Even though Superman has never been the most complex or interesting of comic book characters, he is the most iconic. I'm still not sure why. Does it have to do with the amount of marketing his character's gone through over the years, his origin story's close resemblance to myths passed down throughout history, his identification with the "American Dream," and all that other stuff they tell you about in documentaries and books? I watched the Bryan Singer documentary on Superman, and you had various writers, filmmakers, actors, etc., discussing Superman's legacy, his representation of American values (freedom, idealism), the "immigrant" connection, his ties to other mythic figures, yada yada. Everyone in the documentary was saying how Superman isn't super because of his powers but because of what he represents. Yeah, I guess you could say that. But if you strip those powers of his he's pretty much like you and me (and this has happened countless times in the comics). Let's face it. We all want to be Superman or at least have one of his powers. I would really like to fly, personally.
Now I'm gonna sidetrack here, because I want to talk about something bothering me - Superman II. I watched it for the second or third time, and it's arguably the most frustrating of all the Superman movies. I'm not counting three and four, those were just bad movies. And Lois & Clark and Smallville... hate the latter, can't remember ever liking the former.
But Superman II had a good film in it somewhere. It even had the potential to be a great film, almost on par with the first. But it can't decide on what kind of movie it wants to be. You have a great love story between Lois and Clark, mixed with cheesy Sci-Fi, mixed with campy humor. The music in this picture would be better off in a Planet of the Apes movie, since it can't even come close to the John Williams score. There's an element of darkness in the second half, when Clark loses his powers and gets his ass handed to him by some trucker (a scene which I will return to later). But this makes the movie feel uneven. Like I said, there's a good movie in here, but they can't decide on what direction to take it in. At least Batman Forever and Batman & Robin were consistent in maintaining the campy-feeling of the 1960's TV show. But Superman II feels like it's heading in too many different directions, and that puzzles me because it seemed like a very straight-forward adventure movie at first.
There are good things about Superman II: the romance between Superman and Lois (and Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder in general), Gene Hackman hamming it up as Lex Luthor, Terrence Stamp as General Zod (although I would've cut the other two Kryptonians out completely). If they had made Zod a little less one-dimensional, man he would've been a much cooler villain. He does have some cool lines.
President: Dear, God.
General Zod: No. Zod!
And how can I forget the worst act of treason ever in the Superman franchise - the kiss of forgetfulness (couldn't come up with a better tag, sorry). Lois is upset that she can never "be" with Clark, so he kisses her and she somehow loses her memory, forgetting Clark is Superman and presumably everything else that happened in the movie. When and where did Superman get this "magic" power? And if it is magic, the producers should be ashamed because everyone knows Superman is just as vulnerable to magic as he is Kryptonite. And that's not the only power that comes out of nowhere. Somehow the other Kryptonians can shoot beams from their hands and lift people into the air with them. At least the rotation of the earth at the end of Superman I (though highly ridiculous) follows some sort of logic, since he is the fastest man alive, able to move mountains, etc... But kissing someone to erase their memory... C'mon!
Back to the trucker kicking Clark's ass. I rank that as the third most upsetting scene from a movie I watched as a kid, right behind the death of most of the Autobots and Optimus Prime in Transfomers: The Movie and the scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke has to fight that monster in Jabba the Hutt's lair and that guard that looks like a boar gets eaten alive.
Up up and away!