Superman ][ - The Richard Donner Cut

I've finally started making time to watch some of my HD-DVDs. This last weekend I watched Mad Max 2, and it seemed a bit on the edited side, but I'm not sure. However the majority of the movie is quite stunning in terms of picture quality. Although the one scene where Max falls into the trench in the dark is grainy as all get out, but with the darkness of the scene and the speed of the film it's understandable.

So, two weeks ago I watched Superman - The Movie, and Superman ][ - The Richard Donner Cut. Superman was great, just as it always has been. I was kinda let down by the amount of extras, as the regular DVD has more, but WTF who cares, right? It's all about the movie and not extra crap. It did include the extra footage that wasn't in the movie during it's theatrical release, but surfaced when ABC showed it on teevee. One interesting option, which I didn't really examine is just to have the video, and the music, with out the dialogue or any of the other audio effects. I still think that Anne Archer would have been a better Lois!

Superman ][ - I always had problems with some of the crappy writing, the clumsy story, and the general lameness of the New York battle. I had no iDea of how different the Donner version would be. Would it just be a few timing edits? Maybe some extra scenes? Can't be much more than that, right?

Well, shit on a shingle, it was as different as it could be while still being the same movie. Nearly every single change is for the better. Well except for the end. Everything is tighter in terms of the story and the writing. The New York battle still has some of the lameness, but it's still better. Even if it's exactly the same as the original battle, it's still better because it's in the better version of the film. I thought that they might have fixed a color issue or two, but they didn't. Oh well, nothing major.

The worst part is the end. In the original version, in order to get Lois to forget that Clark is Superman, Clark gives Lois the kiss that makes her forget, and then life goes on-wondering why Clark is never around when Superman is there, and all that crap. In the Donner cut, they did something really bad. I'm not going to say what they did, since I don't wanna spoil it, and I don't want anyone to not watch it because of this plot device, but Why Richard? Why?

The other bad part is that the Ursa character isn't as hot as I remembered!

SC