Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Mild-mannered Clark Kent works as a reporter at the Daily Planet alongside his crush, Lois Lane. Clark must summon his superhero alter-ego when the nefarious Lex Luthor launches a plan to take over the world.
Superman (1978) is a landmark superhero film that essentially invented the modern genre template — its casting of Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman alongside Christopher Reeve's iconic dual performance elevates the acting well above average. Reeve in particular is extraordinary, selling both Clark Kent's bumbling charm and Superman's nobility with effortless conviction. The film's novelty is genuine: it made audiences truly believe a man could fly and established the tone and grammar of superhero cinema for decades. The plot is competent but uneven, shifting from mythic Krypton origins to rural Americana to campy Metropolis adventure — the tonal inconsistency holds it back. The cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth has scope and grandeur but is unremarkable by modern standards. The ending is the film's weakest element — the time-reversal solution via spinning the Earth backwards is logically absurd even by comic-book standards and feels like a cheat, undermining the dramatic stakes built throughout.