Small in ville, small in scope

Odds are if you're a fan of comic book films today, you're used to even the lesser movies being at worst just okay, barring your occasional Green Lantern or Fant4stic. If you didn't start watching this genre of film until about 2008 when the first Iron Man came out, you've basically been living in a golden age of super hero films. But there was a time when that good to bad ratio was quite reverse... oh, a very dark time. On that note, my boyfriend has been urging me for months now to sit down and watch 1983's Superman III. 

Of course, this was still from a time when the superhero film genre was in its infancy, but there had already been critical and/or box office disappointments such as Swamp Thing and Flash Gordon. However, this was a poorly received entry in the film franchise that gave us the cinematic superhero in the first place. Up until now, I've only known it by reputation. After all, I'd seen Superman IV: A Quest For Peace quite a few times growing up, so I thought, "how could it be any worse?" Well, now we'll find out as I find out why Superman III was considered anything but super. 

"Did you try to bullshit last week?"

The film starts out in a Metropolis unemployment office where local ne'er-do-well Gus Gorman, played by the late Richard Pryor, is trying to eke one last week of unemployment out of what has been a pretty long time without a steady job. But is summarily shut down despite his talent for bullshitting. On the way out, though he bums a pack of matches off someone to light a cigarette (he lit it indoors in a government building-- the 80's were like another world) and by chance he espies an ad for becoming a computer programmer. You know, the computer programmer ads you see on a tiny flip pack of matches instead of brand names.... What? You say that's not a thing? Oh, well. Cue the credits.

Whereas the credits of the first two films were iconic, set in space giving the viewer a sense of Superman's cosmic background while the signature, grandiose theme by John Williams played, Superman III takes a decidedly different approach. The two words that best describe it are comedic and pedestrian. Starting with a tracking shot of a blonde bombshell we will later become familiar with. The sequence travels around the city as one minor disaster cascades into another in a very Rube Goldberg fashion, sometimes intersecting with Clark Kent. I won't go beat by beat in this sequence, but the highlights are flaming mechanical toy penguins, Clark changing into Superman in a photo booth and having to snatch the photo strip away from a kid, but giving him the last shot (the non-Clark one), and a guy drowning in his own car after running/knocking over a fire hydrant. 
We finally cycle back to the blonde woman from the beginning towards the end of the credits along with Clark smacking some rando in the face with a cream pie... because this film has a sophisticated sense of wit. Oh, and it's at that moment, lingering on good ole pieface that director Richard Lester drops his credit. He could have placed it anywhere, but I suppose he wants the audience to mentally associate his directorial hand with all the dignity of a unwitting passerby getting creampied by the man of steel. Classy. 

Tonight's cinematic auteur, ladies and gentlemen...

This sequence is paired with a pretty buoyant, bouncy score. In case flaming penguin toys, the pie gag, and the inclusion or Richard Pryor didn't tip you off, the score might as well be screaming, "Hey look! A comedy! We're in on the joke!"

Time seems to have elapsed. During the credits, Gus has seemingly applied, been accepted to, and is already in class for data processing. It's worth mentioning that a recurring theme in this film seems to be the fear/frustration/fearstration that came along with what was then a slow but inevitable march towards the democratization of computers. This is a pre-Bill Gates/Steve Jobs world and it seems like the only person in class who isn't floundering seems to be our man Gus. In fact, it seems to be coming a bit too easily to him. Even he doesn't get how he's doing it. Hm...

How nice of them to point the baddies out to us.

Over at the Daily Planet, Lois, Jimmy and Perry remark off screen over humanitarian wunderkind and the film's designated corporate villain, Ross Webster while the camera is locked on a tight shot of a black and white photo of him. Lois informs us that he is good-looking despite the fact that "bland" would be more accurate. Since this is an exposition dump with visual aids, we also see pictures of Lorelei Ambrosia, the blonde bombshell from the credit sequence, and Vera, Ross' sister and business partner, who is the antithesis of a blonde bombshell. Jokes are made that insinuate that Lorelei is Ross' possession and that Vera is so homely Perry thinks the photo must be blurry. I don't know about you, but I feel like this is one step away from a workplace harrassment PSA in which Perry White stops female interns to tell them they'd be prettier if they smiled. It's a bit uncomfortable.

Clark is getting ready to head to his hometown of Smallville for his high school reunion. He's pitching a story that sounds all kind of snobby when you think about it: how a former country boy re-adapts after having become a big city sophisticate. Ah, yes, Clark. Let's see you mince about in your fine silk suits among all those uncouth slackjawed yokels you used to know. Sigh. How much longer is this thing? An hour and fifty minutes?! Clark must be pitching this story on his last stop before heading out of town because he has his letterman sweater with him... like a total dork.

Keep it classy, LoLa

Lois too is headed out of town, to Clark's surprise. Does she just keep that bikini top stuffed up her shirt sleeve and wait for an excuse to gloat to anyone who'll listen? Did she have it up there all day or did she just prep when she heard Clark coming down the hall? Anyway, Lois is Sir Not Appearing In This Film except for the very beginning and very end. Condolences to any Lois fans out there.  

While they're hashing out their travel plans, 
 Perry's secretary is having him participate in an office lotto for a trip to the country of South America. Will this be a plot point or just a bit of business to pad the scene? You make the call.

Either we just hit another another time jump or Gus' computer course only took one session and had same day job placement. He's got a job  at our evil villains' evil company, doing evil data entry. And is pissing and moaning about the size of his first paycheck. Okay, he's already got a paycheck? I can no longer do mental acrobatics to resolve this film's faulty timeline. Screen writers David and Leslie Newman were too lazy to make sure this script made sense. His coworker gives him an idea and he uses his computer to scam fractions of cents from the earnings of everyone in the company. Is this the same computer he had in class? Or maybe the same log-in screen name? Because again, it seems like the computer system itself is doing all the heavy lifting for him.

For some reason, Jimmy is accompanying Clark on a coach bus back to Smallville. I guess Perry wanted some shots of Clark's HS reunion for the front page. Or he just wanted the kid out from under foot for a few days. You know for someone famously known as "Superman's best pal," Clark seems like he is only marginally tolerant of Jimmy as he rambles on about his life. 

Fortunately for Clark, a fire at a chemical plant stops Jimmy's stories. Jimmy gets some gumption and puts himself in peril to take pictures up close-- and breaks his leg in the process. Clark supes up and meets with a scientist who tells him that the lab is home to special super acids that can eat through anything. Checkov's gun? Check. 

The majority of this action scene kind of blurs together and feels really long in relation to how important it is to the plot. Superman's solution to putting out the chemical fire is to use his freezing breath to ice over a nearby lake and dropping it on the fire. So, we can all agree that Clark has never been put through a workplace fire safety tutorial, right? Fortunately, neither have the Newmans, so that saves the day... onto that reunion.

He's every Delco townie d-bag ever

At the reunion, we quickly meet a couple characters who will be the basis of Clark's Smallville supporting cast for this film. Brad... we all know a Brad. He was the top dog back in the day during high school, the quarterback, the ladies man. Translated: He's the has-been. In any other film, he'd barely be a blip on the radar, but in this film he functions as a Clark-specific rival and the abhorrent admirer of... 

Little did she know she'd be better remembered in a tv movie
where Tim Currey makes bad jokes in a clownsuit.

Clark Kent's childhood crush and/or girlfriend, Lana Lang. Okay, if there is one casting decision I love in this film it is Anette O'Toole. Granted I have watched the tv mini-series of Stephen King's It more times than is healthy, but I saw her enter the frame and I just went "Oh yaaaaay! It's Beverly Marsh!" Lana is recently divorced and is thankful that Clark is around to help avoid any painful Gaston-like interactions with Brad. 



Apparently another week has passed and Gus now gets to marvel at the success of his "stealing fractions of pennies from coworkers" scheme. His last paycheck didn't even crack $200, but this one could set him up nice and cozy for a good long while.

Back in Smallville, it's the day after the reunion. Either that or they waited a week to clean up. Whatever you do, don't touch that gallon of potato salad! Lana is pretty much telegraphing her desire to leave Smallville, that she thinks Clark is the one that got away. She literally spells it out just in case having a great rapport with him and looking dreamily at the blow-up of Clark's high school photo wasn't enough. Some directors believe in "show don't tell." Lester leaves nothing to chance and does both. Oh, and she drops the fact that the has a son. 

Thirty minutes in and we're finally introduced properly to the villains, who have caught wind of Gus' payroll shenanigans. Right out of the gate, we see that Ross is that corporate snake. Vera seems to be an adolescent pastiche of feminists, depicted as her brother's equal, but is a decidedly masculine-looking woman who wears power suits. Lorelei... if you take Billie Dawn from Born Yesterday and give her the voice of Lena LaMont from Singin' In the Rain, you'd have Lorelei. I feel like the screen writers must have had some intent with having a straw feminist and an MRA's ideal of womanhood play opposite opposite one another but that might be giving them too much credit. Ross calls Gus up to his penthouse. Have I mentioned he's a corporate baddie? I should clarify that he is a comically corporate baddie. His office has a secret passage in the wall that flips around to reveal a fully stocked bar, he skis on an artificial mountain on the rooftop of his skyscraper, his plans are all about cornering various markets. He might as well have a suit decked out in dollar signs. Gus is worried he's in trouble. 

Instead, Ross recruits him into his money money money schemes. However, they think he should start small. For some reason, this involves sending him to Smallville, KS. Okay, of all the towns in the world they send him to a rural pissant town in Kansas? And he arrives seemingly the next day? If Metropolis is supposed to be NYC in this movie, I somehow doubt that either you'd arrive the same day/ that Clark would still be in town by the time Gus arrives. But you know what, movie, whatever. Logic was clearly not a priority during production so let's just keep going.

Oh, before I forget-- that grand prize trip to South America that was happening during Operation: Infodump? A couple of rando day players won. Yeah, that plotpoint sure went somewhere.

Meanwhile, Clark is out with Lana and son at a picnic in a field arced by an unrealistically perfect rainbow. He's wearing his old sweater around his neck, so I'm pretty much sure that we're in midlife crisis territory. Superman eats dog food. Well, if the filmmakers' goal is to show audiences Superman doing something he's never done before, that sure is one way to go about it.
Lana's son (no, I didn't bother to learn his name) gets hurt somehow and passes out in a high crop of wheat and when Clark notices a team of tractors headed his way, he transforms into Superman. Notice I say that he changes wardrobe. No, he just transitions behind a a fence where anyone can spot him. It isn't even a good transition. It's like they stopped the camera, Reeve changed into his tights and they resumed rolling camera.  In case you're wondering, Superman rescues the kid. This scene is padding. Actually, a lot of scenes are padding, but that goes without saying. After the rescue, he returns to Lana and boy as Clark again and is clearly taking pleasure in bragging about knowing Superman.

So, yeah... That happened.

Back to Gus' story, he is for some reason infiltrating the Webscoe Smallville branch. This is Ross' company-- why is this necessary? Can't he hack the system from anywhere? In order to do that, he gets the night guard liquored up so he can do his thing. Guess who the night guard is? That's right-- it's big man on campus Brad. Boy, did he shoot for the stars! He knocks on the door, and shows Brad the contents of his large suitcase, which is stocked with about half of Ross' rotating liquor cabinet, and Ross is pretty much, "yeah, this looks legit. Come on in." I'm going to be honest, I tried but this scene is fairly inexplicable. And yet also remarkable. Now, granted, this is a Superman-as-comedy movie, but why does there just happen to be a big foam novelty cowboy hat that you'd probably wear to a Dallas Cowboys game just laying around? 
It turns out though that Gus needs good ole Mr. Pornstache to do his embezzling computer mojo because the system requires two key card users on opposite sides of the room to activate. So he schleps Brad's blind stinking drunk body  over to the second panel and strings him up like a marionette in order to activate the system. 

It's about now while I question my life choices that I realize that this would be funny in your average Richard Pryor movie you'd see in the late 70s and early 80s, but just feels ill-suited for a Superman film. Comedy or not, a film centering around a hero is only as strong as the menace of its villains. We've spent little time with Ross, Vera, and Lorelei and what we have seen sets them up as caricatures of flimsy stock yuppy villains. We've spent a lot of time with Gus, but he's not much more than a get rich quick schemer who is in so far over his head that he has resorted to sight gags and slapstick. Do these sound like foes up to the challenge of the Man of Steel to you?

If you're like me, it's about now that two questions come together in your mind. What exactly is the business of Webscoe Industries? What exactly could computers actually do in 1983? The answer to both of these questions is: whatever the writers want. The Smallville branch computer he gets into says "Wheat King and somehow effects a banking ATM back in Metropolis, mail order bills from Bloomingdales." We learn this as he inadvertently causes chaos while trying to figure out what he's doing. In one clearly necessary scene, we see a husband hand his wife her bill from Bloomies. She's so stunned by the bill that she barely manages to react with a weak, "oh," when her husband smashes a sliced open grapefruit into her face. If you've ever gotten citric juice in your eyes, you'll know that it burns, so even with that bombshell, I am baffled by this actress's lack of response. And no, this wasn't the result of fighting over the bill. He just does it because Richard Lester was the misunderstood genius of his time. If this happened in a Honeymooners/I Love Lucy-type marital quarrel, I think that could have been funny, but this just feels like a headscratcher. 

Webscoe also seems to control crosswalk signs. I don't know how that is the terrain of big money corporate villains, but whatever. Gus manages to mess up crosswalks so that traffic is brought to a screeching halt in the city (sidebar: I've concluded that the cosmology of this movie consists of one city and one rural town and anywhere beyond them is limbo) and causes a riot. Even the crosswalk sign starts to fight itself with the go figure climbing up for a knockdown brawl with the stop figure. You know what, it's not even worth the effort to figure out how that works.

Ye gods, I wish these kinds of scenes were  isolated incidents. You can practically see the hands of the director and screenwriters frantically shoving the comedy they want to make into the superhero film they've been commissioned to, even if it means randomly cutting to unnecessary characters you'll never see again. They're desperate, cheap laughs that don't earn their payoff and break the world established in the first two films. 

Gus at last gets his ass in gear ending that montage of awkward pity laughs and this gives him control of satellite Vulcan, which causes a storm to quickly form in Columbia, South America. Here we run into those Daily Planet randos who won the trip to South America. Apparently, the company gave them the vacation time for the trip that very day. They spot a church where a wedding is in progress and attempt to barge in watch, calling it "a native wedding" because this film is a bastion of decorum and sophistication. Fortunately, the sudden storm chases them away before they cause an international incident.

We cut back to our villains in Metropolis. They are in a winter ski lodge situated atop his sky scraper because money. Ross is gloating over the news broadcast about the storm because apparently his goal with that storm in Columbia was to drive up the sales of his brand of coffee. So, to summarize, the villains only show up 30 minutes into the film and the goal of the subsequent 30 minutes has been the coffee market. Our villains, ladies and gentlemen. Vera asks why stop at coffee when they can corner the market on oil too? I'm surprised they didn't say, " Today coffee, tomorrow the WORLD!" but we were damn close. 

This is when they are once one again joined by Gus because, in accordance with my running theory, you can just hop from Smallville, Kansas to Metropolis, New York like you're using the world map of a video game. Gus apologizes about Superman interfering with their plan. Um, when did that happen? Why didn't the news story reporting in real time mention it? Are we missing a scene? Oh, well. Gus does act out the missing scene for our benefit, including going around with a pink table cloth as a cape and Zeus almighty, you can practically hear the film begging for us to laugh with it and not at it.

"Don't make me pull out my She-Ra Man Haters Club
membership card, mister.."

 Gus ends a sentence directed at Vera with, "man." To which Vera replies, "don't call me man." In case her appearance and comportment didn't give it away you guys, she's the resident militant straw feminist and don't you dare forget it! Gus' description of seeing Superman takes place where the storm hit in Columbia. How the hell did he see that? Okay, again we arrive at my theory about this movie's cartography. Perhaps in the world of this film, Columbia is on the other side of Smallville, KS and Gus just happened to see it at a distance as he was leaving the Webscoe office... in the dead of night, and it was mid-day in Columbia, which in the real world is only an hour ahead. Okay, I give up. Did this movie's script supervisor go on strike the day before shooting? 

Ross despairs that Superman rescuing the citizens of Columbia from a hurricane means that he'll be after Ross' company next, because in some parallel universe, those two things are easily put together. He frets about Superman ruining his oil plan, which to be fair, is only an oil idea at present. They wonder how to get Superman out of the picture and ditzy Lorelei mentions kryptonite. Vera asks how she knew that and makes a snide insinuation about Lorelei's sexual activity in the process. Clearly the hack writers' definition of feminism is slut shaming. Nice work, Newmans. Ross plans to get his hand on some of the stuff, once again, implementing Gus and the Vulcan satellite. Gus implies that he either isn't earning enough for what he's being asked to do or that he wants to back out before things go to far, he responds "If there's anything I hate, it's greed." He says this, mind you, in his own private ski slope built atop his own sky scraper, from the muilti-million dollar corporation he owns and while plotting to accrue even more money. Oh, and Gus accidentally skis off the building, falling probably 30 stories to the ground but miraculously survives. Praise C'Thulhu. 

Ross narrates as Gus acts out the krypton plan, which involves not retrieving kryptonite but analyzing it and replicating it. The lab can't ID one component, so of all things, he types up tar 0.57%. This thing is less than one percent off-type from standard issue kryptonite-- remember that.

Clark is back in Metropolis trying to write his hard hitting news story about his high school reunion when Lana calls him and basically guilts him into "getting Superman" to come back to Smallville. I think she tricked him into thinking this was a favor for her son when it turned out they wanted to honor him for that chemical factory fire from what feels like an eternity ago, as well as rescuing the kid from the tractors. They reward him by presenting him the key to the city. I'm surprised they didn't go the whole nine yards and proclaim it Superman Day in his honor. 

Sit on what, indeed, Mr. Pryor.

For some reason, the villains had this impromptu day marked on their calendars and Gus takes the hidden warp zone on Level 3 back to Smallville. He just interrupts the town's proceedings decked out in his best Halloween Spirit soldier costume, delivering his best Patton impersonation and some FDA Approved Grade A  Ham. He rambles on about plastic chairs for a while, causing the also-disguised Vera in the crowd facepalm and mug at the camera a lot. Finally, when this pointlessness ends, he hands over the synthetic kryptonite to the last son of Planet K, but it has seemingly no effect, much to Gus' and Vera's surprise. When Gus reports this in to Ross over the phone and confesses the missing ingredient snafu, he is most displeased and really should have been provided a mustache to twirl.
Back at  Chez Lang, Supes is complimenting Lana on a wonderful lunch when she goes to answer the phone. Suddenly, accompanied by some ominous music, Superman lurches over. Lana's meatloaf must have hit one of his three Kryptonian stomachs like a ball of lead. No! My bad. It turns out this is the delayed effect of the synthetic defective kryptonite. Suddenly Superman's entire demeanor changes. Lana gets off the phone and tells him about a truck that is hanging perilously off the side of a bridge, but old red briefs doesn't seem all that interested, focusing more on Lana, until she tells him both verbally and with her distressed body language that he really should go help. He flies off, really disinterested, and arrives on the scene pretty lackadaisically for someone faster than a speeding bullet, and about 30 seconds too late to prevent the truck from falling into the river.

I'm going to only give the cliff notes for this section of the movie because it's pretty stupid. In case it isn't clear, the synthetic defective kryptonite effectively functions like red kryptonite, which causes him to lose his inhibitions and suffer violent, irrational mood swings.  Tar is apparently the only thing standing between depowering Superman and turning him into a raging douche bag. Because he is now Superdouche, he shoves the Tower of Pisa into a 90 degree, ruining the local souvenir stand owner's business. Next we get to see him blow out the Olympic torch at the lighting ceremony. The villains gloat over this new change in his personality while bedizened in their finest 80s workout gear.

We get to see Lorelei without Ross present. She's reading the works of Kant, speaking in a normal tone of voice, and contemplating transcendentalist philosophy, but as soon as the Gus and Webster siblings enter, she quickly hides the book under her pillow and we're back to the baby doll voice. Yes, I'm intrigued. 

The floor flips over and another wall opens up to reveal a pair of lit up maps showing the locations all around the world of computers that remotely control oil tankers. I don't know why, but some of these tankers are smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic.

Gus stands his ground, not that he thinks what they're doing is wrong, but that he wants to make some plans. Ross hears him out and Gus pulls out plans for a super computer. Ross agrees as long as Gus gives him control of all the tankers. All comply save for one headed to Metropolis, which rightly finds the newly received coordinates outlandish.

For some reason, we cut to Lorelei straddling the crown of the Statue of Liberty, presaging Sigourney Weaver as Zuul a year before Ghostbusters came out. Superman arrives to tell her he doesn't rescue people anymore. She is in full-on seductress mode, hoping to convince him to fetch the wayward tanker. Our hero complies, but instead of dragging it to the coordinates, punches a hole in the ship, causing an oil spill then flies off to bump uglies with Lorelei. 

Presumably the next day, there is a line stretching around the gas station with a sign saying "2 gallons per person" and it's now that I realize that this film was made for a generation for whom the oil crisis was a living memory. 

Back in Smallville, Lana is still rejecting Brad at every opportunity and it's only now that I realize the costumers consistently have dressed her in  like a 50's housewife in all but two of her scenes. Those two exceptions being when she was cleaning and when she was bowling. Maybe the warp zone between Smallville and Metropolis is actually a timewarp zone. Brad's constant pestering has finally convinced her to break ties, so she calls the Smallville airport asking about flights to Metropolis. Wait a minute. First off, who takes flights to Metropolis. Every time we've someone arrive in Smallville, it's either been by greyhound.

Back in Metropolis, Superjerk is in a bar, drinking off his regrets, flinging nuts around to break people's glasses, and heat visions his reflection in the mirror into submission. He snubs the newly arrived Lana and lanaboy (I swear he has a name), but boychild hasn't given up faith in his rescuer and his words of encouragement echo in his ear. He touches down in a junk yard and screams like Logan in statistically every third scene of Wolverine Origins. The junk yard workers know what's what and get the hell out of dodge. Then suddenly, accompanied by a glowing green light on his forehead, Superman splits into two people, the other self appearing fully dressed in his Clark Kent persona. They proceed to battle one another. I wanted to think this was an interesting way to dramatize his internal struggle, but both Superman and Clark Kent actively impact the environment around them as they fight. It reminds me of an old issue of Uncanny X-Men when the permanently absorbed psyche of Carol Danvers whom Rogue absorbed permanently years prior was given physical form but there was only enough life force to sustain one of them and they had to duke it out for survival. Okay, that's off-topic (albeit vastly superior to this film), but you all know how this kind of sequence in this kind of Superman, at this late stage of the film plays out. Clark wins and he is restored to his noble, heroic self! The John Williams theme plays!! And I get to skip to the next scene on the DVD!!! 

He flies back to Lorelei's pad where a message starring Vera tells him to meet them at the Grand Canyon where an obvious trap has been planted. Why do they want to trap Superman? How did they know he'd revert to his true self? I don't care, I just want to go home... For some reason they had Gus' super computer built at the bottom of the Canyon. Lorelei and the Websters fly down in single person motor powered hot air balloons.
They seem to question Gus' choice to ride down on a burro. acting like he looks silly on his donkey compared to the quiet sophistication of balloons attached to silver-painted lawn furniture. Gus' stated reason for preferring the burro is what I call into question. He says he doesn't believe a man can fly. I'm sorry. I know this film's ability to remember it's own continuity only reaches the heights of middling during its lucid moments, but wasn't he the one excitedly describing his first hand account of seeing Superman flying in Columbia?

Down at the super computer, Lorelei calls it a jukebox. Now that we know the ditz thing is an act, I can't help but wonder is that slang or if she wants them to think she's dumb enough to think it's a jukebox. Vera meanwhile has absolutely no plans on letting Gus be the one to operate the computer. Because she's been the computer whiz in this movie? By the time Gus arrives, they have weaponized the super computer against Superman, having trapped him in a beam of green light emitted from the newly perfected, tar-free synthetic kryptonite. Ross says that Gus will get the bragging rights for being the man who killed Superman and Gus has finally reached his breaking point and turns on them to save Superman. He zip lines down to the lower level of the facility and removes a vital screw, shutting down. Gus and Ross engage in some slapstick as Ross tries to get the screw out of Gus' mouth. Gus bites Ross' thumb as suddenly we're in a Three Stooges short.

The krypto-beam comes back on of its own accord, and we soon realize that the super computer is a living, sentient, and obviously evil thing. It taps into power stores which shuts down the power grid to apparently the Grand Canyon's nearby city of Metropolis, New York. As it so happens, everyone's favorite country mice, Lana and her son Bowl-Cut are on the subway and get trapped down there when the power blows.

Gus manages to free Superman once again from the kryptonite beam, but the super computer is angry and blasts Gus across the room. Superman hobbles away, still weak from the effects of the kryptonite. Lorelei figures out their fucked, tells Vera "later frogface," and starts running and Vera follows suit. However, the computer traps Vera in its tractor beam and sucks Vera into its main core and starts the borgification process.

This was the end result. In a post Star Wars world, this was what the Superman franchise gave us when they finally went with something more visually spectacular than Lex Luthor and a bunch of Kryptonians. Sigh... And to top it off, in her new cyborg form, which I have dubbed Frogface 2.0, she doesn't get to chew the scenery as a good special effects villain ought to be allowed to do. No, she's basically a lifeless cyborg zombie. I feel like she could have been a female version of Metallo, especially since the super computer (which might have been an attempt at a proto-Brainiac) had access to synthetic kryptonite, and she could have been a cybernetic beast driven by the rage of the loss of her humanity. Instead, she merely becomes a bipedal extension of the super computer's attack ten whole minutes before the credits roll.

Superman has in the meantime flown to chemical factory in Kansas, which we now know is either a few hundred miles away or two blocks away depending on the draft of the script,  and returns with a cannister of Checkov's acid from way back in the beginning of the film. The computer has Lorelei and Ross trapped. Lorelei seems to be pinned to the wall by a band of electicity around her midsection while RoboSister holds Ross in a stasis beam. The computer scans him as he enters, but disregards the acid. Superman reflects the stasis beam Frogface 2.0 has set on Ross against her, causing her to short out and fall down what I can only suspect is a bottomless chasm. The computer is fighting Superman with all its moving parts while the cannister starts to bubble over, turning from green to red, then splashing all over the computer and eating through the area, causing the computer to spark and explode, and generally collapse. Lorelei is freed from the wall, somehow Vera is de-zombie-fied (and apparently not in a bottomless chasm), and Superman retrieves Gus from under a pile of rubble. 

Superman is next seen flying with the acrophobic Gus in his arms. The movie is going to forget about the Websters and Lorelei, but Superman says they'll have some explaining to do with the police. And by explaining, I think he means bribes. Kal-El drops Gus off at a coal mine, where he crushes a lump into a diamond and suggests to the workers that they hire Gus as their new computer guy. Gus isn't feeling it so he walks to the bus stop.

Clark visits Lana and twerp at their hotel. Apparently, they were expecting Superman despite Lana being afraid of him due to his changed behavior at their last encounter. Clark on bended knee, gives her the diamond now made into a ring. Just at that moment, who should walk in but everyone's least favorite jerk-face, Brad. Okay, it's one thing if they keep running into each other in Smallville, but for him to just show up at her hotel room in "the big apricot (no really, they call it that)," shows some serious stalker talent. He tells Clark he hates him because he's nice and nice guys finish last before he is comically rebuffed. Who says that? Even the biggest jerk thinks their the hero of his own personal story? Ye gods! Dear Newmans-- I hope this project brought you closer as a couple because it definitely didn't do you any favors as writers.

Back in Perry White's office, Lois is back (apparently her month-long vacation is over). She praises Clark on his writing (which also took a month to write, based on this movie's timeline). Perry introduces Lois to his brand new secretary Lana, whose giant ass ring definitely sparks Lois' interest, especially after finding out who gave it to her. 

The film ends with Clark traveling back to Italy and setting the Tower of Pisa back to leaning mode, once again to the frustration of the nearby souvenire vender who since Superman's last visit has replaced his stand with 90 degree angle tower figures to sell.

End Credits.


So, yes. This movie is bad. I think Superman IV is worse by most metrics. I think this film's saving grace was the fact that it was really trying to be something different than the first two films-- a comedy. However, I really think it tries too hard to be something different than the first two films. When it's more organic to the film, such as Lorelei's bubbly ditz persona or the better parts of Pryor's bits, even when it got a little over the top. But then there's cut aways and recurring characters like the vacation couple whom I'm sure the director thought was comedy gold, but were either flat or didn't make sense within its own universe. Making sense in general was another problem. I mean seriously, it made you wonder whether it was written by people who had ever stepped a foot outside their house because they had no sense of, well, anything resembling reality. I need a drink...