WHY SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978) IS BETTER THAN MAN OF STEEL (2013)By BARRY DUTTER
1) IT HAS A REAL ROMANCE BETWEEN LOIS & CLARK: SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is, at its heart, a love story. MAN OF STEEL is not. Although MAN OF STEEL tries to shoe-horn in a romance between LOIS LANE and Superman, it is a very half-hearted effort. Sure, they kiss at the end, but it comes from out of nowhere. They seem to kiss for no other reason than somebody deciding the movie should end with a kiss.
2) SMALLVILLE. SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE gets all the Smallville stuff just right. Clark Kent is a young man who flirts with revealing his powers, but he never actually shows them off to anyone. Except for that one time he kicked a football into outer space, no one in Smallville has any reason to suspect that Clark might have super-powers. In MAN OF STEEL, young Clark rescues a busload of kids, and there are several witnesses. As Clark grows up, it seems the whole town of Smallville comes to regard him as “that kid with the weird super powers.” These early scenes pretty much make it impossible for Clark Kent to ever have a normal life.
3) THE DEATH OF PA KENT: SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE nails it. Pa Kent dies in a cornfield of a heart attack. Clark utters the immortal line, “All my power… and I couldn’t save him.” It’s a simple yet effective way to convey that despite his Godlike abilities, there are some things that he just can‘t do. In MAN OF STEEL, PA KENT dies during a tornado, all the while ordering his son not to save him, for fear of revealing his powers. I get the idea that the writer of MAN OF STEEL did not want to duplicate all of the events of the 1978 movie. He wanted to put his own spin on the story. But this was a bad way to go. Kevin Costner has a thankless role as Pa Kent, where he spends all of his scenes telling young Clark not to ever use his powers to help people. The scene where PA KENT tells CLARK he “maybe” should have let those kids on the bus die is perhaps the worst line of dialogue ever written for a Superman movie, and I’m including all of RICHARD PRYOR’S lines in SUPERMAN III. That one line shows a complete lack of understanding of both Clark Kent and the man who raised him. Then, in one of the only lines echoing the first movie, Costner tells Clark that he is here for a reason, and that someday he will find out what that reason is. Apparently that reason is NOT to save the life of his adopted father. 
4) THE TONE IS ALL WRONG: The tone of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is one of hope. There is a sense of optimism and wonder that pervades the film. The tone of the new film is one of FEAR. Pa Kent teaches young Clark all his life that he should fear humanity, that he must never reveal his powers to anyone because humanity will only hate and fear him. Pa Kent comes across as the biggest coward of all time, terrified to let his son leave the house for fear of something bad happening to him. Basically, MAN OF STEEL subverts the theme of the X-MEN movies to become, “Protecting a world that might hate and fear him if he ever revealed himself to it.” It seems a desperate attempt to take the age-old concept of Superman as the “big blue boy scout” and modernize it to make him the typical “alienated hero” that is all the rage these days.
5) THERE IS NO HUMOR: The first 2/3 of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is perhaps the best super-hero movie of all time. It has just the right mix of action and heart and epic storytelling. The montage of scenes showing SUPERMAN’s first night in METROPOLIS, where he stops various petty crimes from happening, is filled with funny bits. I even like the bit where Supes rescues the cat from the tree. MAN OF STEEL is too busy presenting a grim and gritty, mopey version of Superman to offer any laughs.
6) THE DAILY PLANET SCENES: SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, filmed on location in the actual offices of the NY DAILY NEWS, does a great job of conveying the feel of a big-city newsroom. There is real chemistry between CHRISTOPHER REEVE and MARGOT KIDDER. JACKIE COOPER s a perfect PERRY WHITE. MARC McLURE is just right as JIMMY OLSEN. The scenes at the DAILY PLANET are humming with life. The PLANET scenes in MAN OF STEEL don’t really add much to the movie. LAWRENCE FISHBURNE is a great actor, but he is not given much to work with. JACKIE COOPER got to utter all the classic PERRY WHITE catchphrases, and got to play a fun variation on the “newsman with news in his blood.” FISHBURNE just plays a generic “boss” character. And the less said about JIMMY’s transformation into JENNY OLSEN, the better.
7) TOO MANY SCENES OF JOR-EL INTERACTING WITH OTHERS AFTER HE DIES: SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE introduced the idea that JOR-EL made a bunch of recordings before he died, providing an answer for any question that SUPERMAN may have had over the course of his lifetime. The new movie takes that same idea into the “artificial intelligence” era, where a hologram of JOR-EL is able to interact with Clark and Lois, and even get killed a by ZOD a second time. It kind of takes you out of the story a bit to see RUSSELL CROWE keep coming back after he dies the first time.
8) THE PLOT IS TOO COMPLICATED: Part of the magic of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is that it’s a very simple story. Basically Superman comes to Earth as a child and grows up to try to stop Luthor's insane real estate scheme. MAN OF STEEL has way too much plot, a lot of which makes no sense, including a Codex filled with the genetic info of the next generation of Kryptonians, and a world engine capable of transforming Earth into New Krypton. All of these details just make the movie longer and unnecessarily complicated.
9) TOO MANY PLOT HOLES: There is just too much about MAN OF STEEL that doesn’t make sense, including Clark walking into the offices of the Daily Planet at the end of the movie and no one realizing that he is the same Clark Kent who was the super-powered talk of Smallville when he was growing up. And the military struggling to find out who Superman really is, when Lois figured it out pretty easily. And…
11) BETTER ACTING: HENRY CAVILL is not bad, but CHRISTOPHER REEVE is still the definitive Man of Steel. His portrayal of KAL-EL had the perfect mix of charm, whimsy, playfulness, confidence, etc. But he could still convey real emotion, as when he reacts to the death of LOIS LANE. REEVE gets extra points for creating two distinct personalities in CLARK and KAL-EL, something the new guy was not called on to do. CAVILL doesn’t get to show a lot of emotion other than being sullen and moody. He really needs to smile more. 12) BETTER LOIS: Let's face it, MARGO KIDDER's Lois is spunky, funny, quirky, etc. and makes a strong impression. AMY ADAMS' Lois is cute, but that's about it. Again, she is not given much to work with.
13) BETTER VILLAIN: Sure, his performance is campy and I still don't know why he didn't go bald for the role, but GENE HACKJMAN was a memorable LEX LUTHOR. In MOS, MICHAEL SHANNON a decent ZOD, but he doesn't make a strong an impression as the previous ZOD, TERRENCE STAMP. 1) BETTER MUSIC: Let’s face it, JOHN WILLIAMS’ unforgettable theme from SUPERMAN remains one of the greatest pieces of movie music of all time. That music is so inspiring, so evocative, that just hearing those first few notes has you believing a man can fly. The music in MOS is competent, but there is nothing there as timeless as the 1978 classic.
Basically, SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE takes everything that is great about Superman and updates it for a contemporary audience. MAN OF STEEL takes some stuff from the SUPERMAN legend but then changes a lot of it, and none of the changes are an improvement..
Is there anything the new film does better? Well, the special effects are better, and the slugfest between the Kryptonians is one of the greatest super-battles put on film. So MAN OF STEEL gets high marks when it comes to SFX, but not much else. When it comes to timeless Superman movies that people will want to watch again and again, MAN OF STEEL never really gets off the ground while SUPERMAN THE MOVIE soars.
