Watched: 07/05/2025
Viewing: a lot. Whole bunch of times.
Format: Max
Director: Richard Donner
You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.
In prep for seeing Superman 2025 on the 8th, I figured I owed the OG classic one more spin before settling in for what Big Blue has to offer us in our modern era.
To catch folks up, I saw Superman: The Movie (1978) during its initial release in December of 1978 or shortly thereafter. Maybe in Spring of 1979. But I'd certainly seen it in the theater with my dad and brother during that window when I was 3. I recall seeing it, as they were giving away gumball machines that were red or blue, and at that time, my brother's stuff was coded blue, and mine was red, so my parents could be even-steven giving us things, but we knew what belonged to who.
I think often of how spoiled we were as kids in the 1980s. One of my first movies outings was seeing Star Wars in the theater at age 2, and then all of the paraphernalia around the movie from toys to wall paper . To me, movies were just where mind-boggling things happened, and what was the point if you weren't seeing something amazing?
As kids, just as Steanso was coded blue and I was coded red, my brother was told he would play Superman, and I would play Batman - because I did love Batman as a kid. In my way, I still do love Batman.
I am also of the right age that my childhood was full of lightcycles, Greek monsters come to life, Gelflings, archaeologists running from boulders, fighting the Kodan Armada, etc... It's not really a shock that I turned to comics to get that fix for $0.75 in four-color monthly installments when I got the chance.
But even as I got into comics, I wasn't into Superman yet. I recall telling a friend in 6th grade how Superman was old-fashioned, and I was into hep new heroes like The X-Men. But... I wasn't picking up or reading Superman, so why I thought that is a mystery.
A few things changed my opinion.
First, I stumbled upon the art of Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and seeing a modern interpretation of Superman in comics form, broad chested, cool and confident made me rethink the Super Friends version in my head. The second was that, one summer Saturday night when I was 14, I was supposed to hit Blockbuster but Superman: The Movie had just come on TV.
I'd been reading comics for a few years, and any morsel of comics media outside cheap newsprint comics was rare in those days. I figured I'd best watch the movie for at least a while, but I probably wouldn't like it much now that I was a mature gentleman of 14. Instead, I sat rapt for 3 hours, and at the end looked at my dad said "that was... like... a good movie." And he agreed. He'd known it was a good flick since taking me as a wee kid. Within months I'd be watching Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, etc... and I lump this movie in with those self-discoveries of the period.
Oddly, in some key years, Superman: The Movie kind of disappeared. The movie arrived before VHS made new releases obtainable in 7-8 months after theatrical release closed. I don't think it fell into HBO rotation. And in the 1980's, movies considered slightly older were not given the same treatment coming to home video as recent releases. Even today when someone my age tells me they saw Superman: The Movie, what they're remembering is seeing Superman II at some point as a young kid.
Batman came out in 1989 when VHS an the release windows to cable and TV were well-established. The movie was taken shockingly seriously by the public for a movie about Michael Keaton in a silly hat and rubber suit. I like the movie, but even at the time I was shocked by the world's reaction to the movie. And as much as I like the movie (I do, I'm teasing out of love), for reasons I am ill-equipped to explain and a sociologist might have a field-day with, Batman think pieces emerged in the 90's, about how Batman was relevant to our morally ambiguous, urban experience, and Superman was a product of a by-gone era and should be retired.
Sometimes I wonder if my adoration of Superman stemmed from my chronic contrarian-ness and these bad takes.
My own interest in Superman was probably, ironically, delayed by The Death of Superman comics event, which was meant to draw folks in.
A couple years before Superman and Doomsday punched each other to death, I'd picked up Superman #53 (it's hard to forget that cover) and quite liked the issue. It was better than I figured it would be, both in story and art. And then I picked up a few subsequent issues seeing if I wanted to get on board. And then The Stunt happened, and I - who mistakenly believed at the time that good story telling was an organic thing that just flowed from the pen as if the gods put the words down through one's hand, and saw the death as comics hucksterism and its most shameless (it was and is) - turned my back on Superman again.
I've probably never fully been on board with what Death and Return of Superman was, but now appreciate it for what it did for comics and Superman. That said, when you keep seeing filmmakers recreate the story over and over, it gets a little wearying, and if the only story in the 90 years of Superman anyone can consider adapting is that Superman is dead... I dunno, man. That's more on the folks making choices in Hollywood than the character.
Then, in the mid 1990's, Superman: The Animated Series came out right about the same time as the comic series Kingdom Come, and both were revelatory to me. I'd read Man of Steel and other Superman books, but this was the turning point. I was now picking up Superman comics. In part because of the Superman take in Grant Morrison's JLA.
Around late 2000 or early 2001, the DVDs of the Superman movie series were released, and I raced to Best Buy to pick them up. I still recall watching the first two with Jamie and my brother in our little rented house on Briar Street.
Since, I've probably seen Superman: The Movie no less than fifty times. The number is probably much higher.
It's a long movie. It's also a strange movie. It goes from self-serious sci-fi to earnest Americana to an almost Broadway-style-humor adventure that winks at the absurdity of Superman while creating a world in which Superman seems possible and we can believe a man can fly. It's pulpy, campy fun. But it also gives us a Superman who we can relate to and want to be our pal. And make us hurt with him.
I often say that of the superheroes and how they're portrayed, Superman is the one you like as a kid, turn your back on as a teen and 20-something when you start to get a sense of the world as a true adult wishing things were better, you start to get Superman again - maybe even need Superman again. In the 1970's and 1980's, Batman was repositioned as a caped Dirty Harry, someone out there cleaning up our urban streets, solving the ills of society with broken femurs and jaws aplenty. Gone was the notion of a detective in a kooky suit, and in moved the guy who could outsmart genius bad guys and out-karate bullets. And many, many superheroes followed suit. Spider-Man was already full of angst. Hulk now was the product of childhood trauma.
Superman, though, was someone who should be a power fantasy about doing what he wanted, and what we found he wanted to do was have a wry chuckle when a baddie hit him with a crowbar. Then he was f'ing up traffic with the baddie's get-away boat in the middle of the road. The funnier the justice, the better. My kind of dude.
And, of course, he wisely made time with the attractive reporter who thought Clark Kent a dweeb.
To be clear, I watch and enjoy Daredevil and have read my fair share of runs of plenty of comics playing in the realm of the old ultraviolence. There's no right or wrong to what you want to do per character - but sometimes it's hard for people, including executives, to not want to cram every character into the most lucrative mold - and for a long time, that's been a Batman that reflects the R-Rated action media of my youth.
But I think Superman is the one we like for what he does when we're kids - mucking about with robots and giant aliens and whatnot. Performing super-feats. Watching with a wry smile as bullets bounce off his body. And when we get older, seeing a person not bent on breaking others like he could (and recent years have given us plenty of alternative Dark Supermans who flambe'd anyone looking at them sideways) but on trying to do the right thing in a complicated world, even when - especially when - there's a cost. And it looks like Superman 2025 is digging fully into this idea.
But, yes, I've seen Superman: The Movie a lot.
I've seen it in the theater probably 10-12 times (I lost track a long time ago), and I used to just put the movie on as background noise when we lived in Phoenix. So, honestly, the number of times I've seen it is unknowable. But I've seen it enough that this time, Jamie heard Otis' line about going to Addis Ababa and said "you always say that". And I do.
Last summer, I helped host a screening for Texas Public Radio in San Antonio for their Cinema Tuesdays series hosted by pal NathanC.
I'm also fifty years old, and I'm out of the business of rating and ranking movies or saying that I even have a favorite movie. But clearly, Superman: The Movie is foundational for me. The notion of trying to be a friend who can help is something I've tried to use as a north star, even if I fall short of that ideal far too often.
My home is part Superman hoard, part living quarters. I remain an avid reader of Superman with a few thousand Superman comics, books, etc... in my collection. I don't own any original props or even replicas from the film. I've got a signed pic of Margot Kidder thanks to JimD. But mostly, I've just got copies of the movie on VHS, DVD, BluRay and now 4K. I guess I'd buy the LaserDisc if I saw it.
I'm thrilled this movie still works when I see it with an audience - usually an audience wherein the audience is both surprised and a bit embarrassed to have gotten swept up in the film. But I am equally as glad that WB has pivoted and is trying a Superman again that is for kids and those of us who don't mind escaping into a world with spacemen with capes who can fly. And, whose real power is wanting to get up every day and do some good.
I've got tickets for Tuesday. We'll report out.
For a long discussion of the film with two Superman nerds, check out this podcast by myself and Stuart.
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