Superman: The Movie (1978)
 This first of four mega-movies (and definitely the best) about
the comic book hero from the planet Krypton is both the perfect
fairy tale for grown-ups and an exciting cinematic marvel to bring
out the child in every age group.
Two years in the making, at a reported cost of $35 million, Superman
more than lived up to its promotional ballyhoo at the time of its
release.
It is the work of scores of dedicated artists and craftsmen
(the end-title credits list more than 400 names belonging to
everyone from process photographers to helicopter pilots) whose
combined efforts took comic strip art to a movie zenith.
To say that the film was heavily pre-sold would e one of the
decade's understatements. The merchandising of Superman products
was quite awesome - from books to lunch boxes, from posters to
cereal bowls, from badges to pyjamas.
Director Richard Donner manages to humanise the mythological
Superman, shaping and sharpening every fantasy element to surpass
science fiction. Donner went back to the source material for the
Superman comics originally created by Jerry Siegel and Joe
Schuster, and a flock of talented script writers fleshed out the
story.
 This
is the saga of the baby, evacuated from his own planet Krypton
before it explodes, and sent whirling through a myriad of galaxies
on a flying star until he lands in the prairies and wheat fields
of America to be discovered by a pair of farmers (Glenn Ford and
Phyllis Thaxter) who raise him into manhood.
Deriving his strength, wisdom and power from another sun more
dazzling than anything in our solar system, Superman heads for a
big city called Metropolis (looks like New York - no prizes for
guessing where the exteriors were shot), where he lands a job as
mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent on the Daily Planet,
falls head over biceps for dingbat city room doll Lois Lane, and
uses his superior gifts to fight for "truth, justice and the
American Way".
There are loose ends (a group of villains on Krypton led by
Terence Stamp, threaten an eternal curse then never reappear,
Superman breaks his father's rules forbidding him to tamper with
human history) but they all fall into place in the sequel, Superman
II.
What we have to thrill to in the meantime are some of the most
stupendous special effects ever seen on the silver screen: a
daring helicopter rescue while Lois hangs precariously from the
ledge of a skyscraper; air disasters; earthquakes; tidal waves;
and a nest of screwy bad guys (Gene Hackman, Valerie Perrine, Ned
Beatty) who live two hundred feet below Grand Central Terminal and
aim a 500-megaton bomb at the heart of Los Angeles.
The explosion of Krypton fills the screen with thousands of ice
daggers that freeze the landscape, and the flying sequences, in
which the suspension wires have been individually brush-stroked
out by hand, frame by frame, are pretty amazing, too. As special
effects go, Superman is in a class by itself.
Marlon Brando is excellent as Superman's father (he earned $3.7
million for what looks like quite an effortless cameo),
Christopher Reeve is a likeable presence as both the Man of Steel
and butter-fingered Clark Kent, and Margot Kidder provides just
the right confusion for Lois Lane - at times a relentless
journalist out to get her story at all costs, and other times a
kittenish nitwit, losing her cool over a guy in a Halloween
costume.
John Williams wrote a smashing score that wisely incorporates
the theme from the TV series, and real Superman buffs will get a
charge out of a brief guest appearance by Noel Neill, the original
Lois Lane, shown briefly on a speeding train looking properly
befuddled.
Oh . . . and the predicted newspaper headlines devoted to the
untimely deaths of teenagers leaping off tall buildings in blue
capes in a Superman frenzy did not come to pass!
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