Superman II (Patreon clip)

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[00:00:28] Movie Oubliette, Minnesot. Hello, patrons, and welcome to this month's Minnesot. How are you, Dan? I'm good, I'm good, and how are you? Yeah, not too bad. I'm excited to talk more Superman with you. Yes, yeah. Is our topic today, because as you talked about on the main feed pod, Superman hasn't been something that you've watched a lot of?

[00:00:55] No, no, I don't know. It's, yeah, I feel like he's my least favourite superhero, because he's just so powerful. He's just so powerful. But then he's also so weak when you've got kryptonite. So there's just extremes where he's like invincible or just like a normal human, which is just, it just messes with me. I can't handle it.

[00:01:21] Yeah, so I grew up with the 70s and 80s Superman movies, because they were in constant rotation on TV. I mean, I did too. I mean, yeah, I remember watching the original Superman movie when I was, I don't know, eight, ten years old? I can't remember. I was fairly young, and I don't really remember it. I just remember the scene in his apartment where he starts levitating. I think that's in that movie, right?

[00:01:51] Maybe not. I don't think so. Is it not? Okay, maybe I've got confused memories. But I have seen the, I did grow up with the Superman, like the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. And then through the 90s, there was Lowell and Clark and Smallville. But yeah, I mean, it was, it definitely dominated the sort of superhero realm, as well as Batman, I guess. It was Superman and Batman and nothing else. Yeah, for the longest time. Yeah.

[00:02:21] Yeah. But what about Superman 2? So we picked that because we thought it's the most relevant to Superman Returns, really, because Superman Returns is supposed to be a sequel to Superman 2. And I don't, have you, had you actually seen it? Did any of it seem familiar? The only scene that I can recall seeing was the scene where you've got the three bad guys and one of them walks on water. And that's the only scene I remember.

[00:02:51] I don't remember anything else. I'm pretty sure I've seen parts of Superman 3 as well. That's the one with Richard Pryor. And he gets, doesn't he get his powers taken away? Like, was there a clone of Superman or something? I can't remember. Yeah, he battles with himself. So Richard Pryor tries to, well, Napoleon Solo from The Man from Uncle, he has replaced Lex as the sort of business tycoon supervillain. So very 80s villain. He's a yuppie.

[00:03:20] And he enlists Richard Pryor to kill Superman with kryptonite. Right. But because they can't get, like, the full chemical readout of kryptonite from a satellite scanning a passing meteorite or whatever, and there are some unknown elements, Richard Pryor just puts tar in there instead. And so it ends up being this sort of contaminated kryptonite that doesn't kill him. But for some reason it splits him in two and he has a fight with himself in a scrapyard.

[00:03:50] Yeah, I remember that fight and that's it, I guess. I've definitely not seen Superman 4. I have no idea what happened in that movie. And I know it's a trade wreck. But yeah, it's like probably all of these movies were on TV at some point. And I probably had glimpses of them or maybe I went to birthday parties and it was on in the background. But I don't think I've ever seen all of them apart from the first one in their entirety.

[00:04:19] And yeah, so watching Superman 2 now, it's like the first time seeing one of the sequels fully. Wow. Yeah. That I can remember. So what did you make of it? Because for me, Superman 1 was sort of filled with a sense of wonder. Yeah. But it seemed very serious and thoughtful and deeply imbued with the character and the sense of duty and the emotional turmoil and the romance and so on.

[00:04:47] Whereas 2 kind of lets its hair down and just has a bit of fun. But it does still have a development of the romance and some introspection and so on. So it's sort of a bit of both. But it was always the one as a kid that I loved the most. Oh, was it? Because you get twice the action scenes with special effects because I think we talked about this on Superman Returns. Whereas in the first one, you only sort of get special effects scenes when Superman turns into Superman and does a super rescue.

[00:05:17] Right. And you're intercutting with Lex Luthor, who's a normal human being. So you don't get any special effects then. Because he's just doing dastardly things, but they're really human things. Okay. Whereas in this one, when you're cross-cutting with what the villains are up to, you're still getting special effects because they're like Superman. They're doing all sorts of things like lasering snakes and what have you. Yes. Yes. And I did not expect this movie to be so comedic. Like there's a lot of comedy in it.

[00:05:47] I mean, Lex is hilarious. There's that ridiculous escape from prison scene where there's a hot air balloon, but one of his henchmen is left behind because he's too heavy. He keeps weighing down the balloon. Poor Otis. Yeah. And it's just quite almost like Pink Panther-esque in terms of silliness in that scene. And a lot of the Lex scenes are quite, like he's such a swindler. He's such a con man.

[00:06:15] As I kind of mentioned in the Superman Returns episode, he's not this highly intelligent billionaire. He seems just like a guy that just wants to swindle money from you, like a buck from you. He's just like always out to get, sort of take advantage of people and find a way to get something. Yeah. He's just a huckster, isn't he? But still calls himself one of the greatest criminal minds the world has ever seen. Or what have you.

[00:06:45] Sure. The greatest. But I think it's all part of the joke, isn't it? He may think that, but maybe not. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.