Superman Reviews and Ratings


  • moviegirl50
    November 21, 2009
    moviegirl50
    What can I say about this? Christopher Reeve is awesome as Superman--I was so excited when this came out--CLASSIC! On "My 5 Star Action/Adventures" list.
  • ythelastman89
    November 20, 2009
    ythelastman89
    While it is extremely dated by today's standards, Richard Donner's adaption of one of the world's most popular superheroes is revolutionary. It made the superhero genre a financial success and a legitimate form of storytelling.
  • JaneDoeNili
    November 12, 2009
    JaneDoeNili
    So this is the real deal huh? How the legend starts and all. It was quite educating for me. I liked it. Lex Luthor was very funny. Superman interfering an earthquake was a bit too much.
  • kcddck
    November 11, 2009
    kcddck
    Though it is a bit dated, this is still a very fun movie to watch. I thought that Christopher Reeve was nothing short of amazing in this film. I really loved his portrayal of Clark Kent. This also had quite a punch with the rest of the cast as well. You had Brando, Hackman, Kidd...( read more)er, Beatty, Gleen Ford. At times this did get a little slow for me, but it really didn't bother my enjoyment of the film. You can see how this ties right into the second movie right away, but I guess I don't want to get to far ahead of myself.
  • JimG944
    November 8, 2009
    JimG944
    5 of 5 stars for the comic book based movie Superman The Movie. This movie starts the franchise with the destruction of Krypton following sending of its last survivor to Earth. From the landing of his ice craft in the fields to his experiences in high school to his moving to Metr...( read more)opolis and working at the Daily Planet, this movies sets the basic history and story of Superman. An all star cast includes: Reeve, Hackman, Brando, Ford, Perine and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. This movie has the sequence with Lane in a long gown going flying with Superman. Once Superman is established as a character, we enter the meat of the movie where Superman fights against Lex Luther (Hackman). Helped by Perine & Beatty's characters, Luther learns to use Kryptonite to neutralize Superman. Then he steals a nuke for purposes of setting off a major Earthquake on the west coast to move "ocean-front property" to the east.

    A grand movie with sweeping music and visuals, this is a really fun movie and worth watching several times!
  • formerwowaddic
    November 3, 2009
    formerwowaddic
    for the time frame and sticking to the comic this was a great film kudos to Chris for this one
  • lanba
    November 1, 2009
    lanba
    hace años q me la ví...
    Finalmente la volví a ver, es buena realmnete buena ya q data del año '78 tiene buenos efectos especiales en cuanto a la historia es entretenida pues es el comienzo de todo, del porq es asi y todo lo qlucha por la humanidad, un buen concepto defiunitiv...( read more)amente SUPERMAN
  • thoms51
    October 30, 2009
    thoms51
    You WILL believe a man can fly!
  • thisdaredevil
    October 12, 2009
    thisdaredevil
    i did not care much for christopher reeves
  • jekoaguado
    October 3, 2009
    jekoaguado
    Great MOVIE! A classic! Even the effects were surprisingly great for a 70's movie.
  • oralandohylton
    September 28, 2009
    oralandohylton
    needs more action!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • lordzasz
    September 27, 2009
    lordzasz
    the flying around the earth and spinning back time, doesn't sit well with me
  • superboy1985
    September 22, 2009
    superboy1985
    Superman... One of the best movie ever each movie and each serie have the best thing ever RIP my man Reeve
  • SkywalkerJones
    September 18, 2009
    SkywalkerJones
    Easy,miss,i got you.-Superman
    You ve got me?Who s got you?-Lois Lane

    ...( read more)gn:center;font-size:10px;">Flixster - Share Movies

    Directed by:Richard Donner
    Cast:Christopher Reeve,Gene Hackman,Marlon Brando,Margot Kidder
    Genre:Action,Adventure,Comic Book Adaptation
    Year of release:1978
    Running Time:148 minutes

    Plot:
    The infant Kal-El, of the planet Krypton, makes his journey to Earth in a ship constructed by his father, Jor-El, just as the planet explodes. Crashing down in the midwest United States, the boy is adopted by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent. After Jonathan's death several years later, Kal-El - now known as Clark Kent - learns of his true identity from the ghost of Jor-El. He has great powers - he can fly, outrun a train, and lift up a 1-ton truck. But it isn't until he gains a job at Metropolis' Daily Planet newspaper that things begin to come together. One night, after leaving work, he sees a helicopter crash on the building's roof. From this night on, he will be known by a new name...SUPERMAN! His mission: "To fight for truth, justice and the American Way". Lex Luthor, however, has other ideas - to sabotage a pair of nuclear missiles and use them to create an earthquake that will wipe out the California coastline. Superman must race against time and stop a sinister plan by Luthor to eliminate him before millions of innocent people are killed.

    .Review:soon...
  • ElCochran90
    September 18, 2009
    ElCochran90
    THE superhero classic, with Cristopher Reeve and Marlon Brando. A must-see for all comic fan generations.

    82/100
  • NeoTranquility
    September 17, 2009
    NeoTranquility
    unforgettable but nothing to it really
  • n1c0th3man1ac69
    September 11, 2009
    n1c0th3man1ac69
    Hell yeah, now good old time fun movies!
  • whosinthenews
    September 8, 2009
    whosinthenews
    Great movie.
    On a complete side note: The ending... it's poignant, I suppose, and relates back to earlier events. But seriously...what the F. Yeah, you all know. Superman needs time travel ability like Batman needs a gun. Giving him the power of God basically nullifies everything...( read more) previously and subsequently done. Oh whatever.
  • fiaud
    September 7, 2009
    fiaud
    What kid didn't like Superman or this movie?
  • TheMahonster
    September 5, 2009
    TheMahonster
    I actually don't like these movies, even though I realise how good they are. Why? I just dunno...
  • SirPant
    September 3, 2009
    SirPant
    Superman is by far the best Superhero movie of all time. Sure the new Batman films are excellent but they're not a touch on Donner's classic. Reeve is the quintessential Superman, even though he the 3rd (or is it 4th?) person to play him. I just can't express how much I adore thi...( read more)s film, it has been my favourite since childhood and I must have watched it over 100 times. I love everything about it and can find no faults with it. Brilliant!
  • itbegins2005
    August 26, 2009
    itbegins2005
    Oh, we believed, all right. In a decade defined by Watergate, the continuing atrocities of Vietnam, and a mounting national rebellion against authority and an increasingly oppressive socio-political climate, one movie had the guts to stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way...( read more) without a hint of irony or sarcasm. Following hot on the heels of Star Wars, the Man of Steel's big-screen debut was- and is- an epic, high-spirited adventure, the absolute gold standard for superhero movies for decades after its release, and a film that's so clearly a labor of love that it's practically stamped on every frame. What's really great about this movie is that, instead of ignoring the climate of cynicism that had been cultivated in cinema for the past decade, Superman posits itself as an ideological response to it, placing its hero in a world not far removed from the likes of The French Connection or All the President's Men and playing against that well-established stark realism for a brilliant contrast between the two aesthetics. The irony of this is that Superman, whose idealism and relentlessly good nature might make him seem hopelessly naive to many of the citizens of Metropolis, is the only character who is portrayed absolutely seriously, while the disillusioned pragmatism of the other characters is played for laughs- a clever strategy, because it makes Superman sort of the audience's perspective on the rest of the world, the identifiable character through which we evaluate the rest (which he maintains even as Clark Kent, his sly smiles and small gestures letting us in on the joke that he's only pretending to be clumsy and oafish... taking advantage of society's preconceived notions to hide in plain sight). Despite a few... problems with the screenplay (i'll get to those), Superman: the Movie remains the ultimate portrayal, in any medium, of the Man of Steel, and one of the greatest adventure-fantasies to ever grace the screen. The film opens on the planet Krypton, as a desperate scientist tries in vain to warn his contemporaries of the imminent destruction of their world. Jor-El, rebuked by his peers and forbidden to leave the planet, places his infant son Kal-El into a starcraft and sends him to Earth just as Krypton's sun goes nova. The craft lands safely in Kansas, where a kind and decent couple discover the child and raise him as their own. Flash foward several years, where we meet Kal, now rechristened Clark Kent, as a teenager in Smallville, just discovering that he has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. After his adoptive father dies of a heart attack, Clark discovers a mysterious crystal- a piece of the craft he arrived in- that leads him to the arctic, where it grows into a massive crystal palace: the Fortress of Solitude. Here he learns all about his heritage and how to master his powers, and after twelve years of study, Clark sets out to Metropolis, becoming a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper and concocting a mask of impentirable meekness to ensure his anonymity. But when fellow reporter Lois Lane finds herself in mortal danger, Clark reveals his true nature to the world: in a flash the reporter is gone, and in his place stands the red, blue, and yellow figure of Superman! Filling in those big red boots, of course, is Christopher Reeve, and actor who so quintissentially embodied the qualities of Superman that even now it's hard to seperate the image of the man from the character itself. Reeve projects an immutible confidence as the Man of Steel that makes you believe that he actually IS bulletproof, but is tempered with an easy charm and an earnest innocence that is somehow worldly, not naive (as if he was aware of the depths of humanity's darkness- and he certainly acknowledged it- but still ultimately believed that mankind was inherently good, and could be, well, redeemed [yes, he's a Christ figure. Secular Jesus. Deal with it.]). More impressively, however, he creates a Clark Kent through body language, a subtle slouch in posture, and a higher octave speaking voice, that you actually could work next to every day without once suspecting that the most powerful being on Earth was sitting right across from you; for once, the glasses are just an accesory, not a disguise. Playing opposite Reeve (both spectacle and bispectacled) is Margot Kidder as intrepid reporter Lois Lane, the feisty-yet-jaded yin to Superman's yang who, in this incarnation, is a chain-smoking working girl, a sort of avatar for urban life in the 1970's, who knows all the angles and sniffs out bullshit for a living. Kidder plays her with manic energy; Lois is a woman on the go 24/7, and that's the way she likes it- which is why she finds Clark Kent (slow, fumbling Clark) so unappealing. Superman, however, is a different story; the romance between Lois and Superman is the dramatic crux of the movie, and it is executed wonderfully as a sort of screwball-comedy, His Girl Friday courtship, with the hard-nosed Lane turning to butter every time the Man of Steel locks his cobalt-blue eyes on her. The Flying Sequence is the unquestioned centerpiece of the film, a majestic, romantic flight through the clouds that somehow never feels overwrought or cheesy, even with Kidder doing a lyrical voice-over through half the scene. But while the love story dominates the majority of the film, you can't have a hero without a villain, and in this film Superman faces off against Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, the personification of all the worst qualities of humanity. Keeping with the thematic conceit of the film, Lex is kind of a clown, dressing in cheesy plaid suits with ridiculous "wigs" and referring to himself as "the greatest criminal mind of our time", but beneath it all there's a current of genuine menace that Hackman brings to the part- a mean-spirited cruelty that he disguises as wit and sarcasm (an interesting reversal from Clark Kent). The part is definitely a little overdone (the Abbott and Costello-ish relationship with Otis is sometimes a bit much- sometimes- and WHY does he have an evil underground lair?), Hackman makes Lex into a perfect foil for the Man of Steel, exploiting his seemingly only weakness- overconfidence. Last but not least (first-billed, in fact) is the legendary Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-El, who, for the latter part of the film is portrayed as a giant floating head (which seems somehow appropriate). Brando is good as the wise alien scientist, lending the film's opening some serious gravitas (balanced nicely against the incredible Terrence Stamp-but more about HIM later...) and anchoring the more fantastic elements of the story to the tone of the rest of the film. That tone is set by director Richard Donner, the strongest guiding force behind the film, who somehow manages to evoke three distinctly different styles in the film- the quasi-biblical science fiction opening, a nostalgic portrait of rural America, and a modern urban comedy- that mesh together as a complete, integrated story. His camera moves in slow dollies and pans, giving a sense of scale and grandure to his big scenes, and his color palettes are rich and vibrant, from the bright blue skies and amber fields of Kansas to the deep browns and grays of Metropolis, against which Superman pops out like a beacon (the cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth is phenomenal; I can't say enough about the visuals in this film). Production designer John Barry gives us a Krypton that still looks majestic and awe-inspiring today, set against an Earth grounded in realism; the flying effects are still impressive, even to today's jaded viewer... with the occasional exception (did anyone EVER buy those young-Clark-running-home shots?); and John Williams crafts a score that captures everything we love about Superman in a single, powerful title march (the score is so good that it was re-used for every single sequel with virtually no thematic changes- a cheap move, but surprisingly it works). The script is the area in which the movie fumbles worst; the climax makes the ridiculous assertion that, by flying around the planet so fast that he reverses its rotation (which would more likely rip the atmosphere to shreds than make the world spin backwards), Superman can TURN BACK TIME, which he does only to save Lois just this once (and yet, while the nuclear bomb clearly still hits the San Andreas Fault, the fissure that forms under Lois's car and killed her the first time DOESN'T HAPPEN the second time around. Go figure). Add to this the most mind-blowingly stupid scene in the film- Lex Luthor's deduction of the existence and effects of Kryptonite (try to follow his steps in reason without getting a splitting headache)- and you have a movie that has some definite problems with logic. Be that as it may, the fact remains that Superman is the patriarch of all superhero films; without it, there would be no Batman, no X-Men, no Spider-Man, and certainly no Dark Knight or Iron Man. More than that, though, Superman: the Movie was a landmark in popular film, its hero held in the ranks or Rocky Balboa, Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, and the shark from Jaws as an icon of pop culture and a herald of a new, brighter era in cinema- for better or worse. The film is a love letter to a character who had been around for nearly forty years (now nearly seventy-five), a story that took the ideals of its hero and contrasted them with a world rendered in ever darker shades of gray... making those ideals stand out that much more. Of course, it's not a political picture; Superman: the Movie is escapism at its finest, and adventure about a man who can fly, who bends steel in his bare hands, and who always tells the truth. It's hard to say which it was of those that was hardest to accept in the decade the film was released, but audiences believed every minute of it- and we still do.
  • jscottcorley
    August 16, 2009
    jscottcorley
    Here's a way to do a solid film with a comic book feel. But Kidder is all wrong and the sequence with the poem blows.
  • stormyweather980
    August 15, 2009
    stormyweather980
    In my opinion, this is the best "Superman" movie out of any of them. All of them are great, but none of the others have the thrills, wonder, and excitement that this one has. Superman (Christopher Reeve) is sent to earth to keep people out of danger the best he can. However, it m...( read more)ight be harder than he might had anticipated after he meets with Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) and learns of his plan to destroy parts of the United States by means of huge bombs.
    "Superman - The Movie" had some of the best special effects ever seen at the time and it also had a great plot. Not only is Superman a superhero, he also has a life. When nobody's in trouble, he turns into Clark Kent and works at a local newspaper company. He is also interested in Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, and Gene Hackman all put on great performances to make this movie a classic.

    If you like movies about superheroes who always come to the rescue, I would recommend getting "Superman - The Movie." The first time you see it, it will take you by surprise as you watch it in awe at what Superman can do. Even after you see it a few times, it doesn't get old. NOTE: That was my Amazon review written in the year 2000. I lied, the best Superman movie is Superman II, but this one's great also.
  • Kelsidy21
    August 10, 2009
    Kelsidy21
    it was a good movie but i only ever saw it in parts, and backwards
  • daviddanielpv
    August 9, 2009
    daviddanielpv
    Sólo porque es un clásico
  • tonas88
    August 8, 2009
    tonas88
    Mmm... I don't like superman
  • slightlyyossie
    August 5, 2009
    slightlyyossie
    The hardcore fans would love this comeback...
    too bad im just a reguler fans
  • erriku84
    August 2, 2009
    erriku84
    Lol. This is a fun movie as long as you don't count the unbelievably retarded "can you read my mind" poem.
  • TomBowler
    August 1, 2009
    TomBowler
    set the benchmark for superhero movies
  • cyberray1976
    July 28, 2009
    cyberray1976
    Greatest comic book movie EVER. 'Nuff said.
  • flameamigo777
    July 26, 2009
    flameamigo777
    Good when it came out, Meh now.
  • luvafish582002
    July 22, 2009
    luvafish582002
    Mr. Reeve WAS, and ALWAYS WILL BE Superman. RIP
  • TheBeginningAndTheEnd
    July 16, 2009
    TheBeginningAndTheEnd
    Christopher Reeve is great in the title role. The first truly great superhero movie.
  • MagicButterfly
    July 11, 2009
    MagicButterfly
    When I first saw this, I didn't particularly care for it. However, I think this is less about watching a "movie" and more about watching the "magic" of Christopher Reeve playing Superman. This movie deserves its iconic status.
  • oscartorrado
    July 9, 2009
    oscartorrado
    Not a big fan of Superman, but you just dont have to be a genius to realize that this is one of the best (not the best) superhero movie ever made.
  • annajade1
    July 8, 2009
    annajade1
    the original superman movies all the way.
  • ianmillar65
    July 2, 2009
    ianmillar65
    first and best music score fantastic
  • supermangilbert
    June 30, 2009
    supermangilbert
    Hellooooooooooooooo!
    This movie was THe BOMB!
    This movie is the reason we can even rate all these other films now. It paved the way for high value production Superhero films.
  • sharkattack1978
    June 26, 2009
    sharkattack1978
  • carolynnereed
    June 24, 2009
    carolynnereed
    This was a ok movie for the time it was made. With Reeves being dead it should be watch in the manner it was made.
  • DoctorXQuinzel
    June 24, 2009
    DoctorXQuinzel
    I'm not a fan of superman, but this movie was dumb, changing the rotation of the earth does not make time go back, if that so why doesn't constantly continue to reverse time every time he faces a villain.
  • dil1788
    June 23, 2009
    dil1788
    A classic which may forever remain the best Superman movie ever.
  • stu4cam
    June 21, 2009
    stu4cam
    anyone up for bit ov superman
  • DeadAngelLover22
    June 21, 2009
    DeadAngelLover22
    What can i say, i always wished for my own superman :)
  • charlenebonnici86
    June 19, 2009
    charlenebonnici86
    An alien orphan is sent from his dying planet to Earth, where he grows up to become his adoptive home's first and greatest super-hero
  • Titansfan904
    June 19, 2009
    Titansfan904
    Best superhero movie of all time. Agree with me or fuck off. ;)
  • SuperStarDust
    June 17, 2009
    SuperStarDust
    I love all Superman movies with Christopher Reeve, they are spectacular...

Summary

Superman Summary