The Superman movies continue their decline with Superman III, arriving on UHD as part of Warner’s Superman 5-Film Collection boxed set.
The Production: 2.5/5
With the success of Superman II, the Salkinds brought back director Richard Lester and screenwriters David and Leslie Newman for Superman III. Also returning and getting top billing for the first time in the series is Christopher Reeve, with Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), and Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) reduced to minor roles – Kidder’s total screen time is a mere five minutes in this installment – and Annette O’Toole cast as Clark Kent’s new romantic interest, Lana Lang. Rumor has it that the Salkinds saw Richard Pryor interviewed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where he expressed interest in starring in a Superman movie. The result is essentially a family-friendly Richard Pryor movie with Superman as a supporting character.
The plot is very convoluted, with Clark Kent going back home to Smallville to cover his high school reunion and rekindling an old flame with Lois Lang. Out of work Gus Gorman (Pryor), having exhausted his unemployment benefits, finds he had a gift with computer programming, hatching a scheme to embezzle partial cents leftover from his employer’s payroll. His employer’s CEO, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), seeing Gus’s programming prowess, takes him under his wing to take over a weather satellite and eventually causing another gasoline crisis. The plot only gets worse, with Superman quite literally splitting into a good and evil person and battling each other in a junkyard, and Ross’s sister Vera (Annie Ross) getting turned into a supercomputer.
Fellow reviewer Cameron Yee summed it all up nicely in his review of the film as part of the Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray release in 2011:
Nothing is more telling of what we’re in for than the slapstick sequence that runs through Superman III‘s credits sequence. In addition, the casting of comedian Richard Pryor as a hapless computer programmer makes it clear the goal is to present a more lighthearted Man of Steel, though “cornball” would be more accurate. To many this proved offensive, a clear departure from the tone previously set by Donner, which basically respected the source material. Even without that legacy, the film has few moments that work, the attempts at comedy overshadowing the compelling bits, such as the manifestation of Superman’s dark side and Clark Kent’s burgeoning romance with former high school classmate Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole). The film’s villain, a money-grubbing tycoon played by Robert Vaughn, is also no replacement for Lex Luthor – in either deviousness or ambition – though the role is really more of a plot device than an actual character. Ultimately the movie represented a precipitous decline in the franchise, though no one would guess four years later things could actually be worse.
Video: 4/5
3D Rating: NA
While a noticeable improvement over the 2011 Blu-ray (included in this set), I found Warner’s HEVC-encoded 2160p transfer’s use of HDR10 to be a bit heavy-handed, with whites appearing almost blindingly right (at least on an OLED display), and deep blacks that unfortunately have weak shadow details. Film grain often fluctuates from fine to very noticeable, and not necessarily only in optical sequences (which still often appear much softer – very apparent during the opening title sequence). Colors are natural and well-saturated.
Audio: 3.5/5
The default Dolby Atmos track is a bit hit and miss, at times feeling immersive (crowd scenes benefit the most), yet often sounds like a dated Dolby Stereo presentation from the early 1980s. While dialogue is clear and understandable, it does suffer from limitations of the recording technology of its time period. Warner once again ditches the 5.1 track and replaces it with a DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo surround track, noted as “Original Theatrical English.”
Special Features: 3/5
Warner once again includes the commentary track on the UHD disc, with the rest of the special features available on the included 2011 Blu-ray release.
UHD Disc
Audio Commentary with Producers Pierre Spengler and Ilya Salkind
Blu-ray Disc
Audio Commentary with Producers Pierre Spengler and Ilya Salkind
The Making of “Superman III” (480i; 49:08)
Deleted Scenes (480i; 19:43)
Theatrical Trailer (480i; 3:11)
Overall: 3.5/5
The Superman franchise devolves into slapstick humor in this third entry, but the worst is yet to come.
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Todd Erwin has been a reviewer at Home Theater Forum since 2008. His love of movies began as a young child, first showing Super 8 movies in his backyard during the summer to friends and neighbors at age 10. He also received his first movie camera that year, a hand-crank Wollensak 8mm with three fixed lenses. In 1980, he graduated to "talkies" with his award-winning short The Ape-Man, followed by the cult favorite The Adventures of Terrific Man two years later. Other films include Myth or Fact: The Talbert Terror and Warren's Revenge (which is currently being restored). In addition to movie reviews, Todd has written many articles for Home Theater Forum centering mostly on streaming as well as an occasional hardware review, is the host of his own video podcast Streaming News & Views on YouTube and is a frequent guest on the Home Theater United podcast.
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