I just finished watching Superman II. Now, it's been quite a few years since I've watched it, and apparently someone has taken a cue from George Lucas and decided that it would be a good idea to go back and mess with a good movie. I noticed right from the beginning that someone has been messing around. alternate scenes were used instead of the scenes that were in the theatrical version. Scenes were removed, and in a few instances, stand-ins or CGI was used to fake scenes with principal actors.
In some cases, I'll admit this messing around could have helped. For instance, a lot of the "silly" physical stunts that were in the original film were removed or at least minimized. Scenes like a man talking on a payphone even though it was blown off it's base and scooting down the sidewalk for instance. But they took it far beyond that, especially at the end of the movie. In the original, after defeating the three krypton villains in his fortress of solitude, Clark Kent kissed Lois Lane, using some sort of mind power, we assume, to make Lois forget that he is Superman. The world remembered everything that happened and there was a stirring scene in which Superman places the American Flag back on top of the whitehouse and tells the President that he will never let this happen again.
In this new version, Superman speed flies around the Earth spinning it backwards (like he did at the end of the first Superman movie) turning back time and making it as if nothing ever happened. Everyone, this time, has conveniently forgotten that anything happened at all, completely deleting the last scene with the American flag and the President. In this post 9/11 world, perhaps this is intended to make the movie more non-American friendly. For me, all it did was completely ruin and castrate this once great movie. The studio executives responsible for this farce themselves should be castrated!
I would now have to set this "version" of Superman II on the shelf next to Superman IV, the quest for peace. Another sorry excuse for a Superman movie. Hopefully one day I'll be able to find the original version of Superman II on DVD and keep it so that someday I'll be able to show the grandchildren I hope someday to have what this movie is truly supposed to be.
