SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)
Over 40 years after Donner brought the Man Of Steel to life in Superman: The Movie, it remains the gold standard by which all superhero movies — and certainly, all supermen — are judged. It still has the best big-screen Superman. The best big-screen Clark Kent. The best big-screen Lois Lane. The best big-screen Lex Luthor. We could go on.
And much of the credit can be boiled down to one word — verisimilitude, or a sense of reality. It was Donner’s watchword while shooting the movie at Pinewood. He even had it hanging on a wall in the production offices as a constant reminder that, while this was a movie in which an alien could fly so fast that he could turn back time, or build a fortress out of ice, the tone was always to remain semi-realistic. “I remember that Dick said it was never to be a cartoon,” says Sarah Douglas, who played Ursa, the right-hand psycho to General Zod in both Superman and its Donner-free sequel, Superman II. “We were all completely believable, and that came from Dick.”
Of all Donner’s prodigious gifts as a director, perhaps his greatest was his facility for casting; for spotting raw potential in an actor which could then be honed into Clark Kent, or Lois Lane, or an unstoppable, Kryptonian killing machine clad head-to-toe in a black leather jumpsuit. Certainly, that’s why Douglas believes that Superman continues to be lauded as the best Supermovie over four decades years later. “Christopher [Reeve] is the definitive Superman, there’s no getting away from that,” she says. “I remember, because we were at Shepperton doing costume tests, Margot coming in for her screen test, and the minute she opened her mouth there was this magic between her and Christopher.”
Recently, Douglas was scheduled to attend the Royal Albert Hall for a special screening of Superman, at which the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra would have blasted out the score in sync with the film.
It was postponed due to Covid restrictions, but Douglas is determined to be there when it’s rearranged. Because if there was another thing Donner had a knack for, it was teasing iconic scores out of composers. “When that John Williams music starts,” she says, “it’s just wonderful. Christopher Reeve is my Superman, and Donner’s version is my version. There is no doubt about that, forevermore.”