Christopher Reeve will always be Superman to me.
I saw the first movie on tv when I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a magical experience to watch it as a little boy, it was exciting, funny, romantic and a little bit scary. It was THIS movie that made me really like the character. It was Christopher Reeve...
Reeve's Superman radiates a warmth that's lacking in the other guys portraying Superman (don't get me wrong, I think Routh and Cavill did great too). When you first see him in the Superman suit, saving Lois Lane, the people in the plane and the cat from the tree, you know that this guy cares about the people he's here to protect.
Everything he does in this movie is great, and believable. The way he changes personality when he's Clark Kent, his anger when confronting Luthor, the scene where he finds Lois dead... You can really feel his pain in that scene. And he never looks silly in the Superman costume, it looks so natural.
Some people ridicule this movie now that MOS is here, calling it campy and dated. I think they're wrong about that. There's a lot of humor in it, but when its serious, its serious. When I first saw it, the scene where Lex Luthor shoves that guy in front of the train scared me. It was so cold hearted. And he's going to kill millions of people by blowing them up. He even jokes about it... Man, what a jerk.
Cavill's Superman may have bigger muscles. But Reeve's Superman has the bigger heart. And even though Superman IV was a bad movie, I like this quote:
The reason that I would want to do something like Superman IV is to offer up for children in America and everywhere else as a fun entertainment, which has an actual character at the center of it. That has a character who's caring, who loves people, who's considerate, who's a gentleman as a possible antidote to the Rambos and the Chuck Norrises and the Schwarzeneggers.
One of the problems with Man of Steel was that it forgot the children, while Superman : The Movie and Superman II is safe for everyone to watch (unless you're afraid of flying). I like MOS, but it suffers from a common problem in todays movies... They make the heroes too flawed, they drag them down to our level. Heroes should be above us. We'll never be like them, but we they should inspire us all to try a little harder. The classic movie got that...
Thank you, Christopher Reeve.
