Call me crazy but I prefer this to the original. It has some of its own flaws that the first didn’t but this story worked a lot better for me and shaving off that half hour from the runtime allowed that improved story to have a better impact. What I loved most about this story is the Clarke and Lois writing, admittedly the biggest reason I remain interested in seeing the Superman story adapted to screen is for the romance between those two characters and I’ve never seen it better than it is here. Speaking of Clarke and Lois Kidder and Reeve’s chemistry hit an incredible height here, like I said the great character and dialogue writing in their shared scenes helped them out a lot but I really loved the performances from each. Where I was surprised to see this step down was in the action, you’d think as these movies went on the newer tech would allow the vfx to look better but that sadly wasn’t the case with this, the green screen work was rough and the action scenes, especially the climactic one at the end of the third act, were just dull. And even though John Williams sadly didn’t compose this I thought Ken Thorne’s score replicating his work was did the job about as well as you could want, I love the reuse of Williams’ iconic lemotifs and the original stuff he composed was quite good as well. That’s about all I’ve got for Superman II, I was ready to give it a 3.5 but as the time went on I felt the runtime more and more and with the rather anticlimactic third act I just can’t rationalize that rating but I really did have a blast with this movie and am excited to see Richard Lester’s third entry.
Call me crazy but I prefer this to the original. It has some of its own flaws that the first didn’t but this story worked a lot better for me and shaving off that half hour from the runtime allowed that improved story to have a better impact. What I loved most about this story is the Clarke and Lois writing, admittedly the biggest reason I remain interested in seeing the Superman story adapted to screen is for the romance between those two characters and I’ve never seen it better than it is here. Speaking of Clarke and Lois Kidder and Reeve’s chemistry hit an incredible height here, like I said the great character and dialogue writing in their shared scenes helped them out a lot but I really loved the performances from each. Where I was surprised to see this step down was in the action, you’d think as these movies went on the newer tech would allow the vfx to look better but that sadly wasn’t the case with this, the green screen work was rough and the action scenes, especially the climactic one at the end of the third act, were just dull. And even though John Williams sadly didn’t compose this I thought Ken Thorne’s score replicating his work was did the job about as well as you could want, I love the reuse of Williams’ iconic lemotifs and the original stuff he composed was quite good as well. That’s about all I’ve got for Superman II, I was ready to give it a 3.5 but as the time went on I felt the runtime more and more and with the rather anticlimactic third act I just can’t rationalize that rating but I really did have a blast with this movie and am excited to see Richard Lester’s third entry.
