Warning – This post is in huge danger of going off at a tangent.
And it wouldn’t be a good one – I try to avoid negative thoughts because they tend to be very self reinforcing. My own state tends to work like that, people with depressive tendencies will recognise it too. The particular negative this time around isn’t something I’d want to put here anyway, it’s an over a coffee thing to people I trust completely (and I can only think of 4 people I’d count there).
Where’s the memories coming from this time ? These go back 30 years !
And they’re actually mostly good ones.
I’ve been watching the Superman movies again. It’s partly in anticipation of the new one coming, I have mixed expectations there as most of the remakes to come out lately have been ok. There have been stinkers like Total Recall but that didn’t have great material to work off in the first place. I’m on the third at the moment.
Christopher Reeve’s defining role will always be Superman, although he did massive things for disability later in life. It’s a shame his accident left him the way it did and took him from us much earlier than it should have. We’ll always remember him as Superman. And the defining memory there will be of the flight with Lois Lane in the first movie.
Superman 1 – great movie. The effects are looking incredibly dated and the Luthorian sidekick was appalling but it’s still very watchable today.
Superman 2 – follows straight on from the first and it’s still pretty good. It’s a more serious movie than the first, although it still has its lighthearted moments. Still an excellent movie, I enjoyed this one again the other day.
Superman 3 – oh dear. There’s lots of series I enjoy but there’s some where I avoid watching or reading bits of them again :
Star Trek V The Final Frontier
Lord of the Rings where Frodo & Sam are in the Marshes (depressing)
Star Wars books by Kevin J Anderson
Formula 1 in the ITV years
Doctor Who in the Sylvester McCoy years
Any Transformers movie done by Michael Bay
Stargate SG-1 seasons 9 and 10 (maybe – they have their moments, like all the ones with Claudia Black)
You get the picture. Superman 3 has its moments but right from the start, it goes for sad attempts at slapstick humour which really don’t work. They insult the viewer. Richard Pryor is a great actor but is wasted here. Lois Lane is criminally underused. The script is appalling.
It’s just a really bad movie – a product of its time. And when I do the box set thing again, I’ll most likely skip it.
Talking of a product of its time – Superman IV was born in the era where we’d finally got our leaders to listen and reduce the nuclear weapon stockpiles. I’ve only seen this one once, so I’ll be curious about watching it again.
Superman Returns makes up the last of the box set, with Brandon Routh being an excellent stand in for the original legend. This one’s a great movie too, I’ll be looking forward to watching it again.
Where’s the dim and distant memory come in ?
My cinema going habit started early. And then it had a massive break. I went to primary school over in Northern Ireland, which was great. The school was excellent and got me a couple of years ahead of where the equivalent school in England was. But we came back (followed the work) when I switched from primary to secondary school.
One thing Ireland had was a good cinema … My dad took me to see films like E.T. and Return Of The Jedi. This was at a time when Star Wars movies were a staple event of Xmas and Empire Strikes Back had just started showing on telly. I think it was before VCRs too (maybe).
One of those films was Superman 3. Strangely, I can’t remember it being as bad as it actually is. I suspect my 9 year old brain was doing a lot of filtering …
The important thing is – my dad took me to see it. I wonder where that tendency I have of not wanting to see films at the cinema on my own came from ? Oh – one reason why we stopped going to the cinema in England was that the local cinema was a hicksville type that got its movies 6 months after the rest of the world. You could watch some off video (rented from Blockbuster!) before they got to our cinema.
PS Still wouldn’t mind seeing Iron Man 3 again.