LogFAQs > #910304687

Superman III (1983)
Nominated by: Anagram

This will be the first opportunity to really play off of the major changes I made in a previous iteration of a series, and I'm going to use that opportunity to completely overhaul this film.

In this movie, we open with Robert Vaughn going about the daily routine of a normal person up until the point that he enters a military base and attacks a variety of soldiers on the way to claiming a piece of kryptonite. As he picks it up, a soldier attacks him and claws at his face, revealing metal beneath it. Robert Vaughn is Metallo, the robotic minion of Luthor from Superman II. He opens his chest, placing the kryptonite inside, and leaves the base.

Most of this movie deals with the fallout from Zod. Lois has no interest in Clark, and Clark is reeling from being fired in the opening scenes - after all, he failed to show up to work during the biggest news story of the century. After Lois publicly announces that she's dating sports writer Steve Lombard, Clark packs his bags. As he's ousted from his job, he finds himself a new position at the Daily Star across town. Run by a mysterious magnate named Morgan Edge, Clark is offered a position by the Star's George Taylor due to reasons known only to Edge. Clark's first big project is to determine where Lex Luthor has been since the Zod incident - something Clark would like to find out himself. He's also assigned a partner, Steve Lombard (played by Richard Pryor).

As Lombard and Kent search for Luthor, Lois Lane is investigating the holdings of Lex Luthor, and she stumbles upon information that suggests Morgan Edge has been buying up LexCorps holdings. Eventually, Kent and Lombard stumble upon a mysterious South American LexCorp laboratory, where they find that not only is it ransacked, but that it contained failed clones of Superman. Lex Luthor steps out of the shadows and he gets in a shouting match with Clark, revealing he is aware of Clark's identity. Lex has known for some time now, but what Clark doesn't know is that this is an android version of Lex left working on a project since the time between Superman I and II, and that it's automated to commence a self-destruct sequence. Without any real lead on Lex's whereabouts, Clark is forced to reveal his identity to Steve Lombard. Afterwards, he tries to use the special lipstick to mindwipe Lombard, but Lombard recoils from this advance and eventually convinces Superman that he won't reveal his identity.

Meanwhile, Lois finds out the location of Morgan Edge's secluded island home, and she meets him - played by Robert Vaughn. Lois and Jimmy Olsen tour the island and after significant suspicious incidents, Lois learns that Edge is dying, and he has been buying up holdings in the attempt to find at least one of LexCorp's holdings where genetics and cloning are being studied. Edge has been replacing parts of his body with robotic pieces in order to survive, but after he was forced to replace his heart with a battery to power his mostly metallic housing apparatus, he only has a short time to live until he can functionally perform a brain transplant. The doctor involved in these procedures is named Emil Hamilton.

Morgan Edge's behavior leads Jimmy Olsen to use his Superman watch, and when Lombard sees that his girlfriend Lois is in trouble, he coerces Superman into letting him come along and attempt to save both Jimmy and Lois. This is all part of Edge's plan - he wanted Jimmy to lure Superman so that he could expose him to kryptonite and use the weakened body to house his brain. Ultimately, it's the dumb luck of Lombard that frees Superman so that he can go toe-to-toe with Metallo, and he eventually wins. In the end, Lois clearly still has feelings for Superman, but Superman recognizes that despite his bluster, Lombard is the right man for her, and he leaves to search for Lex once more, asking if Steve wants to join him.
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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful