Supermen Return
Chris Klimek
Lex Capacitor: Nicholas Hoult and David Corenswet are archenemies. (Jessica Miglio)
I have a piece in the Paper of Record today running down the sordid history of the first Superman movie franchise, the one that started with Richard Donner’s iiimperfect masterpiece. Is that a contradiction? Let us agree to disagree.
And here’s a deleted scene, of sorts, from the piece, addressing the 2006 “Donner cut” of Superman II, which was released on home video only once the rights issues around Marlon Brando’s footage were resolved so his voice and likeness as Jor-El could be used in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns that same year:
When the contractual issues regarding Brando’s participation were settled so that director Bryan Singer could use the Brando footage from 1977 in 2006’s Superman Returns, film editor Michael Thau took the opportunity the assemble “The Donner Cut” of Superman II, a curio that draws upon unseen footage from the late-seventies production — and even, in one instance, a screen test of Kidder and a scrawny Reeve, who’d not yet bulked up into Kryptonian shape — to offer a rough approximation of what Donner had intended some 25 years earlier.