‘Superman: The Movie’ Remains the Gold Standard for Superhero Adaptations
Superman: The Movie was a hit before it was a hit. From the moment Ilya and Alexander Salkind purchased the film rights to the character in 1974, it became a major Hollywood event. Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Lester, William Friedkin, George Lucas and Sam Peckinpah were all considered to direct. Spielberg and Lucas turned it down because of their respective commitments to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, while Peckinpah was out after revealing a gun during his meeting with Ilya. Actors like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, James Caan and even legendary boxer Muhammad Ali were all considered for the role of Superman. Hoffman was even offered the part of Lex Luthor after being considered for Superman, but turned it down.
Yet the only thing more wild than what the movie could have been is what it actually was. Richard Donner directing, coming off the huge success of The Omen, a few years before the monumental hits of Lethal Weapon and The Goonies. While Christopher Reeve was a relative unknown, Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman were both not only Oscar winners but two of the biggest stars in the world, in general. Mario Puzo, author and screenwriter of The Godfather, wrote the screenplay. This was a major moment in film history. And that’s not to even mention that the big-budget, earnest superhero film had never even really been attempted before.
There had serials and there had been Batman: The Movie in 1966, but that was an entirely different beast. It was an adaptation of a TV show that had been low-budget and very intentionally campy, a parody of the comic with an earnest love of its quirkiest charms, inviting the audience to be in on the joke. The film adaptation was all of those things, and then some. Superman had a much harder task. Like the ’66 Batman, it embraced the inherent silliness, but it also treated it seriously and with great respect at the same time. The result is something of a miracle.
People think that Superman feels and sounds a little outdated because of the time in which it was made, but that’s not really true at all. The 1970s were the age of grimy and gritty realism, even in prestige pictures, even on big budgets, but there’s nothing raw or unrelenting about Superman, because it is in some ways trying to evoke an entirely different time. Even visually, the film seems to exist at a perfect nexus between the 1970s and the 1930s. This is especially true in the newsroom. Gruff, no-nonsense Perry White, fast talking star reporter Lois Lane, they feel plucked out of a ’30s movie, and yet treated as real, fully-developed people at the same time.
Christopher Reeve’s performance stands as the ultimate example of this, but for different reasons. He feels like a man out of time not because he’s invoking any specific era, but rather because he’s so good, so pure, as to not feel as though he belongs to any particular era. In short, he feels a little alien, but in the best way. He is deeply human, he is everything we are and especially everything we’re capable of, but he is simply more human than most. I know people talk about that one shot inside Lois’s apartment so much, but it’s simply because it’s that good. I could watch that moment over and over, where Reeve goes from Clark to Superman and back to Clark again in a single shot and the vocal and physical difference between the two characters is absolutely striking. Clark is hunched over and sounds a bit like Kermit the Frog, Superman is a tall, warm presence, immovable but not unapproachable, and unwaveringly sure of himself.
Superman is the distilled essence of good, but with an unmistakably full range of human emotions that are also, in their way, presented larger than life. And that’s not only great, it’s necessary for what the film sets out to accomplish. Superman: The Movie is not just an adaptation of a comic book, it’s an adaptation of a myth. It seeks to bring the myth of Superman to the big screen for the first time and does it perfectly. Now, I have done my fair share of complaining about the Christification of Superman in pop culture, considering the character was created by two Jewish immigrants and in its essence, is meant to evoke the story of Moses rather than the story of Christ, and all of that does pretty much start right here with this film. But that comes down to a few specific moments of on-the-nose imagery or even more on the nose dialogue, be it Clark wandering in the Great White North instead of the desert, or Jor-El saying “I give them you, my only son.” As a whole, though, it is a perfectly distilled representation of Superman as cultural myth, presenting it as though it were an adaptation of The Odyssey. Not without a sense of fun, mind you, but instead bursting with humor and heart as much as drama and action, because that’s how the source material reads, and that’s what a faithful adaptation needs.
Keeping the myth in mind, if Superman is a pure representation of good, Lex Luthor must stand as a pure representation of evil. That’s exactly what Hackman’s arrogantly infallible performance provides. It’s interesting to note how much Luthor has changed over the past almost fifty years, both in the comics and in pop culture. This was Luthor before he was reimagined as a billionaire tech CEO, before he was someone who claimed he was out to save the world from Superman. But there are elements of the character that have always been there, and that Hackman gleefully embodies. Lex has always been a “brilliant criminal mind,” always the brains of the operation, and always a man without physical power who is insanely jealous and resentful of a man who has all that power and doesn’t use it for his own gain.
The two characters are perfect, polar opposites, as represented in this film. Superman lives in the bustling city of Metropolis, surrounding himself with people to blend in, but also because he loves them. Everything he does and everything he is, is because he cares for them so deeply. Lex, meanwhile, lives in a bunker a mile below the surface. He is cut off, save for his assistants that he barely treats like people. Whereas Superman surrounds himself with people, Lex surrounds himself with things. His books, his plans, even Otis and Miss Teschmacher , these are accomplices that are basically possessions to him.
Superman: The Movie established a template for the superhero origin film that we are still following today, though it also did some things that I wish were still followed, that somehow actually feel more modern and less safe than a great deal of the comic book movies of today. Namely, and there’s really no way to sugarcoat this, Superman is a deeply horny movie. If there’s one thing I think people forget about this film, it’s that. The sexual chemistry between Clark and Lois is off the charts, and the flirting between them walks right up to the edge of downright explicit. I could not even begin to imagine seeing that in a Marvel or DC film today, and I absolutely commend them for it.
That aside, the overall template is absolutely there. I’m not saying that Superman is the greatest superhero movie ever made or even that it’s my favorite, but it is the gold standard. It gave us a template that we’re still following almost fifty years later. Kevin Feige once said that every Marvel production started with a viewing of Superman, and I understand why. I don’t know if they still do that, but they should. And yet, it’s not something that can be replicated. I think, in many cases, the superhero movies that fail are the ones that try.
This film is the perfect template on how to do it, but that doesn’t mean to literally ape this movie’s approach. The way to follow that template is to what Superman did for whatever story is being adapted next. To embrace its inherent charm and embrace it completely, to treat it with respect and have fun doing it. I think every adaptation that truly does that, without hesitation and without looking down on the material, is sure to fly.
