Superman Redeemed

Review by aarkus — June 4, 2009 @ 1:54 pm

Just watched Superman Redeemed. First, this was my first ever viewing of a fanedit, and I have got to say, that in terms of quality, this was bar none, fabulous. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought this was a whole new cut of Superman IV (with elements of Superman II and III).

That aside, I felt like a good deal of the movie lacked a central narrative. It seemed very disjointed. I don’t think this is due to my memory of where the different pieces came from (It’s been years since I sat down and watched Superman II, III and IV). I understand the over-arching story that superman goes home and reacquaints himself with Lana (and all the Smallville stuff). I further understand the over-arching story of the atomic bombs and Superman’s quest for piece, and the idea for Nuclear Man’s corruption of Superman. I get these. However, I rather felt that in a movie–which needs to deal with fewer ideas than a novel or season of a tv show–that the collision of these two themes did not work well.

I also felt that the movie Superman Redeemed was more of Superman IV than III (and the beginning of II), and so if you were going to make this film tighter, I would advise cutting the majority of the Smallville scenes. The scene with the factory, for example, adds nothing to the story of superman’s quest for peace. Ditto for the cornfield and the key to the city. Furthermore, while my favorite part of Superman III was always superman being evil and then fighting himself, it just doesn’t seem to work in terms of NuclearMan’s corruption of Superman. Not only do Superman’s bad antics seem rushed, but the touch is not so noticeable. Perhaps if you had rotoscoped superman so that the viewers discovered that all of him glowed for several seconds… maybe that would have made the transition smoother.

In terms of disjointedness, it did occur to me, however, that these two films may have worked better had they been cut as episodes of a tv season of Superman. With expert cutting, you may be able to get away with half a decent tv series that successfully integrates both story arcs.