The wife and I watched the first 10-15 minutes of ‘Superman II’ this past weekend while doing our Sunday morning cable flipping, and we were both amazed at how something so horribly cheesy can be held in such high regard by a fanbase that loses their mind whenever the slightest bit of continuity is screwed up in the comics. Not being a scholar of the Superman films, I don’t know how much of that could be due to the studio’s hack and slash approach to the original releases, but soon enough I’ll have the chance to find out. Word is, Warner Brothers is officially on board for releasing Donner’s uncut version of ‘Superman II’. No matter what, I refuse to believe that Lois Lane will be at all tolerable.

Fans of the celluloid Man of Steel will know that the first two Christopher Reeve-starring Superman films were more or less conceived as one film by Donner, and that he had more than two-thirds of the second film in the can before he was himself canned over creative differences and replaced by Richard Lester, leading to charges that Superman II became an uneven, campy mess because of it.

Super-philes have always known that a better version of Superman II exists somewhere – Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the first four Superman films, claimed in 2004 that Donner had filmed enough to make his own cut, prompting a lobbying effort for Warner Bros to release a full cut of Donner’s version. It looks like fan power has won out.

[via]

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