Film Plot Summary

The film opened in Metropolis' Unemployment Bureau, where a shiftless black man in his early 30s, August "Gus" Gorman (Richard Pryor), stood in line while playing with a yo-yo. Unemployed for 36 weeks, the chronic loser had a horrible job record, and he was no longer eligible for benefits. An advertisement for computer training, "EARN BIG MONEY. BECOME A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER," printed on a borrowed matchbook, caught his eye as he left the counter and lit a cigarette.

The credits (obscured by the background action) played over a sequence of a series of mishaps (Rube Goldberg-style) occurring on Metropolis' city streets: a voluptuous office assistant (later identified as Lorelei Ambrosia) in a low-cut white/pink polka-dot dress walked by - oblivious to her effect upon others as she set other events in motion: an errant roller skater lost her balance and propelled a hot-dog wagon into a row of three phone booths that fell like dominoes, wind-up penguin toys from a Penguin Vendor (Henry Woolf) waddled off in different directions, a seeing-eye dog ran after another dog - leaving its Blind Man master (Graham Stark) staggering into the street and grabbing the handle of a line-painting machine, a Man in a Cap (Gordon Rollings) fell into an open ditch, a Century Savings Bank robbery criminal (Peter Wear) fled the scene, a wayward policeman's bullet struck a tire on a passing car on Third Avenue and sent it into a hydrant on the curb, where the car's interior filled with water - threatening to drown the Man Trapped in Car (Roy Alon). Oblivious Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) who happened to be walking down the sidewalk, noticed the drowning driver trapped inside, entered a self-photo booth, and changed into his Superman costume. While inside the booth, a young boy (Aaron Smolinski, young Kal-El in Superman: The Movie (1978)) dropped a quarter in the booth's slot, and took four pictures of Superman in various stages of changing. When Superman emerged, he saw the incriminating row of pictures, and tore off the one photo of Superman alone and handed it to the boy. He then rescued the victim by ripping open the vehicle's sun-roof.

Two painters on a scaffold dropped paint and a bucket onto the head of a Dignified Gentleman (Bob Todd) below, who upset a gumball machine on the sidewalk and caused a Mime street performer (Justin Case) to lose his balance; as the Blind Man walked through an oil painting being carried out of an art gallery and reached for his seeing-eye dog's handle, a Delivery Man (Terry Camilleri) with custard pies lost his balance - and Clark deftly directed one of the pies away from striking the face of the voluptuous woman, who happened to be walking by, although the pie hit the face of the Man in a Cap.

At the Archibald School of Data Processing in a downtown building nearby, students were instructed in computer data processing. One of the students was Gus Gorman, who skillfully demonstrated to the astonished, baffled Instructor (Stefan Kalipha) that he could program two bilateral coordinates at the same time - he hit a key and a series of PRINT commands displayed on his monitor, although he was unsure how he did it.

And in the Daily Planet newspaper offices in the year 1980, chief editor Perry White (Jackie Cooper), photographer Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure), and reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) were discussing her latest story about Humanitarian of the Year award winner Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), CEO of Webscoe Industries. For the story, Jimmy had taken pictures of Webster's sexy assistant 'Girl Friday' Lorelei Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), and his sister Vera (Annie Ross), the VP of the company. Clark entered the office, seeking approval for his next assignment - to write a story about his return to his Middle-American hometown of Smallville for his high-school class reunion (Class of 1965) after 15 years, accompanied by Jimmy, while Lois was leaving on a long vacation to Bermuda. Perry White was also distracted by a Planet-sponsored contest drawing to determine winners who would receive a trip to Central America.

Gorman found employment in the Data Processing Center of Webscoe Industries, where he complained about the deductions from his first paycheck, and with a co-worker discussed how fractions of a cent were left-over every time (they pondered: "What happens to all those half-cents?"). One night, Gus worked overtime at his computer, and using a technique called 'salami slicing' to embezzle money from the payroll, he aggregated small left-over fractions of a cent to his own personal account (with the command: "Channel half-cents from all Webscoe Salaries Into Above Expenses Account").

Enroute to Smallville by Trailways bus, a dangerous chemical plant fire caused the road to be blocked. While Jimmy snuck over to the plant to get photographs of the disaster, Clark exited the bus, changed in the back of a parked police car, and rushed to the scene. He first rescued trapper workers on a roof, and then was told by one of the White-Coated lab Scientists (Pat Starr) that vials of Beltric acid, if heated up to over 180 degrees, would create a major crisis: the production of clouds of corrosive vapor could cover the entire Eastern seaboard - "If it begins to heat up, it'll turn volatile. If that happens, you'll get a great cloud of smoke that will eat through anything. Steel, concrete, anything." Explosions rocked the facility, and Jimmy (who was taking photographs on an extended firetruck ladder) fell to the ground and broke his left leg. Superman saved Jimmy and then when the water pressure failed and the plant was imperiled, he flew to Lake Comooga, five miles away, froze the lake's water with a gust of Ice-breath, and brought the five-inch thick ice cover back to the site of the chemical fire to drop on and extinguish the flames like rain, and cool the threatened vials of acid. [Jimmy returned to Metropolis after being medically treated, without any pictures to his credit - his film stock had melted.]

At his high-school reunion dance in Smallville's gym, Clark was reunited with his pretty red-haired friend Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). She had divorced her husband Donald after three years of marriage (they were King and Queen of their Prom). Another classmate who had often bullied Clark in high school - drunk ex-football star Brad Wilson (Gavan O'Herlihy), refused to shake Clark's hand, and scowled when Lana showed an affectionate preference for Clark instead of him on the dance floor. The next day, Clark assisted Lana in cleaning up the gym's decorations, and they realized their affection for each other, especially after she revealed: "I just feel like I can talk to you." She told him about her desires to leave Smallville, but as a single divorcee, she was stuck in the small town with a house, a job as a secretary that paid the bills although she was struggling, and her young son Ricky (Paul Kaethler). Clark apologized for the various problems she was experiencing. She thought quietly to herself about Clark: "That's the one that got away," as she looked at an enlarged photo of his senior picture still hanging on the wall. Later in the film, Clark joined Lana and Ricky for bowling at the local alley, when she told Clark that her boy was not only small for his age, but the "only kid in town without a father." Ricky seemed to only be throwing gutter balls, when boastful, egotistical, and tipsy Brad showed up to give her son "a couple of pointers from the old champ here." He made matters worse, until Clark intervened, and a cleverly-timed Super-sneeze made Ricky's second ball a smashing winner when it decisively knocked down all the pins.

At Webscoe Industries, Gorman was astounded when he received his next payroll check (for expenses he claimed) in the amount of $85,789.90. In the office of the CEO of the family-owned cartel, Ross Webster was informed by his elderly chief accountant Simpson (Robert Henderson) that there was missing, stolen money in the amount of $85,000 from the firm, a hoax perpetrated by some shrewd embezzler. He was joined by his strident-voiced sister Vera, who showed animosity toward her brother's busty, squeaky-voiced, "psychic nutritionist" Lorelei Ambrosia. Soon after, Gorman was summoned to see "the boss," who accused his nervously trembling employee of being both "a naughty guy" and a "genius," while handing him a drink from a revolving bookcase/wet bar. Gorman described his sneaky embezzlement method: "Because of the half-cent thing with the computers," as Webster pontificated about the potential of computers to aid his scheme to rule the financial world: "...computers rule the world today. And the fellow that can fool the computer can rule the world himself." Webster demanded: "I want coffee" - his objective was to monopolize the world's coffee crop. He clarified about how he wanted to employ Gorman to help destroy the economy of one Latin American country, Colombia, that wouldn't "play ball" (conduct business) with him: "We're gonna teach them a lesson, aren't we?...Destroy the entire Colombian coffee crop right down to the last bean...You are going to do this for me." Webster's "baby sister" Vera descended the stairs to describe how to accomplish their scheme. The US government's weather-monitoring satellite, the Vulcan, would be reprogrammed by Gorman "to make weather, storms and floods, blizzards, heat waves" in order to decimate the competing nation's coffee production and harvest.

To execute his plan, Webster and Gorman decided that he must become anonymous by using his computer skills in "someplace small" - Gorman was next seen exiting a bus in the town of Smallville, Kansas, where Clark, Lana, and Ricky were buying groceries and preparing to drive into the countryside to have a picnic. After Clark mistook dog food for paté, Lana vulnerably confided in Clark about how Brad was the only single man in town. When she repeated her intention to leave Smallville: "I'm not gonna find what I want in Smallville anymore," Clark encouraged her to move to Metropolis, where he'd volunteered his assistance. When they leaned forward and seemed about to kiss, Lana was interrupted by her leaking oil pan on her car. Clark's super-sensitive hearing and X-ray vision detected that Ricky's dog Buster was whining above the unconscious boy in a nearby wheatfield - he had tripped and fallen on a rock near where giant Wheatking threshers were cutting through the wheat with rollers and churning blades. He darted behind a fence, emerged as Superman, and flew into the field to stop the rotating combine and save Ricky from death, and then returned him safely to Lana. After taking off as Superman, Clark reemerged from a drainage pipe with Buster. He was less than incredulous when told Superman had been there: "I'm from Metropolis. I see Superman every day," and then grumbled to himself when Ricky asked for the superhero's autograph: "If I had a nickel for every time some little kid..."

Wheatking, a manufacturer of farm machinery, was one of Webscoe Industries' subsidiaries. The company employed Brad as a security guard/night watchman. Posing as a midwestern salesman, Gorman approached the facility one night claiming that he was late and that the boss' special order (an office bar) needed to be installed by the next day. He opened the lid of his case, revealing shelves of various kinds of whiskey and spirits - and Brad immediately permitted him through the electronic glass doors. Later that evening, they sampled most of the contents of the case, until Brad passed out. Then, Gorman found the two access keys to Wheatking's computer area, where he was able to rig it so that the keys were inserted into the computer simultaneously. After the half-witted Gorman accessed other mainframes, an ATM machine on a city street dispensed wads of bills to an unsuspecting customer (Peter Whitman). Gorman pushed some other control buttons and computerized bills for Bloomingdale's were generated and mailed - at a breakfast table at the Symonds residence, a husband opened up one of the erroneous bills, for $176,784.57, and stuffed a grapefruit half into his wife's face (a spoof of The Public Enemy (1931)). After Gorman's third adjustment, walk signals at a busy intersection malfunctioned (the symbols, a green Walk man and a red Don't Walk man, became animated and fought each other). After clearing that program, he finally accessed the Vulcan weather satellite, set longitude and latitude degrees at Colombia in South America, and directed its two laser-like beams toward Earth, to cause a hurricane and tornadoes - a total disruption of the country's weather patterns.

A news report announced the weather anomaly of gale force winds and torrential rainfall that were "threatening to destroy the nation's entire coffee crop for the next five years." The winning couple of the Daily Planet's contest arrived just as the Colombia storm hit. Skiing down a slope (when the camera pulled back, Webster was on the terraced, snow-covered rooftop of his downtown penthouse, where he had created a Swiss-chalet and ski run), he laughed maniacally at the news: "Poor little Colombia..." Vera and Webster saw a dramatic vision of future earnings: "Today, coffee. Tomorrow, the oil...If Gus Gorman can push the right buttons. I can have it all. Holy cats!" They were interrupted by Gorman's apologetic arrival - he was disturbed by TV reports that Superman had thwarted their schemes by neutralizing the hurricane with his laser-beam vision to dry up everything and save Colombia's crop. He also curtailed the tornado by flying into its base and turning it upside-down. Webster was incensed by Superman's intervention: "That lousy do-gooder ruined it." To get rid of Superman, Webster (and Lorelei) remembered the superhero's one weakness from a past interview - the substance kryptonite from his exploding home planet. Webster ordered Gorman to use a Webscoe lab computer to contact the Vulcan satellite again, and have it search outer space around where Krypton used to be - to locate a floating chunk of Kryptonite debris and analyze it. (On Gorman's computer monitor, the debris' ingredients were computed: Plutonium 15.08%, Tantalum 18.06%, Xenon 27.71%, Promethium 24.02%, Dialium 10.62%, Mercury 3.94%, and Unknown 0.57%.) Its composition was to be duplicated by "boys in the lab." When the computer couldn't identify the unknown element, Gorman substituted Tar (an ingredient in his Camel cigarettes). Soon after, the lab technicians, who used Gorman's formula, brought him a synthetic chunk of green kryptonite.

While writing his newspaper story in his Daily Planet office ("the prettiest girl in the school is still the prettiest girl in the school"), Clark received a frantic phone call from Lana, about how Ricky had promised his friends that Superman would appear at his next Wednesday's birthday party. She knew Clark (who had already obtained an autograph for Ricky) could contact Superman and make it happen. Lana ended the call with: "You're the best!" On the day of the party, Smallville made the celebration a welcoming, town-wide event held in the town square. The superhero was commended for putting out the fire and for saving Ricky, and was presented with the key to the city by the town's Mayor (Gordon Signer). Two US Army officers - a disguised Gorman and Vera, drove up to the reviewing stand in a jeep, and after Gorman delivered a General Patton-like rant about the "chemical-plastics gap," he thanked Superman for saving them from a chemical-plant disaster with another gift - the chunk of manufactured kryptonite. They were both dismayed and curious that Superman had no immediate reaction to the meteorite, and Webster was livid with the news ("I ask you to kill Superman and you're telling me you couldn't even do that one simple thing!"). Later, however, at Lana's home, Superman was beginning to experience subtle changes, beginning with symptoms of dizziness, and he was unresponsive after Lana received a distress phone call about a trailer's crash on a bridge and an injured truck driver in the cab that was hanging off the railing. He claimed there was no rush and wanted to "relax" with Lana on the sofa, where he further propositioned her and put his arm around her: "It's unusual finding a good-looking girl like you all alone like this." Troubled and nervous by his behavior, she urged him to hurry to the bridge, and he assented, but he found himself too late to assist at the crash site. Just before he arrived, the truck plummeted into the river below the bridge.

At one of the souvenir stands near the leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, two shopkeepers were talking, as Superman flew by and mischievously pushed the tower into an upright, vertical position. TIME Magazine reported on Superman in its cover story: "Goodness at the Crossroads," commenting on his obviously-strange, scandalous behaviors. In the UN's General Assembly, 178 countries voted to censure Superman with only Colombia abstaining. Webster was pleased that their efforts weren't entirely a failure, as Superman was becoming an "ornery, evil, malicious, selfish" individual, and they could now plan on acquiring the market on oil. At the opening ceremonies of the Olympics as the torch was to be lit, Superman committed another act of malicious vandalism - he blew out, with a gust of Super-breath, the Olympic Flame being carried by an Olympic marathon Runner (David Fielder).

In his transformed 'War Room' office with a world-map display of oil tankers scattered over the oceans, Webster's next scheme was to monopolize worldwide oil supplies, by having Gorman computer-program all the world's oil tankers to sail toward a 50-mile area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and then sit immobilized to await further orders. Vera added that Gorman would also need to program oil pumps in America to stop pumping oil, and "one special command into all these systems" would make it irreversible. Gathering his nerve together, Gorman bargained: "I wanna know when I get a taste," and blackmailed Webster into agreeing to finance and build a supercomputer, based on scraps of paper that he claimed were his blueprint drawings. He promised, while gloating: "It'll do anything you tell me to tell it to do for you...If anyone attacks this machine or anything, the computer counter-attacks it. I mean, it finds their weaknesses and wipes them out." Everything went according to plan, except that one tanker in the Atlantic, the British Reliance, stubbornly sailed toward Metropolis ("the wrong way").

Search lights shone on the Statue of Liberty, where Lorelei (a potential "jumper") was provocatively perched in the crown of the statue, dangling her legs and wearing a revealing red dress. When Superman flew by and landed, she told him: "Thought you'd never get here." He wasn't expecting to save her ("I don't do that anymore"), but she was alright with that: "I'm way past saving." She seductively cooed that she had "lots of things" on her mind -- including "one little favor" -- to redirect a stray "little boat." In the next scene, Superman (with a noticeably darker costume) flew swiftly above the Atlantic waves toward the tanker, and crashed directly into its hull, produced a giant hole and caused an oil slick on the water's surface. Lorelei, in a low-cut white gown, awaited Superman's arrival at Webster's penthouse Swiss-chalet dwelling, in front of a roaring fireplace with the sounds of jazzy music ("How about a little apres-ski?"). Ignoring her offered drink of champagne, he grabbed her for a passionate kiss as the scene faded.

Due to the shortage of the world's oil, the oil slick, and gas rationing, tempers flared at gas stations on the East Coast, and fights broke out. In an adjoining coffee shop, one disgruntled customer noted: "Somebody's behind this. You can't tell me there's no oil. You can't tell me someone's not getting rich off this...You know who suffers, the small guy." Gus Gorman guiltily sat nearby, realizing the harm he had created. Outside of a cave in a distant sandstone canyon area, Webscoe workers in white overalls supervised the helicopter-delivery of a large box of materials/supplies - for the super-computer, to be built with Webster's newly-acquired wealth.

Back in Smallville, Lana became weary and fed up with Brad's insistent phone calls to date her, especially when he asked: "What else you got in Smallville?" Brooding, she realized the obvious answer to the question - that she had nothing there and that she must leave immediately. Lana phoned the Smallville airport and ordered two plane tickets to Metropolis the following day. Meanwhile, a crowd gathered around the outside of the neighborhood St. Louis Hotel tavern in Metropolis, where a disgraceful Superman (with a stubbly beard and a completely dark costume) was on a drinking binge at the bar. To amuse himself with target practice, he destructively flicked peanuts at the rows of glasses stacked up on the shelf behind the bar, and he melted the mirror (reflecting his surly appearance) with a beam of Heat-vision. Completely coincidentally, Lana and Ricky were passing by in a taxi, and noticed how changed, sick, and evil Superman had become, when he stumbled out of the bar and drunkenly snarled at everyone. Ricky yelled after him and pleaded: "Superman, please get better...Superman, you're just in a slump. You'll be great again," as his ex-idol scowled and flew away. Ricky's words echoed in Superman's weakened mind, tormenting and torturing him - and he dropped from the sky, crash-landing in an auto junkyard, where he let out a primal scream as he sank to his knees.

Two personas or sides of his dual character emerged: the morally-upright Clark Kent wrestled himself apart, and walked away from the evil and selfish Superman, creating two separate identities. They both looked at each other -- the surly Supeman with fists clenched, and the well-dressed figure of Clark. The two engaged in an epic battle amidst the wreckage - Clark was viciously punched, and then projected backwards, into piles of auto parts, phased but unhurt. He decided to challenge Superman: "I can give as good as I get," and charged head-down at his defiant identity, pushing him into an acid bath. Superman blew a stream of the acid back at Clark, burning off his suit coat, and also grabbed a car bumper and hit Clark with it. He then took ahold of Clark, taunted: "You always wanted to fly, Kent," and tossed him into an hydraulic car crusher, where it flattened him. However, Clark fought his way out of the giant iron press, and tossed a series of tires over Superman's head to pin him momentarily. Enraged, Superman burst free, and with his Heat-vision, melted a chainlink on a crane holding an enormous flat-bottomed electromagnet positioned above Clark. The full heavy force of the weighted magnet smashed Clark into the ground, yet growing stronger with each challenge, he moved aside the weight like a manhole cover and climbed out of the hole. Finally, Superman kicked Clark unconscious and deposited his body on the conveyor belt of a metal-shredding machine, while removing his eyeglasses and crushing them in his bare hand. But Clark caused the machine to screech, shake and then self-destruct, as he furiously crashed out, grabbed Superman around the neck to choke him, and strangled his evil identity. The figure of the dark and evil Superman faded and then disappeared. The victorious and rejuvenated Clark stood upright, strong, erect and determined, ripped open his shirt to reveal his brilliantly-colorful Superman costume with an emblazoned 'S' - and was once again restored to his former self before flying off.

He soared over the Atlantic to the British Reliance, used his Super-breath to blow the spreading oil spill back toward the ship and into the hull, and then resealed-welded the hole in the metal bulkhead with beams of his Heat-vision. Superman then flew to Webster's rooftop penthouse, where his entry triggered a TV videotape recording of Vera Webster taunting him and inviting him to "drop in" where they were located - in the desert Southwest at the Grand Canyon. At that moment, the Webster group (Lorelei, Vera, and Ross) were using individualized, motorized balloons to descend to the floor of the canyon gorge, while Gorman took a mule down. In a riverside cave, they came upon a futuristic, four stories-high supercomputer - the "ultimate computer." Lorelei exclaimed: "What a jukebox!" When Superman approached the gorge, Vera prepared small missile rockets on three launching pads. At a computer video screen, Ross said "Let the games begin" and began to play the ultimate arcade game version of an Atari "Space Invaders" video game, with joysticks and buttons. The screen displayed the animated action - a barrage of rockets aimed at the flying figure - while keeping "Score"and tallying the number of rockets remaining (the final score was 7150). Superman defensively evaded the many rockets but then was struck by a massive MX cruise missile, although he survived. He entered the hidden cave, announced "Game's over," and told Lorelei (who greeted him warmly as "honey"): "I don't know you, lady." When she referred to their previous night together, he replied: "I'm sorry, that wasn't me. That guy's gone." As he moved toward the supercomputer, he was zapped with a jolt of a weakening beam, encapsulating him in the force-field's transparent bubble. Although trapped with no air, he used his Heat-vision to break free. Superman was then struck with a bright green kryptonite ray, which dropped him to the ground, causing him to writhe in pain. Gorman and Lorelei were horrified by the sight, although Webster congratulated his "genius" computer whiz: "You're going to go down in history as the man who killed Superman." Horrified by that prospect, Gorman cut the power to the ray and momentarily saved Superman from death, but then the "out-of-control" supercomputer took on a life of its own and redirected the full-forced ray at the superhero, while drawing more power from the lines of nearby electrical towers. Power blackouts begin to hit North America and darken cities. Gorman grabbed a fire-safety axe and hacked at the mechanism to shut off the green ray. To retaliate, the machine slammed Gorman into a cave wall with an energy beam, as Superman fled and flew away.

Suddenly, as Ross and Lorelei escaped the control room, the supercomputer grabbed Vera and sucked her back inside. Empowering her but monstrously transforming her, circuitry appeared under her skin, and charges of electricity and power passed into her body - she became an agent of the machine. She was turned into a hulking, fright-wigged robotic cyborg zombie that used power rays on both Lorelei and Ross to subdue and immobilize them. Meanwhile, Superman flew to the chemical plant which he had saved earlier, and returned with a cylindrical silver canister of Baltric acid hidden behind his back. Unheated, the acid was analyzed as non-threatening by the supercomputer. He blocked off the harmful ray hitting Ross, but was trapped between two enormous transformer arms (like giant pinball flippers) and sucked into the machine like Vera had been. Heat emitted by the supercomputer turned the Baltric acid into a glowing red color, and the volatile bubbling substance corroded the computer's circuits and caused it to explode, self-destruct and disintegrate (Superman later joked: "It died of acid indigestion"). Vera returned to normal after the machine was neutralized. Superman removed wreckage and rubble above Gorman, rewarding him for saving his life. He left the others to the authorities, and flew Gorman to a coal mine, where he took a lump of coal - and with the super-strength pressure of his palm, squeezed it into a diamond. Before leaving, he recommended Gorman as a computer expert to the foreman.

In Metropolis, Clark reunited with Lana and Ricky at their hotel room (they had relocated to the city), substituting himself for the dinner date she was scheduled to have with a too-busy Superman. He presented her with a gift from the superhero, a massive diamond ring to replace the one she had pawned away. At that instant, Brad entered through the door, hatefully accused Kent of being a "nice guy," and missed with a punch - he ended up on a dinner trolley that rolled onto an open elevator. In the final scene in the Daily Planet offices, Lois returned from her three-week vacation, where she was able to "blow the lid off the corruption in the Caribbean" where she was kidnapped by a taxi driver. Having read Clark's Smallville reunion story, she was a little competitive and jealous regarding his reacquaintance with "the little girl back home" - Lana. She had become the newest addition to the staff - Perry White's secretary. When Lana shook hands with Lois, she proudly showed off her "sparkler" given to her by Clark.

In the final scene, the Tower of Pisa vendor admired his new souvenirs - statues of a vertical Tower, but realized his re-ordered statues were worthless when Superman pushed the tower back to its leaning position. He smashed his shelves to the ground with a broom. A restored Superman gracefully and majestically flew above the blue planet Earth, again keeping vigilant watch.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

This was the third of four films in the original series.

With a production budget of $39 million, and box-office gross receipts of $60 million (domestic). Although a profitable film in terms of box-office, it was unpopular with fans and critically assailed by reviewers for its slapstickish, overbearing comedic tone, rather than for following the initial film's tone of epic-adventure.

Nominated for two Razzie Awards: Worst Musical Score (Giorgio Moroder), and Worst Supporting Actor (Richard Pryor).

The film was the third and last Reeve/Superman film produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind.

Margot Kidder's role was reduced to a cameo, basically, with only about 5 minutes of screen time (in the film's opening office scene) and only 12 spoken lines of short dialogue. She also appeared briefly in the final scene, with a few more lines.