Gene Hackman's death was announced the other day, and I mentioned that I had his appearance in the 1978 film Superman: The Movie on my DVR. So I decided to watch it and schedule it now and move some other stuff around to be able to do a review on it.
An opening establishing sequence mentions how the Superman comic book character was created in 1938, and that first issue apparently told the story of how Superman, real name Kal-El, was born on the planet Krypton a long time ago in a galaxy far away (wait, that's a different backstory). However, Krypton orbits a sun that's about to go nova, something that only scientist and prosecuting attorney Jor-El (Marlon Brando) is able to figure out. The rest of the Kryptonian elite don't want to panic the population. Jor-El also happens to be the father of infant Kal-El, so he creates a spaceship to send Kal-El to a distant planet which, as we all know, is Earth.
Kal-El's spaceship is perceived as a meteorite when it crashes into Earth near the town of Smallville, where Kal-El is found by Ma and Pa Kent (Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter) and given the name Clark. They realizes he's got superhuman strengh, but keep the secret for various reasons, right up until the day Pa dies of a heart attack. Clark realizes he has to go off on a quest to figure out what his true purpose for being on Earth is.
Clark's (now played by Christopher Reeve) journey of course takes him to Metropolis, and gets him a job at a cub reporter at the Daily Planet, which is where he meets Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). It's also where he starts performing superhero feats, like when the helicopter Lois is riding in suffers a fault that leaves hanging off the edge of the Planet building. Clark Kent turns into Superman and saves her as well as doing several other good deeds. All of this brings Superman to public attention while nobody is bright enough to put two and two together to figure that Kent and Superman are one and the same. Meanwhile, Lois, despite being a modern woman, has hormones, so of course she's attracted to this big strong guy who saved her.
Superman: The Movie has a listed running time of 143 minutes, and at this point we're already into the second half of the movie without even having reached what is putatively the main plot line of the movie. That would involve supervillain Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). Lex seems to have only one employee, bumbling Otis (Ned Beatty), as well as a girlfriend, Eve (Valerie Perrine), and lives in a secret lair 200 feet below Grand Centra Station. Lex also knows that one of the things you can't really make more of is land, so land is the key to wealth. And he plans to increase his wealth in a wacky way. You'll know from your geography classes how the San Andreas fault runs through California and how it's moving Los Angeles closer to San Francisco on a millions of years timescale. The thinking is that the part of California west of the fault is going to sink into the sea, so Lex has bought a ton of land to the east so that when the west sinks into the sea, his land will be seafront land worth zillions. Now he just needs to speed things up by exploding the San Andreas fault!
Like I said, it's ridiculous, but it's also the sort of fiendish plot that allows for all sorts of special effects; remember, the all-star disaster movie Earthquake had only come out a few years prior. Lois is out west trying to get a story on the corporation buying up all that land, while Lex has discovered somehow that kryptonite is a chemical that saps Superman's strength. Lex lures Superman to his lair, puts a chain of kryptonite around Superman's neck, and leaves before waiting for Superman to die. So as you can guess something is able to save Superman, and he's able to fly off and derail Luthor's devious plot.
A lot of people give Superman: The Movie very high marks, which I guess is because it's one of the movies that really made the idea of the big-budget superhero movie a viable thing. That, and its iconic John Williams score. However, I have to say that this is a movie where if you find yourself actually doing thinking you'll see how little of it really works. The buildup goes on way too long. Many of the characters are just way too stupid. Even by the standards of the 1970s, I didn't find the special effects very good. I don't know if TCM had a bad print, but a lot of the photography looks oversaturated. And Reeve's acting isn't very good here.
However, it you don't think much about what you're watching, it's easy to see why Superman: The Movie was such a box office hit. It's certainly extremely terribly entertaining despite its flaws. And there is that John Williams score. And Hackman looks like he's having a blast getting to go way over the top with the idea of the supervillain. So while Superman: The Movie has a lot of flaws, on the whole I think the entertainment value does outweigh those flaws, especially if you don't think too hard.
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