As we discussed when we reviewed "Superman 2" on these pages, the cinematic version of the film was plagued with problems as director Richard Donner left/was dropped from the project (delete depending on who you're asking) to be replaced by Brit Richard Lester. This caused no end of problems on set as the two were like chalk and cheese in terms of their style - while Donner had gone against the wishes of producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to inject the first film with a bit of gravitas, Lester's past was in more light-hearted comedy films meaning that the Salkinds arguably had a director who was much more malleable to their vision of what the films should be. However, this new more slapstick approach didn't sit well with a lot of those from the first two Superman films with Gene Hackman refusing to return for a third outing as Lex Luthor and Margot Kidder being reduced to a cameo appearance in the film, allegedly for criticising Lester and the Salkinds. Lester attempted to add some star power to the picture by bringing in Richard Pryor (still hot property at the time) in a supporting role but on its release, Superman 3 was savaged by the critics and fared much worse than its predecessor at the box office. The series limped on for one more film, 1987's Superman 4 (which did even worse still but we'll deal with that in two weeks' time) before being put out of its misery with this film being generally regarded as the point where it all went wrong. So yeah, this could be...erm, interesting...
The film begins with Clark Kent walking to work one morning seemingly through some kind of Ealing comedy as a load of guys get distracted by a hot blonde lass walking down the street and we see a blind man inadvertently operating a road sweeper, a mime tripping up on some golf balls and Superman having to save a bloke from drowning inside his car. Not exactly a promising start to the film...
Anyway, it turns out that Clark is taking some leave from his job as he's been invited to a high school reunion back in his old hometown of Smallville. As it turns out, Lois Lane is also away on an assignment in Bermuda so Kent is given Jimmy Olsen as his sidekick on the journey. However, en route the greyhound bus they're on is stopped due to a fire at a petrochemical plant. Jimmy quickly sneaks in to get a few photos but ends up on a ladder which collapses and breaks his leg. Clark quickly turns into Superman to save him before putting out the fire by freezing the surface of a nearby lake and dropping it on the flames to extinguish them! Just as well too as there was a room full of beltric acid which would have turned into gas and formed a poisonous cloud over the coast if the flames had got it. However, Jimmy is taken back to Metropolis in an ambulance and Clark ends up going it alone for the rest of the journey.
Back in Smallville, Clark ends up reuniting with the girl he had a crush on in high school Lana Lang (who we briefly encountered in the first Superman film). She's now an early thirtysomething single mum and her old high school boyfriend Brad (who again we encountered in Superman I) is still trying to win her back in spite of the fact that he's turned into a boozed-up ne'er-do-well in the intervening years.
Clark saves Lana from Brad's attention at the reunion party and the two reunite to take Lana's son Ricky bowling and then off to a picnic where he ends up tripping up in a field and falling unconscious. Clark hears him and turns into Superman to save him from being mashed up by a combine harvester.
However, Clark has to cut short his stay in Smallville when Superman is needed to counteract a rogue weather satellite which has started dropping torrential rain on Colombia threatening to wipe out their coffee supply. It turns out that this villainous deed was the work of Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), this film's replacement for Lex Luthor, who owns a company called Webscoe.
Webster is basically an evil uber-capitalist (with a ski slope on the roof of his office block no less!) who has a trade deal on coffee with every nation in the world except for Colombia so hijacked the weather satellite to sabotage their coffee crop. He's done this with the aid of his resident computer expert Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) who's come to his attention after being caught using his advanced IT skills to embezzle several thousand dollars from the company. Gorman has a long history of unemployment prior to joining Webscoe and Webster promises not to fire him if he'll assist him with his various nefarious schemes. Also along for the ride are Webster's sister Vera and his girlfriend Lorelei (Pamela Stephenson from "Not The Nine O'Clock News") who we'd previously seen in the opening sequence as the main distraction which caused all the accidents.
Pryor's presence in the film is a weird one as his character isn't very well defined - Gorman is obviously the comic relief in the film but he starts out as a workshy dole scrounger whose main aim in life appears to be to fleece the system for anything he can but then acquires a conscience the longer he works for the villainous Webster. However, it's a bit difficult to take the character that seriously or really get invested in him when he's stuck doing ridiculous sequences like ski-jumping off a tower block with a pink blanket round his neck...
With his plot foiled by Superman, Webster enlists Gus and Vera to take him out for good so that he can engage in an even bigger scheme to gain a monopoly on the world's oil. Gus attempts to brew up some homemade Kryptonite in the company labs but doesn't get the formula quite right meaning it doesn't prove fatal when he presents it to Superman at a civic reception in Smallville where ol' Supey is presented with the keys to the town as a symbol of their gratitude.
However, the not-quite-Kryptonite does have an interesting side effect in that it starts to turn Superman evil. Initially it's just small things like being late to an emergency in Smallville involving a truck driver stuck hanging off a bridge because he's hanging around chatting to Lana but soon he ends up straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa and blowing out the flame at the Olympics for a laugh.
With Superman out of the picture, Webster is able to put his plan into motion by building a supercomputer for Gus which allows him to reprogram all the world's oil tankers and maroon them in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean before switching off all of the petrol pumps in the USA. One tanker, however, disobeys orders leading Webster to dispatch Lorelei to seduce Superman by sitting on top of the Statue of Liberty.
Spurred on by the promise of a night of passion with Lorelei, Superman tracks down the tanker and punches a hole in the side leading to it being stranded in the ocean with a massive oil spill pouring out of it. Lorelei makes good on her promise and Superman promptly gets invited back for a spot of apres-ski at Webster's penthouse ski slope...
Now a national hate figure, Superman spends his days in a bar taking it out on the bottle and smashing spirit bottles with superpowered peanuts. Eventually the landlord throws him out and he attempts to take off but crashlands in a junkyard. Crippled by guilt, he ends up splitting into two personas - the evil Superman and the good Clark Kent. The pair have an actually quite enjoyably surreal fight in the junkyard which Clark ultimately wins after taking a bit of a battering by strangling his evil alter ego and having his Superman powers restored to him.
Back to being the good guy figure of old, Superman flies back to the ski lodge to apprehend the Webster siblings and Lorelei only to find them fled to a base in the grand canyon where the tower-sized supercomputer is stored. Arriving there, he finds Ross firing missiles at him using what looks like a NES game from about 1986.
Superman dodges the missiles and makes it into the base where Ross and Vera attempt to incinerate him with a Kryptonite death ray. However, Gus and Lorelei both end up feeling a pang of conscience with Gus fighting Ross and knocking him out before switching the death ray off. However, the computer goes into self-protect mode when Gus tries to disable it with Vera being dragged into the computer and turned into a cyborg who uses her lasers to incapacitate Ross and Lorelei before Superman knocks her into a chasm. He eventually beats the computer by flying back to the chemical plant from the start of the film, retrieving some beltric acid which heats up and dissolves it. Vera is turned back into a human and Superman leaves her along with Ross and Lorelei for the authorities to find. He drops Gus off at a coal mine allowing him to walk back to Metropolis from there.
Back in Metropolis, we find out that Lana and Ricky have both moved out of Smallville to the big city with the former now working as a receptionist at the Daily Planet and dating Clark. However, they're hassled on their first date by Brad turning up at Lana's apartment. However, he makes the mistake of challenging Clark to a fight and...well, I think you can guess how that ends. Roll the credits.
So I'm gonna be a bit controversial here - while it's undoubtedly a big step down from the first two Superman films, I thought Superman 3 was...inoffensive enough I guess. Certainly, there's enough action here to ensure it at least never gets boring and the cast, especially Reeve, certainly can't be accused of phoning it in. The section with the "evil Superman" culminating in the junkyard fight is actually, dare I say it, pretty cool. The main problem here is twofold - firstly, the script just plays it a little bit too slapstick for its own good at times and veers into out and out silliness, something which if you've seen the first two Superman films, is definitely a bit unwelcome. Secondly, there's just a general sense of the whole thing not fitting together as well as it should. As much as I like Richard Pryor, and it's not for a lack of trying on his part, he just feels like an awkward fit with the film. Secondly, much as Robert Vaughn tries, he's just not a good replacement for Gene Hackman in the main villain role and it seems as though the producers knew this as well as they quickly went crawling back to Hackman when Superman 4 came out a few years later.
Overall though, if it's an afternoon's worth of generally harmless and fairly mindless fun you're after, Superman 3 should just about suffice. I s'pose its main problem was that it was the sequel to two films which just set the bar incredibly high. Although the film made its budget back, it grossed less than half what each of its predecessors did and the writing was arguably on the wall. The Salkinds and Lester would all jump ship prior to the series' last hurrah, 1987's Superman 4: The Quest For Peace. Let's just say that if Superman 3 saw the wheels on the franchise starting a wobble a bit then that film would see them well and truly come off...but we'll save that angst for when we review it in a couple of weeks.
FINAL RATING: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 (5/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Superman (1978) (8/10)
2. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
3. Batman (1966) (8/10)
4. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
5. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
6. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
7. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
8. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
NEXT WEEK: Another Kryptonian hits the silver screen (and another cannonball hits the bows of the Superman series) as we look at 1984's Supergirl...
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