My Review of "Superman III"

Superman III came out in 1983 and in a way it was forward thinking. Unfortunately, that forward thinking didn't really translate to a good entry into the franchise. I'm so disappointed because the first two movies were actually pretty good. This movie doesn't even focus that much on Superman. It's a shame because this movie doesn't know what it wanted to be. They added a whole slop full of stuff onto a board and just made that movie.

It all starts out with the introduction of the character Gus. Oddly enough, this feels more like his movie than an actual Superman movie. Gus is kind of a screw up and he's down on his luck lately. He can't keep a job because he doesn't like working and he's run out of unemployment payments. Desperate to make some money he finds a job at some company. Over there he miraculously discovers he has superhuman powers to understand computers.

It's a product of its time and you can tell that they didn't know much about computers back in 1983. They make these far fetched assumptions but looking at it now, it kind of makes sense. Back in 1983 the internet wasn't prevalent and they weren't connected as we are now. It's interesting how they predicted this back in this movie.

This movie then becomes some sort of weird white collared crime film. Gus has somehow cracked the code where no one else in the world has. He's able to hack and manipulate everything. The only person to discover his hacking is our Lex Luthor wannabe Ross. He's pretty much exactly like Lex Luthor but a different character probably because the original actor didn't want to come back.

Ross basically wants to use Gus to eliminate competing resources so that he can become rich and powerful. This would work perfectly if it wasn't for Superman stopping their schemes. These criminals then try to recreate Kryptonite to destroy Superman but instead make some cheap version of it. This cheap version of Kryptonite basically makes Superman not want to do good anymore.

Writing this all out already has me remembering how bonkers this movie is. It's all over the place with weird jokes everywhere. They don't even know if they're going to go for a kid friendly direction or a darker movie. The tone of this movie is all over the place. They have some lewd jokes all the while making very kid friendly jokes.

I thought it was also weird how Lois Lane is barely in the movie. She's sent off and Clark then goes to Smallville to woo his former classmate Lana Lang. That was a huge element of the last two movies and they just dismiss that in this movie. The whole fight between the good and bad Supermen came out of nowhere. Again this movie is absolutely bonkers and all over the place.

For a Superman movie he's barely in the movie as well. It mainly focused on the antics of Gus. I think it was because of the popularity of Richard Pryor at the time. Gus is basically the main character of this movie. Although he's supposed to be a bad guy, they try to make him sympathetic. What we got was an opportunist trying to do what's best for himself despite knowing he's doing the wrong thing. His character evolution isn't that great either.

The fight scenes are absolutely atrocious. I'm not sure if it's because of the era that it was made but there was barely any fight choreography in this movie. The weird superpower special effects were really bad as well. This movie really reminded me of a third world movie made on the internet. It was just that bad.

Overall, I didn't like this movie. I did find it quite interesting how forward thinking the movie was but overall it didn't gel at all. I'm surprised this movie got greenlit. It's so bad that I would recommend people to stay away from this movie at all costs. I have to give this movie a 3 out of 10. I can't believe anyone would enjoy this one.