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Superman II (1980)

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It's a bird. It's plain. It's not super, man., 31 July 2007

Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!"

Could that possibly be the cheesiest line in cinematic history? Yes. Yes, it could; most certainly aided by the level of fruitage employed by Terence Stamp as the titular General Zod, resplendent in black, pseudo-leather, thigh-high disco boots and heavier eyeliner than Heidi Fleiss.

Director Richard Donner, filmed *Superman* (1978) and *Superman II* simultaneously for expediency. Creative differences between producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind and Donner caused Donner to jump ship before finishing *II*, leaving inferior director Richard Lester to salvage the shreds of two movies' worth of footage into a cogent sequel.

Consequently, *Superman II* is two movies mashed together to make HALF a movie.

Badly scripted (by too many cooks – Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Tom Mankiewicz), badly acted (by *Superman*'s principal cast: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine, Marc McClure, Gene Hackman – well, Hackman's good in anything, but his scenes in *II* were shot with Donner, and he refused to do any more scenes for *II*, which resulted in stand-ins finishing his job from behind), badly directed (Lester's forte was comedy), badly edited (by John Victor-Smith, with amateurish looping and unsalvageable scenes that had to be included because nothing else was shot), badly scored (by Ken Thorne, trying to augment the great John Williams' music, but churning out a bombastic hash instead); were it not for Superman himself – that blue-clad icon with the red towel tied 'round his neck burned into our neo-cortexes since birth – this movie would be as unbearably ludicrous as E.G. Marshal's wig.

Superman hurls a nuclear bomb into space, which is so powerful it releases three Kryptonian super-villains from the *previous* Superman movie - Zod (Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas, as some kind of sadomasochist dyke) and Non (Jack O'Halloran, as a big dumb galoot) – who, all possessing the same powers as Superman, decide to conquer Earth just as Superman decides to conquer Lois Lane by inexplicably abdicating his powers to show his love for her. Smart move, puss.

Did Kal-El fail to consider that trailer-park Lois fell in lust with a SUPER man and that the loss of his powers would translate to a 9-to-fiver brain-fry existence, coming home to find Lois with a mud pack on her face watching Jerry Springer, ignoring the screaming kid? And having an affair with Green Lantern. After all, that's what she "fell in love" with – super powers. "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight…" Whatever you say, Greenie, you had me at "Let's fly to Paris for lunch…"

Kal-El's disembodied mother (Susannah York – because Brando wouldn't) warns him that there will be Far Less Pussy once he takes the Irreversible Step in becoming human; nonetheless, Superman enters an anti-super chamber, gets irradiated with brothel-red lights and leaves the chamber in chic John Holmes threads and a really bad hairstyle. Cue 70's porn music.

Meanwhile, General Zod is camping it up in Midwest Podunk with his dyke and galoot, orating cheese in High English vernacular, then kicking the badass American army in the groin and storming the White House to make the President (E.G. Marshal's crooked wig) kneel before him.

The unthinking script has Ursa mock a helicopter, "Look! They need machines to fly!" (well, so did you on Krypton, honey) and pick up a snake that bites and hurts her – even though she is a veritable woman of steel.

The script continues to unthink… as Clark, driving a hire car back from the North Pole with Lois, gets his shiny new human ass whipped by a trucker and, to add insult to his injuries, also learns of the three super-villains who are stealing his thunder-cheese. (As a further insult, the trucker was probably Canadian.) Fearing it just might have been a mistake to go *homo sapien* (what gave it away – the internal bleeding?), he hikes back to the Pole to get his supermojo back (I guess three super-villains taking over the world wasn't a big enough emergency for Lois to give him the HIRE CAR - already treating him like a nut-less puss).

And – like Final Notices, Final Destinations, Drop-Dead Deadlines, etc. - we find that the Irreversible anti-super effect wasn't that Irreversible after all, as Superman's blue-groined hard-body is soon streaking through Metropolis skies to tangle with the three super-villains with stunningly mediocre special effects.

It is a real pity that the *Superman* franchise is not better than it is, because there is something so inspiring and awesome about John Williams' soundtrack, truly capturing the essence of thunderous power, a majestic, sweeping paean of an otherworldly being who can bend the world at will. We vicariously thrill to the possibilities of being a Superman, or of loving a Superman. It's the lottery one-hundredfold.

Ironic that General Zod mincing, "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!" was part of the reason the franchise was brought to its knees.

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