Memory can play strange tricks sometimes, even over just two years, and especially when you are a kid. Superman The Movie was the first film I was taken to see at age seven [the second was Jaws, but I won’t go into that here…]. Therefore, I was all excited to see Superman 2 two years later, and we intended to see it in London, but my parents decided we would go and see a bloody play instead, and after that showed no interest in seeing it at the cinema near where we lived. Therefore I first saw the film on TV a few years later. I immediately thought it was better than the first one and therefore made sure I watched it when it was shown again. However, the second time around, there were bits missing and the whole thing seemed shorter. I remembered Superman destroying the Fortress of Solitude and a scene between Superman and Lois on a balcony. Well, as the years went by, I grew to wonder if I had imagined seeing this version, seeing as all videos and DVDs were similarly cut. Then I researched it, and realised that that version definitely did exist, but was very hard to come by. In fact, the history behind the what now are three major versions of this film tells a very sad story of what might have been. You see Superman 2 could have been absolutely brilliant. As it stands it’s very good, but I came to realise, with maturity, that it doesn’t match up to the first film.
Now originally Alexander and Ilya Salkind planned one huge Superman movie. Superman would battle Lex Luthor, then General Zod, Ursa and Non, who he would accidentally free when throwing a missile into space. At the end, Superman would rewind time so Lois Lane doesn’t know he is Clark Kent. However, they decided to make the second part of the film a separate movie, and used that film’s intended ending as the end of the first. Directo Richard Donner had already shot over 70% of the second film when he was fired. Scenes still to shoot included, most notably, a sequence where the Kryptonian baddies destroyed world landmarks. Various reasons have been proposed for Donner’s removal, from arguments over the direction of the film [the Salkinds wanted a campier picture], to him taking too long. He was replaced by Richard Lester, who, because he had to direct over 50 % of the film to be credited as director, re-shot many scenes. Others were substituted, while the Salkinds scaled down bits of the script to save money, including the removal of the landmarks destruction scene. About 30 % of Donner footage remained in the film. Marlon Brando, who played Superman’s dad Jor-El, had shot scenes for Donner, but had then been fired during a dispute over money. Rather than pay him, the Salkinds just threw out those scenes and partially substituted them with bits with Superman’s mum. Money was also saved by not having John Williams return to score the film, instead hiring Ken Thorne to adapt his music, and for a much smaller orchestra. The cast mostly hated what was going on, and Gene Hackman, playing Lex Luthor, refused to work for Lester, so they finished his scenes with body and voice doubles.
Considering all this, it’s amazing that Superman 2 turned out as well as it did. Lester adopts for a much more ‘comic book’ visual style than the first film, with lots of people crammed into static frames and many things shot from one angle [Lester usually shot his films with three still cameras], rather than the more expansive, fluid feel of Donner’s film. Similarly, the tone is often lighter. Donner’s film had humour, to be sure, often gently sending up Superman and certainly having lots of laughs involving Lex Luthor and his cohorts, but Lester’s is even more comical, adding silly stuff all over the place, and generally adopting a very flippant attitude that shows that Lester didn’t have the love for Superman that Donner did [he actually claims he’d never even heard of Superman when asked to come on the film]. Despite all this, the emotional part of the story, with Superman having to give up being Superman if he wants to be with Lois Lane, is handled with sensitivity, and the action remains exciting. It remains very decent, only really suffering badly around two thirds of the way through when Zod, Ursa and Non take over. They land on earth, have a skirmish with a few soldiers and helicopters, take over the White House, and that’s it, they rule the world, with nobody trying to attack them. It’s so obvious this is material missing here. In any case, we’ve all seen the theatrical cut of Superman 2, so let’s move forward a few years….
THE RESTORED INTERNATIONAL CUT
When first shown on US TV, Superman The Movie had over half an hour of footage back in, so it’s not surprising that they wanted to do the same with Superman 2. Because nearly all of Lester’s footage had made it into the film, most of the stuff they had saved and now put back in was Donner-shot footage. 24 min were restored. This version aired on TV in various countries [and was certainly the one I saw], and actually some countries saw a cut that was even longer by a couple of minutes, but both longer cuts were never shown again. However, bootleg videos of this version became more and more widespread over the years. Then, in 2005, some fans created Superman 2: The Restored International Version from all the TV footage around and polished it up. Though not actually legal to sell, it’s not illegal to buy this version, and I did. Is it better than the theatrical cut? Yes, definitely!
Now not all the extra footage is gold. A small amount of Lester footage is put back in, and it’s mostly comic stuff like people bickering watching TV and a badly dubbed man at the White House. It’s amusing but pointless. Many scenes are just extended, such as most of the action. However, you do get so see far more of Lex Luthor and his girlfriend Eve going to, and at, the Fortress of Solitude, Non killing a boy with a police car light, and Non machine-gunning a load of people in the White House. Most importantly, after the big fight at the end, Lex is led away by the ‘Arctic Police’, then Superman destroys the Fortress with his eyes. Now follow two beautifully written scenes between Superman and Lois, the first in front of the Fortress, the second on the balcony of Lois’s apartment. The talk of a love that can never be, because Superman has to be Superman, is very touching and what all the previous scenes between the two have been leading up to. Christopher Reeve and Lois Lane act their socks off, by now knowing their characters inside out. Now I’m not really a Lester hater; some of what he shot for Superman 2 is very good, but it is unforgiveable how he cut those two scenes out. It was a complete and utter act of callous butchery that makes me livid whenever I think about it.
In putting in everything they could find into this cut of the film, there is a certain awkwardness to it. Certain shots repeated from the first film to bump up the running time, and some of the comedy bits mentioned above, where Lester just gets carried away, just don’t really belong. The ‘magic kiss’ dilutes the poignancy of the climactic Superman and Lois scenes, making Superman seem devious, though you could say the original turning-back-time ending also does that. Of course there are also differences in picture quality between some of the scenes which was unavoidable. But the film, which feels very truncated in the Theatrical Cut, really benefits from being longer. It feels more complete and certainly doesn’t move slower. Remove about five minutes from this version and I think it’s about as perfect as you could get from all the material that was available at the time. It’s a shame that Warner Bros. failed to recognise this version, to the point of prosecuting sellers, because it is really is very good. However, they did listen to fans who had been clamouring to see an official release of a version that was closer to Donner’s conception…..
THE RICHARD DONNER CUT
It was a really exciting time to be a Superman fan in 2006. A lavish new Superman box set was about to come out, and in it something called Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut. This came about because in 2001, editor Michael Thau, while putting together an extended version [though nowhere as long as the TV version] of the first movie, found all the material Donner has shot in vaults. Neither Donner [understandably uneasy to revisit a painful experience], the Salkinds, nor Warner Bros.were up for putting together a cut from this footage closer to Donner’s intended version until Thau got hundreds of fans to write directly to Warner head Jim Cardwell demanding it. And, after much legal wrangling, it happened, under Thau and co-writer Tom Mankiewizc, with input from Donner that increased with time. You have no idea how excited I was when I put the DVD into my player and pressed play, though I reckon I was nowhere near as excited as many others, people who had not even seen the Restored International Cut and to whom all the added footage would be brand new.
Well, it’s an interesting alternate version, that’s for sure. Is it better than the Theatrical Cut? I would say yes, but it comes with problems of its own. What they basically did was throw out all of Lester’s footage, except in places where there was no equivalent Donner version of a scene, and replace it with Donner’s stuff. Often the differences are minimal, just different lines or line readings. Sometimes the differences are huge. The rather clumsy scene in the Niagara Falls apartment, where Lois realises Clark is Superman after his hand doesn’t burn when he accidentally puts it in a fire, is now replaced by a much better scene where Lois, convinced he is Superman, shoots Clark, than tells him she used a blank. This was taken from a screen test, so it doesn’t look too great, but it’s very good nonetheless. The Niagara Falls scene where Lois falls into the water, knowing Clark will save her, is replaced by a far better scene at the beginning where, in the office, Lois draws glasses on a picture of Superman and throws herself out of the window. The scenes between Superman and his mother at the Fortress of Solitude are now replaced by equivalent, though sometimrs differently written, scenes with Brando. When Lester footage is used, it’s often edited down, often to remove humorous or overly silly moments. This really benefits the portrayal of the villains, who now come across as far more menacing [Non is less of a fool], and the big fight scene is improved by different, and tighter, editing.
Sometimes the cutting goes too far though. They obviously wanted as little Lester footage in the film as possible, but I really miss the Paris sequence that was a really tense opening to the film. They cut it because it was all Lester and not essential to the story, but it was good! I also really like a bit in the Theatrical Cut where Superman flies to some tropical paradise and gets a flower for Lois, but it’s not in the new cut. Most of the Donner stuff put back into the Restored International Cut is in, though a few bits aren’t, like Lex being led away by the Arctic Police near the end. We do now see Superman throw the rocket into space and accidentally free the Kryptonian supervillains during the opening re-capping of events from Superman The Movie. This looks like it has been put together with clever editing and new special effects shots, rather than it just being an old scene they put back in. Similarly a later shot of the Washington Monument falling down looks newly created, but actually looks a bit lame.
Elsewhere, some scenes are in a different order, most notably when Clark sleeps with Lois. In Lester’s film, he becomes human before he sleeps with her. In Donner’s, he sleeps with her first. It feels more romantic in the Lester cut. The biggest flaw though is the ending. They decided to use the ‘turning back time’ ending again because it was originally intended to be the ending, but it now seems silly considering that it had already been the ending of the first film. I think on this instance they should have used Lester’s ‘magic kiss’, as awkward as it is, or just ended it with Clark and Lois on that balcony. You can see that the Richard Donner cut is in some way better, some ways not. In removing so much Lester footage, they lost some good material and made the film really choppy, but the new stuff is very good and the overall tone far more consistent and closer to that of Superman The Movie. I guess that that the best version would be to use bits from all three [the Restored International Cut does have a few good bits that are not in either of the other two cuts], though the problem would be whether to use the Lester version or the Donner version as a basis. Some fans have pieced together their own cuts, and you can find them on the internet. Me, I just haven’t had time to see them, and may even have a go myself one day!
I seriously think Superman 2 could have been the greatest comic book movie ever if Donner had been allowed to finish the film. Though ten minutes of any of the three compromised versions that exist are still far better than the ugly, soulless, shakycam crap of Man Of Steel.
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