Superman 1978

I was channel-surfing briefly yesterday and saw a few minutes of Superman: The Movie on pay cable. (Nowadays both the 2025 and 1978 films come up in the channel guide as simply “Superman” so it’s not always clear what you’re going to get.)

This is one of my favorite movies and I just love it, always. I watched a few minutes of the initial Metropolis scenes. Donner and his team get everything so right. Even the little things, the character grace notes and humor—just so, so good. Or as Clark might say, swell.

There have been so many sequels and reboots and spin-offs and most of them are so lame. When the original makes all the right choices, what can you do in your version but make some wrong ones? It’s like going second at the end of Family Feud.

Of course it’s baked into me from a lifetime of watching it that this is how Superman is supposed to be. Anecdotally I have heard about Gen Xers showing it to their kids, who found it corny and boring. So it’s hard to separate the movie objectively from the cultural experience.

It is interesting having not seen it for a while, and then randomly watching a few scenes, how much of a creature of its time it is—the 1970s disaster cycle. It’s a world that was way closer to the 1950s than to today. No cell phones, no computers, Lois smokes, etc. Long shots, stationary cameras—and great, great music.

What more could anyone ask?