Superman '78 (2021)

[Kamdan]

Granted, Superman III's budget wasn't as big as the previous two films. But it didn't need to be. Superman: The Movie's budget was exceptionally large, in part due to all the new special effects techniques that had to be experimented with and developed (e.g. the Zoptic process). Superman: The Movie is still one of the top hundred most expensive movies ever made when adjusted for inflation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films#Most_expensive_films_(adjusted_for_inflation)). Not every Superman film needs to cost that much.

You are conveniently leaving out details that justify the almost $100 million budget for the first two films that's beyond just special effects. The first two not only had gigantic set pieces to construct based in England (like the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor's hideout and the entire Daily Planet newsroom), but they filmed on location in New York, New Mexico and Canada. That eats up a large portion of the budget, especially when Donner would scrap whole days of shooting simply because the sky didn't look right. When Richard Lester shot the Paris sequence for II, it was raining and he kept going because he knew that he could not be frivolous as Donner was. The ends do justify the means in Donner's case but it was still looked at as insubordination from the producers' standpoint.

Superman III saved a significant amount of money not filming in New York by using the Canada not only as Smallville but as Metropolis as well. Sequences like the chemical plant rescue had to be scaled down from the initial idea of Superman saving half of Alaska from burning. That could've been achieved with the budget they had with the first two but since they were working from half of that, they had to significantly scale down. To draw comparisons with the James Bond series, they have the advantage of being able to showcase locations all over the globe while Superman's adventures typically are confined to his home base of Metropolis. This was something that Christopher Nolan also got around by going outside of Gotham City in each of The Dark Knight Trilogy films.

Nor did they need to pay Brando's exorbitant salary.

Once again, I state that Pryor was paid $5 million, which was 5 times the amount Reeve was getting. The issue with Brando was that he was guaranteed a percentage of the gross which he had to sue the producers to get. If they did that for Superman II as well they would've had to of pay a percentage as well. This time around, they were being more savvy by offering a large upfront salary, which shows how much space they put into this idea of having Richard Pryor be a costar.

I don't think he would have been too difficult to adapt from a technical or budgetary standpoint. Making him tolerable would have been tricky, since the character is meant to be annoying. But I think it could have been done.

Mxy's depiction in the Superboy series made me question whether or not his comic book counterpart could be convincing. Aside from his out word appearance, there would have to be a significant effort to make his character small and be able to easily float about as he did in the comics. The problem with achieving that is that you may not be able to have both of the actors in the same space playing off each other. This was a problem with Julia Roberts when she played Tinker Bell.

Even if you did have a talent like Dudley Moore (or my personal preference of Robin Williams) in the role, you take a big risk of the actor completely blowing Reeve off the screen every time he's on. Just look at how Williams was when he played Mork in the first episode he appeared in on Happy Days. All eyes are on him and his antics which is what led to him being given his own show. Same deal with Moore playing Arthur Bach. That is suitable when you are the star of the show/movie, but not so much when you are playing a supporting character.

Provided the filmmakers had access to the 'Rebirth' storyline that was being developed concurrent with their movie – and as discussed elsewhere in this thread, it seems highly likely that they did (just five years later DC would grant Tim Burton and Sam Hamm early access to The Killing Joke before it was published) – then all of my suggestions to improve the plot were based on ideas that were readily available in 1983.

The Killing Joke was only available to the filmmakers after it was published. Tim Burton liked it because it helped him define a singular visual look and tone of the film, not for the content at all as Sam Hamm drew upon the original origin story depicting their The Joker as a narcissistic gangster before he fell into the chemicals instead of the whole "one bad day" storyline Alan Moore wrote.

You have to face the reality of the situation that the writers of Superman III did want to adapt something established in the comics, but wanted to bring their own unique plot to the film. I've spoken to one of the writers of the Dick Tracy film and he explained to me that they didn't care at all how much this matched the source material. What they wanted to make was a movie for mass audiences and not something that would only appeal to the fans with every detail correct. This was the same emphasis for these films and the only thing that kept them on track was that DC had that "integrity of character" clause in their contract. Back when Mario Puzo wrote his first draft, he described Jor-El having blonde hair and DC criticize that Jorell has never been to pick to with blond hair in the comics and therefore should not in the movie. I'm sure they had similar concerns when they read Salkind's treatment with Superman and Supergirl being romantically involved even though they are cousins in the comics and making Lana Lang more of a Lois Lane clone instead of her comic counterpart.

And if Ilya Salkind's initial concept is anything to go by, then many of those pitfalls could easily have been avoided had wiser minds prevailed during the development stage.

Again, it was bad decision making, not lack of money, that prevented Superman III from reaching its potential.

We must remember that hindsight is always 20/20 and nobody sets out to do a terrible movie. The Salkinds were trying to emulate the most successful independent producer at the time, Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, who was raking in millions of dollars off of the highly successful James Bond series. The Salkinds from the onset wanted their first Superman production to be a two-part movie that would be the start of a lucrative franchise like the Bond films.

The then current Roger Moore films were nowhere near the tone of the initial series of Sean Connery films and the comedic tone of them was emulated in the Superman films. They certainly were believing their own press when critics actually said II was better than I. That made them think the comedic tone Richard Lester emphasized ensured further success and the opportunity for a big comedic star like Richard Pryor to participate was going to ensure that. We now all now see the hiring of Pryor as a detriment, but in their eyes at the time, it was something new that didn't feel like they would be repeating the same material as the first two.

I know it's difficult to separate the fan part of yourself when it comes to observations like this, but it does help you get more into the mindset of what decisions were ultimately made. It's a lot different now that we have filmmakers who are more familiar with the source and want to see faithful adaptations of the comics, but this was out of reach at the time. I would have liked to have seen Telly Savalas play Lex Luthor, but he wasn't as big of a star as Gene Hackman who was what got the Salkinds' backers to write them checks that paid for their extravagant budget. And as I emphasized earlier, Warner Bros. had absolutely no interest in making a Superman feature film and saw themselves profiting more from the Salkinds paying them to option the characters than the movie(s) themselves.

[Silver Nemesis]

You are conveniently leaving out details that justify the almost $100 million budget for the first two films that's beyond just special effects.

I fear we're talking at cross-purposes here. At no point in this thread have I attempted to undertake a comprehensive breakdown of how the budgets of any of the movies mentioned here were spent, nor have I offered a detailed subjective evaluation of how cost efficient each filmmaker was in their allocation of those budgets. I offered a couple of examples of why Superman I and II were so over-budgeted, but I never claimed those were only reasons. Nor have I disputed that some filmmakers are better at making their budgets go further than others, or that certain actors got paid more, or that certain locations are more expensive, or that Lucas having ILM at his disposal saved him from have to outsource his special effects to other companies, or any of the other details you've highlighted concerning Hollywood expenditure. I'm not disagreeing with you on any of these things.

I simply cited the comparative budgets as an objective point of reference to show that Superman III had a generous and IMO sufficient sum of money invested in it relative to the year it was released. It was the most expensive movie of 1983, and its $39 million budget was substantial for that time. It wasn't as large as the budgets of the previous two films, but that doesn't mean it was underfinanced. Not when Superman I and II represented the single most expensive Hollywood enterprise of the seventies. https://www.looper.com/254469/the-most-expensive-movie-made-in-every-decade/

I don't think the budget for Superman III was the reason the film was bad, and I don't think having an extra $15 million sunk into it would have redeemed it. Not when the problems, as I see them, stemmed from the script. If you disagree with this, and think that lack of money was the problem, then I'd be interested to know where you think the shortfall is evident in the finished film. Which parts of the finished movie do you think suffered from lack of money? How much more money do you think it would have taken to improve its quality, and how would you have spent it?

Even if you did have a talent like Dudley Moore (or my personal preference of Robin Williams) in the role, you take a big risk of the actor completely blowing Reeve off the screen every time he's on. Just look at how Williams was when he played Mork in the first episode he appeared in on Happy Days. All eyes are on him and his antics which is what led to him being given his own show. Same deal with Moore playing Arthur Bach. That is suitable when you are the star of the show/movie, but not so much when you are playing a supporting character.

I agree about Williams. He would have been my first pick too. But I've got a feeling the Salkinds might have favoured the casting of Moore, simply because they seemed to be fans of his double act with Peter Cook (they cast Moore in Santa Claus and Cook in Supergirl). I think the best live action Mxyzptlk to date was the Howie Mandel version in Lois & Clark. He retained the powers, humour and provocative impish qualities of the comic version, while also displaying darker lethal characteristics that made him more sinister.

I doubt they would have gone as dark as this in the eighties, but they might have taken a vaguely similar approach to adapting the character.

The Killing Joke was only available to the filmmakers after it was published.

DC supplied Sam Hamm with an advanced copy of Alan Moore's script back in 1986.

JEFF: Did you incorporate any of the background of THE KILLING JOKE into the character?
SAM: No, THE KILLING JOKE was not around when we started doing this. I did get a copy of Alan Moore's enormously dense manuscript for THE KILLING JOKE about a month or two months into the writing.

http://www.1989batman.com/2013/05/vintage-magazine-article-comics.html?m=1

Uslan and Burton were almost certainly given access to it as well. Hamm and Burton were also sent advanced b & w issues of The Dark Knight Returns before they were published.

Hamm: Dark Knight was, I think, two issues in (or halfway through) when we started work, but [DC Comics' then-publisher] Jenette Kahn and the nice folks at DC sent us B&W Xeroxes of the upcoming issues.

https://13thdimension.com/sam-hamm-the-comic-books-that-inspired-batman-89/

It's fairly common practice for comic publishers to supply filmmakers with advanced previews of their major upcoming titles. It allows them to align their creative trajectories and ensure that the characterisations will accurately reflect those in the comics at the time of the film's release.

We must remember that hindsight is always 20/20 and nobody sets out to do a terrible movie. The Salkinds were trying to emulate the most successful independent producer at the time, Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, who was raking in millions of dollars off of the highly successful James Bond series. The Salkinds from the onset wanted their first Superman production to be a two-part movie that would be the start of a lucrative franchise like the Bond films.

The then current Roger Moore films were nowhere near the tone of the initial series of Sean Connery films and the comedic tone of them was emulated in the Superman films. They certainly were believing their own press when critics actually said II was better than I. That made them think the comedic tone Richard Lester emphasized ensured further success and the opportunity for a big comedic star like Richard Pryor to participate was going to ensure that. We now all now see the hiring of Pryor as a detriment, but in their eyes at the time, it was something new that didn't feel like they would be repeating the same material as the first two.

I know it's difficult to separate the fan part of yourself when it comes to observations like this, but it does help you get more into the mindset of what decisions were ultimately made. It's a lot different now that we have filmmakers who are more familiar with the source and want to see faithful adaptations of the comics, but this was out of reach at the time. I would have liked to have seen Telly Savalas play Lex Luthor, but he wasn't as big of a star as Gene Hackman who was what got the Salkinds' backers to write them checks that paid for their extravagant budget. And as I emphasized earlier, Warner Bros. had absolutely no interest in making a Superman feature film and saw themselves profiting more from the Salkinds paying them to option the characters than the movie(s) themselves.

I can empathise with the reasoning behind a decision and still think the decision itself was misguided. I'm capable of objectively acknowledging an historical attitude or mindset, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to subjectively approve of the outcomes resulting thereof. The fact those attitudes might have been commonplace in the film industry at the time does not vindicate them, but rather highlights precisely why it took that industry so long to get to grips with the superhero genre in the first place. This is the same executive-level mentality that resulted in Batman & Robin (1997) being so rushed and toyetic, and that prompted WB to hire a marketing company to reedit the theatrical cut of Suicide Squad (2016) because the trailer was well received.

There's always a profit-driven logic behind Hollywood decision making, but that logic isn't always sound. A modern example of something similar to the Pryor situation would be Barbara Broccoli and Kathleen Kennedy hiring Phoebe Waller-Bridge to work on James Bond and Indiana Jones respectively. I understand their reasoning – Waller-Bridge has won awards, critics love her, and she's popular with feminists. But I can also see that she's generally reviled by heterosexual men, action movie enthusiasts and conservative viewers, who constitute a substantial portion of the target demographic for James Bond and Indiana Jones. So while I can see the industry logic behind hiring Waller-Bridge, I can also see how inappropriate she is for these particular franchises. And if these films end up underperforming, as I expect they will (especially Indiana Jones 5), then her involvement will likely be one of the main reasons. It doesn't necessarily take the benefit of hindsight to see a disaster playing out in front of you, and I'm sure there were many people connected to the production of Superman III who could see that Pryor's involvement was ill judged.

[Kamdan]

At no point in this thread have I attempted to undertake a comprehensive breakdown of how the budgets of any of the movies mentioned here were spent, nor have I offered a detailed subjective evaluation of how cost efficient each filmmaker was in their allocation of those budgets.

You have been implying by comparing the budgets of Superman III and Return of the Jedi that the Salkinds should have had no problem at making a broader cosmic film closer to the comics with using characters like Brainiac and Mxyzptlk. I've stated the reason why George Lucas could handle such extravagant special effects and don't care to repeat them again. All of those factors come into play why we got a Superman film costarring Richard Pryor. I'm sure they would have been happy to give us something comparable with Return of the Jedi if they could have had another $60 million to throw into it but it wasn't finically feasible at the time.

I think the best live action Mxyzptlk to date was the Howie Mandel version in Lois & Clark. He retained the powers, humour and provocative impish qualities of the comic version, while also displaying darker lethal characteristics that made him more sinister.

This is a good case of the show runners downplaying aspects of a character to make them suit their needs. Mandel would have been wild if they had him go full Maurice in Little Monsters as Mxy, but that was only suitable for that film where you need that manic energy to complement Fred Savage's more nuanced performance. I really liked how Mxy was handled in the Animated Series because that character works best as cartoon character and how radical of a departure it is from a typical Superman story. It could be done in live action, as evident with Jack Nicholson's performance of The Joker. Again, they were conscious with that decision and wanted to hire someone that could convincingly take him down, which Keaton succeeded at.

DC supplied Sam Hamm with an advanced copy of Alan Moore's script back in 1986.

Read his response more carefully. Hamm received the MANUSCRIPT, not the actual comic book. That's just words on a page. And as he said, nothing from the comic was utilized other than the already established chemical plant setup for the origin of The Joker.

Burton, on the other hand, praised the highly visual aspects of Brian Bolland's artwork and wanted to emulate that for his version of Batman. So, again, they didn't get the actual comic until it was released.

It doesn't necessarily take the benefit of hindsight to see a disaster playing out in front of you, and I'm sure there were many people connected to the production of Superman III who could see that Pryor's involvement was ill judged.

It's difficult to be unique with these franchises because radical ideas like these will always be criticized by those who want it to be the same as the previous. And it's hard to judge was is valid. I love The Temple of Doom because it is nothing like Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wish every film in the series was different from the last. I won't ever criticize Superman III for giving us something new that didn't repeat what we saw in the first two. Ilya Salkind considered it an episode and not a major event movie that the first two were. It is a shame that sequels have to carry the burden of being compared to the previous. I love how innovative and interesting the sequel to American Graffiti is, but it is instantly dismissed because it is simply not on the same level as the first. I feel the same applied to Superman III.

[thecolorsblend]

It's difficult to be unique with these franchises because radical ideas like these will always be criticized by those who want it to be the same as the previous. And it's hard to judge was is valid. I love The Temple of Doom because it is nothing like Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wish every film in the series was different from the last. I won't ever criticize Superman III for giving us something new that didn't repeat what we saw in the first two. Ilya Salkind considered it an episode and not a major event movie that the first two were. It is a shame that sequels have to carry the burden of being compared to the previous. I love how innovative and interesting the sequel to American Graffiti is, but it is instantly dismissed because it is simply not on the same level as the first. I feel the same applied to Superman III.

I pretty much agree. And I have been ready and willing to defend Superman III for a long time. It is very similar in tone to the Superman comics being published in the early Eighties. My experience has been that there's considerable overlap between the Superman fans who bash on S3 the loudest and the Superman fans who have no awareness of what the late Bronze Age Superman stories were like.

Even Pryor taking somewhat centerstage has considerable precedent in Superman comics, where a guest star propels a story and Superman mostly reacts to whatever the guest is doing.

[Silver Nemesis]

You have been implying by comparing the budgets of Superman III and Return of the Jedi that the Salkinds should have had no problem at making a broader cosmic film closer to the comics with using characters like Brainiac and Mxyzptlk. I've stated the reason why George Lucas could handle such extravagant special effects and don't care to repeat them again. All of those factors come into play why we got a Superman film costarring Richard Pryor. I'm sure they would have been happy to give us something comparable with Return of the Jedi if they could have had another $60 million to throw into it but it wasn't finically feasible at the time.

It wasn't my intention to imply that all. If I gave you that impression then I must have misarticulated. The reason I cited Return of the Jedi's budget was simply because it was another big effects-heavy blockbuster movie released in the same year, and because it's the other film that is sometimes cited as being the most expensive of 1983. I also cited the budgets of Krull, Never Say Never Again and several other 1983 movies to give further context to the point I was trying to make.

My suggestion for how Brainiac could be inserted into Superman III was intended to utilise as much of the pre-existing film and effects sequences as possible while making minimal changes. Here's what I wrote earlier in the thread.

Here's my idea for how you could adapt Superman III to include Brainiac. Firstly, the film would require a new prologue. Superman I and II both had prologues taking place on Krypton, so I'd have included a similar sequence for Superman III. During this scene, we'd be introduced to Brainiac; possibly as a computer voiced by Nimoy, or else by having Nimoy appear in the flesh in the character's green skinned Coluan form. In the Rebirth storyline Brainiac was able to convert his essence into incorporeal energy and travel through space propelled by solar winds.

This is how I would explain him surviving Krypton's destruction in Superman III. His body is destroyed, but his intellect survives as pure energy drifting through space. Then when Gus Gorman uses the appropriately named Vulcan satellite to probe Krypton's solar system...

...the scan detects Brainiac lurking in the vicinity. Brainiac travels along the satellite's laser beam in the form of pure energy to reach Earth. He hides inside the Vulcan computer system while telepathically influencing Gorman, similar to how the Post-Crisis Brainiac influenced Milton Fine in 'The Amazing Brainiac' (Adventures of Superman Vol 1 #438, March 1988). There's no real explanation in the finished film for why Gus suddenly wants to build a supercomputer, but in this version it would be explained that Brainiac tricks him into doing it in order to construct a new physical form for himself. A form that will grant him dominion over the Earth's computer networks.

In this version of the film, the finished supercomputer would speak with Nimoy's voice. It initially obeys Webster's commands and pretends to be his servant, but eventually kills him before seizing control of all global computer systems. It would then be Brainiac, not Webster, that launches all the missiles and Kryptonite lasers at Superman. Gus realises he's been manipulated and tries reasoning with Brainiac, but to no avail. Eventually he tries escaping from inside the supercomputer, whereupon Brainiac takes possession of his body. This would basically be the same as the robot scene from the finished film, only it would be Gus that gets possessed instead of Vera.

The robot/cyborg would now have Brainiac's glowing red disks on his forehead and would speak with Nimoy's voice, and it would be in this form that he fights Superman during the finale. Superman defeats him using the acid, saves Gus, and hurls the remnants of the supercomputer (containing Brainiac's consciousness) into deep space. The end.

The only significant addition that would need to be made in terms of special effects would be the prologue introducing Brainiac, and that would be far less elaborate than the prologues to Superman I and II. You'd just need a model shot of Brainiac's ship accompanied by a voice over from Nimoy as he analyses what's happening on Krypton, then some stock footage from Superman: The Movie of Krypton's destruction, followed by a miniature shot of Brainiac's ship exploding. It wouldn't have cost much. All the other effects sequences in my outline would have remained the same as in the finished film, except that the robot at the end would have had Brainiac's red disks on its head.

I never suggested using Mxyzptlk or Supergirl in the same film as Brainiac. Those were ideas from Ilya Salkind's initial concept for the film, and earlier in the thread I opined that his version would have been too overstuffed and would have needed to be split into two separate films. But do I think Ilya was on the right track with using Brainiac, as were the writers of the subsequent treatments in which Gorman was to be revealed as Brainiac. I wish they'd stuck with that idea.

Read his response more carefully. Hamm received the MANUSCRIPT, not the actual comic book. That's just words on a page. And as he said, nothing from the comic was utilized other than the already established chemical plant setup for the origin of The Joker.

Burton, on the other hand, praised the highly visual aspects of Brian Bolland's artwork and wanted to emulate that for his version of Batman. So, again, they didn't get the actual comic until it was released.

I never claimed they had the finished comic before it was published. I wrote that they were given "early access" to the story before it was published, and that's true. They were given Alan Moore's complete script.

It's difficult to be unique with these franchises because radical ideas like these will always be criticized by those who want it to be the same as the previous. And it's hard to judge was is valid. I love The Temple of Doom because it is nothing like Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wish every film in the series was different from the last. I won't ever criticize Superman III for giving us something new that didn't repeat what we saw in the first two. Ilya Salkind considered it an episode and not a major event movie that the first two were. It is a shame that sequels have to carry the burden of being compared to the previous. I love how innovative and interesting the sequel to American Graffiti is, but it is instantly dismissed because it is simply not on the same level as the first. I feel the same applied to Superman III.

I've lately rewatched a number of underrated sequels to films that are widely acknowledged as being great: Jaws II, Psycho II, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Poltergeist II. In each case the original big name director was not involved in the sequel, and because of this many critics dismissed the second film as an insult to its predecessor. I don't think any of those sequels are as good as the films they're following, and they are all flawed. But I don't consider any of them to be bad per se. They're all decent when judged on their own merits, and I enjoy them all.

Superman III doesn't quite fall into that category for me. I don't think it's a terrible film by any stretch. Just average. I actually enjoy all of the Superman content in it. For me it's one of those half good, half bad films. I like the half of the film that focuses on Superman, Clark and Lana, but it's the villain half that lets it down for me.

Even Pryor taking somewhat centerstage has considerable precedent in Superman comics, where a guest star propels a story and Superman mostly reacts to whatever the guest is doing.

One thing we should have cited back when we wrote the comics influence thread was Don Rickles guest starring in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen Vol 1 #139 & #141.

Many comics had celebrity guest stars like this back in the day. For example, Johnny Carson and Uri Geller both appeared in Silver Age Daredevil comics, while Dante and Randall from the Clerks movies made cameos in David Mack's Parts of a Hole. You can get away with celebrity guest stars in a comic, or even in a TV show, but I don't think they work as the central focus of feature films.

Then again, it depends on how their talents are used. Richard Pryor was a capable dramatic actor, as demonstrated by his performances in films like Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Blue Collar (1978) and Lost Highway (1997). Margot Kidder expressed frustration that the makers of Superman III didn't utilise the full range of his dramatic talents in a more meaningful way. But obviously that's not why they hired him. They wanted the comedic movie star Richard Pryor to headline their picture, and that's what they got.

[The Joker]

You have been implying by comparing the budgets of Superman III and Return of the Jedi that the Salkinds should have had no problem at making a broader cosmic film closer to the comics with using characters like Brainiac and Mxyzptlk. I've stated the reason why George Lucas could handle such extravagant special effects and don't care to repeat them again. All of those factors come into play why we got a Superman film costarring Richard Pryor. I'm sure they would have been happy to give us something comparable with Return of the Jedi if they could have had another $60 million to throw into it but it wasn't finically feasible at the time.

I think it pretty much boils down to just "how" the Salkinds would have adapted Brainiac and Mxy for Superman III that would ultimately determine the overall production budget. If we're talking about wanting to be absolutely faithful to how the both of them were typically depicted in the comics, then yeah, we're talking a pretty extensive budget for sure. However, being that cinematic adaptions of characters can deviate from their comic book counterparts, due to various reasons; plot convenience, adhering to what was possible for that time, to just deciding to "ground" the character(s) to some extent so that audiences might be more accepting in what the movie is trying to sell, I think there are cinematic workarounds that could have been implemented that wouldn't absolutely necessitate a staggering increase in production budget. As the best example of this, would probably be how Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor in the Superman The Movie was cinematically depicted. By 1978, comic book Lex was firmly established in typically wearing a purple and green uniform that was outfitted with various types of weaponry to combat Superman. This was introduced in, what? 1974-ish? However, Donner was absolutely correct in deviating from the what was then-current in the comics, and scaling back Lex's capabilities as an antagonist for cinematic purposes. It's a fine line. Especially so for general audiences tastes back then.

I think the inclusion of Brainiac in Superman III probably would have been the "easiest" fit. With Mr. Mxyzptlk, whether it would have been Moore or Williams in the role, the idea of faithfully adapting Mxy to where he's floating around Superman, akin to the comic book version, would have been a tall order. Especially so in making something like that really look good in 1983. A workaround, possibly could have incorporated a change in color timing (to visually announce Mxy's presence), in addition to intentionally filming Mxy's scene's with a surreal undertone that gives the audience visual cues/sight gags that something isn't quite right. In my mind, this would be akin to how Wes Craven shot the nightmare sequences in the original 1984 NOES, though admittedly it wouldn't be as dark/mature. As this is Mr. Mr. Mxyzptlk, and you want it to be more comedic in nature, but those are just some ideas for workarounds to the limitations of that era. 

Silver's treatment was more focused on what could be retained from the finalized Superman III, rather than a dramatically overhauled rewrite that bears little resemblance to the actual realized product. Thus bringing the conceptualized extra budget to a minimum. Which I appreciated.

Superman III being essentially "episodic" in the Reeve quadrilogy of films is both a positive and negative overall. Positive in that one can enjoy it entirely on it's own. Negative in that the film was always going to be compared to the first two. Which are typically perceived as being much more in relation to one another than III ever will be.

[Kamdan]

But do I think Ilya was on the right track with using Brainiac, as were the writers of the subsequent treatments in which Gorman was to be revealed as Brainiac. I wish they'd stuck with that idea.

It's a decent fix, but I would have preferred if Brainiac possessed Gus Gorman much earlier in the film when we he's just a bum that's being manipulated into becoming a computer genius instead of it just being a random skill he has. It would also make him more sympathetic to all of the antics he causes and would explain plot holes like manipulating of weather satellite that can project the weather, not cause it.

I've always questioned the validity of Gus Gorman originally conceived as the human guise of Brainiac due to the writer's assuming that Richard Pryor's role in this was comedic. Pryor wanted to take on more serious roles and was reportedly upset that this wasn't the case but he let the money talk him into accepting the role and apparently was a let down for director Richard Lester who only wanted to direct III for the opportunity to work with Pryor and hoped that he would punch up the humor with his improvisations, but Pryor wasn't motivated enough to do so.

Perhaps something like that was planned but due to Pryor's freebasing cocaine incident, he had to be restrictive on elaborate make-ups. It was a small feat enough just to have him fly was Superman due to his fear of heights. I'm sure all of these changes would've been implemented, but other circumstances got in the way of them being achieved.

I never claimed they had the finished comic before it was published. I wrote that they were given "early access" to the story before it was published, and that's true. They were given Alan Moore's complete script.

Burton is not a words on paper kind of guy. He once explained that he had dyslexia over which word balloons he was supposed to read to follow the comics and has often stated that he doesn't have the best judgment in screenplays. You have to give him full visual representation and I don't see what he could've done with Alan Moore's complete script for The Killing Joke.

As for this relating to Superman III, the Newmans never struck me as people interested enough for this to fit the mold of the comics as Hamm clearly was. I wish that there would have been more interviews detailing their involvement with the franchise other than their Telly Savalas joke from the first film that gets repeated far too often. Scripts have several terrible jokes in them but that doesn't mean they'll end up in the final film. They deserve a lot of credit for laying out the groundwork for the two films working from Puzo's original script. For III, this was their own work and they succeeded in parts but obviously floundered on the humor, which was a criticism that stemmed back when Donner was in charge with the Luthor material. Critics thought Lester made the Luthor material funnier when it was really Donner directing. That's thanks to the more humorous nature of Luthor being subservient to the humorless General Zod.

[Silver Nemesis]

Coming back to the point about Ilya Salkind's original idea for Superman III being split into two different films... Now that I think about it, isn't that more or less what happened? The Brainiac part of his idea morphed into the supercomputer plot in Superman III, while other elements – such as the introduction of Kara and a magic-wielding villain with godlike abilities (Selena instead of Mxyzptlk) – ended up in the Supergirl movie the following year. Selena wasn't on the same multiversal threat level as Mxyzptlk, but she was still a powerful magical adversary who could effectively do anything she wanted. She's the closest thing the Donnerverse had to a character like Mxyzptlk.

Selena has since been adapted into the Supergirl comics, in which she was also portrayed as a powerful magic user.

I've read that Reeve's cameo in Supergirl would have involved Selena transforming Superman into a sick old man, and then him being turned back to normal again after Kara defeats her. Transforming Superman in this manner is the sort of thing I can imagine Mxyzptlk might have done. But of course Reeve decided not to go ahead with the cameo, and instead fans had to make do with this scene.

Imagine if Superman III and Supergirl had been merged into a single movie. That would have been interesting. Disastrous perhaps, but interesting all the same.

I think it pretty much boils down to just "how" the Salkinds would have adapted Brainiac and Mxy for Superman III that would ultimately determine the overall production budget. If we're talking about wanting to be absolutely faithful to how the both of them were typically depicted in the comics, then yeah, we're talking a pretty extensive budget for sure. However, being that cinematic adaptions of characters can deviate from their comic book counterparts, due to various reasons; plot convenience, adhering to what was possible for that time, to just deciding to "ground" the character(s) to some extent so that audiences might be more accepting in what the movie is trying to sell, I think there are cinematic workarounds that could have been implemented that wouldn't absolutely necessitate a staggering increase in production budget. As the best example of this, would probably be how Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor in the Superman The Movie was cinematically depicted. By 1978, comic book Lex was firmly established in typically wearing a purple and green uniform that was outfitted with various types of weaponry to combat Superman. This was introduced in, what? 1974-ish? However, Donner was absolutely correct in deviating from the what was then-current in the comics, and scaling back Lex's capabilities as an antagonist for cinematic purposes. It's a fine line. Especially so for general audiences tastes back then.

They did this with Zod too. Before Superman: The Movie, Zod was always portrayed as bald, clean shaven and wearing a military uniform (usually either green or purple) with a peaked cap. In his earliest Silver Age appearances he wore trunks that left his upper legs bare. The dominant image of Zod we have today, with the dark hair, beard and black costume, was created for the film. I imagine they would have adapted Mxyzptlk in a similar way.

I think the inclusion of Brainiac in Superman III probably would have been the "easiest" fit. With Mr. Mxyzptlk, whether it would have been Moore or Williams in the role, the idea of faithfully adapting Mxy to where he's floating around Superman, akin to the comic book version, would have been a tall order. Especially so in making something like that really look good in 1983. A workaround, possibly could have incorporated a change in color timing (to visually announce Mxy's presence), in addition to intentionally filming Mxy's scene's with a surreal undertone that gives the audience visual cues/sight gags that something isn't quite right. In my mind, this would be akin to how Wes Craven shot the nightmare sequences in the original 1984 NOES, though admittedly it wouldn't be as dark/mature. As this is Mr. Mr. Mxyzptlk, and you want it to be more comedic in nature, but those are just some ideas for workarounds to the limitations of that era. 

It's funny that you should bring up A Nightmare on Elm Street, as that's one of the films that popped into my head when I was trying to imagine what a live action Mxyzptlk might have been like in the eighties. Obvious Freddy is a much darker and nastier villain, but there is some overlap in terms of them both being reality-warping antagonists who are somewhat like cartoon characters in their ability to basically do anything their imagination can come up with. They can change their own appearance, environments, or even the laws of physics (only in dreams, in Freddy's case) for the purpose of tormenting their enemies. The other eighties movie character I thought of, who is also like a live action cartoon character with reality-warping abilities, was Beetlejuice.

Another eighties movie that depicts a reality-warping antagonist with godlike powers is Joe Dante's remake of 'It's a Good Life' from Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). The kid in that story is able will anything he wants into existence and change reality on a whim.

Xtro (1982) attempted something similar on a much smaller budget.

These examples are all a lot darker than anything we would have expected from an eighties Superman movie, but they offer us a glimpse of how characters with reality-warping powers similar to those of Mxyzptlk were depicted during that era.

Alternatively, a way of doing a more grounded and less effects-heavy version of Mxyzptlk would be to portray him as a sort of malevolent version of Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life (1946) – an odd little eccentric who keeps following Superman around and making his life harder by imposing random handicaps: "From now on, you're no longer invulnerable/no one remembers who you are/everything you touch turns to stone, etc." That way Brainiac could still be the main antagonist, while Mxyzptlk serves as a secondary villain.

It's a decent fix, but I would have preferred if Brainiac possessed Gus Gorman much earlier in the film when we he's just a bum that's being manipulated into becoming a computer genius instead of it just being a random skill he has. It would also make him more sympathetic to all of the antics he causes and would explain plot holes like manipulating of weather satellite that can project the weather, not cause it.

That would certainly have explained his sudden aptitude for computer programming. The filmmakers would need to add a scene early in the movie where we see Brainiac first make contact with Gorman. Perhaps Gus gets struck by lightning after he leaves the unemployment bureau, and as he dusts himself down and questions what just happened we could briefly see Brainiac's red disks superimposed over his forehead before promptly vanishing. That would signal to the viewer that the alien presence has latched on to him. The audience could fill in the rest for themselves. And as you say, that would also make Gus more sympathetic by shifting the responsibility for his actions onto Brainiac.

I wish that there would have been more interviews detailing their involvement with the franchise other than their Telly Savalas joke from the first film that gets repeated far too often. Scripts have several terrible jokes in them but that doesn't mean they'll end up in the final film. They deserve a lot of credit for laying out the groundwork for the two films working from Puzo's original script. For III, this was their own work and they succeeded in parts but obviously floundered on the humor, which was a criticism that stemmed back when Donner was in charge with the Luthor material. Critics thought Lester made the Luthor material funnier when it was really Donner directing. That's thanks to the more humorous nature of Luthor being subservient to the humorless General Zod.

I'd like to know more about the Newmans' contribution as well. I enjoyed reading the earlier drafts of the Batman '89 and Batman Returns scripts and seeing which elements were introduced in which treatment, and it would be equally interesting to see the evolution of the Superman movie scripts.

[The Laughing Fish]

I read the first issue of Superman 78 today.

It's a decent start. It feels like your typical Superman vs Brainiac story but in the style of the Reeve era, and it captures the tone pretty well. I can definitely imagine the actors in their heyday reciting the lines in this comic, so they definitely got the characterisations down, and it's little things such as Clark using his heat vision to set a mugger's foot on fire before the cops get him would certainly fit in that era. My only complaint so far is I'm not the biggest fan of Torres' art. It's not as detailed as Quinones, and there are some moments where it does look traced, but it's a style I will have to get used to, I guess. If you wish Reeve's Superman was more a brawler in the movies then you'll be happy with this issue.

Let's see what the second issue has in store.

[Gotham Knight]

Issue #2 is a fine addition and very authentic, but I can't help thinking these issues needed to be longer. I think the material thus far should have been covered in a double length first issue. Having said that, I was very pleased with Luthor's first appearance, and I'm glad that the humor hasn't been done away with. So far so good.