Richard Lester made a number of popular comedies in the 1960s – including The Beatles’ classic A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and other hits such as The Knack (1965), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and Petulia (1968). Lester’s grounding is in comedy and this is an approach that dooms Superman III. The opening scene, for example, is a giant choreographed custard pie sequence where Clark Kent’s changing into Superman unwittingly causes a chain of disasters in the street involving a blind man, toy penguins, a row of phone booths collapsing and a fire hydrant causing a man to nearly drown inside his car. When we come to other scenes like where the computer targeting system for a missile launch suddenly turns into a videogame or with the animated figures on a traffic light signal getting confused and deciding to fight it out, we realize we are watching a film that is no longer taking itself seriously.

The major problem with Superman III is the writing in of Richard Pryor, who was a popular Black comedian of the time in films like Stir Crazy (1980), Some Kind of Hero (1980) and The Toy (1982). Richard Pryor has no place in the film – he was only cast after an appearance on a US talkshow where he said how much he would like to be in a Superman film. Pryor’s exploits are given as much running time as Superman’s and this is a clear signal that the film is focused on selling itself to the light comedy and children’s audience and no longer interested in paying respect to the comic-book. Richard Pryor’s presence results in some incredibly silly antics – with him running about in a giant cowboy hat getting Gavin O’Herlihy drunk; or one scene messing about on Robert Vaughn’s rooftop ski slope where Pryor’s bumbling ends up with him skiing down the slope, off the side of the skyscraper and all the way to the ground where incredulously enough he survives without harm (a feat that would in reality kill him, no questions about it).

The script has no real focus. Robert Vaughn’s villain is merely an unimaginative rehash of Lex Luthor from the first film, even down to his blonde bimbo. Moreover, Webster’s villainous schemes are vague and unfocused – we are not even sure what his grand plot is. There are also numerous inconsistencies in the script – Superman can fly through a hail of missiles yet a good bottle of whisky gets him drunk; and when he does the old coal-squeezing trick from the comic-book, it amusingly not only comes out as a diamond but a cut and refined one too. There is an amazingly bad climax – one where the super-computer becomes a recalcitrant AI in about 30 seconds flat then starts shooting rays and turning people into cyborg zombies. The special effects are not that special this time out. The one worthwhile sequence is where Superman splits into a good and bad self and the two start fighting it out in a junkyard – a scene that has clearly been modelled on the super-powered street fight that Richard Lester choreographed and was the highlight of Superman II. Christopher Reeve gives a customarily good performance in both roles.

Missing substantially from Superman III is Margot Kidder and the character of Lois Lane. In interviews following Superman II, Kidder had been vocal about expressing her dissatisfaction with the way the Salkinds had fired Richard Donner and in punishment her role here was severely diminished with her appearances here kept only to a few minutes at both the beginning and the end. She is replaced by Annette O’Toole as Lana Lang, one point where the film does pay homage to the comic-book, with O’Toole doing a reasonable job. [In an interesting piece of trivia, Annette O’Toole was later cast as Martha Kent, the adopted mother of the young Superman in tv’s Smallville (2001-11)].