The Superman Movies: Are They Cursed?

[TMC]

It has practically grown to be a pretty strong coincidence that a majority of the stars of these movies have carried some sort of tragedy and/or massive personal misfortune years after making the movies. The movies themselves were to a certain extent, seemingly hampered by bad karma. For starters, the producers fired the original director half way through the production over creative differences and replaced him with someone who didn't even carry any sort of knowledge or respect for the Superman character.

This in return, help lead to the ill fated and awkward slapstick elements that ultimately hampered Superman III a great deal as it only made approximately $60 million (along with an ultimately unreleased video game) when compared to the first two movies making over $100 million. When the fourth movie came around, it was hampered by a bunch of low rent and cheap-skate new producers. This proved to be little more than setting an example of what may happen if a movie and/or franchise is placed in the wrong hands. This of course, led to cheesy special effects and a ton of heavily cut footage. But now lets get to the particular misfortunes that came to most of the stars of the movies shall we?:
*Christopher Reeve-Gets paralyzed in a horseback riding accident

*Margot Kidder-Has a mental breakdown which eventually leads her to wondering around the backyards of others in a pretty deranged state

*Marlon Brando-Daugther commits suicide (if I'm not mistaken) and son gets charged with murder

*Richard Pryor-Comes down with MS

*Mariel Hemingway-Sister commits suicide

[callmetootie]

I don't know why, but I kind of liked the Superman series. I even liked the 4th one, which was even hated by the readers of the comic book series. I enjoyed watching Richard Pryor in an action film, he had spunk.

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Andrew Carden

[EdBrownJr]

The best was Superman II that movie rocked.
It was the best out of all 4 movies.

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GET OUT OF MY GARAGE!!!

[JohnMcMillin]

I just bought pt. 1 and 2 on DVD yesterday and love it.

I was thinking about the "curse" too. Also, didn't Margot Kidder suffer a stroke as well?

Gene Hackman is about the only major actor from any of those movies who has come out unscathed.

I also don't recall Superman III being a huge flop. It wasn't as big as the first two, but it was still in the top 5 movies of that year.

[TMC]

I think that the reason for Kidder's relatively small screen time in Superman III was because the producers were either unhappy that she posed with Superman merchandise inside of a dirty adult magazine. Or she was highly outspoken about the antics of the producers, the Salkind family. Especially when it came to the firing of director Richard Donner halfway through the production of Superman II.

[TMC]

On its own, Superman III would primarily be viewed as a realtive hit albeit being a very modest success story. But from another point of view the lukewarm response that this movie received as well as the Supergirl spin-off a year later, played decisive factors in the ultimately change in the hands of producing when the ill fated Superman IV came around.

[TMC]

As for Hackman, it's quite obvious to say that he's one of the few stars to ultimately come out unscathed at first glance since he wound up winning an Oscar. But at the same time, you can't over-look the fact that he was also a huge factor in the turmoil during the production of the movies. As the story goes, Hackman quit in the middle of filming Superman II in protest of the firing of the original director Richard Donnor. In order to attempt to fill in the gaps, the film-makers used a mixture of a stunt-double and voice-over artist in several scenes (especially towards the end of the movie).

[JohnMcMillin]

what happened to the Salkinds anyways? There are several documentaries on the DVD for pt. 1 which include new interviews with Donner, the other guy who rewrote the movie, Margot Kidder, Marc McClure and Christopher Reeve among a few others, but no imput at all from the Salkinds. Is this because everyone in the entire cast and crew was upset with the way they kicked Donner out halfway during filming part 2?

Reeve said in an interview that if/when he walks again (he is very determined to beat the odds) that he'd like to do another Superman. Because he kinda is a real-life Superman from the paralysis situation and the way he is fighting.

[TMC]

The Salkids eventually sold the movie rights to The Cannon Group, who produced Superman IV even though they were going through serious money woes right around the same period. Besides the Superman movies, they also produced Santa Claus: The Movie which wound up boming even worst than Supergirl or Superman IV. They went on to produce the syndicated Superboy TV series in 1988. As for the people themselves, I'm sure that Alexander Salkind at least, died a few years ago while in his 70s.

[TMC]

If this "curse" was to be genuine and truely exist, than it may more than likely be directed towards a case of bad karma. To put it in another way, a certain chain reaction was started from the greedy mindset/antics of the Salkinds and the indifferent attitude that director Richard Lester (who replaced Richard Donner half-way through making Superman II and made Superman III totally by himself) carried towards the Superman character and his mythos. You may be easy to call be paranoid and roll on the floor laughing, but the fact of the matter is that this sort of thing has likely been being around throughout history. For example, some like to direct the highly documented tragies suffered by the Kennedy family towards patriarch Joesph's alledged massive anti-Semitism.

Then, there's of course the much talked about "Curse of the Bambino." This directs to the fact that the Boston Red-Sox has not been able to win the World Series since Woodrow Wilson was the president. The how thing supposedly started when they sold pitcher Babe Ruth for money to help them start a Broadway show or anything else like that stage performance crap. In the process, their rivals, the New York Yankees have so far, won 26 World Series.

[The Obsolete Man]

Christopher Reeve's original story for Superman 4 was supposedly pretty good. Als, the movie was over 2 hours long. But, it was cut down to 90 minutes, and Reeve's story disemboweled. Also, the Budget was cut drastically when the Salkinds sold the film to whomever, and the man slated to originally dircect the film, Wes Craven (he of Scream and Nightmare on elm Street) was dropped from the film.

That's why Superman 4 sucked.
If you want to ask more questions about Superman 4, or anything Superman, go here....
http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/files/Forum30/HTML/004059.html

these fanboys know everything.