I just finished watching Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1980), neither of which I had ever seen before, and my reaction is essentially thus: damn that Christopher Reeve died.
I hadn't expected to like these movies so much. Granted that neither of them was the best story I've ever seen commited to cinema, but with the exception of the first half-hour of the first film, I enjoyed myself the whole while. Even through the twelve-year acid trip that he spends in the Fortress of Solitude. And not to discount Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, who screamed a little too much for my tastes, but whom I found otherwise plausible as a crack reporter, I place most of that reaction onto the shoulders of Christopher Reeve. He made the character work. Clark Kent is a gawky überdweeb in horn-rims, whose prose is crisp but who's a handful of thumbs in person, but he's not unbelievable; and an immortal, invulnerable, near on divine Superman should be the most boring person on the planet, and yet he's not.* And there were all sorts of small moments I loved—in particular, the frustration with which Clark casts around at a moment of crisis for a proper phone booth in which to change, and his smile when he unfolds his hand to reveal the bullet he has saved Lois from, caught in mid-shot, when she only thinks her milquetoast co-worker had fainted. I could even deal with him spinning the planet to run time backwards, and the presence of people named things like Non and Zod. (Gesundheit.) I only wish I'd had some popcorn.
And now I too can watch Superman Returns in Reeve's shadow . . .
*Look, my obsessions are masks and selves and identities; I would have liked to see more time devoted to the interplay between Superman, Lois, and Clark—and Kal-El, in a sense. "I don't even know what to call you," she says in the second film, as though "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are insufficient names; each only half of the man she loves. But he never does tell her his birth name . . . I'm nitpicking, I suppose. What there was made me very happy. But this is why I'm not the scriptwriter.
I hadn't expected to like these movies so much. Granted that neither of them was the best story I've ever seen commited to cinema, but with the exception of the first half-hour of the first film, I enjoyed myself the whole while. Even through the twelve-year acid trip that he spends in the Fortress of Solitude. And not to discount Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, who screamed a little too much for my tastes, but whom I found otherwise plausible as a crack reporter, I place most of that reaction onto the shoulders of Christopher Reeve. He made the character work. Clark Kent is a gawky überdweeb in horn-rims, whose prose is crisp but who's a handful of thumbs in person, but he's not unbelievable; and an immortal, invulnerable, near on divine Superman should be the most boring person on the planet, and yet he's not.* And there were all sorts of small moments I loved—in particular, the frustration with which Clark casts around at a moment of crisis for a proper phone booth in which to change, and his smile when he unfolds his hand to reveal the bullet he has saved Lois from, caught in mid-shot, when she only thinks her milquetoast co-worker had fainted. I could even deal with him spinning the planet to run time backwards, and the presence of people named things like Non and Zod. (Gesundheit.) I only wish I'd had some popcorn.
And now I too can watch Superman Returns in Reeve's shadow . . .
*Look, my obsessions are masks and selves and identities; I would have liked to see more time devoted to the interplay between Superman, Lois, and Clark—and Kal-El, in a sense. "I don't even know what to call you," she says in the second film, as though "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are insufficient names; each only half of the man she loves. But he never does tell her his birth name . . . I'm nitpicking, I suppose. What there was made me very happy. But this is why I'm not the scriptwriter.
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