Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Terrence Stamp
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: I’ve taken my fair share of potshots at Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) but I legitimately think the framework for this long-lost director’s cut of a DC superhero movie would have been a better outcome for that more recent situation. Out of necessity (decades passing, and a number of the key players passing away), the cut is cobbled together from the material already available. Some sequences key sequences are built from rough footage and screen tests. Had they just released the disparate footage that Zack Snyder had shot—and not shot a lot of extraneous nonsense with Martian Manhunter.
Does that cobbled together quality detract from the experience? Does it somehow make the more polished theatrical cut of the film a better film?
The answer is a resounding no on both fronts. The rough edges only make the film more fascinating. That they were able to make a watchable film out of forgotten film canisters which were—at that point—thirty years old is something of a small miracle. The wobbliest example is the scene where Lois Lane (Kidder) finally proves that Clark Kent (Reeve) is the Man of Steel is actually taken from their final audition for the roles, and to hear Donner tell the tale, you can actually see the moment where Reeve earned himself the job and the definitive on-screen portrayal of the character was born. The fact that that moment is given some context, and isn’t just b-roll on a behind-the-scenes featurette is nearly reason enough for this new version of the film to exist.
And ultimately, I think this is the better version of the film pound for pound. The weird moment in the theatrical film where Superman throws what appears to be a cellophane version of his emblem at one of the villains (a moment so silly, I doubted it actually existed for a moment, and had to google to confirm) is gone. Gone too is the super-kiss which wiped Lois’ memory and set everything back to zero. Those are already some fundamental improvements to an experience which was, admittedly, pretty good to begin with.
In it’s place is a re-setting of the “spinning time into reverse” trick, which works even less than it does in Superman (1978). Jackie Cooper’s toothpaste returning into its tube is a neat gag, but the only time when “everything that happened in the movie you just watched didn’t really happen” worked, it was The Wizard of Oz (1939). Maybe Inception (2010). It’s clear that Donner and company never really had their ending worked out, and all the sudden influx of cash from Warner Bros. after the fact wasn’t going to fix that.
Also, the story of Superman’s sacrifice of his powers in favor of his love for Lois doesn’t quite make sense. It’s improved with the restoration of recordings of Brando as Jor-El into the cut, as the weird bald Kryptonian bald guy in the theatrical cut and Superman’s mom never quite fit. The film is still never quite able to earn both the power of the sacrifice itself, and the speed with which it is reversed so Superman can propel himself into the third act, where he has to do final battle with General Zod (Stamp) and his cronies.
But both of those complaints are going to be present in some form of the theatrical cut, so I can’t really fault this film when it improves somethings, if it never quite fixes some other insurmountable things.