Donner Superman 2 SE (merged thread) - Page 70

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Superman II was successful. But at the time I wouldn't percieve it as a 'smash'- and I was a huge Superman fan when it was released, I was pulling for it to be a smash (even though I really was disappointed in it-go figure the fanboy mentality). Movies that I would consider 'smashes' that summer were Raiders (undisputed) and Arthur, both of which really seemed to have come from nowhere. Raiders never got any hype until WOM hit after it was released. And the latter may not have grossed as much as SII, but I'm sure the ROI was better.
Superman performed well, but it was hyped quite a bit and eventually blown away- a month after it was released, nobody was talking about it.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see if Stripes grossed as much or more.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I just finished watching the Salkind/Spengler commentary on the first Superman. While I have yet to watch You Will Believe, I was really blown away by the detail and (apparent) honesty with which these two guys talked about the film. Salkind actually cries as he watches the film's final shot. Anyway, I'm quite familiar with the film's history and never believed that things were as simple as Salkinds = Bad / Donner = Good, but I still found this commentary to be something of a revelation. (They refer in several places to their forthcoming Superman II commentary, so I'm now very excited to spin that disc.)

There's no question in my mind that the single greatest missing ingredient in this new DVD release is Richard Lester. His thoughts and feelings seem to me like the big missing piece of the puzzle. For instance, Salkind and Spengler both independently credit Lester for moving the turning back time sequence to the end of the first movie: which I think was brilliant.

The only time I've ever read Lester's retrospective thoughts on Superman was in the book of interviews with Soderbergh, and I don't remember him getting too far into the details in that book.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Oh for Pete's sake that's not what I meant and you know it.

Who cares if it wasn't allowed to be finished, it's finished now (or as finished as they could get it anyway) and is now in the film and it just doesn't work. Having two films back to back (doubly bad when they're sequels to one another) end with the same gag is insanity to me, it would be like Die Hard 2 also ending with McClane jumping off of yet another building while it explodes, or ending all of the Lethal Weapon films with Riggs and Murtaugh fighting with bad guys and having them prevail while arguing about who is going to drive.

Oh wait, that IS how every LW film ends!

Look, if you like that ending then that's cool more power to you, but it stunk of unoriginality to me, I don't care who wrote it, shot it, directed it or how it ended up in the film, all of that is irrelavant to me, the fact remains that it's in the film and it sucks IMO.

To me the Donner cut was an interesting experiment to watch, but when I really want to sit down and watch Superman II it'll be the Lester version, while not having those strong scenes that Donner's had, the film just flows better and works better IMO.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

haha. Looking forward to it, Grant.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

yup
yup
yup
me too.

I always liked Kidder, and the new begining is a good example why. In addition to the presence of Brando, I loved seeing Lois in Supermans shirt, and I loved the way Jor-el steals an implicating glance at her during the depowering .
In fact, the whole depowering segment I liked 10x better in this version.
Never understood why losing your powers also meant you got an instant change of wardrobe too.

And as for the oddity of him giving up his powers after they have sex- leaving aside the kryptonian biological concerns-I like it here because it represents a ture commitment. He's buying the cow after he's already gotten the milk- that to me represents true love- rather than a rash decision made in the heat of lust- it makes the entire episode a little more tragic for me(because of what he will further have to give up eventually). I think it works great.

The only thing that disappointments me about the villans is that they are still pretty one dimensional. Zod has wonderful characteristics (voice, attitude, look, etc) but is he really an interesting character? The conflict with Jor-el is one -note and can't really be expanded upon one line. It just seems thin- as does his whole "to rule" impulse. You want to rule, we get it. Why?
The subject is broached by Ursa in the White House, but it never gets any farther because we immediately introduce Luthor to them and off we go again for more wrestling. I just wished they had been conceived more beyond the "bow/yield/kneel" bits.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

LOVED Lois wearing Supes' shirt!

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Eh? Lester touched Superman too? .........Bastard! ......... no seriously, what? He was involved in the first one?

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Relations between Donner and the producers deteriorated to the point where he was refusing to even talk to them anymore. They brought in Lester, who they'd worked with in the past, to act as a go-between. Supposedly Lester and Donner got along well and he didn't step on Donner's toes at all, directorially. Anyway, I guess when these guys all sat down in meetings to talk strategy, Lester would be there. He was supposedly involved in the decision to finish the first movie and leave the second for later...

A few different sources (Spengler, Salkind, and Lester himself in the Soderbergh book) credit Lester with the idea of taking the ending to II and putting it on I. On the other hand, I think I recall Donner and Mankiewicz telling a story on one of the DVDs about coming up with the idea themselves while drunk in the back of a limo.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Don't get me wrong here....

I never said that I liked the "Time Travel" ending to Supes 2...

What I am trying to get across is that it seems allot of the members posting, seem to be in shock that this ending was used again....

The bottomline is that Donner shot 75% of Superman 2. The Time Travel sequence was shot to end Superman 2, not 1.

Producers (because of the runaway budget and in need of funds) forced Donner to stop shooting any further Supes 2 footage and concentrate on finishing one or they would miss the opening date. Donner made the choice to move the Time Travel ending to 1 because it could help finish up with minimal costs and would allow them to make the opening date.....

The reason it is used here in the Donner cut is because Warner and friends made every effort to piece this thing together as closely as they could to the original shooting script of Supes 2. Because Donner never made it back to Supes 2 to finish rescripting a new ending nor got to shoot any additional footage, we have this cut.

And as for Supes 2 being a blockbuster in 1981, of course the film saw success. 108 million certainly is nothing to sneeze at. But considering that this was a tentpole film for that Summer and Warner spent a considerable marketing dollar, the film was expected to perform as well or better than Superman 1.

As for Box office: Raiders of the Lost Ark - 242 million / On Golden Pond - 119 million / Superman 2 - 108 million / Arthur - 95.5 million / Stripes - 86 million.

Dugger

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I don't think this is quite accurate. It was originally *scripted* as the ending of the second movie, but clearly they re-wrote on the fly and *shot* it specifically to fit with the earthquake sequence at the end of the first movie.

I assume the few bits of time travel footage we see in the Donner Cut (the toothpaste stuff and the scene that follows) are things they shot prior to the re-write.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I just watched the Donner cut. Pretty good stuff. I didn't really have a hard time with it (some have suggested it only works if you consider it as more of a workprint). Certainly, some of it felt rough, but only a few bits bothered me.
Notably the reworked screen test bothered me more than I thought it would, probably due to some of the bad quality audio and Chris Reeve's change in appearance. Otherwise the acting in the scene is fine. I didn't have too hard of a time buying into the turning the world backwards scene. It mainly jarring due to the new material that was shot for the scene, which look too modern and don't really match the style of the films. For example, the modern shots of the people in NYC, etc.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Donner (along with Mankiewicz) get a lot of credit for ushering live-action superhero material into the modern age.
But the idea that everything had to return to the same stasis by the end of II. no matter what happened in the middle of the story (i.e. the clark/lois/superman dynamic) is ithe epitome of a very antiquated approach to these characters.That's one reason Empire was always so fascinating to me. The characters rolled with circumstances and were changed by them- they didn't just change for one or two acts and then go back to the way they were before.

Frankly, there just isn't any reason that the Lois/Superman situation shouldn't be left with just the rooftop goodbye. A subsequent sequel could have picked right up with this new dynamic and show the skittishness and uncomfortability with which they interact at work now in the first act, and it would have been a golden opportunity to explore something new and fresh- instead of writing the same old Lois/Clark cliches.
At some point in the third film, something could have happened to Lois where it appears that her memory is affected by natural means (a bump on the head...it's not like Lois isn't accident or conflict prone anyway) and then we could have all breathed easier that everything was comfortably familar again, but then just as the film is winding down, the audience gets a clue that maybe Lois didn't lose her memory after all, and is just faking it to put Clark at ease.
I think that would have been a great twist.

There is really no way to keep up the pretense that a superior reporter would not be able to divine the secret of Clark and Superman. It was only logicial that she would know the truth- but for a blabbermouth reporter, to keep that secret private and personal, especially from the man she loves for his sake, would have been a nice new facet to her character.

who knows- maybe Donner and Mank would have realized this, had circumstances been different and they weren't pushed away from the franchise. We might not have only gotten a stronger II but a truly amazing third film as well.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

ESB didn't perform as well as SW.
TEMPLE OF DOOM didn't perform as well as RAIDERS.
JAWS II didn't perform as well as JAWS.

So why is SUPERMAN II the only sequel from this era that was supposed to make "as much or more" than its prequel? I don't get this revisionism.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

well....

EBS (1980 - first 12 weeks of release 145 mil) performed much better than Supes 2 (1981)
Temple (1984 -179.9 mil) performed much better than Supes 2
Rocky 3 (1982 - 125 mil) performed much better than Supes 2

and Jaws 2 (1978 - 103 mil and a terrible film ) performed within 6 million of Supes 2 four years earlier....

Given the negative reviews Temple & Jaws 2 recieved, you would think that they would not have performed better than the excellently reviewed, over hyped and fan recieved Supes 2.

Dugger

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Boy, you can't give up on this, can you? The performance of other sequels relative to S2 is irrelevant. It's a comparison between a sequel and its predecessor that matters. For reasons unknown, you believe S2 should have done as well or better than Superman in an era when virtually NO sequels outgrossed the originals. Why?

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Chris, you don't understand what I'm saying. ESB made more than SII, but it didn't make more than the original SW. The same for the other sequels. SUPERMAN made 125 Million Dollars, SII made 108 Million. That's a pretty good hold of the audience. The original JAWS made 260 Million, so JAWS II lost a huge percentage of its audience.
I'm done posting on this particular subject, but I think it's pretty obvious that SII was a very successful film in 1981 terms.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I agree with that. "Would you care to step outside" is a much better line.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I haven't received my copy yet, so I can't respond in detail, but it wasn't that Donner "just went with what worked before", his vision of the sequel was simply preserved as close as it could have been to the point at which he stopped working on the project. Which was before Superman II HAD an ending.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

IIRC, in the "You Will Believe..." documentary Donner suggests that the studio (Warner Bros?) requested this ending after the decision was made to stop production on II and complete STM in time for it's impending holiday release. I think he says something along the lines that the studio felt there were 3 or 4 very strong beats (one of which was turning back time) that would make STM a better film, commercially. Donner agreed and also mentioned that the plan was to come up with "something better" for the ending of II when they got back to it.

So, in the end, if that is correct, then the ending of the new Donner cut is technically the "original" ending, but most likely NOT the ending the film would have had if it was released on schedule in 1979-80. How's that for confusing??

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

After watching almost all of the Donner cut I can say that one bit that I prefer in the Lester version is the part where he goes back to the fortress of solitude and speaks to Jor-El and he (rather wimperingly) says "I errr.... I failed". I thought personally that was the best part in the Lester version, the replaced scene isnt as good in my opinion.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I tried watching the Lester cut of SII yesterday, and ended up turning it off around midway. It could be because I've seen it too many times, but I was missing Brando in the Fortress, and was annoyed at some of the more slapsticky elements with the Phantom Zone villians. There are things I miss in the Donner cut-some of the Niagara Falls material, "General, would you care to step outside?"-but in other ways I think the Donner cut may end up being my preferred version of SII. I guess it will take a few more viewings to know for sure how I feel.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Yea, I think the Donner cut is very good, probably a better film than the Lester version overall, however there are some good scenes / good lines of dialogue in the Lester version that aren't in the Donner cut.

I was also surprised to see the musical score has been changed also.
I take it Williams scored the entire film?
Did Williams withdraw his score when Lester got involved?

I have also ordered the SE of SII just for completion's sake, as I think its a half decent film, though poorly executed.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

The humor in Donner's SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN II is mainly concentrated around the banter between Lex and his cronies, and some Clark bumbling. There is no comparison between this kind of humor, and Lester putting shots of wigs flying off, ice cream flying into somebody's face, telephone booths being blown away while a person is still chatting away inside, etc., during what should have been one of the most intense sequences in SUPERMAN II.

Also re: the producers' side of the story- not for nothing, but the Salkinds were well known as being complete scoundrels in the film business who screwed over a lot of people. Their "word" means little. The fact is, Donner may have been perceived as "difficult" by them, but he delivered. He delivered spectacularily. There are lots of difficult directors in the world, but they don't get fired when they deliver huge hits. What happened to Donner is almost without precedent- yes, directors have been fired before, but not when they've shown that they can deliver the goods like Donner did with SUPERMAN.

Vincent

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Content aside, from a techical point of view I am slightly disapointed with the appearance of some of the shots (and im not referring to the screen test footage). Some of the shots of the Metropolis battle look very bad, particuarly the bit where Zod is eye - lasering the truck's fuel cell and Superman blowing the cold air over it after.

Again, audio wise some of the voices sounded deeper or just "different", not sure why this is, though with the audio manipulation equipment around today I can't think why these things should stand out from the rest.

Obviously theres not much you can do about hazy close ups and such of the test footage, but I thought perhaps something could have been done with the audio.

My other gripe, is the lighting (or over lighting) of the Metropolis battle sequence. It looks like daytime in some shots its lit that brightly, again, I don't understand the artistic reason behind that, it just looks wrong to me.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

The visual flaws you note in the Metropolis battle are inherent in the Lester footage. Lester's cut has the same effects you mention.

Re: the voices, I'm guessing that's because the added footage in the Donner cut uses almost exclusively production audio (I'm thinking off all the added Zod material in particular), whereas much of Lester's SUPERMAN II was looped. The difference between original production dialogue and dialogue re-recorded in a studio later can be very pronounced.

Vincent

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I don't agree with that. I'm not a fan of the ice cream/hairpiece gags, etc and am very glad they're out of the Donner cut, but I'd argue that the humour involving Lex and his cronies is even more inappropariate.

Since Lex and co. are villains, having them portrayed so humourously robs the films, particularly the first one, of much of their intensity. Superman I would've had a lot better last third if the film treated the villains more seriously. One of the reasons why "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" works so well is that the villains are played straight. I don't mind the banter between Lex and Teschmacher so much, but the slapstick involving Otis is particulary painful to watch.

It's not as inapproriate in II as Lex and co. are secondary villains, but much of the scenes involving them are far too silly. Sure the gags involving the ice cream, et al are bad, but at least it's not the villains themselves being silly. It's a result of their actions maybe, but it's not directly them being silly.. It was probably viewed as comic relief following the fight between Superman and the villains to give the audience a breather between those scenes and the final confrontation. In II, with the exception of some scenes involving Non, the three supervillains are mostly played straight.

And again, it's not that I like them, but I'd take a hundred ice cream/hairpeace/phonebooth/roller skate gags over a supposed master criminal with an utterly bumbling sidekick who's so overweight a hot air balloon can't support itself with him hanging off it or even just the concept of trying to spring someone out of a maximum security prison with a hot air balloon.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

Finally someone who feels the same way I do regarding Lex and his flunkies in the films, i've never liked Otis and even to this day I watch the film and wonder "what the hell is he doing there!?" The reasons you give are precisely why, at least IMO, Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville is the best damn Lex Luthor that's ever been filmed for any live action version of the Superman tale.

Kevin Spacey went a long way to repairing Lex's image for the film's though I thought.

There is an easy out solution to all these ending problems, one could just stop the film after your favorite end scene, for some it would be the rooftop scene between Supes and Lois and for others they could stop it after the Fortress is destroyed.

In fact, are the end credits given their own chapter stop? Because then you could just skip right to them after your favorite scene has ended.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I remember loving SII when I saw it in the theater as an 8 year old. I hate it now.

The Donner cut, though? SII is my favoprite again! Much better. Better villains, better battles, better chemistry between Reeves and Kidder. It's just better. So great to see Brando. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The PQ was fine with me considering it's age and (new) budget and the sound was great. Nice LFE. It was worth the price I paid for the Ultimate set. I watched STM expanded edition yesterday with my family. I'll watch the theatrical edition when I get my replacement from WHV. SR tonight. Can't wait to see how it plays with SIITDC fresh in my mind. I have a feeling it will be better than when I saw it this summer, and I loved it then.

What a great time to be a Supes fan.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I don't know if this has already been stated in the thread, or if it's too obvious to bother saying, but for the record, Superman Returns is a sequel (or semi-sequel or whatever Singer wants to call it) to Lester's Superman II. In more ways than one, Returns doesn't work as a follow-up to the Donner Cut.

It was also interesting to hear Singer, in the Requiem for Krypton documentary, talking about the "magic kiss" as being part of the backstory for Returns.

Re: Donner Superman 2 SE Under Consideration!!!

I saw it and enjoyed it enormously. I was somewhat underwhelmed when I saw the Lester version in the summer. This more than makes up for it. A triumph from beginning to end. Wonderful. The screentests didn't take me out of the film as much as I was worried it would, either. It's a shame it doesn't fit into Superman Returns continuity, though, but that is beside the point.

Was anyone else really moved Reeve's tribute? It was beautiful and very true.

That said, my next step is to watch the Lester cut again to compare. My UK set packages the two cuts together, which is nice of Warners. It's two slim cases (a two disc for the original, and a single version for the Donner cut, packaged in a slipcase the size of an Amaray.