Donner Superman 2 SE (merged thread) (1 Viewer)

[Dave Simkiss]

With all the legal hoo har and red tape surrounding Superman II I can't see a recut happening, but I can live in hopes.

The best Im hoping for is to get all the Lester and Donner (especially the Donner) missing footage in a deleted scenes section. But once again Im not getting my hopes up, there are tons of deleted scenes from Superman The Movie that didn't make it to the DVD.

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

I wouldn't say there are "tons of deleted scenes" missing from the Superman - The Movie DVD. There are many scene extensions missing. The broadcast version had new little inserts in almost every scene. As a supplement they wouldn't work. The scenes that were cut back into the movie are the "major" cut scenes.

Neil

 

[Michael Harris]

Whatever became of the lawsuit against WB regarding the DVD release of the series?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Lester is the the director of record for Superman II and will remain so. Could you imagine being the one to say to him...."Say... we didnt particularly care for your version.. can we update it now and let the other guy claim it." Pleeeeeze...

Well, that's pretty much what they did to Donner for Lester after the premiere of the first movie. I think Lester deserves credit for holding a VERY troubled production together as well as he did, and I wouldn't dream of having another director touch Superman III, which Lester started and finished (and is very much a Lester film). However, the situations quite a bit different for Superman II. Since about a third of the current footage in the film was shot by Donner in some form during the first film's production (thus a dead D.P. getting a co-credit), this would simply shift the balance so about a third of the footage would be pieced together from what Lester shot.

That said, Donner has gone on-record several times as saying that he's put the Superman II fiasco behind him and doesn't want to go back to it. Certainly understandable, but a man can dream, can't he?

 

[Dharmesh C]

I agree, Donner can't go and re-edit Superman 2 without permission from Lester, after all, Lester refused a PRODUCER credit for Superman The Movie. He was certainly entitled to one.

 

[Kevin EK]

I personally would be very happy to see a special edition of Superman II. Occasionally, Donner has actually expressed interest in it. On the Superman Cinema site, I remember a discussion about this happening a couple of years ago. None of this is to discount Lester's work. As noted in earlier posts, he was put in a horrible position and made the best of it. As it was, some 70% of Superman II had already been shot before he came on board since I & II were shooting simultaneously through 1977 and beyond. And as I understand it, all of Gene Hackman's work was completed before Lester got involved, and they wound up using a double and a sound-alike for any new shots of Lex Luthor after Lester took over II. And all of Marlon Brando's work was shot for both movies during his brief time with them in England at the beginning of the shoot. So the Brando footage definitely exists. It's just a question of whether WB wants to spend the money to be able to put it on a disc, and whether Donner wants to take any time to revisit the film. I seriously doubt Lester would want to deal with it - most of what we're talking about wasn't even footage that he shot. I also doubt that WB would spend money for CGI or a new score by Williams. But they might give Donner a little time to put his scenes together either into the film or in a supplement, so that people could finally see a good part of what he was trying to do in the second film. I'll continue to hope that we one day see this footage.

 

[Tom Brennan]

I personally don't think it would make sense for Warner Bros. to restore Donner's unseen footage to only have them linger as supplements on a second disc.

It is going to take a lot of money to restore this footage, I think if it does happen, it will happen in the form of a re-cut.

Besides, this is the age of the fan re-edit. Does Warner Bros. really want to spend time and money restoring footage and release them as supplements only...then have some fan take the new scenes and edit them into the film himself? I doubt Warner Bros. would want to lose their profits to bootleg edits of the film on eBay.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Personally, my preference would be for a DVD-18 version of the film, which side A being the Donner cut, with a commentary by Donner and Mankewitz(sp?). On side B, you'd have the Lester cut, which would be either the theatrical cut if he was happy with that or a new director's cut with a commentary by him.

 

[JustinCleveland]

Anthony: ever heard of a movie called Brazil? "we don't like your version, we're going to recut it."

It's not unheard of, and it's also not unheard of for the director to go back into the film.

 

[Patrick McCart]

The simple thing to do is to give both Donner and Lester direction credit. Part of the restored cut would have to have scenes directed by Lester.
The Salkinds should have given Donner SOME kind of credit (heck, at least Co-direction!) instead of giving Lester all of it.
Imagine if the film DID get only Donner's credit... he'd never be able to live down the ending White House scene effects.

 

[Steve_Knutzen]

I believe that you need to have directed 50% of the material in a film to recieve director's credit. After the Lester re-shoots, less than half was Donner's footage if I'm not mistaken (of course I'm refering to the theatrical version).

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler was mangled by Fred Calvert in very much the same way Superman II was.

This is something I disagree with totally. SUPERMAN II was hardly "mangled" the way Richard Williams' movie was. It's pretty clear a lot of internet fans and sites are completely in Donner's camp, wanting to give Donner all the credit for everything that is good and wonderful about SUPERMAN I and II. On the other hand, anything bad in SUPERMAN II is all Lester's fault.

IMHO, it's not as simple as that. It's not clearly black and white. Lester brought some positive attributes to II that resulted, yes, to a lot of people in a better rounded movie than the original (and yes, I'm well aware a good deal of footage was shot by Donner). Over the years that sentiment has been lessened by a growing number of people who think Richard Donner is solely responsible for the success of the original movies. Now, the revisionist internet thought now is that II isn't a great movie, it's a flawed film that WOULD have been a masterpiece if the evil Salkinds hadn't ruined Saint Richard's original vision.

Again, I don't think it's that simple. I would love to see Donner's original footage as well, but I like SUPERMAN II the way it is. It's hardly a "mangled" movie like THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER and the situations, for me, aren't comparable whatsoever.

 

[Kevin EK]

I don't think that Lester did a bad job or that the theatrical version of SUPERMAN II was a bad job. I loved it when I first saw it back in 1981. But I have to admit that now knowing what footage had been cut, specifically the Brando footage, the film could have been significantly improved. I would have liked to have seen the completion of the "son becomes the father" thread from the beginning of the first film. So I still hope to eventually see the Brando footage, if it can ever be made available.

 

[oscar_merkx]

interesting discussion about a possible recut of Superman II. Would there be a possibility of a John Williams music only track as there was on the first one ?

 

[Paul_Scott]

only if John rescored it.

SII was scored by Ken Thorne.



i just tried to watch SII again last week, getting ready for X2.

imo, SII is a big steaming pile.

the unsatisfactory substitution of Lara for Jor-el is a major blow to the film, but only one of many, many elements that i find really weak (and crass).

and not all of it is Lesters fault.

i have a hard time swallowing a prison break by hot air balloon, especially the way its portrayed in this film.

and guess what? Lester didn't shoot that.

also, its kind of amusing to see how much the producers had it in for Kidder. in the Donner material, you can see her hair is quite stylized and she don't look all that bad.

for the Lester material though, they couldn't bother to style her hair at all-hell, they couldn't even bother to brush it (look at the scene in the Honeymoon haven during the 'reveal', and also some inserts in the daily planet scene before supes shows up for the big fight.

You can see how Donner treated her, as she is cradling Perry Whites head after he is knocked unconscious, and you can see Lesters work w/ her in close-up as she says "he'll be here, he'll be here...if its all possible he'll be here")

not too mention that they garb her in some of the most wretched fashions ever put on camera ( the Niagara Falls puke green and pink polyester ensemble is a particular eye sore).

story wise, even though its a fantasy, even the 'normal'characters act in childish and unbelievable ways.

the film completely falls apart if you try to bring any kind of critical faculty , over the ability of say...your average retarded 10 year old, to it.

honestly- there is a terrorist situation so "we bungled her on the first airplane out of here", yet after she goes to the trouble of this trans-atlantic flight she seems completely surprised that the terrorists have that destructive a bomb?

what the hell did she think she was going there for?

-and then the crack security in this kind of tense situation becomes easily distracted with a English/French dictionary- and although he does see her breech the barricade, being forty steps in front of him is just too much, so he doesn't bother going after her?

no, being wholly contrived is not a crime, but

how can anyone take any of the rest of the film, including the threat posed by the villans, even fleetingly seriously?

one more really lame bit within the first 10 minutes-

Clark walks blindly into the middle of the street only to get hit by a taxi, which sends the vehicles engine block into the front seat.

ok- not only has he made a public display of invulnerability in front of crack news reporter Lois (who merely chastises him for 'not looking both ways', but he leaves an out of commission taxi blocking a major lane of a major street.

and for some reason the taxi driver doesn't need any of clarks info for the insurance...hmmm.

this is a screenplay written at the level of a non-discriminating 7 year old.

honestly, this is Batman & Robin bad.

i was 14 when i first saw it, and even though it took me a while to admit it, i knew in my heart the film was crap even as it was unspooling.

it might not have hurt so much, if not for the fact that

1) the first film was executed with such a high degree of craft and wit

and

2)this damn film had one of the all-time great %$#*&! kick-ass premises-three anti-versions of Superman battling for world supremacy- w/ the head villan played by an all time freaking awesome Terence Stamp!

ARRRGGGHHH!

even if The Matrix Reloaded doesn't reach the rarefied heights of its predecessor, at least its fans won't know the soul crushing agony of waiting years to see something like... this.

yes, i am still a nerd.

 

[oscar_merkx]

:b oops I was under the impression that JW also scored SW II

:b

 

[Dharmesh C]

IMHO, it's not as simple as that. It's not clearly black and white. Lester brought some positive attributes to II that resulted, yes, to a lot of people in a better rounded movie than the original (and yes, I'm well aware a good deal of footage was shot by Donner). Over the years that sentiment has been lessened by a growing number of people who think Richard Donner is solely responsible for the success of the original movies. Now, the revisionist internet thought now is that II isn't a great movie, it's a flawed film that WOULD have been a masterpiece if the evil Salkinds hadn't ruined Saint Richard's original vision.

Since I am, or was editor and founder of Superman CINEMA, I'm very in favour of Donner's and Mankiewicz's work on Superman. Both these guys defined the comic bok film genre, it's disappointing that the pair have not gone onto doing another comic book film.

I've never been a big fan of Lester's Superman 2, this was before I learnt of the troubled production. It's a drop in quality and mismatch of styles. Lester autuer style was not suited for Superman, a good director, but not for Superman.

Lester had the blueprint to work from, if he shot from scratch, the film wouldn't have done as well, Superman 3 is the perfect example of a director not interested in comic book films. The stilted camera work in 2 is plainly obvious to the kinetic style of Donner and Unsworth.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Salkinds, they talked the talk and walked the walk, but they clearly did some things totally wrong with Superman and Supergirl.

 

[Mike_Richardson]

But I have to admit that now knowing what footage had been cut, specifically the Brando footage, the film could have been significantly improved.

Remember that this material was cut not because someone (i.e. Lester) simply wanted to re-shoot or re-think it, but because Brando sued. Unless they want to pay Brando a small (or large) fortune, I doubt we'll ever see this footage. The other material I'm sure could be easily cleared for a supplement if nothing else, but the Brando material is most likely -- and sadly -- never going to be a part of it.

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Also, its kind of amusing to see how much the producers had it in for Kidder.

I haven't read Kidder's autobiography, but it's entirely possible that Kidder was having "difficulties" in her life by the time II was shooting -- and if they were anything like her recent bouts with substance abuse, that may have as much to do with how she appeared physically than the Salkinds "having it in" for her.

Other cast members have said over the years that she wasn't always easy to work with -- so if that WAS an issue, can you blame them for writing her out? (Even Christopher Reeve said the two didn't exactly get along at times).

 

[Dave H]

I haven't read Kidder's autobiography, but it's entirely possible that Kidder was having "difficulties" in her life by the time II was shooting -- and if they were anything like her recent bouts with substance abuse, that may have as much to do with how she appeared physically than the Salkinds "having it in" for her.

Kidder did look MUCH better in first movie - It always stood out to me how she looked so much worse in Superman II.