CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 12/01/06

Reconstructing a Hero:
The Richard Donner Cut
Of Superman II

By jason davis

Twenty-seven years after director Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon) was fired from his sequel to 1978's Superman: The Movie, the power of the home-video market has allowed the filmmaker another chance to see (for the most part) his vision on the screen, and a dramatically satisfying and tonally consistent movie is the result.

Spoilers abound for both versions of the film, so please proceed with caution.

More than a mere editorial curiosity, this new version of Superman II exhibits the power of post- production in crafting a story. Superman: The Movie and Superman II were produced simultaneously, with the former film taking precedence as its release date loomed. After the first movie's success, executive producer Ilya Salkind (The Three Musketeers), with whom Donner endured a strained relationship, replaced the director with Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night). Required to direct 51 percent of the film to claim credit, Lester set about re- working the shooting script and re-filming material already completed by Donner. The resulting film, laced with clichéd humor and relentless, empty-calorie action sequences, has long inspired speculation as to the movie's original conception. Using newly recovered Donner material and filling the unfilmed gaps with stars Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder's screen tests, along with a minimal amount of Lester footage, producer Michael Thau (Superman: The Movie's 2002 special edition) has worked with the director and creative consultant (and uncredited screenwriter) Tom Mankiewicz (Live and Let Die) to create a film nearly in keeping with the filmmakers' original intent.

Following a new opening montage recalling how arch villain Lex Luthor's (Gene Hackman) nuclear missile was diverted into space, causing the release of three super- powered criminals from the extra-dimensional Phantom Zone prison of Superman's (Reeve) homeworld, Superman II now opens with a narrative bang (as opposed to the literal bomb that terrorists use to hold the Eiffel Tower hostage that kicks off Lester's version), with reporter Lois Lane (Kidder) throwing herself out of a window in an attempt to force Clark Kent to reveal his alter ego as the Man of Steel. The consequent action finds Superman covertly deploying his powers to make Lois' safe landing appear to be accidental, thus maintaining his secret. Not only does the sequence demonstrate the hero's ability for unconventional thinking as he slows Lois descent with an updraft of super breath and cushions her fall with a skilled use of heat vision, but the scene finally confronts the almost laughable conceit that Lois could work with Clark Kent everyday without seeing past his glasses. It also illustrates how far the tenacious reporter is willing to go to follow her hunch, while avoiding the empty action of Lester's opening, which simply serves to show off Superman's powers and creates a repetitive deep-space detonation to free the Kryptonian criminals.

As the story of both versions centers on Superman's choice between loving Lois or serving humanity, the Donner opening gets the love story off to a stronger start that is then developed as the two reporters investigate the defrauding of newlyweds in Niagra Falls. Here, Lester's parody of the aforementioned attempt by Lois to force Superman's hand is carried out in a tedious romp down a river, followed by a forced fall into the fireplace wherein Clark's unburned hand reveals his secret. Using audition footage, Thau re-creates an unfilmed sequence in which Lois decides to risk Clark's life rather than her own to prove his identity. Firing a pistol at Clark, Lois gets results when the unscathed Superman chastises her for endangering Clark's life and realizes he's been had when Lois reveals she's loaded the gun with blanks. The two then depart for Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic Circle where the most obvious alteration to the movie's structure awaits.

Relationships are the key to the difference between the two cuts, and one of the most touted aspects of Donner's iteration is the return of Superman's father, Jor-El (Marlon Brando). Originally excised from Superman II to avoid actor Marlon Brando's fee ($3.7 million against percentage of gross for total payout of $14 million for Superman), Jor-El's evolving relationship with Superman is at the heart of the movie and provides the greatest emotional link to the first film. Effectively the last of his species, Superman's only connection to a world he never knew is the holographic library left by his father to teach him after his arrival on Earth. When his love for Lois overwhelms his duty to humanity, Superman turns to Jor-El for the solution and, despite his father's admonition, undergoes a process to relieve him of his powers. Unlike Lester's take on the scene, wherein Superman's mother Lara (Susannah York) presides over her son's sacrifice, Donner's use of the more familiar Jor-El adds an emotional resonance lacking from the theatrical release. Indeed, Donner's version finds Lois, clad in Superman's shirt, watching over the event, and the look of disdain from Jor-El's holographic visage says more about Superman's father than any line of dialogue ever could.

Least altered between the two edits is the material focusing on the Kryptonian villains jailed by Jor-El in the first movie. After their accidental release, Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O'Halloran) travel to Earth, where they first use their powers to conquer a small Midwestern town, then converge on Washington and force the President (E.G. Marshall) to surrender before forming a pact with Lex Luthor. A destructive rampage across America ensues as Zod seeks to avenge himself upon his jailer's son. The villains' comical antics are curtailed in Donner's version as Lester's material is minimized. Of course, the arrival of three criminals of equal superhuman ability soon requires that the Man of Steel seek some way of resuming the fight against evil, and Superman II's most pivotal moment finds the hero accepting that he must grow up while asking his father to restore his birthright -- a sacrifice that will exhaust Jor-El's ability to commune his son, effectively killing him. Echoing Jor-El's physical death in the Superman: The Movie, this sequence makes clear the cost of his son's mistake and adds dramatic weight to what seemed an arbitrary plot point in Lester's cut.

While the Donner cut effectively restructures Superman's relationships with Lois and Jor-El, tying it more closely to the emotional core of the first film, the greatest challenge for Thau was ending the film. Donner and Mankiewicz had used the time travel ending originally intended for Superman II as the finale of Superman: The Movie, intending to develop a new climax for the second movie when they resumed work following the first film's completion. This resulted in Lester's denouement wherein Superman kissed Lois, magically erasing her memories of his secret identity before restoring the U.S. flag to the roof of a White House ravaged by the film's superhuman heavies. Forced into a narrative corner, the decision was made to borrow the time travel footage from Superman: The Movie, thus allowing the Man of Steel to right the damage done by his dereliction of duty while simultaneously restoring his relationship with Lois to the status quo. Though the conceit works, it's rather like the re-use of the Death Star in Return of the Jedi and lacks the impact of its intended deployment, wherein Superman reverses time to revive a dead Lois as in the first film (and as intended by Superman II's original script). Still, the maneuver satisfactorily ends the film and allows the final sequence between Clark and Lois in the Daily Planet to play.

Only one troubling discontinuity remains. While bereft of his powers earlier in the film, Superman visits a small diner with Lois. There, he invokes the wrath of a volatile trucker (Pepper Martin), who beats the mortal hero to a bloody pulp. In Lester's version, a revitalized Man of Steel returns to the diner to teach the thug some manners, humiliating him and drawing the approbation of the diners. The scene plays without a problem in Lester's cut, but Donner's version places the rematch after Superman has turned back time. Effectively, Clark Kent walks into the diner and brutalizes the jerk without the foregoing scene ever having happened. Though a minor quibble, the fact that the diner's owner refers to having just fixed the place (alluding to the prior encounter) and the seemingly pre-emptive attack leave the astute, and temporally aware, viewer with a sense that all is not quite right in the edit decision list.

The fact is, Superman II can never fully be what Richard Donner intended, but this new edit of the film offers a fine account of what might have been. There are undoubtedly a few scenes shot by Lester with an accordingly different approach to the material. The audition footage is unmistakably jarring, but effectively played. Indeed, Thau's assembly is a polished, if not perfect, affair that comfortably sits alongside Superman: The Movie as a continuation and companion developing the themes and emotions of the former into a satisfying saga capturing one of the most recognized characters in popular culture as never before…or since.

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Superman II courtesy Warner Home Video

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