Superman Movie Review - Starring Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, and Marlon Brando
"Superman" (1978), starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, is a terrific film. It's much better than any of its many sequels. Christopher Reeve is perfect in his role as Superman. Gene Hackman also does an incredible acting job as Lex Luthor, his arch-rival. The story and special effects are also exceptional.
The movie begins on Krypton, a futuristic planet in a distant galaxy. Three arch-villains are on trial for committing deplorable crimes against Krypton. Jor-El (Brando) presides over the trial. A jury of three council members pronounce the arch-villains guilty. Their punishment is to be held captive in the Phantom Zone, a large mirror, and to fly through space for eternity.
Meanwhile, Jor-El is convinced that Krypton is about to be destroyed, though his council disagrees. He wants them all to evacuate, though they vote him down. In any case, Jor-El is able to allow his infant son Kol-El to escape the planet in a small crystalline spaceship and sent to Earth. Krypton does end up getting destroyed, killing everyone on the planet. Kol-El journeys through space for three years, finally crashing on Jonathan Kent's farm in Smallville, Kansas in 1951. Jonathan is driving with his wife Martha when he hears a loud boom and gets a flat tire. As he gets out to fix it, Martha discovers a small boy near the crash scene. She decides to adopt him, against Jonathan's better judgment. The car collapses, but the boy picks up the end of the car, whence they know he has special powers. They also see his burnt-out spaceship on the ground.
Jonathan and Martha raise Kol-El on their farm, giving him the name Clark. They insist that Clark hide his powers from everyone, though Clark finds himself hard-pressed to do so. Jonathan dies of a heart attack and Clark takes over the family farm.
Early one morning, Clark gets a mysterious call. He rushes to the barn, removes a piece of the floor, and discovers a glowing green crystal, which tells him to journey northward. He tells him mother he must leave, but gets a friend of his to help her run the farm. He then ventures out to the north pole with the crystal. He throws the crystal far out and it lands on the ice. The surrounding ice turns into a huge crystalline fortress. Clark goes into the fortress, finds the crystal inside, and receives a message from Jor-El, his long deceased father. Jor-El tells him his real name is Kol-El, and takes him on a 12-year journey to Krypton and back. By the time he returns, he's wearing his famous red cape with the large S on the chest.
Kol-El maintains his alter ego as Clark Kent, a bumbling man with glasses, and gets a job for the Daily Planet, a large news agency in Metropolis. There he meets co-workers Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson. He develops a crush on Lois, though as Clark, she thinks he's a fool. He takes her out to lunch. She ends up getting mugged and nearly killed, but he secretly catches the bullet and saves her life.
That night, Lois is sent out on a helicopter to do a story, when a disaster strikes. The helicopter gets caught on some loose wires on top of the Daily Planet and ends up dangling on the side of the building. The door opens and Lois grabs on for her life. Clark spots her and quickly changes into his uniform and flies up to save her along with the helicopter. He then performs several other heroic stunts, stunning everyone in Metropolis.
Now every news agency in town wants to get the scoop on this mysterious caped wonder. He pays a visit to Lois and she gets the full story on him. He ends up taking her on a flight over Metropolis. Shortly after he leaves, she comes up with the name Superman for him.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor, the world's leading criminal mind, operating 200 feet below Park Avenue in Metropolis, is devising the crime of the century. Once he learns of Superman, he realizes he's facing the challenge of the century as well, but he comes up with an ingenious plan for killing him. Luthor reasons that kryptonite, debris from Krypton, would be lethal to Superman. He also learns that such debris was found in Addis Ababa in 1948, so he sets out to retrieve this meterorite. He also carries out his plan of diverting two nuclear missiles from their intended trajectories, one toward a critical point along the San Andreas Fault in order to destroy California and build a new empire along the west coast, and the other inadvertently headed toward Hackensack, New Jersey.
Lex lures Superman into his secret hideout by broadcasting an ultrasonic message which only he can hear, telling him that he's releasing gas into Metropolis which will wipe out half its population. Superman arrives as quickly as he can, drilling himself underground and breaking the large metal door. Lex then explains to Superman that the gas wasn't real but was just a way of getting him there. He then tells Superman of his plan for wiping out California. Superman looks for the detonator of the missiles, which Lex leads him to believe are inside a lead container, which he can't see through. Superman opens the container and is horrified to find a glowing hunk of kryptonite attached to a chain. Lex places the chain around Superman's neck and into the swimming pool, where he helplessly begins to drown.
Lex's assistant Miss Tessmacher agrees to save Superman under the conditiion that he saves her mother first, who lives in Hackensack. This means that he won't be able to prevent the other missile from striking the San Andreas Fault, near where his friends Jim and Lois have been sent on assignment, but he agrees in any case. She throws the chain off his neck and he rushes out to stop the missile headed for Hackensack. He is unable to stop the other missile on time, however. As a result, California experiences a horrible earthquake. Superman first restores the fault line by going underground and picking it up. Then he saves a bus from falling off the Golden Gate Bridge. He performs several other heroic stunts in California. He saves Jim Olson from falling off the top of a dam, but he is unable to save Lois at first, who's fallen into a crack in the ground quickly filling with dirt. Lois ends up suffocating to death before he can save her. Superman's only recourse is to fly around the world repeatedly as fast as he can in order to turn back time to before the crack formed and save her.
The movie ends with Superman capturing Lex Luthor and his assistant Otis and sending them to jail for their deplorable crime.
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