Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut

This is not your father’s Superman II. To the delight of fans of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Dick Donner’s original vision, as it was conceived and intended to be filmed for episode 2, is available this month in Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut.

Donner had already shot most of the Superman II footage during Superman: The Movie. But as production on the sequel continued, creative differences between the director and the film’s producers became irreconcilable and Donner left the project. Although director Richard Lester was hired to finish production, he chose to make major changes to the film, leaving only vestiges of Donner’s original vision and concepts in the version of Superman II that was ultimately released to theaters.

Michael Thau, producer and editor of the new Donner Cut, was challenged with not only re-editing the movie, but he also had to find the original Donner footage in England. ‘It took longer than it should have. The negative had been stored well in metal cans and all taped up and it survived fairly well, but it had been packed away without a lot of organization. Superman: The Movie and Superman II were shot simultaneously and the negatives were stored together so it was hard to find the scenes I was looking for,’ says Thau.

Superman II feels like a case of d’j’ vu. You know you’ve seen it before, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. As Thau explains, ‘Fifty percent of the movie is brand new for audiences. But more than half will feel new. I re-edited the existing scenes as well. We also added John Williams score from the first movie as much as possible.’

‘The tone of the film is much closer to Superman: The Movie in tone,’ says Thau. ‘It also has an extra 15 minutes of Marlon Brando as Superman’s father, Jor-El. There are new dramatic story points and the beginning is completely different, as is the end. But the plot is the same. The three villains, (Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas and Jack O’Halloran) are jailed by Jor-El. They escape and they come down to wreak havoc on earth.’

Thau completed close to 200 new effects to restore Donner’s version of the film. However, Donner had already shot all the miniatures during the original production, like the rocket flying and exploding and a lot of explosions shot against black velvet. The restored effects were handled by effect supervisor Max Ivins at Look Effects.

Matching the look of special effects in the 1980s was tricky, as they didn’t want the new effects to stand out. ‘A lot of the effects shots were of Marlon Brando’s disembodied head in the fortress of solitude,’ says Thau. ‘That was difficult to make look like the scenes in Superman: The Movie. It was difficult to give it that feel since we are compositing on computers now and they composited optically then. Compositing is obviously easier now, but we needed to give it the optical feel and grain.’

There are a lot of visual effects in the Donner cut, but the only shots involving CG are the Washington Monument falling over and some star fields. The Lester release featured some effects at the end of the movie which confused Superman fans. One piece of good news is that the cellophane S is gone in the new release. ‘The cellophane S was Lester’s doing,’ says Thau. ‘Dick had shot that entire scene. It’s now completely Donner’s. There is no celophane S. There is no cat and mouse game of disappearing and appearing. It’s a different scene now.’ And we are super-thankful.

Mark Simon is an award-winning animation producer, storyboard artist and lecturer who is also the author of books for artists such as Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists, Producing Independent 2D Character Animation, Storyboards: Motion In Art and Your Resume Sucks! His books may be found and purchased online along with custom resumes and free industry forms and free podcasts at www.YourResumeSucks.biz. He may be reached at MarkSimonBooks@yahoo.com.