Superman's Dad Returns

Movies are almost always better when the credits are saved until the end. I know the Hollywood unions frown upon such things, but it always makes the movie seem more real to me. It helps keep that suspension of disbelief.

There's one exception, however.

I can watch the "Superman" opening credits -- swooshing through space with that understated little sound effect -- all the way through in rapt attention as John Williams' epic music blares. I even get psyched at watching the names of "casting director" or "chief principle photographer" or whatever all those people are called.

And even moreso now that justice has finally been served after 30 or so years.

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When I watched "Superman II" as a child, I didn't really notice much difference. The first one was better, but the second one rocked ass, too. Those three villains with that freaky-looking General Zod and Superman getting his cookies stolen from him in the diner and Lois finally realizing Clark Kent is Superman ... all the stuff of childhood legend.

And then I really didn't watch it for another 25 years. Until my sons got old enough to watch them.

As an adult, I watched "Superman II" and something seemed a little off. The first one had that depth, an epic mythology with a real sense of internal struggle that made Superman as human as an alien from another planet could be.

What was great about the first one was that it was able to explore that depth but still be a movie that children of my generation loved. And this is something that Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns" completely got.

But "Superman II" seemed to be missing something. A good portion of it very much resembled the first. Other parts seemed to be out of place. There was a shallowness to it, with some of the stupid gags and the tinny opening music -- without the swooshing opening credits!

And only recently, by chance, did I finally learn why it never felt completely right.

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Director Richard Donner filmed "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman II" simultaneously in 1977 and 1978. As he fell behind deadlines for release, he obliged the producers -- father and son Alexander and Illya Salkind -- to suspend filming "Superman II" and finish the first film, with intentions to finish the second.

"Superman: The Movie" was an enormous success. Christopher Reeve, of course, is our vision of Superman. He and Margot Kidder had that epic Clark and Lois chemistry. Gene Hackman rendered Lex Luthor both as villain and comic relief with precision. And Marlon Brando as Superman's dad ... classic.

It's still one of the more majestic sounds to my ears to hear Brando saying the name Kal-El and exuding that larger-than-life pre-eminence. Just his voice was a character, speaking to his son, whether on Kal-El's boyhood journey from Krypton to Earth or giving counsel to Superman as he struggled to find his place as a god among men.

So, we would think that in "Superman II" when a son seeks guidance on how to reconcile being with the woman he loves and being a savior to an entire planet that we at least hear Marlon Brando's voice once again. Instead, it was Superman's mother.

Seems strange for a story about the relationship between father and son (and kind of hard to exclude the father when you're really, really pushing for that savior-endowed-from-the-heavens theme we're so familiar with).

That absence is at the center of why "Superman II" doesn't feel quite right -- in more ways that simple plot devices.

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When it came time to finish "Superman II," Donner only had, at most, about a third of the movie to finish. Everything else had been filmed, including Brando's scenes.

But in a colossal display of greed, the Salkind producers refused to pay Brando a portion of the gross receipts from "Superman II" for the use of his character. "Superman: The Movie" had been wildly successful, and the payout to Brando for the sequel would have been substantial.

So, they instructed Donner to remove him from the sequel. Donner refused and left the second film on bitter terms. Hackman left. Reeve and other members of the cast, who were extremely fond of Donner, felt betrayed.

A new director, Richard Lester, took the reins -- and for whatever reason decided to re-shoot a little more than half the film.

This is how "Superman II" became less the movie it should have been.

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In interviews, Lester expressed that he wasn't particularly fond of the whole superhero thing. He wasn't fond of Donner's more-introspective and heady explorations into the Superman mythos. He was more fond of a campy perspective (the exact kind that Donner said he was committed to avoiding). He even ridicules the efforts to take Superman seriously.

So, we see a "Superman II" that is incongruous with the spirit of the first. One that takes the cheap road to laughs, foregoing the sophisticated for the banal.

An example:

In Donner footage (which actually appeared in the original), we see Lex Luthor and his mistress, Ms. Tessmacher, flying away in a hot-air balloon after a prison escape.

"Why am I here?" Ms. Tessmacher says. "What am i doing here?"
Lex Luthor retorts: "Ms. Tessmacher, is this a philosophy seminar? No, it's a getaway."

I didn't get that when I was a kid, but I didn't care, either. Now, I get it, and I do care.

Donner was methodical in filming, looking at a scene from various angles and working to find just the right one. Lester filmed with multiple cameras at once, kind of like how TV sitcoms are filmed.

The difference shows.

By re-shooting much of the film and having more than half of the footage credited to him, Lester was able to claim directorial credit for "Superman II" (Donner refused to have his name associated with it). Is that why he re-shot so much of it? Maybe, maybe not.

But now, it really doesn't matter.

Why?

Because of this:



That's right. "Superman II" the way it was meant to be seen -- or at least as close as it was meant to be seen.

As much as half of the film features material filmed by Donner that we've never seen, and more than half of Lester's footage has been axed (some of it had to be kept to fill in the blanks where Donner couldn't).

There's the new (and more inventive) way that Lois Lane tests Clark Kent to prove he's Superman, and there's the new (and more sophisticated) way that she finally learns that he is.

It's unprecendented to be able to see what is virtually an entirely different movie than what was filmed three decades ago. When public pressure built, editors went into the vaults and found the old footage and began the painstaking process of sorting it all out.

Everything that I thought was dumb about "Superman II" (well, almost everything) is gone now. The stupid cellophane "S" symbol he threw. The teleportation. The stupid guy talking on the phone even though the villains have blown it over. Superman telling the president he'll never let him down again (as if he somehow did).

Then there are the big changes.

The swooshing opening credits are restored to what they should be, what they are in "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman Returns."

We see, finally, Marlon Brando's name. And when Directed by Richard Donner appears, it does so with a distinctive and surely deliberately extra crescendo of the opening theme.

That is satisfying enough, but nothing more than the 15 minutes or so of restored footage where we see Jor-El having the conversation with his son about the path he has chosen. We see Superman being rebellious and rash. We see Jor-El pontificate about the higher calling he sees for his son, with overt allusions to a life of celebacy akin to a high priest.

We see him cut his eyes toward Lois in contempt as Superman gives up his powers. And we see him reappear to give his son his powers back, but at the expense of never being able to speak to him again.

These precious minutes are what express the essence of the Superman ethos.

So are the moments between Clark and Lois. There's more tenderness there and more tension -- and therefore, humor and genuine warmness.

In the scene where Lois learns Superman's identity -- she shoots Clark with a blank and he takes his glasses off and tells her she could have been wrong and he could have died -- the two actors aren't actually acting together.

Donner never filmed the scene, but the scene was so important to the film that it was the screen test for both Kidder and Reeve. The editor for the new version, Michael Thau, spliced them together.

They look different, younger. Reeve is more assertive with the Clark character than he turned out to be later in the films. The interaction between the two is a little out-of-synch with the rest of the movie, but it feels so right.

The movie isn't perfect. It cuts abruptly here and there, although I actually like it because it seems to be paced faster. Probably the biggest flaw is in the ending. To make Lois forget that Clark is Superman, he does that thing again where he spins the world backward to reverse time.

It was implausible enough the first time, but we could let it slide and suspend disbelief in context of the emotion involved when he did it the first time. The interesting thing is that the world-turning-backwards thing was always meant to be the end of "Superman II."

The only reason it was used in the first movie is because, after focusing all effort on finishing the first one, they had to quickly come up with an ending. They figured they would come up with a different ending for "Superman II" when they got back to finishing it.

All in all, it's a pretty epic, air-guitar kind of moment for a geek like me. And I know I'm a geek, because I thought about the Nov. 28 DVD release every day since I found out in August that it was happening.

I know one thing: I have no plans on ever watching the original "Superman II" again.