[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I always preferred the more serious take on the superhero (the original SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is one of the most important cultural artifacts in my life)

That 1978 SUPERMAN… when seen today, it has some clunky special effects (obviously in many ways state of the art then), and some silly “villains”, but wow did they ever nail “Superman”, and I mean who Superman is and what he stands for. That movie encapsulated the comic figure better than any other movie before or since. That John Williams music… to this day, that is the music for SUPERMAN, nothing came ever even close to it… and that opening scene, with the boy reading a comic book and then those thundering credits with all those big names, just “wow”, gives me goosebumps to this day. And that first scene of Superman in action, that short up and down glance at the phone without a booth when Clark Kent looks for a place to change, how Christopher Reeve nailed that moment, perfect comic timing…. in those moments that movie showed a perfect balance of taking the character seriously, but also nicely winking at the audience to come along and just enjoy the fun. That was humor that really worked.