Superman III Review

The opening is a five minute Rube Goldberg pratfall through Metropolis, and that tells you the whole thesis: Lester wanted a comedy and the studio wanted a Superman film, so what arrived is neither. Richard Pryor is a great comic actor stranded in a role written for a much broader one, forced to fall off buildings and mug at a computer while the plot fusses over synthetic kryptonite and a coffee tycoon nobody can remember. Robert Vaughn plays a villain assembled from the leftovers of Lex Luthor.

Margot Kidder is written out in the first act, which drains the series of its best relationship, and the replacement romance with Annette O'Toole is warmer than the film deserves. Then, out of nowhere, comes the junkyard. A morally poisoned Superman, unshaven and drunk and cruel, is confronted by Clark Kent as a literal separate person, and the two halves try to kill each other among the crushers. It is genuinely frightening, superbly staged, and it belongs to a far better movie. Everything around it is a decaying franchise spending down its credit.