ultimatefan
The Batman must come back
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It´s been released here in Brazil on november 9, along with SR. Here´s some highlights:
- Ilya Salkind does commentary for the movie and he quite vehemently denies that he and his father Alex wanted to do a campy, Adam West-like Superman movie. He claims their main inspiration was epic heroes like Ben Hur and El Cid. Yet, he´s very vague about the reasons for firing Donner. He even kinda shrugs off the thing about Telly Savalas being on a draft of the script. On an extra, Donner insists that the script was very campy when he came onboard.
- On the extras, It´s sort of implied that his firing was related to the first movie going over schedule and budget, even though Donner was never informed of how much the budget actually was supposed to be, apparently.
- You hear a lot of the stories hardcore fanboys are probably familiar with, like Cassius Clay and Dustin Hoffman being in a "pre-approved" list of actors to play Supes, Redford turning it down, how Donner pretended to have a moustache to convince Hackman to shave his one, how Chris Reeve was initially dismissed cuz he was skinny like a stick, etc.
- One of the best extras describes the complex optical FX used to create the illusion of Supes flying. The "zoptic" tchnique is explained in great detail. There´s hilarious footage of ridiculous attempts to fake the flying with models, animation, etc.
- Kidder talks about how he and Reeve bickered all the time between takes cuz he was very much the method always in character actor, while Kidder was more "relaxed".
- There´s an old making of with some interesting stuff. You see Reeve at the gym. His chest was considerably more defined than the suit shows, which makes it understandable why modern superhero suits use some padding, even when the actors are in shape. A sad moment is Hackman talking about the risk of typecasting and how he felt Reeve was the guy to overcome that, sigh...
- There are two very cool restored unused scenes. One is Jor-El explaining to Supes why he needs a secret identity. The other is Lex trying to stop Supes from invading his hideout with machine guns, fire and ice.
- It includes some old Superman stuff. The best is episodes of the Fleischer studios cartoon, including classics like Mechanical Monsters - which inspired Sky Captain - and Electric Earthquake - the bad guy is a native American claiming that Manhattan belongs to his people, how anti-PC is that? There´s also Superman and The Mole Men. There´s barely any action and the FX are of course laughable now, but it´s interesting how the "monsters" are actually not the threat, but small-minded hillbillies, pretty bold for 1948. Clark and Lois were more bickering and competitive, and she kinda came off as a bitsch...
- Ilya Salkind does commentary for the movie and he quite vehemently denies that he and his father Alex wanted to do a campy, Adam West-like Superman movie. He claims their main inspiration was epic heroes like Ben Hur and El Cid. Yet, he´s very vague about the reasons for firing Donner. He even kinda shrugs off the thing about Telly Savalas being on a draft of the script. On an extra, Donner insists that the script was very campy when he came onboard.
- On the extras, It´s sort of implied that his firing was related to the first movie going over schedule and budget, even though Donner was never informed of how much the budget actually was supposed to be, apparently.
- You hear a lot of the stories hardcore fanboys are probably familiar with, like Cassius Clay and Dustin Hoffman being in a "pre-approved" list of actors to play Supes, Redford turning it down, how Donner pretended to have a moustache to convince Hackman to shave his one, how Chris Reeve was initially dismissed cuz he was skinny like a stick, etc.
- One of the best extras describes the complex optical FX used to create the illusion of Supes flying. The "zoptic" tchnique is explained in great detail. There´s hilarious footage of ridiculous attempts to fake the flying with models, animation, etc.
- Kidder talks about how he and Reeve bickered all the time between takes cuz he was very much the method always in character actor, while Kidder was more "relaxed".
- There´s an old making of with some interesting stuff. You see Reeve at the gym. His chest was considerably more defined than the suit shows, which makes it understandable why modern superhero suits use some padding, even when the actors are in shape. A sad moment is Hackman talking about the risk of typecasting and how he felt Reeve was the guy to overcome that, sigh...
- There are two very cool restored unused scenes. One is Jor-El explaining to Supes why he needs a secret identity. The other is Lex trying to stop Supes from invading his hideout with machine guns, fire and ice.
- It includes some old Superman stuff. The best is episodes of the Fleischer studios cartoon, including classics like Mechanical Monsters - which inspired Sky Captain - and Electric Earthquake - the bad guy is a native American claiming that Manhattan belongs to his people, how anti-PC is that? There´s also Superman and The Mole Men. There´s barely any action and the FX are of course laughable now, but it´s interesting how the "monsters" are actually not the threat, but small-minded hillbillies, pretty bold for 1948. Clark and Lois were more bickering and competitive, and she kinda came off as a bitsch...
