Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut -- 1980/2006 -- PG

Superman II was originally written with Superman: The Movie as a single script that was broken into two movies to be directed by Richard Donner. Most of the film was done at the same time as the original Superman film and Donner actually completed 75% of the film before the studio fired him for "creative differences." Richard Lester was brought in to replace him and in order for Lester to get a director credit on the film, he had to shoot 51% of it, meaning that Donner's footage had to be scrapped and Lester had to reshoot it. This created, of course, a veritable mutiny on the part of the cast and crew and a rather dark episode in the Superman movie history. Now we have on DVD That Richard Donner cut of the film created using the original footage shot by Donner, some test footage, audition material, and some of Lester's footage to fill in the missing pieces which gives us a different view of the same film that came out in 1980.

The story involves Lois Lane figuring out that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same person, and as a result, he decides to become human, forsaking his powers to be a normal person with her. Well, this came at a bad time because one of the missiles Superman diverted in the first film, flew out into space and shattered the Phantom Zone housing the Kryptonian criminals, who subsequently fly to Earth to take over. Superman is forced to get back his powers and battle the threesome with powers identical to his. The restoration of Donner's material gives the story a more cohesive feel as we have Marlon Brando back playing Kal-el (the studio and Brando had butted heads over this film as well causing him to be removed in the final version since he wanted no part of it or something), Superman's father, and it more completely explains both the transition of Superman to humanity and back.

We still have the painful realization of Superman and his knowledge that he will forever be assigned to protect humanity from itself and major disasters, and as a result, can never assign himself to one person. It must be something disturbing to know your lot in life is to always be alone, and this version makes a poignent point of that.

This one was a little rough in spots, but given that it is basically a movie reconstructed with 30 year old and occasionally incomplete footage, it works very, very well. It was nice to see the film that actually has continuity with the first right down to linking the reason the baddies escaped with the rescue in the first movie as opposed to a completely different save-Lois-Lane incident.

My only real complaint (which might be a result of the incomplete footage) has to do with the budding Superman/Lois relationship in the first half as the bad guys get the lion's share of screen time while Clark and Lois gets a few minutes here and there for single scenes to explain what they're doing before we dive back into the new plot. It came off as very choppy and if we didn't have an entire film of development preceeding this one, it wouldn't work at all.

I will say the ending solution to this film was a little dissatisfying, but then again, it produced the same basic ending in the Lois-Clark as the Lester version, but in this version, the ending to that relationship was more emotional and a bit more painful, so hence, a lot better done. The final solution for the overall plot echoed the first movie, which also served to provide continuity, but at the same time, it left it kind of open ended in regards to the villains, which is not necessarily a good thing, and I can't help but wonder what changes might have been made had Donner stayed on and they tested this version officially.

So, it was nice to see a Superman II that worked with the original instead of being a sequel that disregarded it. It was still a rather good film, and had this version been allowed to get out there, I'm sure it would have been far better than what we ended up with. Definitely worth checking out.