I'll be the first to admit that Donner has had his share of clunkers over the years, but he was definately the right man for the job with Superman.
I was very grateful for the Donner Cut of SII. I've seen it bashed to no end as cheesy or incoherent or they say it looks too "cut and pasted"....people not being able to get it through their heads that it is a mere approximation. Certainly not exactly what the film would have been had Donner finished his work.
As is I admit I do prefer the theatrical release, however the Donner Cut has flashes of what may have been had the Salkinds not pulled the plug on him.
Unfortunately there is no better version of SIII or Supergirl (the 138 minute version is no better in my opinion) waiting to be made, what you see is what you get.
As for the Salkindless SIV, the deleted scenes on the DVD release put to rest any idea in my head that the original 134 minute cut was any better than the 89 minutes we got. That footage was AWFUL.
^True this!
But at least the deleted Superman 4 footage eventually saw the time and light of day mostly (some of it is still missing). As much as the cut scenes didn't improve much about the film outright, the producers were wrong to cut out 30 minutes of scenes from the movie simply because one minor test audience obviously moaned about it comepletely wrongly themselves anyhow.
Superman 4 required rewrites and a larger budget to work. Not much less budget and removing what was needed storyline wise for it to work onscreen.
Bad as Superman 4 was, it needed as much footage from it in order to make the storylines work anyhow even if said story wasn't much good to begin with. And please take it from somebody who saw it way back then. Its 90 minute running time "IS" what truly killed it! as it made no sense in its 90 minute form. I have a fanedit now where the deleted scenes are restored along with pictures from the comic book adaptation. And continuity wise, it works far better at maintaining the story than what the 90 minute theatrical version ever did, that i myself once paid to see on the big screen as a kid.
Superman 3 was a bad idea executed with a bigger budget, while Superman 4 was a noble effort to make a decent Superman film, that was simply executed very badly because of its poorer budget all round!
ST4
When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die!
reply
share