Road to Justice: Superman III

Superman III
Directed by: Richard Lester
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Robert Vaughn
Released: 1983
Watched: September 28th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I know nothing about this movie other than it's apparently bad and that one time Superman hung out with Richard Pryor. Strange. I don't really know what to think, and I don't think an established villain even bothers showing up. Before deciding to start down this road of justice I thought I'd never watch this movie. I'm a little disappointed that I'm breaking that vow. When do we get to the good stuff?

Thoughts After: This movie is pretty terrible. It starts off with a ton of "slapstick" comedy, and it immediately lost my interest. Richard Pryor is running around as a gag character, who's secretly really smart, pulling all sorts of crazy hijinks. Meanwhile Superman is saving people, and briefly visits Smallville and reconnects with Lana Lang for some reason. I don't know, nothing really makes sense. Eventually Pryor gets tricked into working for the villain to make fake kryptonite, which he laces with .5% tar when the readings say there's a small unknown element. Yeah. Anyway, eventually they give the fake kryptonite to Superman and it causes his personality to change. The dark Superman is probably the best part, he ruins the olympics, fucks with a bartender and just is an all around asshole. Until finally he flies off to a junkyard and splits in two. A good Clark Kent emerges and Superman just starts beating him up and laughing like a total prick. It's entertaining, but nonsensical.

Eventually he "kills" Clark, but it turns out he does have super powers still. He chokes out dark Superman after some more fucking about, and then flies off as Superman, the good Superman, undoing all the dickhead things he had just done. Hurrah! Finally he goes to the Grand Canyon (I assume?) to stop the bad guys, they shower him with missiles in the silliest looking video game-esque missle targeting program, but of course it doesn't stop him. They try to stop him with a super computer, The computer gains sentience somehow and attacks, turning one of the villains into a robot, who's quickly stopped. Eventually Superman manages to destroy it with acid. And Richard Pryor helps a bit, so Superman and him fly off having saved the day. This movie is pretty terrible.

The effects are really bad this time around too, like noticeably so. The plot is very thin, and makes little to no sense and the character interactions are almost consistently zany. This isn't what I want from a Superman movie. I don't want to think about this movie anymore, there are a couple of genuinely funny bits, but the movie is just not worth the time investment. I'm sorry Superman. I'm so scared for the sequel.

Bonus Round: The extra this time around fared a little bit better, maybe because it was so short though. Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special is a fan made film about the Easter Bunny hiring Lobo to off Santa. Everyone is quite a rude asshole, and incredibly violent to boot. He of course finishes the job, and ends up killing both, ending the short by claiming he always hated the holidays. This sticks pretty close to what makes Lobo as a character good, and the actor did a mostly good job of portraying him. This was pretty good, for a fan film especially.