While Christopher Reeve’s Superman remains the definitive Man of Steel for many DC fans, even the late actor’s most ardent supporters mostly agree that things started to go wrong with Superman III. Yet things could’ve been a lot worse if Superman III‘s bonkers original script is any guide.
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The obvious reaction to this statement is “How?” After all, the version of Superman III that ended up in cinemas is plenty bonkers already. A slapstick comedy sequence kicks off the movie. Comedy legend Richard Pryor’s Gus Gorman invents a supercomputer that makes pedestrian signals fight. Off-brand Kryptonite turns Superman into a meme-worthy drunk and high-stakes prankster. Oh, and our hero and his Clark Kent alter-ego slug it out in a junkyard.
Indeed, topping such a concentrated dose of OTT antics sounds impossible. But that’s exactly what producer Ilya Salkind’s unrealized vision for Superman III would’ve done.
Superman III’s Original Villains Were Brainiac and Mister Mxyzptlk
Salkind penned his initial Superman III treatment (basically, a beefed-up screenplay outline) in 1980. Warner Bros. Pictures promptly shot it down, branding Salkind’s proposed story too expensive and complicated to produce – with the latter adjective almost certainly a polite substitute for “bizarre.”
Part of the problem was the villains Salkind wanted to introduce in Superman III: Brainiac and Mister Mxyzptlk. Both are legendary supervillains and to his credit, Salkind intended to portray them in a largely comics-accurate fashion. The Superman III version of Brainiac would’ve been a super-intelligent alien and Mxyzptlk would’ve been an other-dimensional imp. Sounds good, right? Maybe in theory, but it would’ve almost certainly been a disaster in practice.
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Take Brainiac. Aside from the difficulty of making a green-skinned baddie work within the grounded universe established in Superman and Superman II, Salkind and Superman III director Richard Lester would’ve struggled to make Brainiac’s evil scheme play on screen. Why? Because it involved the movie’s core ensemble time-traveling back to the Middle Ages!
Mxyzptlk is more of the same. As imagined by Salkind, Mxy is a more malevolent incarnation of his classic Silver Age self, who uses his reality-altering powers for “deadly jokes which can kill hundreds of thousands of people.” The most outrageous of these would’ve seen Mxyzptlk transform Metropolis and its citizens into a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. That’d be pretty wild today, but picture it with early ’80s special effects. Not great, right? And even if it worked, it still wouldn’t fit the franchise’s tone.
Superman’s Love Interest Was… Supergirl
However, where Salkind’s Superman III treatment really goes off the rails is in its handling of Supergirl. Throughout the treatment, Salkind is at pains to point out how in keeping his version of Superman’s cousin is with her comic book counterpart – except he also makes it explicitly clear the pair aren’t related. They can’t be, otherwise the Superman/Supergirl love story he cooked up for Superman III wouldn’t work!
That’s right: Superman and Supergirl are an item in Salkind’s Superman III roadmap. They fall in love instantly, which makes Brainiac all huffy because he’s also head over heels for Supergirl. That’s Salkind’s other major departure from the comics: Brainiac finds and raises the orphan Supergirl and – rather creepily – gets the hots for her once she’s all grown up. This would be a bit ropey today; in a 1983 superhero blockbuster, it’s unthinkable.
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Brainiac’s jealousy would’ve led him to mess with Superman’s mind, using his technology to transform into the Last Jerk of Krypton. Superman would then go on a global rampage, before eventually throwing off Brainiac’s influence for good through the power of love. It’s cheesy, but it could’ve translated into live-action – up to a point.
As soon as the action shifts to the Middle Ages, the treatment hits new heights of ridiculousness. Superman III‘s big Superman/Brainiac conflict? It culminates with a good old-fashioned jousting session. Seriously: the original Superman III story ends with Superman and Brainiac LARPing for the fate of the world. Naturally, Superman wins; he then heads back to the present day with Supergirl and their pals, leaving Brainiac behind as a powerless serf.
Nothing – nothing – in the Superman III we got comes close to this ludicrousness.
Did Any of the Original Superman III Plot Survive?
But just because Salkind dialed back the Superman III treatment’s more extreme elements, that doesn’t mean he trashed all of it. On the contrary, a heap of stuff from Salkind’s original vision for Superman III wound up on the big screen.
Christopher Reeve’s Big Blue Boy Scout still undergoes a mid-movie heel turn. He also runs afoul of advanced tech, albeit in the form of Gus’s supercomputer, not Brainiac and his off-world gizmos. One of the treatment’s much less offbeat aspects – replacing Lois Lane with Lana Lang – is present and accounted for in the finished film too.
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What about Supergirl? While she didn’t show up in Superman III, the Maiden of Might headed up her own, Salkind-produced spinoff a year later. That flick was far from great, but at least it depicted Supergirl as Superman’s cousin and not his lover! So, all told, fans dodged a speeding bullet when Warner Bros. rejected the original – and far more bonkers – Superman III screenplay.
Superman III is currently streaming on Max.
