Superman: Son of Jor-El

Very good edit. Includes the essential elements of Donner's two Superman movies and mostly feels cohesive.

My standpoint coming in was this:
Superman The Movie- I always loved the film, except I hated the goofy portrayal of Luthor (see the animated Superman series for a faithful comic book adaptation of him) and I never saw the appeal of Margot Kidder. Narratively, however, it works great except for the ending.
Superman II- I've watched multiple DVD cuts, and all of them have good and bad bits. Zod is of course a compelling villain, but a lot of the powers used by those 3 and by Superman look goofy and cheesy as hell. The ending is a mess as well.

So a fan-edit would have to fix the above elements for me. While this one fixes the end of Superman The Movie, the wrap-up from Superman II still doesn't work for me, and the inclusions of some power usage are still problematic. It's an improvement over any other cut of Superman II I've seen, but if I HAVE to choose between watching this edit or just watching Superman The Movie and skipping Superman II, I'll take the latter.

Technically, this is very high quality. Lots of care and expertise put in. The edits are smooth and most cuts are inspired. The narrative KIND OF works, but there are some leaps in logic by characters, some of which were also problematic in the original films. The inclusion of early test footage between Clark and Lois was jarring for me and my friends when we watched it. Cutting back and forth between that and the footage filmed later was very apparent for us. Reeve just looked quite thinner and different in the earlier footage. Besides that, most edits fit pretty well.

Overall, worth a watch, but I'm still looking for some way to incorporate the good bits of Superman II. I'm not even sure if it's possible, tbh. That film is just a mess. Great effort here, though.

I really liked this fanedit. Definitely replaces Supes 1 and 2 for me.

Audio/Video Quality

It was good. Not crystal clear but considering the movies are movies from the late 70's and early 80's that's understandable.

Audio/Video Editing

Flawless in my opinion. Not one instance that a cut is noticable.

Narrative

Great except for one thing: How does Lex Luthor know Jor-El and The Fortress of Solitude? He hasn't been there yet. The newspaper? No, it never mentioned Jor-El. If we exclude that, the narrative amazingly works!

Enjoyment

Despite my Lex nitpick, I enjoyed this the whole time. It was so fun! No time-travel, no magic kiss, no stupid landgrabbing (even Superman Returns' landgrabbing made more sense!) and surprisingly the Superman Returns Krypton establishing shot worked perfectly!

Overall, I would definitely recommend this to the people who want a near perfect Superman movie!

An interesting cut, which I enjoyed despite some of the problems which have been pointed out by others. The late arrival of Luthor didn't bother me as much as I thought. What did bother me is that throughout the film everyone seemed to know so much about things that they shouldn't have. The characters had a history with each other that is not supported by the timeline.

All of the scene transitions seemed fine and I didn't discern any real problems with the audio. I thought there might have been a bit of leftover audio at about 39:30 where Jor-el was saying something that was cut but you could stil hear bits of it. It also seemed as if the video quality skipped around between higher and lower quality resolution throughout. Some of the scenes seemed fuzzy while others were sharp and clear.

The editors used the superior Donner cut for the reveal of Superman's identity, which is distracting because of the problem with his glasses switching types, but this is a limitation of the source material. I still enjoyed seeing these films in a different light and would recommend it.

While on paper this may seem like a great idea the final version creates so many plot-holes it takes away the overall enjoyment I had for the edit.

Within a week superman aka Clark Kent joins the daily planet and befriends Louis lane, a few days later miss lane falls from a helicopter to which Clark Kent becomes superman for the first time. the next night Louis interviews superman, then the very next day Louis suspects Clark Kent to be superman and then that very evening her suspension are confirmed. Our hero then decides to fly Louis to his secret hide out were he then gives up his powers because he's in love and no-longer wants to protect the earth. All this occurs within a week?

As others have said the lack of lex luthor creates many problems, how doe's he know so much about superman than anyone else and how doe's he know about superman’s hideout. Not only doe's his character need fleshing out but he also needed a conclusion. As it is it would appear superman has just left him to freeze to death the attic conditions

the edit doesn't suffer from too many hard cuts or audio glitches overall though it doe's suffer for a narrative perspective which took away overall enjoyment I had for the edit.

my superman 1 & 2 score 8/8
my fanedit superman score 6/10