I recently had occasion to re-watch this, and was forced to rate it even lower than I had before.  It's hard to believe that at one time this was seen not just as a major blockbuster, but as a good and satisfying example of same.  Because this film is awfully damn stupid.  In budget it may be an A picture, but in its heart this is at home among the cheapest and silliest of B movies.  They built extravagant sets and used expensive stunts, but they did so with very poor quality control, leaving the results looking like what you'd see in a far cheaper movie.  The wirework suffers particularly: some super-person will give a slow ineffective kick to something, and then after a brief delay, the object or person will drift far across the sky to indicate how hard it was kicked.  Optical effects such as heat vision are about as well done as the phaser effects on the more rushed episodes of the original Star Trek.  The flying footage doesn't sync up correctly with the background anymore.  And it's stupid.

Worse, the story is badly marred by the kind of lame forced comedy that gave Superman III such a bad reputation.  And they do things like showing super-people having spoken conversations in the vacuum of space.

The plotting is as contrived as you can get: for no reason at all (unless maybe you decide to believe the Larry Niven hypothesis), Superman is told that if he wants to marry an Earth woman, he has to give up all his powers.  Which he does.  He's also told that once done, this can never be reversed; but of course it does get reversed, and they never explain how this happens!

And they give Superman and his super-opponents bogus extra powers, such as erasing memories.  Hasn't he got enough damn powers already?  They add about four new ones.  Worse than the Bollywood version.

It does increase the super-action over the first film, as Supes has to fight three evil Kryptonian communists who have the same powers he's got.  (Roughly the same, anyway... real consistency is clearly too much to ask.)  In other words, it's Godzilla Syndrome: the next movie has to have more monsters.  The whole point of this film is the super-battle in the giant downtown set, where the characters throw buses at each other and so forth.  Yet despite the extravagance in filming, it's clumsy and unimpressive.  And pointless, because none of them can hurt each other.

But, I have to say that Christopher Reeve is still cool.  They give him the dorkiest dialogue and situations imaginable and he still keeps you on his side.

John Williams' famous theme music is reprocessed by Ken Thorne, and so far he keeps it in pretty good shape.  This will change with the next film.  (By the way, it turns out that the theme Williams used in the opening credits is loosely based on that used in the old Fleischer Brothers animated shorts from the early forties.)

The Silly Superman.  The Salkinds (father and son producers), having fired director Richard Donner midway through the second film for doing Superman right, insisted that the new movie be made campy.  They probably said something like what cartoon producer Leon Schlesinger once told Chuck Jones and his other animators: "Put in lot'tha joketh, fellath, joketh are funny."  This fucks up the film rather badly, especially since the level of humorosity in the attempted jokes is generally abysmal, but some positive elements help to partially save the movie.  Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of unfunny comedy to suffer through.  Those who truly hate unfunny comedy may find this movie harder to sit through than Superman IV.  They may ask: why, oh why, did you give this movie just as good a rating as Superman II?  Mainly, because #2 was forgettable.  This one left far more vivid recollections.  And fortunately, most of the worst stuff is concentrated near the beginning.  The first third is one painful squirm- in- your- seat- with- embarrassment scene after another, but then the second half gets more super.

Richard Pryor guest-stars as Gus Gorman, the world's stupidest superintelligent computer genius.  He makes his character way too clownish, but injects a little freshness into the series nonetheless.

Margot Kidder is written out of the story by a pathetically transparent device... because she went and told the Salkinds how much they suck.  See?  There is something to like about her.

This film contains some memorable scenes, and some incredibly hokey scenes -- sometimes, the same ones.  Like the scene where Superman, turned evil by misformulated kryptonite, super-fights himself in a junkyard, with the "good" Superman being represented by his Clark Kent persona.  Call me a dork, but that's my favorite scene in the movie.  Reeve's delineation of the various character roles -- nerdy Clark, Superman, and Evil Superman -- is stagey but effective.  Nothing can be taken seriously, but the climactic battle, unlike that in Superman II, is actually thrilling -- enough so to keep the movie afloat (barely).  And furthermore, it's imaginative -- they throw in one crazy thing after another that you don't expect.  The nuttiness, and the sparky smoky effects, would be right at home in a Japanese giant monster movie.

The John Williams theme music is again worked over by Ken Thorne here, and this time he does more poorly than in his previous attempt.  Whenever he's not relying on John Williams' theme, he's dull.  Still, it's thrilling to hear that opening motif on french horn, at the moment when Good Superman finds his way back...

I once saw a brief capsule review of this in a weekly alternative newspaper, a summary written to act as a placeholder during the interval before they actually saw and reviewed the film, which said: "Produced by -- oh, shit -- Golan and Globus."  That "oh, shit" was right on the money.  This formerly prestigious big-budget series has suddenly become cheap garbage, not just in the amateur-grade special effects and stunts but in the amateur-grade dialog and plotting as well.  Every scene in the film is, in some greater or lesser way, just plain stupid. Every single scene, without exception!

Gene Hackman didn't even shave his head to play Lex Luthor, or even cover it with a wig.  And he says "nucular".  Perhaps that's Gene's little joke on the filmmakers.  Or did he say it that way in Superman: The Movie?  I can't remember.  He also said "nucular" in Crimson Tide...

(By the way, did you know that in his early comic book appearances, the mad scientist Luthor, not yet named Lex, wore a green dress over his pants?  I think it was supposed to be some kind of archaic lab coat.)

Margot Kidder is back.  She looks awful.  Maybe this was about the time when she was ready to head for rehab.

Anyway, you know you're in good hands right from the beginning, when Supes saves some Russian cosmonauts whose space station has been hit by an old stray satellite.  Not only does the station rumble as it moves by, not only does his cape flap, not only does he take a deep breath in space... but he speaks aloud to a space-suited rescuee right out there in the vacuum, and mentions that he heard him singing!  (I guess hearing the guy would explain how he knew the station was in trouble.)  If that wasn't bad enough, there's a scene near the end where Mariel Hemingway breathes vacuum with no ill effects, just like Superman.  It appears that the writers forgot completely about airlessness up there.  It's like nobody ever told them about it -- they are consistent throughout the film in acting as if there's air.

Don't miss Superman's new super power, "bricklayer vision".

This Superman episode isn't silly fluff like the last one... oh no, it's very earnestly concerned about grave issues.  To wit, the nuclear arms race.  And unlike virtually all other Golan-Globus dreck, it takes an internationalist and anti-military point of view, because Christopher Reeve would only do the film if he controlled the story, and that's the kind of story he wanted.  Perhaps the Go-Go Boys felt a bit awkward or out of place doing a liberal-flavored film... and perhaps that helps explain, in some small way, how moronic the result is.  Or maybe Reeve just sucks at screenwriting.  But I don't think it's Reeve's fault; he didn't write the dialogue, but (as I understand it) just a broad story outline.  And in outline, this story doesn't really have anything wrong with it (by comic book standards); it can certainly be taken as seriously as anything in the earlier movies.  Still, the core premise that the world's nuclear powers would allow an extraterrestrial to disarm them is ridiculous.  But the other parts, such as Lex Luthor creating his own evil superhero in the heat of the sun and having him fight Big Blue, are good plain meat-and-potatoes comic book fare.  No, this movie's failure is in the execution.

There is one thrilling battle of titans to witness on screen here.  No, I don't mean Superman vs. Solar Power Man -- though ironically, the fight with Lex Luthor's super-stooge is probably as close as they ever got in this series to the style of superfight you'd see in the source comics -- I mean Superman IV vs. Supergirl: which movie is worse?  And the winner is... well, it's pretty close, but I think Supergirl retains the title.  For the true bad movie fan, either film is a rewarding experience.

This time the theme music is handed off to Alexander Courage, who does it properly.  He definitely deserved a bigger share of the ol' wealth and fame than he got.