Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman told as a sweeping American epic.
Proving that there’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, long before embittered fans were getting their Underoos in a bunch over mythical extended cuts of their fervently favoured films, SUPERMAN (1978) received the same indulgence, without the need even for a strident and relentless campaign of intimidation and whining – at least, that is, by the fans. The producers and the director, however, was another story (which, in turn, would radically reshape SUPERMAN II).
Director Richard Donner had editorial control over what would be theatrically released but the Salkinds (Ilya and his father Alexander) had editorial control over what could be shown outside of cinemas. By 1981, when the television rights reverted to them, they had already prepared a three hour and eight-minute cut of the movie (not entirely dissimilar to the assembly cut which was then edited down to the theatrical version we all know and love). This expanded version reintroduced some forty-five minutes of footage and music which had been cut and, in February 1982, ABC aired the film in two parts over consecutive nights as a broadcast event.
As with every cut of SUPERMAN, the film opens by literally bringing the comic book to life as an unknown (and believe me, I’ve googled) boy reads out the comic’s captions as we soar into the night sky and John Williams’ peerless Superman March sounds its first brassy fanfare. It’s incredible to think that Jerry Goldsmith was the original choice to score SUPERMAN following his and Donner’s collaboration on THE OMEN but scheduling conflicts forced him to pull out and Williams was hired instead. You have to wonder how much of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE’s triumphant score was repurposed from early work on this film but in any event, cinema score history was about to be made and Williams was about to demonstrate once again why he is utterly without equal in the realms of musical iconography. More than any other of his compositions – save perhaps JAWS – the Superman March completely embodies the character with every note, every leitmotif and every flourish. It’s spine-tinglingly inspirational and hopeful and reassuring and aspirational. Superman in aural form, it’s little wonder it secured, as did so much of Donner’s 1978 film, a hallowed place in pop culture history.
The story – by Mario Puzo (of THE GODFATHER fame), much like another more recently extended movie featuring the last son of Krypton – is basically the same as the version shown in cinemas but the extra time isn’t wasted on slow-motion posturing. Indeed, it’s an hour into the movie before we even get a glimpse of Superman himself but it never feels sluggish or slow. Richard Donner’s masterful storytelling has the audience in the palm of his hand as he lays out his vision of Superman, not as a solipsistic Christ allegory but as a grand, sweeping American epic. This Superman comes to Earth to serve and protect, not resent and disdain.

Following the opening credits, we spend nearly half an hour on Krypton as Jor-El and the ruling council convict former members of attempted coup and condemning General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) to a lifetime of purgatory in the Phantom Zone (with nary a flying dildo in sight). Nearly forty years later, the scenes of a government dealing with members of the ruling elite committing sedition and treason before going on to generally accept scientific data which points to cataclysmic planetary environmental danger but then debating the conclusions drawn from said data seem not only topical, but blacky, satirically prescient.
Its increasing topicality lends additional gravitas to the sequence which was already blessed with the presence – if not necessarily the full focus – of Marlon Brando as Jor-El. While he may have been reading his lines off of cue cards, scenery and, in one take, little Kal-El’s nappy, there’s still no denying his presence and brooding charisma carry it off and underpins the Shakespearian tragedy of Krypton’s fate adding real emotional heft to the ultimate act of parental sacrifice in sending Kal-El to, if not safety, then at least a chance of life. Of course, it takes more than a whole planet blowing up to destroy an ego as big as Brando’s and so his voice and, occasionally, projection feature throughout the movie to provide guidance to his son from beyond the grave.

It’s confirmed during the journey to Earth – as Kal-El’s ship passes Zod and chums in their rhomboid reformatory – that Krypton is six galaxies away from Earth and also mentions in passing dozens of other worlds, mentions of interplanetary conflict and a total of 28 known galaxies in all, so it’s odd in retrospect that the franchise never once flirted with an enemy or threat from beyond Earth save the Kryptonians themselves. You have to wonder if the Salkinds had, at one point, the gleam of a cinematic universe in their producer’s eye? To today’s more scientifically literate ears it all sounds like astrophysically ignorant nonsense but it was, at the time, par for the course when outer space came into play.
SUPERMAN sets its roots firmly in the scenes following Kal-El’s arrival on Earth. The deliberate evocation of a Norman Rockwell-esque rural American heartland atmosphere helps embed this incarnation of Superman’s foundations in the as-yet-untarnished great American dream; a moral and spiritual philanthropic altruism. His father’s death, from the natural causes of a heart attack, also teaches young Clark an important, pivotal lesson about the limitations of his great power, as opposed to, say, sacrificing himself needlessly to a tornado. It’s the “with great power comes great responsibility” moment for Superman as a character, forcing him to acknowledge and accept that as powerful as he is, he still has limits and must strive to remain humble. It also powerfully primes the pump for the moment when, years later, he must confront his failure to save someone he loves once again.

There are a few more expanded scenes in and around Smallville and it’s a nice touch that Lana and Brad, big characters in the flawed but underrated SUPERMAN III are introduced during the high school years, giving the first three films a greater sense of cohesion than they’re generally given credit for. Of course, the film was marketed under the slogan “You’ll believe a man can fly!” but, to be honest, you might be sceptical about him running and the train sequence here, brief as it is, doesn’t quite get the hang of convincing bipedal motion. At least in this extended TV edition, there’s the distraction of a brief appearance by a (very – almost too) young Lois Lane aboard the train, trying in vain to get her parents (played by Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill who played Superman and Lois Lane respectively in the 1940s serials) to believe what she’s seen.
Donner does a great job, too, of balancing competing tones especially in the first hour of the movie covering Clark’s youth and coming of age. There’s an authentic down-home warmth to the domesticity and real pathos when Jonathan Clark (Glenn Ford) passes away while Clark’s discovery of the Kryptonian ship in the barn feels like it could be lifted straight out of a Stephen King novel, as does the quest north and the creation of the Fortress of Solitudes.

Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen and Jackie Cooper as Perry White (another second choice – he originally auditioned for the part of Otis) are immediately, indelibly iconic incarnations of the characters, setting the standard by which all future castings would and should be judged. Crucially, none of them feel *new* to the audience and from the first moment they appear on screen as Kent tries to make his bumbling introduction, they feel fully formed and full of life.
Of course, you can’t really discuss SUPERMAN and its cast – which also, lest you forget, included Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine – without acknowledging the best performance in the whole movie, that of Christopher Reeve. No actor, before or since, has so convincingly and yet so seemingly effortlessly, shown how Superman’s secret identity could credibly work. Reeve threw himself into the part, working out to bulk up his physique so much that by the end of the extended filming period, his silhouette no longer matched the matte shots which had been taken earlier and had to be redone. In addition to his increased muscle mass, there’s a tremendously subtle physicality to his performance which you can see time and time again as he changes persona. At 6’ 4”, Reeve was an imposing figure yet his Clark Kent manages to appear both weak and small. The more you revisit it, the more astonishing a performance it is and it’s little wonder he won a BAFTA for it.
The extended TV version of SUPERMAN provides more screen time for Reeve too, with many more interactions between Superman and Jor-El and a more prominent role for the Fortress Of Solitude. These scenes give a much better insight into Superman’s sense of loneliness and isolation in a world he finds himself increasingly engaged in.

Hackman’s mischievously ruthless Lex Luthor also gets more screen time and we get to see him staying more than one step ahead of the conventional authorities before his attention turns to extra-terrestrial threats. Luthor’s hostility towards Superman is more prosaic than modern interpretations – there’s no grandiloquent ‘greater good’ ideological underpinning to his animus – he just recognises that Superman presents an irresistible barrier to his ‘crime of the century’ real estate scam. In Superman he sees an opportunity to prove his self-declared superiority and takes the Kryptonion’s arrival on Earth as an affront to his own ego rather than some bad-faith argument about the potential danger Superman represents. At this point, even the worst bad guy on Earth couldn’t conceive of Superman turning evil; it just wasn’t in his nature.
Much of the rest of the movie plays out as it does in the theatrical cut, with minor alterations here and there, especially around Luthor’s subterranean lair and Superman’s encounters with Miss Tessmacher. It’s easy, though, to overlook how much of the Superhero Movie Handbook Donner wrote with this movie, from the first reveal of Superman and his foiling of a variety of high crimes and petty misdemeanours in one memorable evening, to the struggles of juggling the secret identity and the obligations of heroism, SUPERMAN set out the formula and visual language that virtually every superhero film since has embraced and built upon.
It remains the most vibrant incarnation of the character in pop culture today, despite what the narrow discourse of social media might want you to believe, although it had the benefit of debuting to a world that wasn’t yet jaded and despondent. Pop culture itself is always a moving average and it’s simply harder for modern incarnations to make the same kind of impact and gain the traction that was possible forty years ago when the field wasn’t so very crowded and competitive but there’s so much about Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN that’s pure and perfect that you have to believe this is a movie which would fly whenever it was released.

