Superman III (PG)
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Caution: spoilers.
This came out in 1983, but I didn't see it until 2017. I guess it was pretty poorly received by critics and audiences alike, but personally I liked it well enough. I do think it plays a bit more like a straight-up comedy than the first two movies did, but honestly, I didn't find it any campier or more ridiculous than those movies... or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I didn't find the first two movies any less campy or ridiculous than I found this one. It's just that this one had maybe a bit less serious plot counterbalancing the campiness. Which is not to say it was entirely devoid of serious plot. Anyway, I did find it fairly amusing and fun. But what I liked best about it is that Lana Lang was played by Annette O'Toole, with whom I'm most familiar as Martha Kent on Smallville. Of course that show aired long after this movie came out, but I saw the show long before I saw the movie, and I'm fairly sure that until I saw the movie, I'd never had any idea that O'Toole had been in it. (And I just read on Wikipedia's page about Lana Lang that the producers of "Smallville" didn't know that until after she was cast on the show, either.) Another thing that interests me is that at one point in the movie, Lana and Clark are looking at a photo from their high school prom, at which Lana was the queen. Of course the photo also includes the prom king, who I think looks rather like John Schneider, who played Jonathan Kent on "Smallville." Of course that's not him in the photo, and maybe I'm the only one who'd think it even looks like him, I dunno. I just think it's interesting.
Anyway... there's a guy named Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor), who is unable to hold a job. When he's finally no longer eligible to collect unemployment, he happens to see an ad that says computer programmers can make a lot of money, so he tries that, and turns out to be quite the savant. But he's dissatisfied with his paycheck, and when he learns about fractions of a penny being rounded down, he programs the payroll computer to give him all the unclaimed fractions of a cent that are technically owed to employees, but don't actually go to anyone. (This is a type of embezzlement I'd previously heard of in an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - 2nd Gig. Wikipedia calls it salami slicing and TV Tropes calls it penny shaving.) However, the scam is quickly noticed by the company's CEO, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn). Rather than report Gus to the police, Ross and his sister, Vera, blackmail Gus into reprogramming a weather satellite to cause a storm in Colombia, to ruin the country's coffee crop. (Because it was the only country that refused to let Ross obtain control of its coffee crops. Or whatever.)
Meanwhile, at the Daily Planet, Lois is planning to head to Bermuda on vacation, so we don't see much of her in this movie. But Clark is going to Smallville to attend his high school reunion, and to write a story about it for the paper. While there, he reconnects with his old friend Lana Lang, who is now a single mom raising a young boy named Ricky. She's also frequently harassed by her ex-boyfriend, Brad Wilson. (I think he was her boyfriend in high school, and the prom king, though I have no idea if the actor playing him in the present was also the one in that photo I mentioned. I couldn't tell by looking, even though it was obviously Annette O'Toole in the photo... which is kind of odd, considering a different actress had played Lana as a teenager in the first movie.) Anyway, Lana becomes a potential love interest for Clark, now. And he encourages her to move to Metropolis, where he believes she could make a better life for herself and Ricky than she can in Smallville.
Meanwhile, Ross is celebrating his Colombian success, until Gus informs him that Superman had negated the effects of the storm. So, Ross devises a plan for Gus to learn what kryptonite is made of, and create an artificial substitute, in order to kill Superman, so that he wouldn't be able to interfere with any subsequent plans. But the computer Gus uses can't determine every element in kryptonite, so he improvises the last bit. Of course, it doesn't hurt Superman, but after awhile, it seems to turn him bad. (This reminds me of red kryptonite, which I must have seen in various other adaptations. But in this film, it's still green.) At first he's just kind of a self-centered jerk, but his behavior becomes increasingly worse, and the public soon turns against him. This all leads to the one scene that critics actually liked, in which Superman and Clark Kent separate into two people, and have a fight. (Apparently this is similar to the effect of black kryptonite, which I don't recall having heard of before, though I don't think the fake kryptonite that affected his behavior in this movie is responsible for the incident here... it just sort of happens, for no apparent reason.) I must admit, that was a pretty cool scene. And just seeing Superman as an asshole, and seeing him get drunk... he didn't even look like Christopher Reeve anymore, I thought. It was... a nice touch. Anyway, Superman eventually turns good again.
But when Ross comes up with his latest plan to make more money than he needs (or to make others lose money, because as he says, it's not enough for him to win, he won't be happy unless others lose). At this point, it starts to seem like Gus's conscience might not let him keep working for Ross, but... it turns out he just wants more money. (And of course Ross says he can't stand greed, without a hint of irony.) But ultimately, he agrees to finance the construction of a super computer that Gus has designed, which could analyze and defend against any attack. So of course we know that this computer will eventually be used as a weapon against Superman. Which is when Gus finally grows a conscience, and turns against his own creation to save Superman's life. (Not that he can stop the computer, but at least he gives Superman time to do what he needs to, to stop it himself.)
Anyway, I'm leaving out tons of details of the plot. But I do at least have to mention that there's a woman named Lorelei Ambrosia, who is basically this movie's equivalent of Miss Teschmacher, just as Ross Webster is the equivalent of Lex Luthor. But I definitely thought she could have been a more interesting character if we got a better grasp of her true nature. She passes herself off as kind of just this gorgeous ditz, but there are multiple examples of her actually being quite smart. But I'm not even sure whether she was trying to hide her intelligence from Ross and Vera, in order to... what? I have no idea what the point of pretending to be dumb would be, because it never seemed for a moment like she was trying to pursue any secret goal beyond what she already had. And she didn't really have to play dumb for that. Instead, I thought perhaps both aspects of her personality were genuine. Also, she seemed perfectly willing to go along with all of Ross's schemes, but like Gus, she ultimately didn't want to actually hurt Superman. So... I really don't know what to make of her, on any level. Which is kind of frustrating, because like I said, I got the sense she could be really interesting, if we knew more about her.
And... eventually Lana and Ricky do move to Metropolis, and Lana gets a job as Perry White's secretary, which I hoped meant she'd be in the next movie. But apparently not. And I guess I don't know what else to say. Except that if anyone else dislikes (or even hates) the movie, I won't blame you (even if I can't understand how you could really think whatever quality you dislike about it is present to a significantly higher degree than in either of the previous movies).
Oh, but I did want to mention how utterly laughable the Atari graphics were. Though I'm not sure what I would have thought of them if I'd actually seen this in 1983.
