Every Superman film, ranked

Telegraph

11-07-2025

There may be no sharper indictment of Hollywood's treatment of Superman over the years than the fact that one of the more successful adaptations to date is an unfinished curio. This is – just about – the Superman II which Richard Donner would have made back in the day, had he not been summarily yanked from his post 19 months into the filming of the first two Reeve instalments.
After a protracted feud with the Salkinds over matters budgetary and creative, he found himself replaced by Richard Lester, with whom the producing duo had worked on their Musketeers films, and who reworked the Superman sequel in his friskier signature style. In 2001, however, Donner's original footage was unearthed in Warner Bros' UK vaults, and following years of backstage legal wrangling around the Brando footage, editor Michael Thau began to reconstruct the abandoned version. Later still, Donner himself was coaxed on board in a supervisory role.
The finished article is anything but: footage has been grafted in from screen tests, the scene-to-scene flow is often choppy, and the gimmicky ending of Donner's first Superman is repeated on even more spurious grounds. Kidder's Lois is brighter and less ditzy – you understand why she was so dismayed by Donner's departure – and the return of Brando as the godlike Jor-El role gives the Biblical symbolism in which Lester evidently had little interest in enthusiastic milking. It's an instructive alternate take on an undisputed classic, and a satisfying glimpse at what might have been.