Just Been To See…Superman!

 

Film poster. Fair use.

My very first Superman was George Reeves. As a child, I was reading the Superman and Superboy comics with a friend, and loved them. In recent years, I re-viewed some of the old Adventures Of Superman episodes and was impressed with how well they held up, despite “Truth, justice and the American Way!” Each episode was a mini movie, twenty five minutes long. The budget can’t have been much, but the stories were good. This Clark Kent was respected by the police and often got information he needed to do his job as Superman. He didn’t have to pretend to be an idiot as later versions did. 

In later years, there were the Christopher Reeve films, which were very good, though I liked the first two films better than the third, and I never saw the final one. In fact, I think that Christopher Reeve was the definitive Superman. He was funny and charming and did a good job as the klutzy Clark Kent. It’s sad what happened to Christopher Reeve. 

I quite enjoyed the first season of Lois And Clark, though it got silly in Season 2. I did like the scene where Lois pulled off his glasses to make her point. 

I confess I have missed most of the later TV shows, just seeing a few episodes of such shows as Smallville. I just can’t watch everything, alas. 

But when the new Superman movie came out recently, I had to see it. And today was too cold to do my usual Sunday visit to the beach, so I went to the 1.20 pm session at the local cinema. I’m glad I did.

David Corenswet, who played Superman in this film, looked strangely like Christopher Reeve. They do choose some appropriate actors for the role. (Henry Cavill was a gorgeous Superman.) 

I was pleasantly surprised to see Bradley Cooper as Kal El’s Dad, Jor El. I only know him as Rocket Raccoon. I never knew how good looking he was. There was a message from Kal El’s biological parents, spoken in Kryptonian, at the Fortress of Solitude, which had robots to look after him and his cape-wearing dog, Krypto. 

But this story started in medias res. There were some flashbacks to tell us how he got to Earth - and why, of course, but we learned early on that he had just stopped a war between two countries, one of which was attacking the other, with weapons supplied by Lex Luthor. Lex wanted him dead, as Lex tends to do in these movies. 

The interesting thing is that Clark and Lois were already in a relationship at the start of the film, and she knew who he was. It was pretty clear that they had been sleeping together, which is fine, except… I’m not sure the writer had ever read Larry Niven’s article “Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex,” in which it was pointed out that he would tear her apart! In Superman 2, someone clearly had read it, because Clark had to lose his superpowers before they could do it. 

Still, an enjoyable film and it had some fun references to earlier versions. In one scene, you could hear editor Perry White in the background yelling, “Don’t call me Chief!” which he did all the time in the George Reeves series. 

This is not a film to take your younger children to see; it’s more serious than the other films and there are some deaths. 

However, it’s well worth a viewing.