Name: Superman 2: What Happens When You Change Directors Mid-Movie
Uploaded: 2026-01-25T17:00:21.000Z
Duration: 7 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's true that the man of Steel has a lot of power.

And while I'm generally on board with super strength, super speed, super hearing, super breath, X ray vision, heat vision, invulnerability, and

flight, having an expanding cellophane s symb that you can throw at enemies to temporarily incapacitate them is an asset too far for me.

While less ridiculous, so are energy beams that shoot from your fingers and the ability to kiss someone so good that you make them forget that you are really a superhero.

These strange tools and powers come from 1980s Superman II and are the brainchildren of this guy Richard Lester, a film director famous for his movies with the Beatles, namely A Hard Day's Night and Help.

And if you look at those films, which are wonderful, by the way, you'll find comedic irreverence and goofy surrealism all over the place.

This is the same vibe you get from the last fight in Superman II and from various other scenes in the movie that feature wacky visual gags like.

The third Superman movie from 1983 and also directed by Lester, pushed things even further into pure slapstick.

This kind of weirdness is not foreign to Superman comics, of course, especially the Superman comics of the Silver Age.

what about the power to shoot a miniature Superman out of your hand?

This light, sometimes ridiculous comedy was also in keeping with other superhero adaptations, like the Batman TV series of the late 60s starring Adam west, which was hugely popular and hugely campy.

What it wasn't in keeping with was Superman 1, the first movie of the series directed by this guy Richard Donner.

Back in the 70s, Donner was brought on to direct Superman I and II, two parts of a single story filmed simultaneously.

It was Donner's intention to take this comic book hero seriously without the winking grin of Batman's camp.

He wanted to create a mythic tale, a cinematic epic with the scope of something like Lawrence of Arabia.

Superman's production costs ballooned so much that the producers eventually told Donner to stop filming anything for Superman II and divert all of the budget to finishing Superman 1, which he did, begrudgingly.

In December 1978, the movie debuted to critical acclaim and massive box office.

Audiences fell hard for Christopher Reeve and for Donner's epic vision of the man of Steel.

Which foregrounded the love story of Superman and Lois Lane.

But between the release of Superman 1 and the resumption of filming on Superman II, which was already 75% complet, the soured relationship between Donner and the producers prompted them to fire him and install Richard Lester to finish the job.

Lester reworked the script, re filmed a number of the Donner scenes and added a few of his own, including an opening sequence where Superman thwarts a terrorist attack in Paris, and

the ending where Superman throws the infamous cellophane S.

Superman II is the result of lots of compromises.

All the Brando scenes had to be cut out and replaced.

For example, due to legal issues, Gene Hackman refused to return to filming as a show of loyalty to Donner.

And they had to come up with a new ending.

Since the script's original ending of Part 2, where Superman turns back time by reversing the planet's rotation.

Lester deserves some credit for landing the plane in such stormy weather.

It's not easy to realize another director's vision.

And despite the goofiness he added, Superman II still retains a lot of Donner's spirit.

Though of course, it would have been ideal to see 1 and 2 as he intended them to be.

Given access to all the discarded film he shot, Donner finally got to piece together his version of Superman ii.

It does away with the campy jokes and weird powers.

And it restores the Brando scenes, providing some closure to the father son arc, but

not actually having filmed a good amount of the movie, The Donner cut of Superman II is noticeably incomplete and a bit janky.

It's a shame, but that's show business, I guess.

And despite all the drama, despite Lester's course correction and it was Donner's vision, his desire to treat the comic book story with sincerity that has influenced virtually every superhero movie that's come after.

It's hard to imagine Tim Burton's Batman or Sam Raimi's Spider man or the entire MCU existing without these Superman films as a guide.

And yet, as impressive as they undoubtedly are, as perfect as Christopher Reeve is, I do think we've yet to see a Superman feature film that really captures the complexity of this character that I've personally loved since I was 12.

Superman is the obsession that launched all my curiosity, the reason I'm making this show today, which is why I was incredibly lucky to get the chance to write about what I think makes a great Superman story in my new book of essays, Escape Into Meaning, which is out in just 60 days.

If you're interested in that, in what I think about the man of Steel, you can pre order the book with the link below.

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