Superman III (1983) - Review
Originally published July 2016Oh, man. I thought the first two Superman movies were bad, but Superman III really reached some new lows. It's really quite astonishing that one of the simplest and most recognizable superheroes from comics would have such trouble getting a good movie made about him. Batman had much better luck.
There's no Zod to make up for it this time either. Not even Christopher Reeve's charm can pull this thing out of the trash. I haven't watched Superman IV in a long time, which many believe is the worst of them all, and I have never seen Superman Returns, but Superman III set a very low bar that would be tough for either film to beat.
Image: Warner Bros. | This is the face. This is the face I was making the whole time.
Pros
Lois Lane is barely in it and replaced with a more interesting, though somewhat selfish, love interest
Reeve is still Reeve and gets top billing for a change
No more Lex Luthor goofiness
Cons
What plot?
The villains suck
Richard Pryor
Where is Superman?
Plot & Thoughts
I find it rather funny how Christopher Reeve finally gets top billing for playing the title character of the movie, for which everyone knows and recognizes him, and how he is in less of the movie than the stand-up comedian who was "on fire" at the time—I don't think he was literally on fire during filming, but Pryor may have been freebasing a little bit on set for all I know. This movie is all over the place and every part of it, except one, is easily forgettable. I watched this movie just a few days ago and the only part I can remember vividly is the same one that I remember terrifying me as a kid, which we'll get to later.
Image: Warner Bros.
The opening credit sequence is more than enough to let you know what you are about to see for the next two hours. A slapstick Rube Goldberg machine of chaotic events ensues after an "attractive" woman in a "skimpy" outfit distracts a person walking down the street. If the opening credits of the superhero movie are something out of a Three Stooges skit, then you should know you're in for a bad comedy. It tries to be funny and it tries to be campy, the same way that the Batman movie with Adam West was, except it's not. It lacks the charm and the wit that was present in the West show/movie that made the campiness fun. To try to add to the humor, they throw Richard Pryor into the mix, who basically becomes the protagonist of the film, even though his role is an antagonist.
Image: Warner Bros.
Pryor was one of the funniest stand-up comedians to have ever lived and could be really funny if allowed to do his own thing. Except, he's playing a character here, a character who could have been played by anyone. The fact that it's Richard Pryor adds nothing to the character and doesn't make him funny or interesting in any way. Any of the jokes he has fall flat or are just gratingly annoying. If people thought the jokes in Batman & Robin were bad, at least those were puns and required some wit. Most of the time, the "humor" of Superman III is just Pryor making goofy faces and sound effects, or playing dumb or drunk.
But enough about that! What's the movie actually about? Good question! I don't really have an answer for you. I can only tell you what happens and give you as much detail about the plot as the movie did, which isn't much. Richard Pryor's character (I forget his name) is an unemployed moron who manages to snag a job doing computer programming for a giant business firm that is in the business of... something. The movie is quick to tell us that Pryor is an idiot savant when it comes to computers and he soon develops a method of embezzling the firm. Naturally, since he's supposed to be dumb, he doesn't do a good job of covering his tracks and the big boss-man calls him up. Instead of firing him and arresting him, he offers Pryor a job as an off-the-books professional hacker working directly under him, because computers are the way of the future! I also like how he hires Pryor for his hacking abilities and assumes that he'll be unstoppable for this reason alone, even though we just saw how bad he was at covering his tracks. A real good idea to hire a henchman for secret missions who's terrible at cleaning up his breadcrumbs.
Image: Warner Bros.
Using his incredible hacking abilities, Pryor could control the world's satellites which can manipulate the weather... somehow. He could also control the oil industry, I guess. Basically, Big Boss-man is rich and wants to be richer by controlling everything and using whatever elaborate and unrealistic means necessary to do so, which can all be done via hacking. All Pryor has to do is hack computers, which might as well be magic as far as the filmmakers are concerned because they treat computers with a bizarre sort of reverence. There's even a sequence that has computer screens using pixel renditions of events taking place and the sound effects from Pac-Man, as though a computer just makes up that stuff and there isn't an artist or designer who has to do it beforehand. Mind you, this movie came out one year after the original Tron, so there may have been some motivation for the themes taking place.
Image: Warner Bros.
I'm not sure if the people involved had some deeper message they wanted to send about computers, or if they were just capitalizing on a craze, but a lot of it leads me to believe that there was a fair amount of ignorance involved in the writing process. Why make the hacker genius so stupid at everything else? How could he possibly be good at coding or designing super-computers when he's dumb enough to show up to work in a Ferrari he bought with stolen money? Much like Superman's theory of time travel, I don't think that's how it works! Several sections of the film focus just on how Pryor has to overcome his stupidity to accomplish his assignment. Once he gets in front of a computer though, he's unstoppable. Strange how a person who acted as though they'd never seen a computer in their life would be able to not only program one with ease but also design a supercomputer fortress from the ground up, with enough defenses to take out Superman.
Image: Warner Bros.
Oh right, Superman! I almost forgot he was in this. His side of the story is that he goes back to his hometown as Clark Kent, dates a woman he remembers from high school for a little bit, and comes in contact with Richard Pryor who gives him some kryptonite that has a contaminant—IMDB's description says the contaminant was tobacco, but I don't recall hearing them say that. Since it was contaminated, it doesn't kill him, but he develops a split personality and just becomes an asshole for a while, indicated by the fact that he's no longer clean-shaven. He has an out-of-body experience, fights his evil Tyler Durden self, and then flies off to stop the villains when that sub-plot is done. His side of the story is dumb and boring as hell, but it's a little less annoying than following the villains around.
Image: Warner Bros.
The last thing I'll mention is the part of the movie that I remember the most. It's the part of the movie I saw as a kid that has stuck with me for years, but I wouldn't have known it was a Superman movie if he hadn't been in the same scene. At the end of the film, Superman finally confronts the villains. As they try to escape the super computer control room that has become self-aware, one of them gets sucked into the device by some force and transformed into some demented-looking cyborg with a shitty wig. Watching it now, it's nothing special, and frankly could fit well in a heavy metal music video, but when I first witnessed it, it scared the crap out of me. It was a nightmare sequence out of a Don Bluth cartoon movie, like what American Tale or All Dogs Go to Heaven did for so many other children.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Superman III sucks. I feel like I may have used that statement to describe a Superman movie already, but this one really sucks. Superman is barely in it. When he is there, his story-line is still boring and rather dumb, yet, it is a welcome reprieve from the Richard Pryor bits that dominate the film with humorless slapstick schlock and technological diefication. I can't wait to see if Superman IV is actually worse.