SUPERMAN II: Making the Sequel

By: Edward Gross
Date: Friday, April 07, 2000

Although Superman: The Movie was a monumental cinematic undertaking and one of the most talked-about creative battles between director and producers, Richard Donner fully expected to complete the filming of Superman II, which he had begun shooting simultaneously with its predecessor. 'My original contract was to deliver two films,' the director says by way of explanation, 'and everybody who signed was told that they were doing two films. We started both and shot everything with Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine for both pictures, and then we realized that if we were going to deliver the first one by Christmas [1978], we had to stop and put all our efforts into that. Having completed everything with those actors, we put Superman II on the side burner and all our efforts into the first film. Superman was a success, and the Salkinds, for whatever reason, chose not to bring me back after I waited to hear for six or eight weeks. I got a telegram one day that said, 'Your services are no longer needed.' That's the Dick Lester story.'
One of the biggest questions regarding Superman II was how much material had been shot by Donner and how much by Lester. According to creative consultant Tom Mankiewicz, 'Dick Donner shot most of Superman II. The major thing that Lester shot was Niagara Falls where Lois falls in. Lester shot the actual aerial fight between Superman and the three villains, and also the thing where they land and destroy the town. Everything insidefor instance, the scene with Gene Hackman inside the Daily Planet leading up to the aerial fightwas shot by Dick. But Dick didn't want the credit for Superman II. He said something that was absolutely right. He said, 'If the first one had been a flop, they would have made me finish the second one. But because the first one was a big hit and I kept calling them assholes, they fired me.' And that's absolutely true.'
Richard Lester recalls the amount of previously shot footage differently, pointing out, 'Dick shot a small portion of Superman II. We did a count, finally, of how much Dick had done of the second film, and I think it was something like 12%, and there were a few other second unit directors who had done some other material, but his work was that much. There is a sheet somewhere the producers have which lists every single shot, how long it lasts and how much it is. That doesn't tell you anything emotionally, but technically that tells you how much was pre-shot by Donner himself.'

Insofar as Donner not being 'asked' to reprise his role as director, Lester was not surprised. 'By the time Superman II was supposed to happen, there was already litigation between Donner and the producers, so there was no way they were going to work together,' explains Lester. Donner was suing the Salkinds for money owed, plus, according to Lester, 'He had set a list of demands like they would have to leave the picture if he was going to carry on. They then came to me and said, 'Would you do it?' Having been involved that little bit on the first one, I was astonished at the technical possibilities that were available to which I was totally and woefully ignorant in terms of miniatures and traveling mattes, which I had never been involved with. I came on more like an open university course, viewing it as a chance to learn what I felt I should know.'
Ironically, it seems as though the things that had appeared daunting to Lester on the first film were what attracted him to the second. 'Not exactly,' he differs, 'because the problems were still there in that there wasn't any reality. I think you can see by the third one, where I had some input on the storylineor at least more inputthat I was playing around with the toys of reality by getting an actor like Richard Pryor and starting the whole film off in an unemployment office. In essence, it's really examining how far you can go towards a reality. That being the case, II was more of a technical exercise, which was very interesting. I also found that I'd enjoyed the experience on I and had a very good time on II. There's something remarkably easy about working on a film with four units. If anybody has a problem, if you find you're up against some problem on that unit, you just say, 'I'm terribly sorry, lads, but the flying unit needs me desperately,' and you can walk away from that problem and whistle along in the studio. Nobody knows where you are and they all assume you're hard at work on one of the other units, so when you come back they've solved that problem and you go on day after day.'
Yet despite all of the technical aspects of Superman II, there was a very human core at the heart of the film in terms of the Lois-Clark-Superman relationship. 'I think you have to work hard at that,' he admits. 'My theory is that in a film that's very technical, it is important to always have a sequence, especially after a very special effects-heavy scene, where two actors could work easily together. Where they didn't have to stand on a particular spot and have a cable up their backside, so you could have a naturalistic character actor in to do a scene before you go zooming off into another technical, and therefore slightly stiff, sequence. We tried to make sure that we wrote, with the Newmans, sequences where the actors could get their teeth into something that had a little bit of reality about it.'
As far as actors are concerned, Superman II got off to a rough start. Although Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas and Jack O'Halloran had been signed to reprise the Kryptonian villains Zod, Ursa and Non (who come to Earth and plan to take over the planet), there were actually some difficulties with stars Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve. Kidder made it clear to anyone who would listen that she was not pleased with the shoddy treatment given to Richard Donner by the Salkinds and, if not for the sheer necessity of her participation, the odds are fairly strong that she would have been dismissed. Reeve, for his part, had grown upset over the fact that he had been paid a reported $250,000 for both films, while Superman: The Movie went on to gross nearly $200-million domestically. Things got so bad, in fact, that he actually walked off the film. The Salkinds attempted some posturing, claiming that if James Bond could be replaced so could Superman, but a settlement was worked out and Reeve donned his tights.
Having renewed his flying license, Reeve was more than happy to discuss his feelings about both Superman and Clark Kent. 'Both identities are more sharply defined in Superman II,' he said. 'In the first picture, we had to establish who Superman was and why he disguised himself as Clark Kent. This time, we come out swinging. Like most people of my age, I was brought up on Superman. I knew the classic stancehands on hips, cape blowing in the breeze, bullets bouncing off his chest. That's the way six and a half billion people have loved Superman, and I wouldn't dream of changing it. But I wanted to find other dimensions as well.
'In a sense,' he elaborated, 'Superman is a stranger in a strange land, a solitary man with incredible powers, trying to fit into his adopted planet. He has warmth and a great sense of humor. And while he has sworn to uphold 'truth, justice and the American way,' there's nothing self-conscious about him. That's simply because it's what he believes in, in a world filled with arch-criminals and evil geniuses. However, Clark Kent is more fun to play. There's more scope to the role because he is such an awful mess.'
In the pages of Fantastic Films magazine, Reeve added, 'When you approach the Superman character, you must remember that when a man, superhuman or not, is capable of heroic deeds, he becomes a bore, a very pompous bore, if he doesn't have a sense of humor about himself. Because of all the amazing things Superman can do, he must temper his achievements with a certain kind of human modesty in order to make himself acceptable to others. He must be secure enough about himself to make jokes and to be vulnerable in that sense. If he didn't, he would be impossible to relate to and no one would like him.
'The vision of Superman we have tried to portray is that of a superhero in every sense of the word. Besides being a super-strong athlete, he is also a gentleman and a scholar. He is someone who sincerely tries not to take unfair advantage of other people, even though he has superhuman powers. The whole idea of a muscle-bound vigilante crusading around the skies, knocking people's heads together, has never really appealed to me. Above all, I wanted to portray Superman as a hero for the '80s, a gentleman who is liberated and intelligent, and who has a definite sense of humor and fair play.'
Prior to the commencement of production, director Richard Lester and screenwriters David and Leslie Newman mapped out the tone of Superman II, determined to establish their own take on the character, which differed somewhat from Donner's. 'I think that Donner was emphasizing a kind of grandiose myth,' offers Lester. 'There was a kind of David Leanish attempt in certain sequences, and enormous scale. There was an epic quality, which isn't in my nature, so my work really didn't embrace that. We didn't want to destroy the myth until we deliberately did in III. I don't think I could have done that sort of work, the early Kansas-Smallville scenes. That's not me; that was his vision of it. I'm more quirky, and I play around with slightly more unexpected silliness. I've never really worked with storyboards before these films. I've never really prepared sequences in that way. I've been inclined to look at the day, see what's there and wing it.'
Adds David Newman, 'Our favorite is Superman II. The problem with the first film is that there was so much back story to get out of the way. I think Superman is three different movies. There's the Krypton part, which you had to tell because that's the legend, although there's something which seems pretentious about it to me.'
'On the other hand,' counters Leslie Newman, 'you really don't have the time to get to know the individual characters on Krypton as characters, so you can't make Krypton have any reality.'
'Then there's the Smallville stuff,' David adds, 'and that's a kind of John Ford looking film, with all those landscapes, Glenn Ford, farmers and all that stuff, which is another movie. And once you get to Metropolis, that's another movie. To me, there was an unavoidable clash of styles in Superman I, although the film works wonderfully. Superman II, to us, was just a dream to do because you didn't have to go into all that stuff. We were actually able to recap the original under the credits. And I love those three villains. To me, Superman II was a fairy tale. First of all, it was a fairy tale about love; second of all it had the greatest threat because it was three against one with a slam-bang finish.'
'And the thing we love most,' says Leslie, 'is the intercutting, the pacing of the stories.'
An intriguing angle of the story for the Newmans was the Lois-Superman-Clark triangle, which, incidentally, played an integral role in ABC's Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. 'There's that great aspect of the mythos, which is Lois Lane,' smiles David. 'She loves Superman but doesn't like Clark. Clark loves her and is jealous of Superman, so he doesn't like Superman.'
Laughs Leslie, 'And in the love scene, which is our favorite, she says, 'But if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have met you,' and it's all so confusing because she's just found out the truth. I was fascinated by Lois and her relationship to both Clark and Superman, and the very nature of Lois. She reflects changing attitudes towards women. I couldn't bear the Lois of the '50s, but then it was pretty unbearable being a woman in the '50s. So in this case, she didn't want to give it all up and settle done. She was spunky.'
'Whereas the Lois Lane of the '50s thought, 'If he'd only marry me, I could settle down,' says David. 'And she always got herself into dumb scrapes, not because of ambition but because of stupidity.'
One of the most talked about aspects of Superman II was the aerial battle between Superman and the three villains from Krypton. Surprisingly, director Richard Lester doesn't feel that achieving that sequence was as daunting as one would think. 'It was only insane in the fact that you sit down in a room with people, many of whom have quite reasonable brains and have gone to universities and taken degrees and are good with their children and wash their cars, tend their garden, who say, 'Okay, he's going to pick up the bus and throw it at Superman. How do we do that?' And these grown men sit around for a while and find the answers. Once you accept a certain set of ground rules, you realize this is the scale that looks real and we can do, and these are things we can't do, and get the balance right. I've always felt about all films of this type that if you explain to the audience precisely what the powers are, they are happy with them. They are pre-set in their minds. Then you just go crazy. I think in the film Supergirl, someone's powers seemed to alter arbitrarily, and it wasn't set up. It just seemed clumsy, to me, and I think audiences feel that if suddenly you switch the rules in the middle of the film, you don't know where you are. You want to know that this power is equal to that power so they cancel each other out, and you can't just invent a new power.'
It's pointed out that Superman II actually did include a sequence where the villains levitated someone with a beam from their fingers and blasted Superman with a similar beamneither of which existed in the comics prior to that moment. 'I don't see that that's any worse than super breath in terms of scale,' Lester offers. 'Certainly, all of the scripts and changes were always sent to DC Comics to make sure they're in the canon. And, in fact, there was a representative from DC Comics who saw the dailies every day. Certainly nobody said, 'Well, that's something that wouldn't happen.' Mind you, I think if you did something absolutely insane but looked terrific, they'd say, 'Okay, we'll go and write that into the next comic and have it out before the film comes out.''
Upon its release, Superman II (which premiered around the world in 1980 and made it to the States a year later) was greeted with near unanimous praise, with a great many critics claiming it was actually better than its predecessor, achieving the perfect mix of romance and comic book action. Overall, the first two Superman films have managed to endure the passage of time.
'I have my own feeling about that,' says Lester. 'I think the myth and the tricks within the original idea, whether they be conscious or unconscious, were treated with respect, sometimes more than others. In general we were all careful to respect that basic idea and that will always work. Today a Superman film would be a little easier to make, because other people have already done it,' Lester smiles, 'but it was bloody hard work at the time.'