The Weekly Planet - Superman The Movies - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Superman The Movie from 1978 is considered the gold standard in superhero film making. Setting trends that resonate to this very day the Richard Donner classic introduced the world to Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder as well as bringing a air of legitimacy to the DC Comics universe with the casting of Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman. It's also kind of very silly. This is out Caravan Of Garbage review, thanks for listening!SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNVideo Edition ► https://youtu.be/TyuhxZg_EdoJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4#Superman #DCComics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. We're back for Caravan of Garbage. It's a new era of movies that we're doing from an era long ago. Not long ago for some. Some will be like, 1978 was like bloody yesterday.

Well, guess what? You're old. Oh, whoa. Surprise! We got you. That's right. This isn't for you. You've never done a TikTok dance? Get out of here. It's for TikTok dancers only. That's exactly it.

So if you could leave it like that, it'd be great because we are going to be covering the four and potentially five, we'll come back to that, Superman movies, the Chris Reeve movies. Because right now we are surrounded by DC properties. The Snyder Cut's coming out soon. We just had Wonder Woman. Yep. And Wonder Woman especially, Wonder Woman 84,

as I understand it, the people putting it together were like, we're going to harken back to a more innocent time in superhero movies. And if you remember that, you're old. Guess what? You're old. That's right. Got that Patty Jenkins. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I think it's not a great movie, but it certainly captured some of that magic. Well, here's the thing. I hadn't seen it in years, Superman the movie, 1970s. Oh, sorry, I meant the Wonder Woman. Oh, okay, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not. But yeah, sorry, go on. Well, Superman the movie, we've done a previous series of videos on the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire, and i've said of those that even though i don't love them i think they are a perfect distillation of comic books in like celluloid form it's like if you just got everything about the comic books in all their

silliness and you put it on screen and that's what it is it's not it's not a real universe it's not it's not like our real world and it's got superheroes in it. It's a superhero universe and it's kind of simplistic and silly. Yeah. And that works in that universe. And I think the Superman movies, the Richard Donner and... Richard Lester. Richard Lester and Christopher E. Mugga, that whole deal, was the prototypical attempt of that.

Yes. And I think it works as well. I think there's so much of this that does work, though. And, yeah, like you said, I think you've got to look at... This one in particular, this is the best one, I feel. I mean, we'll talk about two next week, which I know a lot of people consider the high benchmark of these movies. What about Superman 3?

Well, we'll have to get to it, won't we? Richard Pryor featuring Superman sometimes. But even things like, you know, it's got a long, drawn-out title sequence, which I normally do not like. But something about the John Williams score and just like the era this was in, I'm like, yeah, I could sit here for 12 minutes. Well, what's interesting in re-watching it is that I think,

because I consider these kind of hokey and kind of silly and simplistic, I think these were probably even hokey at the time because they're not an adaptation even of the Superman comics at the time. In this movie, Clark Kent is a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, but in the comic books at the time, he wasn't. He was an on-air TV anchor for like WGBS, Galaxy Broadcasting. They'd moved the character on.

And so this isn't like an adaptation of the comic books at the time. It feels way more like an adaptation of what the writers remember and they read as a kid. And the George Reeve kind of. Yeah. It's more an adaptation of that. And you can see that sort of in the character design and in the costumes. Like Christopher Reeve often dresses in like an old sort of an outdated like double-breasted suit yeah right superman from the

40s yes um even the opening because it's a black and white like comic book and it's it's a kid telling a story and then it like transitions out to this like it's 1978 baby if you're watching this when it came out guess what you're young that's right you're not now just to clarify but yeah i think it yeah it think it definitely aims for that. And I think it also, it nails a lot of it. I think it nails it on that level, given that, again, the writers of this were not comic book writers. And even at the time, I think,

even when we were approaching this era of like, it's got to be a blockbuster, but it's also got to be, films still had a certain amount of prestige. And the reason I guess they didn't get comic book writers for this is because even though they were adapting a comic book they were like that's kind of a low art form we're not none of the because the thing that has always that i was always let down on watching these movies is that i always i always watched them and thought i don't think anybody who ever wrote a comic book was ever within a hundred miles of these movies and we'll get into why i think but if you look at the the list of credits it's

originally mario puso who wrote the original godfather novels and then i think there was a full rewrite on top of that it was tom mankiewicz came in and is credited for like the richard donis what he ended up shooting yeah but i think also they got names like that and Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman and obviously like Chris Reeve and Margot Kidder were relatively unknowns at the time because they were going for this kind of sweeping epic to be like, this is real. You know what I mean?

We're taking a genuine swing at this. You know what I mean? I think if they were just like, it's fun and comic books and adventures, people would be like, well, that's not very serious, is it? You know what I mean? I think they were going for like, this is proper prestige filmmaking. And it certainly looks the part for a lot of this.

Jeffrey Usworth does the cinematography for this, and he passed away almost immediately after this film came out. It's actually dedicated to him. And there's such beautiful shots in this movie, and there's kind of like an ethereal glow to a lot of it, which the other movies do not have. Well, half of two does, which we'll come back to next week. Yeah, for sure.

But yeah, I also think it's interesting that a lot of this stuff also sets the tone for Superman to come in the future, not just movies, but also comics. A lot of the lore kind of folds in. The House of L symbol being the S on Mother Lena's chest, that was then folded into all the comic book stuff and whatever. And, of course, these movies eventually get a sequel of sorts in the shape of Superman Returns.

Which we did look at, yeah. Which is essentially the same universe. Yeah, but also Superman Returns doesn't look anything like this. I guess it sort of has the feel, but just look at the office itself. It's like this is kind of a grimy 1970s New York kind of situation. And the other one's got this. Within spitting distance of the Statue of Liberty. Unless that's the Metropolis Statue of Liberty.

It must be. It absolutely must be. What I also think is interesting about these movies is one and two were shot back to back. It was like an 18-month grueling shoot. A 500-page script or something? Oh, my God, too long. It must have been cut down. I mean, when you

use the basic mathematics of one page of script is supposed to be one minute of screen time. Too many hours. This movie goes for 107, 40 years. Yeah. Do I say that right? Yeah, that's how many years. Okay, cool. And I guess you can kind of see that it does immediately kind of dovetail into the next movie because

the opening of the movie sets up the next movie. We don of the movie sets up the next movie we don't come back to the three kryptonians that's true yeah which i think must have been super unusual at the time to set up these villains that we don't see for another two years unless audiences at the time were like good these people are being punished we enjoy a non-sequitur scene of people being punished oh my god speaking of people being punished i i love i love just krypton bureaucrats just going down in just a wall of flame and shattered glass i love it just bureaucrats just getting a face full of glass i just really enjoy like yeah you deserve this you

absolutely you know you were told this was coming and you did nothing so i appreciate that as always yeah parallels mason to the modern world maybe oh i get it now they're all in bunkers now they don't give a shit the actors no no most of these people are dead from krypton yeah it was thousands of years ago that's right so what do you think about the the special effects of this because there's some incredible model work there's a lot of clever use of like rear projection there's one shot in particular that i love after the supermanLois Lane kind of flight. Well, see, that's good. The floaty situation.

The tagline for this movie, I think, was you'll believe a man could fly. And I think, especially for the time, a lot of it seems pretty seamless. I've got a fun fact for that. So the flying, there was a number of methods that they eventually used to get it together using wires and optical effects

and all these different kinds of things. But the methods originally attempted included catapulting a dummy into the air a remote control model airplane painted as the character and simply animating the flying sequences but i think on the whole considering the year that this came out it's pretty solid and it gets worse as the movies progress for sure it does and i think, if I were to have one criticism, it is obviously that, like, physics doesn't affect many of the things that Superman interacts with. Sure.

So he can pick up a, you know, he can hold a helicopter and it just floats in midair. Or he can pick up Lois Lane and she floats in midair. I love that scene with the helicopter. But, James, obviously Superman projects some sort of gravimetric field that negates the effects of physics. That's how that works. And they mention that in this movie, don't they, at some point?

Somebody mutters it. It looks like under his breath. Gravimetric field or whatever. Yeah, nice, cool, cool, cool. But that moment where he's got Lois Lane in one arm and he catches the helicopter with the other, it's spectacular, man. I know it's slow and it's from the 70s, but there's just something about that that I really enjoy.

But the particular shot I wanted to talk about from earlier where I got cut off, Mason, by you or maybe me, I can't remember. You want me to cut you off again and then it'll be definitively me? That sounds good. Okay, cool. But the moment where Superman leaves Lois Lane's apartment and then it's one shot and it pans over to the door and Clark Kent walks in.

The way they did that, that's rear projection. So they shot the Superman flying away thing and then had the real Chris Reeve knock on the door. So there's things like that, and it's like, that's pretty clever, eh? Movie magic. Movie magic. I love it. I also like that on the Krypton they used the reflective material

that they originally went with the lightsabers, where if you hit it from a certain light, they flare up. That's why they all have trash bag suits. That's right, exactly, yeah. Glow-in-the-dark trash bag suits. Yeah. But I also think a lot of the realism of this comes down to a couple of things. First of all, you mentioned the costume design.

Yvonne Blake did that. I think it really works. But Chris Reevesves embodiment of this character and even little things like it was his idea to like bank when he's making turns huh and i think that just makes that little bit of a difference to kind of you know to feel the realism if there is one thing that i could point to is like the the absolute positive of this movie it's definitely the performance of christopher reeve as superman and again it is kind of hokey and it is you know of

its time he makes a point to push up his glasses every time yeah he uh you know speaks a sentence but like just the glowing ball of charm that is him in both you know versions of the character he's got it he's got it yeah uh-huh makes sense that you know the the subsequent casting of superman and everything else has been so difficult. Because you've got to capture a certain charm that not everybody has. But at the same time, what wonderful Superman we've had. Name one. Dean Cain. Oh, okay, cool.

You've named one. That'll do. I could have named a better one. Yep. But you've made your choice. I've made it, haven't I? So, actually, David Prowse trade Christopher Reeve. That's right.

People don't know David Prowse was in the Darth Vader suit. He actually got so big that they had to reshoot some stuff because he kind of went from like quite a lanky kind of theatre kid to, especially like for the 1970s, he's pretty big. Big in the 1970s was whatever John Wayne looked like. If he was alive then, I've got no idea. And if he wasn't, then kind of the same really. Kind of the same. But even the fact that principal photography wrapped and

he stayed on for a year just doing the special effects stuff just getting dragged around on wires and sitting in front of blue screens and all these and all of these other things i think it's great i also think it's criminal that he got paid 250 000 for parts one and two oh sneaky when we've got some other players in this who put in much less effort. Who are you talking about? Marlon Brando. Bad bloke. I know he's a good actor.

That cannot be doubted. He's obviously one of the greats, but by all accounts, the worst man in the world. That's a shame. His performance is very good in this, I thought. Well, the funny thing is... Even though he was only there for 12 days or something like that?

He was there for 12 days and he made $14 million for 10 minutes of screen time. had a percentage of the gross exactly yeah so i noticed this going into this because i'd read this fact prior but there's moments in this where he's just reading his lines where he's like doing his monologue to the baby and he's like i love this baby and we're sending this baby to earth there's a post note stuck to the baby exactly yeah or it's next to the baby or whatever it is because you see his eye line. He's not actually looking at the baby. He's just reading it. These days they just fix that in post.

They fix it in post, exactly. They just move his eyes or they digitally erase the Post-it note. Or they just twist his whole head backwards. You don't even need to see it. It's fine. Or they just get a digital copy of his face and have somebody else read it. Yeah, exactly. So the other thing is he was an incredibly lazy actor at this point.

Oh, is this just going to be short to Marlon Brando? I'm going to wrap this up in a minute, but in some scenes he told director Richard Donner that the only way to keep his performance fresh and not over-rehearsed was just to record the first time that he read the lines. So just like, I'll do this once because this is obviously going to be the best one.

This is part of my process. It's very important. I only do it once because that's the most natural way. Exactly. And I just want to also mention, Ben's going to put in a clip of this interview where Christopher Reeve just publicly trashes him. Yeah.

And yeah, he's right. Lex Luthor is good as well. Yep. I know the Lex Luthor we get. Look, the way I try to look at this movie, I've tried to look at it in two ways.

One is just like a, a fun throwback adventure. Yep. Don't think about it too hard. It's just the newspaper comic strip moved to the big screen. Focus on it like that. And the other way is to look at it as a very cynical old man who's watched way too many comic book movies

and tens of thousands of pages of modern day comic books. You've been spoiled by the movie Joker, the high point of cinema. Exactly. And so on the one hand i'm like well this having you know having just re-watched this gene hackman puts in a fabulous performance he does as a cartoon villain like it's it's a it's a great performance as as a someone going drats and curses superman you've done it again i'm the smartest man in the world but as as a as a comic book fan who's seen you know dozens of different variations of lexuthor over the years, I'm like,

this is not the Lex Luthor you want to put in the real world. He's just this absolute blowhard who thinks he's smarter than he is because he surrounds himself by idiots. I do like the little hijinks, to be fair. There's probably too many hijinks, like too many times where they try to go to reprogram the nuclear bomb. You could do that in one scene. You don't need to do a second scene to make that happen.

Because like he's meant to be, he considers himself the smartest man in the world and like he's got enough money to buy, overpay for a bunch of properties because his scheme is this real estate scheme. But also he lives in like an underwater hotel. Yeah. Like just an abandoned hotel, like a mole man.

What are you doing? What are you doing, Lex Lutx luther yeah nobody seems to know who he is yeah yeah it's it's quite odd but that being said i think he's really great like genuinely you know and again it adds that gravitas because you know you see the name the second uh billing of this movie is also it's him it's brando then him then christopher reeve you know that i that i think works also margot kidder is great as lois lane there were a number of other names considered at the time one of them being carrie fisher which i think man that would have been very interesting also she would have been 19 or 20 at the time yeah okay but uh she's like fun and fierce and she's like smoking cigarettes furiously and a bad speller and a bad spell and she's got like she's got the perfect amount of big city cynicism

to clash against Clark Kent's small town innocence. Which, again, we still kind of see to this day. But I think the interplay between her and Chris Reeve or her and Superman, however you want to frame it, you know what I mean? It's people playing people playing other people. What? But they work

on may 10th kingdom of the planet of the apes is coming to imax and theaters everywhere what a wonderful day this summer one movie event will reign it is our time. Apes hunt humans. That is wrong. Bend for your king. Never. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Only in theaters May 10th. Tickets on sale now. Really well together and it's because during the filming of this,

it was grueling and everybody hated it and Richard Donner was like killing himself to make this, but he's put together this fun atmosphere to keep everyone going. well together and it's because during the filming of this it was grueling and everybody hated it and richard donner was like killing himself to make this you know but he's put together this fun atmosphere to keep everyone going they fired him immediately after anyway we'll come back to that next week but i think you get the genuine sense that those two like each other you know what i mean they've got yeah they've got great chemistry uh the only bit i would say i don't love from that character is that can you read my mind in a monologue going on it's it's a poem yeah and it was originally going to be a song like she was gonna see

while the lights run yeah there you go so there you go but I loved one one of the things that I enjoyed but maybe not for the reasons intended was the the the first scene where Superman appears in Metropolis and he does a night of good deeds yes saving the day all over the place and stopping crimes and getting cats out of the trees. I love it. Mainly for the consequences that I don't think anybody thought about. Like Superman drops down in the middle of the street next to a police officer with a cat burglar,

and he's like, this guy was robbing all these houses. You should arrest him. If I were that burglar, I'd just be like, who's this guy? I don't know what. Like he can fly. What else can he do? He put these diamonds in my bag just like there would have been a lot of arrests and then a lot of people let off

yeah gross legal malpractice i think at one point uh the little girl gets her cat yes from a tree by superman and then she goes into a house and she says there was a man he flew in out of the sky and he rescued my cat for me and the mom goes stop telling lies and then there's the s the sound effect of a clear audible slap slap to the back of the head and he rescued my cat for me and the mum goes stop telling lies and then there's the sound effect of a clear audible slap audible slap to the back of the head

here's a fun fact I was going to save this for trivia Mark Millar has that cat like stuffed yeah huh comic book writer

Mark Millar that's right yeah huh what do you think of that I love it he's a big fan he loves this movie you've ever read Superior

yeah it's good it's a lot of homages to this yeah yeah so I think though he could definitely use more supermanning does he use his heat vision at all in the first movie well that's the thing it could use a different amount of supermanning yeah

different scales of supermanning different uh uh different ways of saving the day like time travel well see that's the thing like i feel like in not using anybody who ever was within 100 miles of a comic book, what seems to have come through with the writing of this is, eh, it's comic books. You can just say anything happens. Just say you can do a thing. Just say you can look at a Great Wall of China and it comes back.

See, here's the thing, though. I think this movie does less of it. It's like the beginning of the Superman silliness. You know what I mean? Like, there's a moment where he jumps out of the building and the suit just kind of appears on him. Sure, yeah, yeah. But of course they kind of make the effort earlier in the movie

where he goes through like a revolving door. Yes. So he changes really quickly. I think that stuff really ramps up later where it's just literally anything. Yeah. It's like the Kryptonians are like levitating people and whatever and the great

you know we've we've mentioned this before but you know one of the reasons people don't like superman as a superhero is because they're like yeah nothing can hurt him he can do anything yeah who kind of who cares and that was the problem that was facing comic book superman writers at the time and so in between some in between probably superman 3 and superman 4 maybe 1985 1986 superman was rebooted and they significantly reduced his power set so they couldn't encounter these problems and here's the thing i don't think there is a problem with saying just have superman fly depending on your perspective either reversing time or flying back through time and doing that to save the day and

correct some of the mistakes he made prior. But you need some rules on that. Yeah. Because otherwise, the only foreshadowing for him travelling through time is that... They tell him not to? Marlon Brando says, definitely don't do it. And then Superman also recalls that he couldn't, that he didn't, he wasn't daring enough to save his father or to save Park Kent.

He couldn't do it. And then he's like, well, I guess I will meddle with history and then there's no consequences. And look, far be it for me to rewrite a movie from decades ago now, but I mean couldn't you just say that he had a device in his ship that enabled him to travel interstellar distances as a baby and he could use it once. Yeah, right.

And he chooses to use it to save Lois Lane, and then he can't use it again, or something like that. But what's to prevent Superman then going back in time all the time? Maybe he does. Or the evil Kryptonians doing it. Right. Anybody who has that power set. Yeah.

It also opens up the interesting question of, are there two Super Superman in this universe? Because if he goes back in time to stop Lois Lane being killed. There's a pre-existing Superman there. And that Superman isn't going to go back in time because Lois Lane isn't killed. So I guess one kills the other. It may be, yeah.

Superman 3 style. Just chokes him out. That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of time travel based ramifications. I think one is Superman has to kill himself constantly over and over again and also every time he doesn't save a cat out of a tree he's going back in time because he can't leave that cat to fall out of a tree and hurt its leg or whatever yeah absolutely it's just him doing that eternally yeah and good on him and good on him yeah if you do want more and varied supermanning

in this there is an extended cut i remember it it airing in Australia in the 90s, and every now and then it pops up in some versions where he runs like a gauntlet into Lex Luthor's underground weird lair. He's just shooting him with bullets and freezing him and all these other things happening. And I'm like, why isn't that in? And yet you've got a dam collapsing for 19 minutes, which looks incredible, don't get me wrong.

It's some amazing model work. Some amazing model work. Some amazing model work. But it's not the moments like that that I think make this movie. And I mentioned this when we talked about our Man of Steel review for Caravan of Garbage. Check it out. Links below.

Maybe. I don't know. But that Jonathan Kent moment where they just had that quiet conversation where he's like, look, I can literally do anything. Why can't, why don't you let me do these things? Why isn't it okay for me to show people who I really am? And he's like, because it's a waste of your abilities. Why would you?

You can do all these. You could travel through time if you want to, but don't maybe? Unless I die, then maybe do it. Maybe a heart attack's inevitable. I don't know. In the 70s it is. Yeah, I know. But he could go back to like 1940 and be like, hey, you're my dad and eat healthier.

Do some cardio every once in a while. Yeah, you're right. Actually, that's a really good point. They invented this thing called jogging in the 70s. Do some of that. But did you know this movie actually has its own mustache gate? Really? A la Justice League 2017. I did not know that. But did you know this movie actually has its own mustache gate? Really? A la Justice League 2017.

I did not know that. Here we go. So Gene Hackman, and this was also a very jovial situation. This wasn't Gene Hackman just really stamping his feet saying, meh, I'm not doing this. He tells his story in a fun, jovial way that an actor might recount in an interview, that's it. But then bear in mind he is an actor.

So maybe he's still furious about it. That's true. So he didn't really want to shave his moustache off that he had at the time. And Richard Donner said, look, if you do it, I will also shave my moustache off. So we'll do it together. We'll be moustache brothers in solitude. Because famously, he didn't want to shave his head for this. And he wears a bald cap in one scene.

Like he does wear a series of wigs. But he's like no no no no gene hackman doesn't shave his hair for anybody maybe you should gene hackman is all i'm saying oh it's all i'm saying so what he did he went back into makeup and he shaved off the mustache and he came back out and he's like look i did it now it's time for you to shave your mustache off and he goes oh okay and he peels off a fake mustache he He tricked Gene Hackman! What? He got him! What? Yeah. How long had he been wearing that fake mustache?

That's a great question. Years? His entire life? What an elaborate prank. Isn't that amazing? Wow. Yeah. Wait, did he shave it off a long time?

Did he shave it off pre-production and get a fake mustache put on? I don't know what he's up to. By the hair and makeup team? He's still alive. We should ask him. Somebody could ask him if they run into him. He's working on the next Let and makeup team. He's still alive. We should ask him. Somebody could ask him if they run into him. He's working on the next Lethal Weapon. So, yeah, he's like 95 years old.

I've got some super trivia, super stuff, Superman trivia. Ready for this? Yeah. So here's some other names that we got for Superman. Now, this list is a million names long, so I'm just going to take some key ones. It's a million names long, and if I recall. It's literally anybody from the time. Yeah, it really is.

So we got James Caan, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood. Well, I mean, you know... They were names, weren't they? They're tall and lanky. They could bulk up like Christopher Reeve did. Exactly. Muhammad Ali, Nick Nolte, Elton John, Albert Pacino. Did you say Elton John?

Yes, I did. And moved on like it was nothing. Incredible. Paul Newman was offered Superman, Lex Luthor or Jor-El for $4 million. Just pick a role. Wow. And he went, nah. And eventually they cast an unknown or a relatively unknown at the time.

Did you say also Dustin Hoffman on that list? Dustin Hoffman was on the list, yes. That's the one that I remember being like, huh. Yeah. Worked well for the Clark Kent role, I guess. I guess it would. He could bulk up his height. Very wide.

He'd just become very, very wide. I know Stallone actually got vetoed by Brando. He's still angry about this particular moment in time. There could have been two Italian stallions on screen. But I think because a lot of people were comparing Stallone to Brando at the time. And he was like a notoriously petty and jealous man Brando among all the other we're back to Brando I didn't mean to be I actually didn't even write this down but among all these other bad qualities this was one of them and so he very much like stepped in and was like absolutely not and look to be fair I don't think

Stallone is a good choice for this uh but there you go. Wow, it's almost like you and Brando are on exactly the same page on all things. It is that way, isn't it? So here we go. More trivia, Mason. I'm ready. Christopher Lee turned down Zod because he'd just moved to Hollywood to dodge taxes.

He was like, I can't go back to England. There's taxes waiting for me there. Oh, this was filmed in England is what you're saying? Yeah, a lot of it was. Okay, right, right, right. So the Mario Puzo script that was reworked into a completely different thing

even though he's credited up top because people are like, Godfather. Sure, yeah. It included one very famous camp moment where Lex Luthor encountered Tali Savalas

as Kojak himself. Like the character Kojak and then Kojak offered Lex Luthor a lollipop and asked him his trademark line who loves your baby

because they're both bald is that the joke? I guess that's the joke it's also it's another Brando little bit of Brando trivia

we're back on Brando now who's obsessed with Brando Mason? me because you put all this Brando ideas in my head all the Brando juice is dripping down my obsessed with Brando Mason? Me, because you put all this Brando ideas in my head. All the Brando juice is dripping down my head.

Apparently, Brando proposed to one of the writers that in the first meeting with Jor-El, Jor-El would appear as a green suitcase or a bagel with Brando's voice. But Donna persuaded him otherwise. I think that was one of his famous pranks at the time. And by pranks, I mean just being the worst guy. Just holding up everybody's day. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, no, I understand. Just the kind of guy that he was. So Susanna York, who played Lara, Superman's mother. It says green suitcase or a bagel. Was the bagel also green? It had to have been. Did the suitcase have to be green? I think the suitcase opens and the bagel comes out.

Wow. Can you imagine? That's Brando. That's Brand brando isn't it yeah so uh she wasn't really happy with the way that the script went because there's a particular scene where jor-el makes a big speech you know we talked about it and you know it gives him a magic crystal and all that it's like you can do anything and i love you and whatever and her quote from this is i didn't give him dick that was what she said and it's also interesting because he puts his whole consciousness or like an element of into this computing system

so he can converse with his son in the same way that the Russell Crowe version does. And the mother just gets nothing. She just dies in an explosion. I guess it's a tradition for Lara. Don't question their culture, James. That being said, a lot of the stuff, the Brando stuff, had to be reshot for part two,

so she does get a bigger role going forward. Gotcha. Gotcha. This is an interesting bit of trivia. The first time that Mike Johansson heard the word genocide was when he saw this movie in theatres. And if you don't know him, he's got four acting credits on IMDb, including 2015's Caesar and the Otto's

Paranormal Halloween where he played Dr. Feel anyway I think this is just a case of a guy just putting his own IMDB trivia in what do you think of that though?

that's classic Mike whatever his last name was okay here's a question for you this is a trivia when the bit where Superman looks at the phone it's not a proper phone booth, so he's like, it's like a clever nod.

What would happen now if they did that exact gag now? Would you look at one of those iPhone charging stations that you've got to swipe a credit card to get 15 minutes of charge? Oh, good question, maybe, yeah. What's he stopping to look at? He's stopping to look at a TikTok house. You know those houses where there's just influencers? Yeah, sure. And they're all doing TikTok? It just looks at a TikTok house. You know those houses where there's just influencers? Yeah, sure.

And they're all doing TikTok. It just looks at the whole house. He x-rays it and there's like 400 mobile phone devices and computers or whatever. And he's like, damn, I can't change into Superman in any of that. But he could. He could absolutely do it. In a TikTok.

He'd just jump in there and do it. People would think it was a TikTok trick. Yeah. There's a couple of things that I just wanted to make mention of. So Lex Luthor wearing a robe in water, something about that just sets me off. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Even though that it's referred to afterwards.

Yeah, just the bottom of a robe just soaking in pool water. I don't like it. I wonder if that was deliberate or that's the only angle they had of that scene. I think it's deliberate. I think it that was deliberate or that's the only angle they had of that scene. I think it's deliberate. I think it's an intentional gag. Here's a question. There's a moment where it's mentioned that Krypton is spelt with a K and not with a C. Yep.

How do you know that? Good question. And also, why do you, Clark Kent, say Krypton while your father very clearly says Krypton a bunch of times? It's a regional dialect. It's a regional dialect. It's a Kansas dialect. Also, when you were learning all this stuff about Earth and its people and whatever, Clark, when did you decide to just tell everybody

all your strengths and weaknesses in a newspaper article? Do you think that was a clever idea? Maybe Jor-El advised against that or no? It wasn't a very good idea. Dumb idea, I think. Because even though he told the dumbest man in the world, he still got one up on him.

Yep. And if it wasn't for love, he would have drowned in that pool. That's right. Good thing for love, though. Actually, I've got one bit of fun trivia, Mason. I'm ready.

So at one point, it was planned that the film would end with a giant hologram of Superman flying out into theatres. How? Are they just going to be like, now put on your 3D glasses?

Wow. Yeah. Now, they would have hired a bunch of out-of-work actors to just run up the aisle in a Superman suit. That being said, there is something, and I dare to use the word, but I mean it, there is something magical about Chris Reeve drifting past the camera, like looking at the audience, giving a wink, and just floating on by. I love that part of the Superman.

Incredible. Yeah, no, it's good. Yeah, I love it. Anyways, we'll be back next week to talk about Superman 2 and it's a nightmare. It was a nightmare to make. Yeah, we'll get into it.

But how was it to watch? We'll get into it. All right, let's do that. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for watching this though. This is Caravan of Garbage. We do this every week. If you want these videos early,

which of course you maybe do you can go to bigsandwich.co sign up we do bonus podcasts we do movie commentaries what else do we do Mason more bonus podcasts

that's right we do a comic book club check it out if you want to check it out I'm at MrSundayMovies on Twitter I'm at WikipediaBrand on Twitter

does this movie hold up for you you Mason I'm asking you no now I'm asking the audience well I don't know because they're not here okay well they'll have to tell you in the comments maybe in the comments maybe Does this movie hold up for you? You, Mace, I'm asking you. No. Now I'm asking the audience. Well, I don't know because they're not here. Okay.

Well, they'll have to tell you, won't they? In the comments, maybe. In the comments, maybe, yeah. Anyway, thanks for watching. We'll see you next week. Grab that gem, you guys. We'll see you real soon. Goodbye. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network.

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