Review Detail

I'm sure many of us have seen Superman and it's sequels quite a few times over the years. I'm pretty certain this edit was supposed to be more serious in tone than comic style, at least from my perspective. I'm seeing it again with a fresh pair of eyes having not seen the sequels for at least 2/3 years and that's good because I'm seeing and remembering as I go along with this edit.

There are some great moments in this edit such as Nuclear Man's demise leading to to the "breakout" of the Phantom Zone and I felt the scenes with Superman becoming bad in Superman III and linking it with the Superman IV scene (of a poorly Clark and an concerned Lois) fitted perfectly. The problem is I still don't think that the original scene in IV is obvious enough to let the audience know that Lois knows Clark's identity. I know there's a hint of Lois knowing something and I'm sure most people on the street would know the whole Clark Kent/Superman storyline generally whether you have read the comics or simply know from trivia. But at least to someone who has never seen the sequels or may have watched Superman for the very first time, they might not have understood. That problem with the scene obviously isn't the editors fault and I think the editor tried with the Lois/Superman relationship, but there's just not a lot of footage to play around with. Later in the film when we approach Superman II, Lois bursts into tears, which the audience just has to accept that she now knows everything. The editor makes it nearly believable, but falls just short of it.

I think around the 1:40:00 mark when Nuclear Man appears and demands to know "where is she?" is a bit problematic. As a viewer I'm thinking, "what's he on about? Didn't he take her earlier in the film?" Nothing is explained. The editor probably would have been better to leave her kidnapping out entirely since we know Nuclear Man is purely out to destroy Superman and doesn't seem to have any other motive than that. I wish Lex Luther's Nephew had kept a bit more quiet too, but mostly small mercies concerning him.

The audio and visuals are all perfectly fine to me. It was very seamlessly put together. Running from Superman IV into Superman II and linking both together under the science fiction elements from Superman's speech was a great idea also.

I'm surprised comic bits such as Superman rebuilding the Great Wall and lowering rescued people to the ground with the (force?) "super stare" are still present since other comic bits are gone. Is Superman mostly indestructible? Yes. Is he a wizard/jedi? No. But massive praise to linking Nuclear Man with turning Superman bad. It is a superb idea and the flashback a bit later on does clarify that to the audience. His death is a bit of a head scratcher, though I'm sure most people could personally forgive that since the original comical death in IV is so bad that it seriously wasn't worth the cheap joke made.

So overall I think this is probably the best way to link the sequels all together into a single edit. I haven't seen nor know of another edit that has done that with all three sequels, so massive congrats to the editor on weaving the narratives throughout, however, I think with a little more trimming we would end up with an even better vision of this, which would then be the best version of some pretty dire sequels.