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Superman III

Superman III

List Price: $19.96
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Man of Steel Gets a Bit Rusty
Review: Poorly conceived and misguided second sequel to 1978's "Superman" aims towards campy comedy and misses. Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) returns to his hometown of Smallville for his high school reunion and is reunited with his childhood sweetheart Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). Meanwhile, an unlikely computer genius (Richard Pryor) is recruited by an unscrupulous industrialist (Robert Vaughn) to reprogram a weather satellite so that it can create disastrous weather that will effect commodity prices. When Superman foils their scheme, the bad guys try to synthesize kryptonite to destroy him, but they get the process wrong so it instead splits Superman's personality into good and evil halves.

The plot and tone of the film is reminiscent of some of the sillier "Superman" comic books of the 1950s and 60s. Reeve gives another good performance as Superman and Clark Kent, and even gets to stretch as an actor by playing a Man of Steel with a bad streak. As a love interest, O'Toole is a pleasing alternative to Margot Kidder's Lois Lane, who only has a cameo. But they cannot save this disappointing mess of a movie, which suffers from a miscast Pryor, the absence of a compelling story or villains, and too many jokes which are simply unfunny.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Superman movie saga hits new lows. HOWEVER...
Review: Although I thought 'Superman III' was kinda dumb, I also thought it had potential that was never realized. Sure, it featured many moments of goofy slapstick and more than a few stupid sight gags (e.g., the walk/don't walk signal fisticuffs). But it showcased a few great Superman gags and concepts, like freezing the surface of a lake & then lifting & dropping it on a raging chemical plant inferno. There were also the cutesy moments that were kinda cool in their own way, like Clark helping to improve the bowling score of his high-school crush's son. Then there were those truly bizarre & somewhat surreal moments, like the "bad" Superman splittin' into two personalities, then both of 'em dukin' it out in a junkyard. But topper to the list of the many pretty good ideas that were realized here is the fraction-of-a-cent computer program scam, which I believe was based on a real-life program! And, as most cult-flick geekoids are aware, this little high-tech scam would pop up again in the 9-to-5-world satire 'Office Space'!

Sadly, this potential was bogged down by quite a few not-so-great gags & concepts, as well as poor execution of some of the better ones. Who could forget the ridiculously overdone silliness of the opening credits sequence? Or the turned-evil Supes that commits such heinous acts of mischief as straightening out the Tower of Pisa and blowing out the Olympic torch? And let's not forget co-star Richard Pryor, whose presence in a flick usually was a kiss of death back when he was still relatively lucid. His familiar weirdly-stammerin'-whilst-scared-stiff routine doesn't do much to lift this Big Blue outing from the depths of cinematic mediocrity. And his character's change from a total slacker loser to a super-hacker in an instant kinda stretches the plausibility a bit too far, even for a superhero yarn!

Still, even with all these problems, I do somewhat enjoy viewing this flick on occasion, if for nothing more than the cheese factor. And besides, as bad as 'Superman III' is, it doesn't even come close to the horror of 'Supe IV'! So if you ever have a hankerin' for a dumb-yet-somewhat-entertaining superhero flick, the silliness and camp of this particular celluloid nightmare just might hit the spot!

'Late

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: not quite the worst
Review: This film didn't destroy yhte Superman mythos but its overreaching attempts at humor fairly made it a bad thing to be committed to celluloid. I am the Superman fan so it was a big deal for me and it needed to be a little more - lot more - sincere. The villains were comedians, the subplots were less than engaging, in fact the only good thing were the action sequences and Reeves' affable charm as the innocent Clark and the MoS. Pryor should not have mugged so much, the Producers should not have been so desperate to make a few bucks on the franchise that they would neglect their core constituency. I can only hope that the next attempt at Superman will remind us of the 1978 original and not anything after Superman 2...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Profound, horrifying
Review: I no longer have any opinion of this great masterpiece.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What On Earth Happened Here?
Review: Saying Superman 3 is a huge disappointment is a major understatement. This film will go down in history as one of the all time worst disappointments in film. The Salkinds obviously had no idea what to do with this movie. In the film, Robert Vaughan plays a criminal mastermind who hires computer specialist Richard Pryor to help him take control of the world and to stop Superman. As everybody has already said, what is the point of having Richard Pryor in this?. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't work. Robert Vaughan, however, is passable as the evil villain. Christopher Reeve, once again, does his usual bang up job as Superman and Clark Kent. He is the saving grace for this film. Margot Kidder, as Lois Lane, takes the backseat in this movie. Her role can almost be considered a cameo. How can the filmmakers take a classic character like Lois, and a classic couple like Lois And Clark, and do this to them?. What were they thinking?. Annette 'O' Toole(who now plays Clark's mom on the excellent new WB show "Smallville")plays Lana Lang here. She is very adequate in the role. The one great thing about this film is Superman turning evil. It was a great, and only, dynamic to this dud. The fight in the junkyard between Superman and Clark is priceless. A real gem. If only the rest of the fillm had that. It sadly doesn't. The end climax with the cyborg lady gave me nightmares when I was little. She scared me!!. Okay, enough of that. Well, this is a total mistake. It scarred the series. Superman IV would be better, but still not good enough to save this classic series. This one almost killed it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A MAJOR disappointment!
Review: After seeing the first two Superman movies (which were both really great), and then watching this one, you'll be surprised at how much the greatness and quality of Superman has dropped. Christopher Reeve does a good job as Superman (as always), but that's the highest point of this movie. Why did they take Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor away and replace him with a pair of mediocre so-called "villains"? And why, oh why did they focus the movie so much on comedian Richard Pryor, who does such a bad job as a computer whiz? The script is bad (no, terrible), the special effects are bad, and the final battle between Superman and Pryor's Super Computer has "stupid" and "boring" written all over it! The film relies far too much on comedy relief. Yes, the fantastic Superman theme is there, but who cares?! This is one, put in my Movie Guide terms, big turkey! But if you're a Superman fan, like I am, then you might want to watch it, just because it's Superman and all.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: If failure had a name it would be Superman 3
Review: First off what is the deal with Richard Pryor, anyway. Second it has to be the dumbest ending i've ever seen, with the EVIL COMPUTER and THE CYBORG LADY. What is with that. Finally, the special effects were bad and so was the music.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: one of the worst follow-ups ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I love the first two films, & was thinking about this one, unfortunately I had not seen it since its release 18 years ago, so I rented it & boy, am I glad I did not buy it!!, this is the worst follow-up of them all, it has absolutely nooooooo connection to the other two before it, why Christopher Reeve, as smart as he is, agreed to this mess is beyond me, as a stated on my review of "Superman II" the Salkinds fired Richard Donner, the director of the first film, & director of a majority of the second,BIG!!!!!!! MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!, It is perfectly obvious that Donner's presence is missing, the Salkinds completely mocked those films with this turkey,although Richard Pryor was funny somewhat, he just seems out of place, I can't see how the Salkinds were ever producers to start with, as one reviewer stated "their intention was to make superman a mindless comedy" this is so sad to see, when I rented it, I figured it might have some redemming quality, boy was I wrong!! Christopher Reeve is the only thing that makes this film worth watching, & I mean the only thing!!! it is so campy at the end, you want to laugh out loud, Warner Bros. should have fired the Salkinds, maybe they did, I was fortunate enough to catch "Superman IV" on T.V. recently and found it to be surprisingly better than III, Christoher Reeve had input on that one, & it seems he tried desperately to recapture the magic of Donner, Gene Hackman returned for that one, which leads one to believe that the Salkinds were fired, because rumor has it that Hackman could not stand the Salkinds, his scenes in part II were shot by Donner,I highly recommend that you skip "Superman III" & jump to "IV" although "IV" is not perfect, it is 10 times better than this sorry excuse for a movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Reeve's is only one that holds movie
Review: Christopher Reeve is the only thing that's good about the movie.
Everything else is a flop.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Forget kryptonite, you can kill Superman with a bad movie!
Review: Not long ago, I wrote my ideas as to what SUPERMANs III and IV should have been for Superman Cinema's fan-fic section. My version of SUPERMAN III picked up where the last film left off, with the relationship between Lois and Clark/Superman dead and gone. In it, Lana Lang returns to rekindle her relationship with Clark while a pair of insane government scientists mass-produce Bizarros for use as a disposable army. Spurned on the basis that such an army would violate human rights, the scientists use the Bizarros to wreak havoc upon Washington and end up in direct conflict with Superman.

Why am I telling you this? Because what I came up with was way better than the actual SUPERMAN III. It's no secret that the Salkinds originally intended the SUPERMAN films to be camp comedies, a plan that Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz undid when they made SUPERMAN as a dramatic film. Even though both men had been fired from SUPERMAN II after filming 80% of the picture and replaced by Richard Lester and the Newmans (who rewrote and reshot much of the final film, and are the "masterminds" behind III), enough of Donner and Mankiewicz's influence was stamped into the film to keep it from being totally screwed up. With SUPERMAN III, Donner and Mankiewicz's influence is completely absent, and we finally see what the Salkinds intended the SUPERMAN series to be all along. And what we get is a campy, dumb, and unfunny insult to the mythos. Not even the superb FX work, a good rescue scene at a chemical plant, and Robert Paynter's comic book-panel photography can make this film feel like genuine Superman.

It's not the idea of having Richard Pryor in a Superman film that makes this film bad, or using Lana Lang. It's not even the idea of using new villains. What makes this film bad is the sheer carelessness and idiocy of it all. For a film that revolves around computers as a menace, the villain should have been Brainiac, the genocidal AI of the comic books. Instead we get Robert Vaughn and Annie Ross as greedy tycoons who sucker a computer wiz into helping them corner the commodities market. Not very exciting. Instead of giving Pryor a meaty, serious role that would have tested him as an actor and have fit into the tone of the Superman mythos, we get Pryor as Gus Gorman doing standard Pryor shtick and not being funny at all. Instead of Lana Lang having some zest and excitement to her, we get a very bland and dull character played by a very boring Annette O'Toole. It also doesn't help that Pamela Stephenson's Lorelai character is beyond annoying, that none of the plot threads are remotely satisfying, that Superman is now a bit player in his own movie, that Ken Thorne's abysmal and boring score continues to reduce John Williams' powerful fanfares to shrill and campy disgraces, that Richard Lester's disdain for Superman shows in his indifferent direction, and that the acting is all-around awful. Even when Superman ISN'T evil (and the "Superman goes evil and fights himself" scene is the lowest point in the film), Christopher Reeve comes off as smarmy and insincere. And let's not forget the horrible slapstick gags, which are totally out of place here. And why does Metropolis have such a strongly British feel to it in the opening sequence? Shouldn't it be more American?

I can't say that this is as low as the SUPERMAN films can sink; the upcoming SUPERMAN LIVES promises to be even worse. But of the Christopher Reeve cycle, this is by far the worst of the four. To those who assert that this film is truer to the comic books than the first two, I beg to differ. The first two films are kin to the best Superman comic stories. III is kin to the absolute worst.


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