Plot
Wealthy businessman Ross Webster discovers the hidden talents of Gus Gorman, a mischievous computer genius. Ross decides to abuse his talents, in a way to help Webster with his plans for economic control. When the man of steel interferes, something must be done about Supes. When Gus' synthetic Kryptonite fails to kill Superman, it turns him in an evil incarnation of his former self. The tar-laced Kryptonite pits man against himself, setting up the Clark vs. Superman battle.
Keywords: superman, computer, kryptonite, high-school-reunion, villain, super-strength, smallville, high-school, special-powers, small-town
If the world's most powerful computer can control even Superman...no one on earth is safe.
The world's super hero in his toughest adventure yet!
Superman vs. the king of computerized crime!
Perry White: I don't have to tell you, it isn't easy for me to lose one of my best reporters.::Clark Kent: Oh, that's okay.::Perry White: But you deserve the vacation, Lois.::Lois Lane: Thank you.
Vera Webster: Don't call me "man."
Perry White: I don't understand you Olsen. A boring banquet and you bring me three thousand boring pictures. Yet Superman saves a man from drowning on 3rd Avenue this morning while you stand there watching the whole thing and you don't even bring me one picture.::Jimmy Olsen: Chief, I didn't have my camera with me.::Perry White: [while Jimmy mouths the words he knows by heart] A photographer *eats* with his camera. A photographer *sleeps* with his camera.::Lois Lane: I'm glad I'm a writer.
Ross Webster: I can't have anyone with me... who isn't with me.
Gus Gorman: I don't want to go to jail because there are robbers and rapers and rapers who rape robbers.
Ross Webster: I ask you to kill Superman, and you're telling me you couldn't even do that one, simple thing.
Ross Webster: You know a wise man once said, I think it was Attila the Hun, "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail."
[Superman has just stopped a chemical fire]::Fire Chief: I tell you that man is a miracle.
Ross Webster: Never underestimate the power of computers.
Evil Superman: Well I hope you don't expect me to save you, 'cause I don't do that anymore.::Lorelei: Don't worry about me. I'm long past savin'.
Coordinates | 29°57′53″N90°4′14″N |
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name | Superman III |
writer | David NewmanLeslie Newman |
based on | Joe Shuster}} |
The film was less successful than the first two Superman movies, both financially and critically. While harsh criticism focused on the film's comedic and campy tone, Reeve was praised for his much darker performance as the corrupted Superman. Following the release of this movie, Pryor signed a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures worth $40 million.
Series producer Ilya Salkind originally wrote a treatment for this film that included Brainiac, Mister Mxyzptlk and Supergirl, but Warner Bros. did not like it. The treatment was released online in 2007.
Meanwhile, Clark Kent has convinced his newspaper to allow him to return to Smallville for his high school reunion. En route, as Superman he extinguishes a fire in a chemical plant containing vials of acid that can produce clouds of corrosive vapor when superheated.
In Smallville, Clark is reunited with childhood friend Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). Lana is a divorcée with a young son named Ricky (Paul Kaethler). Clark and Lana begin to share affection for each other, though Lana's former boyfriend Brad (Gavan O'Herlihy), Clark's childhood bully and now an alcoholic security guard, is still vying for her attention.
Meanwhile, Webster schemes to monopolize the world's coffee crop. Infuriated by Colombia's refusal to do business with him, he orders Gorman to command an American weather satellite named Vulcan to create a tornadic storm to decimate the nation's coffee crop. Webster's scheme is thwarted when Superman neutralizes the tornado and saves the harvest. Webster then orders Gorman to use his computer knowledge to create kryptonite, remembering Lois Lane's Daily Planet interview from Superman, during which Superman identified it as his only weakness. Gus uses a computer to order Vulcan to locate Krypton's debris in outer space, but after the computer fails to analyze an "unknown" element in kryptonite, he improvises by replacing the unidentified element with tar, garnered from a pack of cigarettes.
Lana convinces Superman to appear at Ricky's birthday party, but Smallville turns it into a celebration. Gus and Vera, disguised as United States Army officers, give Superman the kryptonite as a gift, and are dismayed to see that it appears to have no effect on him. However, the compound begins to produce symptoms. Superman goes through a descent into darkness as he becomes selfish, focusing on his lust for Lana, which causes him to delay rescuing a truck driver from his jackknifed rig. Superman begins to question his own self-worth, and, as the Kryptonite takes effect, he becomes depressed, angry, and casually destructive, committing petty acts of vandalism such as blowing out the Olympic Flame, straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ripping open the hull of an oil tanker, causing the contents to spill into the sea.
With Superman distracted, Webster furthers his plans by controlling the world's oil supply, ordering Gorman to direct all of the oil tankers to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and having them sit there until further notice. Gorman moans that Ross gets his own way all of the time and that he feels unappreciated. He then gives Webster a series of crudely drawn blueprints for a supercomputer. Ross makes a deal with Gorman, agreeing to build his supercomputer in return for sorting out the oil tankers.
Superman assuages his depression with a drinking binge, but is eventually overcome by guilt and undergoes a nervous breakdown after Ricky calls out to him, urging him to fight against his descent into evil. After nearly crash-landing in a junkyard, Superman splits into two personas: the immoral, selfish, corrupted Superman and the moral, righteous Clark Kent. They engage in an epic battle across the junkyard, with the evil Superman repeatedly trying and failing to kill Clark by crushing him in industrial equipment. The battle ends when Clark bursts through the walls of a car crusher and strangles his evil identity, vanquishing him for good. As a battered but unbowed Clark gazes up at the heavens, he pulls his shirt open to reveal his crest. Restored to his normal heroic self, Superman sets off to repair the damage his evil counterpart had caused.
After defending himself from numerous rockets and an MX missile, Superman confronts Webster, Vera and Lorelei, and is forced into a battle with Gorman's supercomputer, which severely weakens him with a kryptonite ray. Gorman, guilt-ridden and horrified by the prospect of "going down in history as the man who killed Superman", destroys the ray with a firefighter's axe, whereupon Superman flees. The computer becomes self-aware and begins to defend itself against Gus's attempts to disable it, draining power from electrical towers, causing massive blackouts. Ross and Lorelei escape from the control room, but Vera is pulled into the computer and forcibly transformed into a cyborg. Empowered by the supercomputer, Vera attacks her brother and Lorelei with beams of energy that immobilize them.
Superman returns to the battle with a canister of the Beltric acid from the chemical plant he saved earlier; the intense heat emitted by the machine causes the acid to turn volatile, eventually destroying the supercomputer, which also reverts Vera back to normal. Superman flies away with Gus, leaving Webster and his cronies to deal with the authorities. After dropping Gus off at a coal mine, where he gives him a job reference, Superman returns to Metropolis and reunites with Lana Lang, who has relocated to the big city and found employment as Perry White's new secretary.
In July 1983, ITV showed the Royal Premiere of Superman III. This show included interviews with actors in the film, who had flown to London for the United Kingdom and European premiere. Some clips from the film were shown, including where Superman is flying Gus to the coal mine and explaining how he used the acid to destroy the supercomputer, thus revealing the ending of the film.
Audiences also saw Robert Vaughn's villainous Ross Webster as an uninspired fill-in for Lex Luthor. Gene Hackman, along with Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), were angry with the way the Salkinds treated Superman director Richard Donner, with Hackman retaliating by refusing to reprise the role of Lex Luthor entirely (though he would later be persuaded to come back for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987, with which the Salkinds had no connection). After Margot Kidder publicly criticized the Salkinds for their treatment of Donner, the producers "punished" the actress by reducing her role in Superman III to a brief cameo.
In his commentary for the 2006 DVD release of Superman III, Ilya Salkind denied any ill will between Margot Kidder and his production team and denied the claim her part was cut for retaliation. Instead, he said, the creative team decided to pursue a different direction for a love interest for Superman, believing the Lois and Clark relationship had been played out in the first two films (but could be revisited in the future). With the choice to give a more prominent role to Lana Lang, Lois' part was reduced for story reasons. Salkind also denied the reports about Gene Hackman being upset with him, stating that Hackman didn't return due to prior commitments.
Fans of the Superman series also placed a great deal of the blame on director Richard Lester. Richard Lester made a number of popular comedies in the 1960s - including The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night - before being hired by the Salkinds in the 1970s for their successful Three Musketeers series, as well as Superman II. Lester broke tradition by setting the opening credits for Superman III during a prolonged slapstick sequence rather than in outer space. Superman III is commonly seen as more or less a goofy (albeit uneven) farce rather than a grand adventure picture like the first two movies.
On Richard Lester's direction of Superman III, Christopher Reeve stated:
The film's screenplay, by David and Leslie Newman, was also criticized. When Richard Donner was hired to direct the first two films, he found the Newmans' scripts so distasteful that he hired Tom Mankiewicz for heavy rewrites. Since Donner and Mankiewicz were no longer attached to the franchise, the Salkinds were finally able to bring their "vision" of Superman to the screen and once again hired the Newmans for writing duties.
Despite such harsh criticisms, Superman III was praised for Reeve's performance of a corrupted version of the Man of Steel, particularly the junkyard battle between this newly-darkened Superman and Clark Kent. One of the film's positive reviews was from the fiction writer Donald Barthelme, who praised Reeve as "perfect" and described Vaughn as "essentially playing William Buckley - all those delicious ponderings, popping of the eyes, licking of the corner of the mouth."
A video game for Superman III was planned for the Atari 5200 but was never released. The game (perhaps intended to be like Missile Command) would've been loosely based on the plotline for Superman III.
Category:1983 films Category:1980s science fiction films Category:Superman films Category:Sequel films Category:Warner Bros. films Category:Films set in Colombia Category:Films shot in Alberta Category:Computers in films Category:Films directed by Richard Lester Category:Films shot anamorphically Category:Films shot in Canada Category:Films shot in Arizona Category:Films shot in Utah Category:Films shot in England Category:Films shot in Italy
de:Superman III – Der stählerne Blitz es:Superman III fr:Superman 3 id:Superman III it:Superman III nl:Superman III ja:スーパーマンIII no:Superman III pl:Superman III pt:Superman III ru:Супермен 3 sl:Superman 3 sr:Супермен 3 sv:Stålmannen - går på en krypto-NIT tr:Superman IIIThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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