Christopher Reeve Believed Casting Richard Pryor and the Comedic Tone of SUPERMAN III Were the Reasons It Failed
When you have a film franchise, there will inevitably be stronger and weaker movies in the series. Some will make more money than others, some go down as fan-favorites, and some are kind of the duds of the lineup. As far as the Superman movies go from the ‘70s and ‘80s starring the late, great Christopher Reeve, the first two are great, and the last two are debatable. According to Reeve, the third film has a casting choice and a comedic direction to blame.
The plot of the film reads:
Computer programmer Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) is hired by financial tycoon Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn) to seize control of a weather satellite and annihilate Colombia's coffee crop. When Superman (Christopher Reeve) manages to thwart the plan, Webster commands Gorman to use the satellite to locate kryptonite, the Man of Steel's mortal weakness. But a missing unknown element in the kryptonite -- replaced by Gorman with tar -- causes an unintended side effect when presented to Superman.
According to /Film, in his 1999 autobiography Still Me, Reeve wrote about the fact that the film’s director, Richard Lester, was keen on making Superman III funny and felt that casting Richard Pryor was a boon. Reeve wholeheartedly disagreed. He said the comedian Richard Pryor was hired purely because he asked to be in the film while appearing on a talk show:
"One night on the Johnny Carson show Richard Pryor raved about the Superman films and said how much he'd love to be in one. When they heard about it, [the film's executive producers] were excited by the idea that they might get Pryor to play some kind of comic villain in 'Superman III.' They approached him and received an immediate yes. David and Leslie Newman, the only writers left from the original group, were hired to write a movie that became more a Richard Pryor comedy vehicle than a proper Superman film."
Reeve went on in the book to describe one scene in the movie that was just totally over-the-top cartoony:
"The Newmans wrote a scene in which Pyror, wearing skis and sporting a pink tablecloth as a Superman cape, zooms off a little ski slope on the top of a high-rise. He falls down the side of the building and land — miraculously unhurt — in the middle of traffic on a busy street, then waddles toward the sidewalk, oblivious to all the honking horns and staring pedestrians. I personally found all that in poor taste."
Reeve then added how much he missed working with Richard Donner. He did add, though, that Superman III had at least one notable scene. The cigarette Kryptonite eventually bifurcates Superman into separate good and evil beings, and the two of them fight. Reeve liked that, writing:
"I missed Donner tremendously, and what we'd created just two years earlier. I did enjoy the sequence in which Superman has become an evil version of himself and tries to kill Clark Kent in an automobile junkyard. That scene stands alone; I think the rest of 'Superman III' was mostly a misconception."
While it’s not the strongest of the Superman films, it didn’t tarnish fans’ conception of Reeve as the man of steel. He is still regarded as one of the best, if not the best, who has ever donned the cape.
What do you think of the Superman film franchise? Which is your favorite film?