but goddammit we're going to try. 

After defending himself from rockets and an MX missile launched by Ross and his cronies, Superman confronts them in the cave where Gus's supercomputer identifies him as a threat and attempts to determine his weakness, unleashing a beam of pure Kryptonite. Guilt-ridden and horrified by the prospect of "going down in history as the man who killed Superman", Gus destroys the Kryptonite ray with a firefighter's axe, whereupon Superman flees. The computer becomes self-aware, much like Skynet but 1000% less badass, defending itself against Gus's attempts to disable it. Ross and Lorelei escape the control room, but Vera is transformed into a cyborg. What the fuck is going on here? Vera attacks her brother and Lorelei with beams of energy that immobilize them. No seriously, what the fuck is going on here? Superman returns with a canister of the Beltric acid from the Smallville chemical plan from earlier. Superman places the canister by the supercomputer, which does not resist as it suspects no danger. The intense heat emitted by the supercomputer causes the acid to turn volatile, destroying the supercomputer.

Our villains: Hughie, Dewey and Louie.

Superman flies away with Gus, leaving Ross and his cronies to the authorities, and drops Gus off at a West Virginia coal mine, where Superman recommends him to the company as a computer programmer. Afterwards, Superman returns to Metropolis. As Clark, he pays a visit to Lana, who has found employment as Perry White's new secretary. He is attacked by Brad, who has stalked Lana to Metropolis, only to end up falling into a room service cart. He restores the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the film ends with Superman flying into the sunrise for further adventures... which we'd hoped we'd never get, but hey, life's a bitch. Get used to disappointment. 

Superman III is an unequivocal pile of garbage. It's action scenes are cheesy, hokey, lame and not really all that awe-inspiring. It's comedic scenes are complete duds, they go nowhere and they do nothing. It's established characters are laughably misused and its new characters are annoying, spotlight-stealing lunatics who have no clue what century they're in or how to behave in this kind of universe. Margot Kidder is in the movie a grand total of five minutes. LOIS LANE ISN'T EVEN IN THE MOVIE FOR FIVE MINUTES. She was so disgusted by Richard Donner's firing during Superman II and so outraged at the laughable script for III that the producers just wrote her out of the movie and wrote Lana Lang a bigger part. Superman literally plays second-fiddle in his own movie to a bumbling, nervous, comedic sidekick in Richard Pryor. If they wanted to drive the nail into the Super-coffin and kill the shit out of this franchise, they couldn't have done any better. It's embarrassing. They don't even open with a triumphant space title sequence anymore; Superman III opens with a series of slapstick gags occurring in Metropolis on a typical weekday morning. I shit you not. God, it's ridiculous that they chased Christopher Reeve out of the franchise out of sheer embarrassment by being included in such a thing. It's like if director Richard Lester was handed the cockpit pilot seat of a 747 and then just crashed it straight into a mountain because he thought it'd be hilarious. Fuck this movie. 

...but just when you thought Superman III was the worst, it gets even worse than that...

Stay tuned.