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a NEW kind of film-criticism series, built around the radical premise that just because "everyone knows" a movie is a classic doesn't mean it stops being worth a deeper look. Today, comic book superheroes represent just about the most popular movie genre on the planet, and studio slates are packed with characters originating in the pages of serialized four-color adventures. But it wasn't always that way. Once upon a time superheroes, regardless of how popular or well known otherwise, were relegated to animated shorts, low budget serials or children's television: Until Richard Donner's 1978 adaptation of SUPERMAN changed everything. Striking (for the first time) a perfect balance between dramatic-realism, the expectations of a Hollywood blockbuster and faithfulness to the often misunderstood source material. SUPERMAN didn't simply bring a popular character to the screen, it brought a piece of global pop-culture mythology to life in a way generations of people had only ever dreamed possible. To this day, every other adaptation of SUPERMAN across every medium lives in it's shadow - from the earnest homages like SUPERMAN RETURNS to stupefying disasters like BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE. But is that fair? SUPERMAN set the tone for what superhero movies in general and Superman movies in particular should be, but does that mean it stands up on its own merits? Or has a combination of nostalgia and the inability of successors to live up to it given the film a reputation even the Man of Steel can't live up to? Is SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE... Really That Good? "Black Vortex", "Disco Lounge", "Marty Gots a Plan", "Oppressive Gloom", "The Curtain Rises", "Ultralounge", "Wizardtorium" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/