Superman III — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Plot

The conglomerate Webscoe Industries hires computer programmer Gus Gorman, who secretly embezzles $85,000 from the company payroll. He comes to the attention of Webscoe's CEO, Ross Webster. A cunning billionaire fixated on using technology for financial domination, Webster sees Gus's skills as a valuable asset. With the help of his stern sister, Vera, and his mistress Lorelei Ambrosia, he blackmails Gus into aiding his schemes.

Clark Kent, accompanied by Jimmy Olsen, returns to Smallville for his high school reunion. Along the way Clark—as Superman—extinguishes a fire in a chemical plant. Jimmy is injured during the fire and is taken to hopsital. In Smallville, Clark reconnects with childhood friend Lana Lang, who has a young son named Ricky. Superman later saves the boy from a combine harvester during a picnic with Lana.

Webster orders Gus to use the weather satellite 'Vulcan' to create a storm that destroys coffee crops in Colombia, aiming to corner the market. Gus complies, but Superman neutralizes the storm. Recognizing the hero as a threat, Webster orders Gus to synthesize Kryptonite. When the computer fails to recognize the total chemical composition, he substitutes tar for the unknown elements. Lana invites Superman to Ricky's birthday party. Gus and Vera infiltrate the party, giving Superman the synthetic Kryptonite, which leaves him unharmed, to their confusion. Instead, he gradually becomes corrupted after exposure to it, committing sophomoric acts such as straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa and blowing out the Olympic Flame.

Gus proposes building a supercomputer for Webster in exchange for creating an energy crisis by redirecting oil tankers. Lorelei seduces Superman and manipulates him into causing an oil spill. Superman suffers a nervous breakdown and splits into two beings: the corrupted Superman and Clark Kent. The two fight, and Clark defeats his corrupted counterpart by strangling him to death. The renewed Superman then repairs the damage from the oil spill. After surviving exploding rockets and a missile, Superman confronts Webster, Vera, and Lorelei in the supercomputer. The computer becomes self-aware and defends itself against attempts to disable it as it transforms Vera into a cyborg. Vera then attacks Webster and Lorelei with energy beams that immobilize them. Superman retrieves a can of acid from the chemical plant and uses it to destroy the computer. Superman hands Webster, Vera and Lorelei to the authorities. Gus starts anew in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, Clark visits Lana in Metropolis, where she begins working as a secretary for Perry White. Lois Lane returns from Bermuda with an exposé on corruption, and Superman restores the Leaning Tower of Pisa before flying into space.

Casting

Both Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder are said to have been angry with the way Ilya and Alexander Salkind treated Superman director Donner, with Hackman retaliating by refusing to reprise the role of Lex Luthor. After Kidder publicly criticized the Salkinds for their treatment of Donner, the producers reportedly punished Kidder by reducing her role in Superman III to a brief appearance. Hackman later denied such claims, stating that he had been busy with other movies and that making Luthor a constant villain would be similar to horror movie sequels where a serial killer keeps coming back. Hackman would reprise his role as Lex Luthor in Superman IV, which the Salkinds had no involvement in. In the commentary for the 2006 DVD release of Superman III, Ilya Salkind denied any negative feelings between Kidder and his production team and denied the claim that her part was cut for retaliation. Instead, he said the creative team decided to pursue a different direction for a love interest for Superman, believing the Lois Lane and Clark Kent relationship had been overdone in the first two films. With the choice to give a more prominent role to Lana Lang, the role of Lois was reduced for story reasons. Salkind also denied the reports about Hackman being upset with him, stating that he was unable to return because of other film commitments.

Though Christopher Reeve had been contracted for seven films as Superman, he engaged a lawyer to renegotiate his contract prior to production. Producer Pierre Spengler described the process of securing Reeve's return as contentious, though Ilya Salkind recalls that Reeve approved of the Superman III script and was more than willing to reprise his role.

After an appearance by Richard Pryor on The Tonight Show, telling Johnny Carson how much he enjoyed seeing Superman and Superman II, and Pryor jokingly stated his desire to appear in a future Superman installment, the Salkinds were eager to cast him in a prominent role in the third film, using the success of Pryor in the films Silver Streak, Stir Crazy and The Toy. Pryor accepted a $5 million salary. Following the release of the film, Pryor signed a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures for $40 million.

Effects and animation

The film includes the same special effects team from the first two films.

To create the video game computer animation for the missile scene, Time Warner's CEO at the time, Steve Ross, contacted Ray Kassar, the CEO of its subsidiary Atari. Kassar assigned the task to Steve Wright, head of Atari's special project department. Wright worked with Pat Cole and Paul Hughett among others to complete the project. Rather than create high-resolution, realistic computer graphics, they aimed to depict a "video game of the future". The project cost around US$120,000, with between US$95,000–US$100,000 going towards technology hardware. Before the request, Wright had developed a high-end graphics system to quickly create video game prototypes at Atari, which allowed them to create the footage faster than traditional programming in assembly language at the time. The system was a Lisp machine with a Symbolics microprocessor connected to an Ikonus framebuffer, which acted as the graphics chip. The system's software included a paint and animation program to create the graphics and a program to create the scripts that dictate movement and interaction. To complete the setup for the film project, Atari purchased Wright a Matrix film recorder with an Acme 35mm animation camera. Wright approached Carl Rosendahl from computer animation studio PDI to set up and calibrate the newly created recording system.

Production for the video game segment lasted approximately four months, from November 1982 until February 1983. Wright's brother, Larry Wright, served as the segment's art director. The team created storyboards of the sequence beforehand. To plan the necessary computer functions, the storyboards included computer graphic coordinates and geometric symbols to indicate the movement of graphical objects. Vicki Parrish used this information to program the positions of the sprites for Superman and the rockets, as well as scroll the background. The components were placed on different layers and then shifted positions to create a parallax effect to give the appearance of depth, a technique Wright referred to as "2½D". The team generated a low resolution preview to ensure the footage appeared as intended, which took the system about an hour and a half. When satisfied with the preview, the team generated a high-resolution version and applied anti-aliasing to remove jagged edges around the graphics. Each frame was photographed by the camera, which took 120 hours to capture the 1440 frames of graphics. The team created 60 seconds of footage, of which director Richard Lester used around 27 seconds in the final film. The footage was sent to Lester in London. After reviewing it, he requested some changes before the footage was ready to include in the film.

Critical response

Superman III holds a 31% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 102 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "When not overusing sight gags, slapstick, and Richard Pryor, Superman III resorts to plot points rehashed from the previous Superman flicks." The film has a Metacritic rating of 44, indicating "mixed or average reviews" from 13 professional reviewers.

Film critic Leonard Maltin said that Superman III was an "appalling sequel that trashed everything that Superman was about for the sake of cheap laughs and a co-starring role for Richard Pryor". The film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Supporting Actor for Richard Pryor and Worst Musical Score for Giorgio Moroder at the 4th Golden Raspberry Awards. Audiences also saw Robert Vaughn's villainous Ross Webster as a weak replacement for Lex Luthor.

Christopher John reviewed Superman III in Ares magazine #16 and commented that "compared to the first film in this series, everything about Superman III is a joke, a harsh cruel joke played on all the people who wanted to see more of the Superman they saw a few years ago."

Colin Greenland reviewed Superman III for Imagine magazine, and stated that "What ultimately spoils the fun in Superman III is not the incoherent story or even the technophobia. It is simply overloaded—too many ideas, too many gadgets, too many stars (Pamela Stephenson is completely wasted in a part which would have been too dumb for Goldie Hawn). The wiring all comes loose at the end; an anticlimax, and a rushed one at that."

Fans of the Superman series placed a great deal of the blame on director Richard Lester. Lester made several comedies in the 1960s—including the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night—before being hired by the Salkinds in the 1970s for their successful Three Musketeers series, as well as Superman II which, although better received, was also criticized for unnecessary sight gags and slapstick. Lester broke tradition by setting the opening credits for Superman III during a prolonged slapstick sequence rather than in outer space.

The film's screenplay, by David and Leslie Newman, was also criticized. When Richard Donner was hired to direct the first two films, he rejected the Newman scripts and hired Tom Mankiewicz for heavy rewrites. Since Donner and Mankiewicz were no longer attached, the Salkinds were able to bring their version of Superman to the screen and once again hired the Newmans for writing duties.

The performance of Reeve as the corrupted Superman received praise, particularly the junkyard battle between the dark Superman and Clark Kent.

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