December Sun – A Web Comic

Here are my comments for the video that I posted on YouTube yesterday, with some more details:

Basically, here’s my heavily-edited remix of Clark meeting Lana again in Superman III, an absolutely dreadful movie, and quite possibly the worst of the Superman series (although still better than ‘Superman Returns’). There were two defining moments in Superman III for me: the “Evil Superman vs. Clark” sequence, which was just the greatest, and the sub-plot of Clark meeting Lana again. The rest of the film, featuring Robert Vaughn and Richard Pryor, was just terrible. In this clip, I’ve removed all of the extraneous characters such as Brad and Ricky, and instead presented this reunion the way I would have liked to have seen it, but no matter how I rework this, the ending was still horrible and nothing could really be done about it.

The Clark/Lana meeting could have been done so much better, as this was such a genuine reunion of two characters with a wonderful chemistry together (more so than Clark and Lois). I can only go so far with the material because the picnic sequence had a terrible ending in the film, so I just crop the video with some comments and music at that point. Ken Thorne did a great job with the music for these scenes, particularly the picnic.

I really could not stand characters like Brad, the unlikable drunk, who occupied far too much of this film, so I completely wiped him out of this clip. The fact that he was in Smallville, entrusted to guard some insanely powerful computer system, is totally beyond reason, and how/why does he show up again at the end of the film? (in Metropolis?)

Likewise, I felt that the Ricky character was just another unlikable character basically added to the script for young viewers to “identify” with, but ultimately he served no real purpose other than to be irritating.

Superman III suffered from a LOT of problems above and beyond just the writing. There was far too much profanity, adult content, and lack of it’s consistency. But at the core of it, here was a genuine reunion of two characters, Clark and Lana, that really had a lot of potential, but was never really developed as well as it could have been. After the picnic, and the downhill slope of the film, Clark gives Lana a new ring, but any any all romantic element seems to have vanished between the two. The ring is little more than a nice gesture from an old friend.

Interesting too was how Lois was completely diminished in this film. I did NOT care for her character in the first place, so this wasn’t much of a negative, but I find it curious how quick Clark was to dismiss Lois during the Reunion cleanup sequence with Lana. I did not like the “romantic” sub-plot of Superman I or II (it made me uncomfortable more than anything. Margot Kidder sounds like she’s smoked a pack of cigarettes prior to any dialog she delivers… what is the attraction here?) Likewise the woman from Superman IV – I can’t even remember her name, but there was no real chemistry there between her and Clark, and again, it’s curious that Lois was just a background character in that film as well. Superman III was the only film in which the romantic sub-plot seemed at all genuine, and it figures, it was ruined in the film.

Wow, I’ve wasted too much time on this. I need to get back to drawing. I had an idea for a longer remix, featuring sequences taken from all 4 films. The story would be that General Zod and crew defeat Superman (I would have used the scenes of Zod and friends blowing away the helicopters, etc, but cut in Superman) and, once defeated, Superman would shake his head tearfully doing the “no…no…” thing. They’d all travel to the Fortress, and Superman would have his powers removed and bow to Zod. The story would then pick up with Clark re-meeting Lana (similar to how it happens in this clip) and then a news article would describe a kryptonite meteorite landing on Zod and friends, wiping them all out ironically. Yeah, now that I write out the idea, that sounds really lame and I’m glad I never bothered with it.