Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, PG, 115 m, 2006
Directed by Richard Donner. Stars Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, et al.

In the early 1970s, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind bankrolled what at that time was (and may still be) the most comprehensive movie version of Alexandre Dumas, père’s The Three Musketeers. After dumping Tony Richardson (Look Back in Anger) over creative differences, the Salkinds entrusted the directorial joystick to Richard Lester, the offbeat auteur behind the Beatles movies A Hard Days Night and Help! (Lester once considered turning Dumas’ revered tome into another vehicle for the Fab Four.) Working from a script by George MacDonald Fraser, Lester ultimately delivered a revisionist swashbuckler that ran so long it was bisected and released as The Three Musketeers in 1973 and The Four Musketeers in 1974. (This resulted in the Salkinds being effectively sued by the movies’ actors, who claimed they were hoodwinked into participating in a sequel for no additional money.) The franchise proved so successful (save 1989’s so-so capper to the trilogy, The Return of the Musketeers, based upon Dumas’ literary Musketeers sequel, Twenty Years After) that when the Salkinds acquired the movie rights to DC Comics’ most popular hero, Superman, they used their new-found strategy for fattening their pay envelopes by carving up Mario Puzo’s lengthy treatment and shooting the resulting screenplays for Superman (a.k.a. Superman: The Movie) and Superman II simultaneously. They hired Richard Donner, fresh from his box office triumph with The Omen, to helm the undertaking, and recruited their ol’ chum Lester to serve as something of a liaison between them and Donner. (Decked out in a black cowl and carrying a razor-sharp scythe, the ghastly form of Lester was constantly looming over Donner’s shoulder, threatening to yank the production’s reins if its director played too fast and loose with the financiers’ moolah.) Donner (with a little help from screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz) was hopelessly devoted to maintaining the integrity of the Superman legend, but his unyielding perfectionism kept adding more days to the shoot, which helped drive the already considerable budget even higher. Worried that they might miss Superman’s projected release date, the Salkinds stepped in and ordered Donner to complete Superman and tend to the remainder of its follow-up at a later date. Superman went on in 1978-79 to become a mammoth hit (it stayed at the very top of the domestic box office for eleven weeks in a row), and audiences were thrilled to see a notice in the closing credits that Superman II would be bounding into the multiplexes the following year. But when the time came to finish the second chapter in the story of the Man of Tomorrow, Donner was given his pink slip, and Lester was assigned the task of wrapping up the project. Even though Donner had completed the lion’s share of Superman II’s principal photography, Lester contributed a good hour’s worth of new material (from a revised script by David and Leslie Newman), gutting much of Donner’s work in the process. (I’ve read over and over again that Lester had to shoot more than half of the film in order to secure a director’s credit, but Donner wasn’t able to confirm it on the audio commentary for the DVD of this new edit.) Lester couldn’t fiddle around with much of Gene Hackman’s performance as criminal mastermind Lex Luthor, though, as the actor was unavailable for re-shoots. (The scuttlebutt is that Hackman was so incensed over Donner’s firing that he refused to participate, but photos of the actor posing with Lester at the premiere of Superman II suggest otherwise.) Lester was forced to employ a body double for Hackman in some shots, as well as an impressionist to loop some new lines. A bunch of other off-camera one-liners (which sounded like the asinine asides from a kiddie matinee’s number one wiseacre) were slackly affixed to Donner’s scenes to help goofify the picture; Lester eschewed Donner’s love of Leanesque epic grandeur in favor of an approach more evocative of comic books, and he brought in cinematographer Robert Paynter (who was no Geoffrey Unsworth) to arrange the mise en scène as such. Worse, composer John Williams backed away from the sequel, so third-rate maestro Ken Thorne (a previous collaborator with Lester on How I Won the War and Juggernaut) was hired to conceive a new score, which wound up being just a bland reworking of the themes Williams laid out in Superman. (Thorne’s wholly original contribution was to parts of the Niagra Falls sequence with source music that wouldn’t be fit for a hospital lift.) In hindsight, it might’ve been easier (and less costly) to just let Donner finish the goddamned film, but the Salkinds made up for those extra bucks by casting out scenes with Marlon Brando that would’ve otherwise netted the mumbling thesp 11.75% of the film’s box office. It’s hard to take exception with the Salkinds’ decision; it wouldn’t have made good business sense to fork over another umpteen-million dollars to Brando when his presence was no longer necessary to the success of what had clearly become a booming franchise. Cutting out Brando, however, ruined a potentially forceful story arc with Jor-El and his son that was sown in Superman and was to come into flower in Superman II.   

Given all of its artistic compromises, it’s remarkable that Superman II came off as well as it did. Though I missed the larger-than-life sumptuousness of the first film, Superman II in its own right was a lot of fun. But where it truly shined was in the deepening of the relationship between Lois Lane and Superman. Indeed, upon its 1981 theatrical release in America (which oddly trailed the opening in Europe and Australia by several months), some moviegoers (and critics) preferred Superman II to its prequel. (That’s not surprising. Superman was mostly exposition; Superman II was a chance to loosen up and have some fun with fully established characters.) But Donner wasn’t amongst Superman II’s devotees. When asked if he’d like to share a director’s credit with Lester, Donner saved his response until he saw a rough cut of the picture. Well, the opening titles of Superman II confirm that he walked out of that screening feeling anything but enthused. Over the years, when Donner was asked about what parts he contributed to Superman II, he’d snip, “The good parts.” Time hasn’t allayed Donner’s out-and-out detestation of Lester; he still refuses after twenty-five years to refer to him by name. I think Mr. Donner needs to move on, though you can’t blame him for clinging to his glory days when his most successful post-Superman effort was that atrocious Lethal Weapon tetralogy.

Over the years, Superman has gained a reassessment; it’s now regarded as a classic, and its sequel, something of a whiff. Most of the complaints with Superman II hinge upon its over-the-top slapstick routines, which were all courtesy of the Lester Laugh Factory. (Its logo depicted a smirking Fatty Arbuckle violating the rump of a bruised and battered Richard Donner. Just kidding.) Many fans of Superman have long wondered what Donner’s version of Superman II might’ve played like sans Lester’s comic (and distastefully composed) flourishes. Well, we can all thank the Internet (and perhaps its creator, Al Gore) for Donner’s original cut finally seeing the light of our planet’s yellow sun.   

In 2004, the Planet of the Apes fansite, TheForbidden-Zone.com, led a write-in campaign, imploring Warner Bros. president Jim Cardwell, president and COO Alan Horn, and chairman and CEO Barry Meyer to put out Donner’s edition of Superman II. The studio had actually toyed with the idea in 2001 after a wealth of lost footage (some reports have it at six tons) was uncovered in vaults throughout Europe during the restoration of Superman for DVD, but Donner had long since lost interest in revisiting the film. Worse, there were legal snags with respect to using Marlon Brando’s scenes as Jor-El, making the prospects of a Donner cut even dimmer. But after Warner Bros. got some things worked out with the Brando estates’ legal beagles (I have no idea what the particulars of that agreement were), the rights to use footage of the legendary actor in a new edit of Superman II (as well as Superman Returns) were permitted. So, with a modest budget in place, film preservationist Michael Thau (who worked on the aforementioned 2001 DVD release of Superman) went about the decidedly daunting task of putting together what he thought Superman II might’ve played like had Donner been allowed to finish it. Alas, most of it was to be done without Donner’s involvement, but in time the director would stop by to check Thau’s progress, adding a suggestion here and there. And though this new version is entitled Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, it’s largely Thau’s baby. Donner may have shot most of it, but Thau cut it. So blame him if the film’s rhythm seems as shaky as Katharine Hepburn’s head in a tilt-a-whirl.    

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut begins with a recap of key events from Superman, but the clip show now completely precedes the opening titles instead of being broken up between a credit for this or a credit for that. (I feel this rudely disrupted the flow of the overture in Lester’s cut.) Since Brando was ejected from the theatrical release of Superman II, the sequence depicting the trial and subsequent condemnation of General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) was restaged, conflicting with what we saw become of the evil sumbitches in Superman. (Superman II’s reenactment stripped Zod of why he was so obsessed with taking down the son of Jor-El: He wanted to hock a big loogie into the eye of his jailer by enslaving his heir.) The original sequence has been restored here, but to differentiate it from the one that opened Superman, Thau has rebuilt it from scratch, utilizing different camera angles. In the original Superman II, Zod and his cronies were inadvertently sprung from the Phantom Zone when Supes took a hydrogen bomb off the Eiffel Tower and hurled it into space. In this edition, Superman (Christopher Reeve) is again inadvertently liable for freeing the oddly outfitted desperados, but we learn it happened during the climax of the preceding chapter after he rerouted Luthor’s Hackensack-bound nuclear missile. The effects for this sequence were never finished, although Thau was able to scrounge up its rough elements (such as a plastic rocket dangling from a fishing rod) and composite them together with new computer technologies. Thau’s team of effects folk are mindful of keeping their CGI trickery visually consistent with the cheesy technologies of the ‘70s, and it pays off—you can’t tell the new effects from the old. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 new effects shots in this alternate cut of Superman II, yet most of them don’t stick out like the computer-generated effects in the revamped Star Wars trilogy did. When the shock waves from the exploding projectile hit the Phantom Zone, the baddies (you gotta love those shiny black boiler suits) are sprung from their cosmic poky. As they make way for Earth’s moon, the goateed ringleader, Zod, maniacally shouts, “Freeeee!” He could very well be voicing the filmmakers’ excitement at being liberated from Richard Lester. 

The opening title sequence in Superman remains one of my all-time favorites. I just dig on that dazzling 3D lettering as it flashes over the screen and recedes into the starry chasm of space while Williams’ Wagnerian themes boom away in hi-fidelity. The grandness of that overture is carried over into Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, which properly whets your appetite for a good helping of the fantastic. When the credit “A Richard Donner Film” whooshed into view, I found myself getting a bit misty. But when Brando’s name appeared (third billing this time after Hackman and Reeve), I was practically in tears. There was a time not so long ago when seeing those names at the beginning of Superman II was the stuff of pipe dreams, so their inclusion here makes for an especially poignant moment. (Only a bona fide film geek could appreciate such sentiments.) Most of the music here is extracted from John Williams’ score for Superman, and he’s also given a prominent credit. Thorne’s score for the theatrical release of Superman II (performed by a 60-piece orchestra instead of the first film’s 90-piece) was flat, tinny—it lacked the luster of Mr. Williams’ opus. But that could almost be forgiven in that Williams was scoring an epic; Thorne, a silly comic book movie. Superman II has now been restored to its epic status, so it’s only appropriate to bring Williams back. And although there are some awkward passages here and there (there wasn’t enough of the airier stuff to compliment the more comedic moments), it mostly works.  

The movie proper takes off so promisingly that the enthusiasm you felt for Lester’s version all these years starts to wither, and you find yourself reassessing it as a total gyp—a thoughtless bastardization of what might’ve been the greatest sequel this side of The Godfather II. That whole story with the terrorists taking over the Eiffel Tower in Lester’s Superman II has been jettisoned; Thau takes us right back to where Superman left off. Mind, both versions of Superman II tell essentially the same story; it’s the garnishments that make all the difference. The establishing shot of the Daily Planet in this new version will be recognized by buffs as having been pinched from a different scene in Lester’s Superman II, but the sequence that follows has never been seen by moviegoers before and may qualify as Thau’s greatest find for this restoration. (It’s so much fun that I can’t imagine how the Salkinds were able to let it go.) As Clark Kent moseys into the office, Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) begins to notice similar physical traits between her fumbling four-eyed co-worker and a newspaper photo of the impossibly gorgeous Man of Steel. After doodling a hat and some specs on the picture of Supes, Lois’s suspicions are at last confirmed. (She gave the matter a quick thought before laughing it off at the end of Superman.) Just then, editor-in-chief Perry White (Jackie Cooper) calls them into his office with a new assignment (as in Lester’s version, they will pose as newlyweds to expose a honeymoon racket in Niagra Falls), and all the while Lois teases Clark with a string of knowing jabs about his secret identity. (“We can just fly right up there,” she jests, “and zoom back down again.”) In the original Superman II, Lois tested these suspicions by throwing herself into the Falls; here she throws herself out of a window on the umpteenth story of the Daily Planet, but the means in which Clark resolves the situation without having to don the cape and tights is very similar. In addition to some new effects, which fit surprisingly well into the proceedings, there are some recently shot inserts to help fill out the action. (Such as Lois tumbling through the air.) We do lose some of Lester’s better bits in this introduction, like Clark getting his thumb squashed in an orange juicer or his fortuitous totaling of a taxi after failing to look both ways before crossing a busy city street. But I guess we can take refuge in the fact that Lester’s Superman II isn’t going anywhere. (Poor Star Wars fans can’t be so certain with George Lucas’s revised editions of Episodes IV, V and VI.) And though I don’t usually make a big to-do out of an actress’s appearance (I’m usually too busy scrutinizing their acting ability), I feel compelled to add that Kidder has never looked so gosh darn cute as she does in this sequence. (It’s easy to see what captivated the filmmakers when they auditioned her.) The difference in the way she looks in the Donner footage versus the subsequent product by Lester is more striking here than it was in the original Superman II. Truth be told, I never really noticed how emaciated she appeared in Lester’s film until now. Maybe it’s because so little of Donner’s stuff was used the first time out that we couldn’t make a good side-by-side comparison. But it’s apparent now that something took its toll on the actress in between the halt on Donner’s shoot and the later pick-ups by Lester.  

We cut from the Daily Planet to the penitentiary where Lex Luthor and his bumbling sidekick, Otis (Ned Beatty), are carrying out their sentences of life plus twenty-five. While toiling away in the prison laundry room, Luthor tells Otis his plan for finding Superman’s home with a little black box that tracks alpha waves. Sensing that the workings of the gadget are Greek to Otis, Luthor asks him, “I could’ve said it tracked pasta e fagiloi, couldn’t I?” Drooling, Otis says, “Oh, with garlic, Mr. Luthor. And butter.” I’m tickled that these scenes with Hackman and Beatty were expanded; their comedy routines (Beatty is Costello to Hackman’s Abbott) now have more time to build and more room to breathe. Ditto Hackman’s scenes with Valerie Perrine as Luthor’s moll, Miss Teschmacher. The big-busted, smart-alecky Teschmacher arrives at the prison one night in a hot air balloon and lifts Luthor to freedom. There follows some very funny bickering between Luthor and Teschmacher in the balloon’s basket, which was all pushed to a later spot in Lester’s version. A different take (or at least an extended one) is used here, complete with the correct nighttime background plate.  

Zod and his crew’s trip to the Moon plays out as it did in the official edition of Superman II with the gratuitous massacre of the American and Soviet astronauts. But the next scene with the fellows back at Houston has been modified with some alternate banter. And while I like the new hairdryer gag, I miss these propellerheads arguing over whether one of the astronauts said “girl” or “curl.” (The latter being a comet with an east-west trajectory.) 

Seeing how Donner was never able to complete shooting Superman II, it’s unavoidable that some of Lester’s work should remain in this new cut, if at least to fill in a few of the story’s gaps. Most of what took place at Honeymoon Haven in Niagra Falls has been scrapped; only the most necessary details remain. At the inn, an acerbic, gum-smacking bellboy (Anthony Sher) escorts Lois and Clark (who are posing as Mr. and Mrs. Smith) to their suite, but this time we’re denied entry as the layout will no longer tone with a later sequence shot by Donner. So, we lose out on the bellboy’s hilarious review of the room’s features, i.e. the Flames of Love, the polyester bearskin rug, etc. Some folks (including yours truly) have got on Lester’s case over the years for the more mirthful direction he took the series, but many of those gags worked, and Lester also seemed to have a real affection for Superman II’s more romantic elements. Indeed, as Donner wasn’t able to shoot many of the parts that would’ve deepened the relationship between Lois and Clark, dispensing with Lester’s lovey-dovey stuff robs the movie of its heart. (Well, at least a ventricle.) 

Donner’s take on the moment Clark finally reveals his big secret to Lois in the honeymoon suite exists only in the form of a couple of early screen tests with Reeve and Kidder, but Thau has done a marvelous job at fixing the scenes together and slotting them into Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. (Surely he could’ve had his spfx crew digitally dress up that lousy dime store set!) As these clips were lensed well before principle photography on Superman and Superman II moved forward, Reeve is much slimmer (he hadn’t fully bulked up for the part yet), and shots of him standing next to Kidder reveal his hair to be longer and his glasses bigger than in his reaction shots (which were likely culled from a screen test with a different actress). Despite these continuity faux pas, the sequence plays remarkably well, and it has a much cleverer pay-off than what Lester’s merry band gave us. Still, what Lester’s version lacked in ingenuity, it more than made up for in spirit—and a commitment to the characters’ integrity. For every mildly amusing piece of Donner film we gain here, we lose an awful lot of Lester’s better material. 

But we do get Brando back. There’s at least fifteen minutes worth of never-before-seen footage of Jor-El communicating with his son via the Fortress of Solitude’s hologramic viewer. Little does Kal-El know that Luthor has recently visited the icy stronghold, and has garnered key info about the Kryptonian seditionists. Brando was excised from these sequences in Lester’s Superman II and replaced with Susannah York as Superman’s mother, Lara. But by putting Brando back in, things flow a bit more smoothly. The sequence where Luthor worms sensitive info from the iridescent image of Jor-El probably runs twice as long now, and there’s even a hilarious pay-off to Miss Teschmacher’s frustration over not being able to find the ice cavern’s shitter.  

I really didn’t mind York taking Brando’s place in Lester’s Superman II; I always felt it was appropriate to have Kal-El discuss matters of the heart with his mother. And yet by bringing back Jor-El (Brando’s readings here aren’t wed to Reeve’s reaction shots from Lester’s version, but rather stuff the late actor performed for Donner), Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut continues with an affecting through-line that was established in Superman and at long last Thau has helped to complete: “The son becomes the father, and the father… the son.” (It’s the circle of life, Simba!) Superman gives up his powers so he can be with Lois, but Superman II’s infamous shot of the two lovebirds lying beneath silk sheets in a post-coital embrace now appears inexplicably before Superman enters the de-powering chamber. Huh? If Superman could play hide-the-salami with Lois with his powers intact, why would he need to give up those powers just to make Lois his shack-up honey? (Dude, why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?) Was Thau somehow trying to account for the extraordinary piano moving abilities of little Jason White in Superman Returns? That would be all fine and dandy if Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was canon, but this is no more of a legitimate sequel to Superman than The Star Wars Holiday Special was to A New Hope. 

The sequence with the Kryptonian shitbirds raising all sorts of hell in Podunk Hollow, USA (which was shot entirely by Lester) has been severely abridged here, relegating Ursa’s arm-wrestling bout with a local yokel (as well as an abundance of other funny bits) to the celluloid ash can. What was once one of the stronger sections in Superman II now feels disjointed, herky-jerky. It seems Thau and company have deemed anything Lester shot to be of lower-grade, so they do away with as much of it as they can without rendering the film unintelligible. One running gag I hated to see go was the wordless brute Non futilely trying again and again to shoot heat rays from his eyes. When he and his naughty droogs first arrive on Earth, a snake greets them by nipping Ursa on her hand. Without missing a beat, the alien femme fatale flame-broils the serpent with a blast from her piercing (yet oddly seductive) eyes. In Lester’s version, Non tried to mimic Ursa’s trick with the snake’s still-smoldering husk, but he could barely work up a flicker. This new edit forgoes that last gag by cutting to some other piece of business, robbing the scene of its payoff. (Come to think of it, most of Non’s funnier moments has been retired here, so he’s no longer the comic relief that he was in Lester’s film.) 

Once Zod and the gang figure out who’s in charge of America, they head for Washington, DC, and wreak all sorts of havoc in the White House. The bedlam in these scenes was toned down a bit in Lester’s version, which was appropriate considering the intended age group for the picture. But Thau has upped the intensity of this sequence, so now we get Zod picking up a machine gun and laying waste to a slew of Secret Service agents. Eventually, he and his cohorts find their way to the Oval Office, where the President (E.G. Marshall in an atrocious wig) agrees to bow before Zod if it means innocent lives will be spared. The movie soon regains its comic edge when Luthor shows up, offering up Superman to General Zod in exchange for Australia.

Meanwhile, Clark is adjusting to life sans Superman. He’s back in the world for hardly two minutes before he gets his clock cleaned in a greasy spoon after defending Lois’s honor from a piggish trucker named Rocky (Pepper Martin). This scene remains largely the same as it did in the theatrical version, except for a reaction shot of Clark exclaiming “Zod!” when he spots the bigheaded crud on the idiot box. (Lester has attempted to take credit for this sequence over the years, but a cameo appearance by none other than Dick Donner outside of the diner proves Lester was full of it.) Clark realizes that he must head back north and find a way to get back his powers, which leads to a powerful moment with his father’s ghost that Lester didn’t even bother coming up with an alternate scene for. But what always irritated me is that we barely got to spend any time with Clark as a regular Joe before he was off looking to reclaim his spit curl and cape. No matter, with his powers restored, Superman high-tails it back to Metropolis, where he throws down with Zed, nearly leveling the city in the process.  

The rest of the picture largely plays out as it did in its original form, save the last reel, which is certain to kick up the most controversy amongst fans. After Supes disposes of the über-criminals at his snow fort (dropping them into a misty abyss that leads to who knows where), he reprimands Luthor for conspiring with them to take over the world. But as Luthor goes about trying to strike a deal with Supes, the movie cuts the crafty devil off mid-sales pitch. In the 1981 edition of Superman II, Superman and Lois flew away from the fortress, leaving Luthor behind, his fate uncertain. In a later TV edit of the picture, we were shown Luthor being arrested and hauled away by the Arctic coppers in their snowmobiles. I thought for sure that Thau would’ve included that out-take in this cut, but it’s been puzzlingly left out. What we’re now given is Superman blowing up the fortress with his super peepers, leading us to think that he’s offed Luthor and the super-villains in cold blood. Of course, it is not in Superman’s nature to deny bad guys their day in court (let alone play executioner), so why Thau would cut the scene in a way that even implies such a thing is beyond me.

In Lester’s Superman II, the caped wonder insured that Lois wouldn’t ever blab about his secret identity by giving her a super-smooch that fried her short-term memory. But as Donner never had a chance to shoot his desired resolution to that plot point (and since Donner, Mankiewicz and Thau are too goddamned bull-headed to concede that Lester might’ve shot something of value), Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut simply reworks the climax of Superman by having our hero zip around Earth until he reverses its rotation and turns back time. (Please don’t try to make sense out of all this; very few heads can take that kind of strain.) In fact, he turns back time so far that General Zod and his posse are given back to the Phantom Zone, suggesting that most of this flick didn’t really happen. (So, does this mean Superman will have to fight the super-villains all over again? At least he’ll be prepared this time.) Actually, this was the coda Donner originally intended for Superman II, but he moved it over to Superman when it was decided that that picture needed a bigger finish. A smart move, too: It is truer to Superman’s character to have him resort to a drastic measure like resetting the space-time continuum only to save a loved one’s life. (Though even that violates his father’s admonition to not interfere with human history.) There follows a newly uncovered scene at the Daily Planet that relates to this conclusion, but surely Donner would’ve dispensed with both parts if he had been given the chance to finish Superman II. Mankiewicz has given a rather feeble justification for rehashing the ending to Superman here, insisting that only Superman should kiss Lois—not that bespectacled doofus Clark. Well, to this I can only respond with my favorite Potterism: MULE FRITTERS! The only reason the filmmakers used this finish was so they didn’t have to sully their restoration with any more Lester footage than they needed to. Period.

In the closing credits of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, there is a note from Donner reassuring us that he no longer condones the movie’s use of furs and cigarettes. Does this guy take us for a bunch of nimrods? Most moviegoers are probably aware that a lot has changed since the 1970s. If not, let’s review: Political correctness has purged academia of any diversity of thought; a group of Islamic extremist fools knocked down the World Trade Center in the hope of getting some unspoiled poontang in the hereafter; a certain Corellian scoundrel was revealed to have not shot a certain Rodian bounty hunter in cold blood, but rather in self-defense; oral sex was redefined by a cigar-sucking, sax-blowing president as not really being sex, so giving little Johnny just the line he needed to talk little Susie into going down on his little jimmy; and a truly super man named Christopher Reeve made us all believe that a quadriplegic could walk again. Reeve didn’t live long enough to free himself of his wheelchair, but he left a filmic legacy that still makes us believe a man can fly. Props to Donner and Thau for acknowledging that in the picture’s dedication.

January 15, 2007

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.