Superman

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: December 15, 1978

8.0	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 411 Ratings

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PeterJDec 23, 2008

DON'T BELIEVE THE 88 RATING. This is a pretty bad movie. The pacing is horrible, not nearly 2 and 1/2 hours of material, and the special effects aged poorly. One wonders how esteemed critics could have been bamboozled by such tripe. The DON'T BELIEVE THE 88 RATING. This is a pretty bad movie. The pacing is horrible, not nearly 2 and 1/2 hours of material, and the special effects aged poorly. One wonders how esteemed critics could have been bamboozled by such tripe. The sound track and opening sequence are ripped off Star Wars, which is funny but sad. The acting is ok later on: two good scenes with comic relief between Clark and Lois, but the script is otherwise cheesy, (including Lois's in-flight mental poetics: "I'm flying so high/ Up in the sky") and Lex Luthor's insufferable whining. The action sequences are fraught with holes and fail to arouse even the barest tendrils of excitement. The only reason to watch this movie is for historical purposes to see how the film version of Superman began. And if you're a big Christopher Reeve fan (though the red panties didn't age well either...) Otherwise, a waste of time.… Expand

0 of 7 users found this helpful

DamonC.Jan 28, 2008

The problem with this movie is that it goes too far with Superman's powers. And whenever he fights a bad guy, he always wins. Its like he's undestructable and invincible. And director Richard Donner cheesily art directs this movie, The problem with this movie is that it goes too far with Superman's powers. And whenever he fights a bad guy, he always wins. Its like he's undestructable and invincible. And director Richard Donner cheesily art directs this movie, with a horrible style, unengaging fashion, and a dull, dudfull life. Superman would have been better if it weren't cheesy, frick'n overrated, and better acting. Its so corny, Richard Donner presents a getting far overaged, and has easily lost its high standards it once had. The affects are terrible, everything sucks. The kryptonyte stuff, the nudity (which in the beginning shows an 8 year-old kid butt-naked, showing absolutely everything, and some parts we don't want to see), its nudity like never before, but a bit too much. The planet Krypton stuff, the 7 crystal things, the ghost of his father, led being a weakness. There are so many stupid ideas. Just to settle the reviews, I personally think this is a simply forgettable bore. Snd a huge disappointing letdown.… Expand

0 of 3 users found this helpful

gzayas91Jun 21, 2017

This is a different kind of movie, is not a classic to me nor better than Man of Steel. It looks like an expensive tv movie. The cast and acting are fine, but none of them are great, except Marlon Brando. I like John William's music. This isThis is a different kind of movie, is not a classic to me nor better than Man of Steel. It looks like an expensive tv movie. The cast and acting are fine, but none of them are great, except Marlon Brando. I like John William's music. This is to me mediocre.… Expand

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MovieNightMar 6, 2016

Comic strips in newspapers or magazines have often been used as the bases of films, but never on such a big scale as in Richard Donner’s Superman – the Movie. The scenes look as if no money has been spared on them, nor ingenuity, for thatComic strips in newspapers or magazines have often been used as the bases of films, but never on such a big scale as in Richard Donner’s Superman – the Movie. The scenes look as if no money has been spared on them, nor ingenuity, for that matter – both very desirable in an elaborate fantasy lasting over two and a quarter hours.

For those who know Jerry Siegel’s and Joe Shuster’s comic strip, which has been running since the ‘30s, no introduction to their hero will be needed. Others will be glad of the opening sequence, which is a prologue showing how Superman came to be launched towards Earth from the planet Krypton.
Marlon Brando, the only well-informed member of Krypton’s council, ruling from a cast concrete capital in a landscape of ice, predicts the planet’s destruction within 30 days.

When this is not heeded by such experienced colleagues on the council as Trevor Howard or Harry Andrews, he and his wife (Susannah York) decide to launch their baby son earthwards in a spacecraft that looks more beautiful than practical – like a starfish in pale pink ice.

Krypton duly blowing up is suitably spectacular; and when, after a long journey, the baby arrives, he’s a little boy capable of holding up car with one hand when the wheel-jack fails. The middle-aged childless American couple with the car who pick him up in a field naturally adopt him, and by the time he’s in his late teens he’s kicking footballs over the horizon and outrunning fast trains, such are his powers.
Only these feats are not, evidently, what he’s here for; and he is summoned northwards to hear words of wisdom nobly delivered, from a reincarnated Mr Brando, speaking from a lovely crystalline building that recalls Ibsen’s Temple of Ice.
His next appearance is in what looks like New York but is called Metropolis, to work, of all places, as a reporter on a newspaper. It’s called, most appropriately, the Daily Planet, with Jacki Cooper as a nice old-fashioned news editor and Margot Kidder as pretty little Lois, the “ace” reporter.
Dressed in a dark city suit and wearing horn-rimmed specs, Superman seems frightfully shy and square; but this is only a disguise, and he has just to put on a red cloak and boots to become another being who can fly through the air – well, rather too much like Batman, who also came from a comic strip, I often found myself thinking.

It seems he is here “to fight for truth and justice in the American way,” which brings him into conflict with one, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). He describes himself as the best criminal brain of his time, working from luxurious headquarters with a pretty secretary (Valerie Perrine) and a silly side-kick (Ned Beatty).
When it eventually gets to the Planet that someone is actually flying around at night, obstructing criminal activities, the news editor naturally puts Lois on to the job; and it is to her, for romantic reasons, that Superman first displays himself in a rather charming and also funny scene, for he has X-ray eyes, and while he can assure her that her lungs are not suffering from smoking, he can also tell her the colour of her underwear.

A subsequent scene when he saves her from a crashing helicopter is good cliff-hanger stuff which ends romantically when they seem to be waltzing away together through the night sky, and one is only sorry when he has to turn to more serious business, such as substituting for an airliner’s dud engine.
These feats, and the actual flying, are arranged by the special effects department with equal gracefulness and naturalness, and superbly photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth; so the film picturesquely and gradually winds up towards the great confrontation and battle of wits between our hero and Luthor, who intends to use a doctored nuclear missile to destroy the whole of California – it’s just part of a deal in real estate.

What with bridges going down, dams bursting and cars piling up on motorways following some big explosion, the film seems for a time to become mere destruction drama, but happily the lighter touch is eventually restored with Superman’s arrival in the nick of time, to save his Lois and civilisation.
All this makes a highly entertaining, though undemanding mixture, of sci-fi, romance and comedy, which could hardly have come off at all at any lower artistic level, nor without such a happy choice for the central part as Christopher Reeve. He manages the two sides of the character, the super and the shy, wonderfully well by bringing to both just the slightest suggestion of burlesque, as if, in fact, he was inwardly enjoying rather a good little joke.… Expand

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