DJ: Look... up in the sky... It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Richard Pryor falling off a building wearing a pink tablecloth cape for "laffs"! And that, readers, is the type of crap Adam and I watched to bring this "Spoiler Warning" of Superman III to you. Adam... what the hell?

APK: Don't you dare "what the hell?" me, mister. Fuck you. You and Dustin set me up! You set me up for this! You had me rewatch Superman III! Geneva conventions cover this shit.

DJ: But but but but... I don't think I've seen this since I was ten and it was on TV or something. Even then I knew it wasn't "good," but my memory really failed me here. This... this was... I mean... shit. It was shit. Superman III? Shit.

APK: From the shit opening credits to the shit ending this was shit. This was SHITTERMAN! Christ on a crunchy stick, I watched Crossroads and might have had a better... no that's a lie. But damn. This movie had one, maybe two scenes going for it -- and Annette O'Toole going for it. That's it. But let's start at the top. Why was Jimmy Olsen 80 years old?

DJ: Yes, and still acting like a kid. Like a little "Golly, Mr. Kent" kid.

APK: While he picks up his AARP membership card with his whitefro. Oh, but don't worry, everything will be okay with an extended slapstick routine that makes no sense and the lamest rescue in Superman history. He pulled that sunroof off, and it was a solid black plastic sheet. How is that a sunroof?! Why was that a problem? Why did he change in a camera booth? Why did it take pictures the second someone put money in? That's not how they work. What the hell?

DJ: What are you saying? Superman III starts off exactly like a Superman movie SHOULD start. Enough with the grandiose Marlon Brando on Krypton scenes and fantastictal, zooming credits through the majesty of outer space; this time they start it with Richard Pryor, slumming it but giving it a go, as Gus Gorman, in the Metropolis unemployment line. From there, we go into that six or seven minute sequence you mentioned of some of the least funny slapstick ever caught on film to a pussiefied version of the awe inspiring Superman theme. Seriously. The opening ends with a pie in the face. Did the folks making this think it was funny?

APK: That's just it. They did think it was funny. They thought the kids would howl at that funny man and the crazy hijinks. Instead, I heard that twenty-seven small children killed themselves after a screening. I can't back that up, but I heard it, and I am only repeating it here for you.

DJ: To some readers, we might seem like raving fanboys, and maybe we are, but dammit, the first two Superman movies are classics. So good. Sure there's some of this Richard Lester tinged lameness that creeps into Superman II, but it was balanced by some solid stuff by the original director, Richard Donner. With Superman III, Lester, who, I think, hates Superman, just runs rampant, and the results are a flat, TV looking, poorly staged, and uninspired movie. I thought I'd get some laughs out of watching it now, but really? It was just bad. Not funny bad. Just... bad.

APK: Oh, wait -- I don't want to get Dustin mad at us. We should do a summary thing. A summation? A recap? A thing, you know, the thing he does where he is all smart and tells people about the film really well? We should do that. Can I do it, Daddy? Can I?

DJ: Go for it, slugger... Tell our fine readers what the hell Superman III is supposed to be about if you want while I attempt to rinse the bad taste of this cinematic abortion out of my mouth with booze.

APK: Well, it's about some unfunny stuff that happens to Richard Pryor and is inflicted on the viewer while some other badly written things happen in order to move the non-existent plot forward about an inch and then dumb stuff happens to dumber people and stupid things happen and then something else goes down and at the end we learn the meaning of life which is, “Don't watch this dreck.” Oh, and there's a robot.

DJ: Sounds about right. The robot scared the shit out of my little bro, Patrick, when we first saw it and for years to come.

APK: It scared me when I was a kid, too!

DJ: What scared me was the Evil Dirty Superman vs. Good Clark Kent junkyard scene. I remember our dad took me and Patrick to see this at the theatre, and I kept whimpering and turning away when Superman was evil. Dad was all, "I paid for you to see this movie, so watch it, boy! Look at the crap on the screen!"

APK: Awwww! That was the best scene for me, though. I loved that and the drunk Superman before it. The previous "bad Superman" I didn't buy. But dejected stumbling Superman? I loved it, and Chris Reeve sold it. He didn't look like the same guy in the face at all. Great work there.

DJ: Yes. That was the one thing that struck me: Sure, a lot of the folks involved seemed to be slumming it, but not Reeve. He was solid. He tried. And he really cut loose with the Bad Supes stuff. The part where he's taunting timid Clark, "C'mon! C'mon! C'MON!!!" Fuck. The look on his face isn't messing around. It took me by surprise. No wonder six-year-old me was scared when I first saw it.

APK: Totally! It sucked me in this time, too. And then, you know, pan down to a star destroyer, if you know the phrase.

DJ: No, I don't. I'm intrigued, though...

APK: Oh, I am never sure how common it is. In Star Wars, the first shot is this long bit and such, and then Lucas keeps using these pans in the first trilogy where he pans down to a star destroyer. So it's this phrase that comes up now and then for that moment when things are going good and then "Awww damn filler."

DJ: Interesting... what was the filler here? The surprisingly violent yet ultimately lame fight?

APK: No, after it. He's fine and flies away, and we have to sit and watch him undo all the bad things he did when he was evil in the dumbest way possible. Why? We know he would. We get it. He's good again. Why are we watching it?

DJ: Right! But I'm glad whenever Superman is on the screen because EVERYTHING else in this one sucks. The "evil" straightening of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and subsequent "good" re-leaning was the worst, though.

APK: Yeah -- why was that "evil" even? "OH NOES! Superman ruined a monument by acting like a crane!" You want to show Superman being evil? There have to be better ways. Though there is an important lesson to be learned from his other restitution...

DJ: Which is?

APK: If you have a tanker full of oil you don't spot weld the bulkhead touching it. Metal hot enough to melt is hot enough to set fire to that oil. I can suspend physics for some of this, but there comes a time, a time when a man must stand up for what he truly knows to be right. You know that; you taught it to me.

DJ: I'm not a scientist, though! You have me confused with Dustin. He's the one with the lab in his basement.

APK: Ooooh sorry! Ok. To put it in other terms? You don't mix Blanche and Sophia and a man and expect the man to come out feeling spiffy.

DJ: Ah ha! Yes... yes. I get you now. Suddenly science makes sense to me! So... basically, what we have with Superman III is a cheap looking, cynical movie that lacks the wonder and scale of the first two movies. Aside from Reeve still bringing his A-game, were there any other bright spots in this mess?

APK: Well, you tell me. How did Ricky make you feel?

DJ: Ricky Lang, Lana’s bastard son... was worse than the kid in Superman Returns. Was he dubbed the whole movie? I don't think that was Ricky's voice.

APK: It wasn't? Milli VaRicky?

DJ: I think so. I'm not sure. It just seemed off. I hated Ricky. Here's Lana, played by Annette O'Toole in her PRIME, and at first, I'm all, "Lois who?" You know? I don't care about her romance with Superman that drove the first two movies so well. Get out of here, Lois, you weathered hag beast. Go to Bermuda... But then hot Lana has all this baggage and whines for the entire movie. Bah!

APK: O'Toole is simply gorgeous though. Well worth a picnic.

DJ: Yes. Even though it leads to another completely unchallenging and lamely staged Superman rescue. Seriously, they tried to build tension out of slow moving farm equipment creeping toward that damn Ricky Lane, who fell and hurt himself off camera! A wheat plow? Come on! It's Superman!

APK: Yeah, and why did he have to break the thing? Couldn't he have grabbed the kid and kept going? The whole movie, though, I think you hit that nail again, feels small. There is no sense of scale or menace in it.

DJ: Yes. The movie is flat, boring, and there's just no "oomph." And the villains are just pale imitations of Luthor and his crew from the first two. Seriously. Robert Vaughn as Ross Webster is a poor man's Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor.

APK: Down to a reference to him being Luthor and the blonde with tits being Miss Teschmacher. (I still tell slow moving people "MUSH! Miss Teschmacher!" you know...)

DJ: Nice. Yep. "Lorelei Ambrosia" is a Miss Teschmacher wannabee. Gus Gorman is kind of an Otis wannabe except he can control the weather with a satellite using a wheat company's computer and design a giant super duper computer on crumpled scrap paper and cigarette packs.

APK: I loved the weather thing! "It's a satellite that can predict the weather, but we can use it to control the weather instead!" What? How? Who does that? What braniac built that little extra feature in? And there ya' go: Vera Webster, Ross’s sister -- was she Braniac?

DJ: I don't know. She was a curveball, I guess. And kinda butch. Man woman sister. I don't know. Adam... I hate this movie. Aside from hot O'Toole and solid Reeve acting: hate. What say you?

APK: Hate with the heat of a thousand suns. You know a movie is bad when you find yourself wondering if you can get lucky and catch a reality TV show on MTV instead.

DJ: Yeah. It took me two tries to get through it. Not "good" bad. Just bad. Bad bad.

APK: Totally. Though... well, we have to take a second to compare it in badness to two other films very quickly. The showdown! Which was worse: This, Superman IV, or Batman and Robin?

DJ: This one, Superman III. Superman IV at least felt like it had its heart in the right place. I really think it did. It sucked, but it wasn't so goddamned cynical about sucking. And what's Batman and Robin? That... no... I have no recollection of that. As if it doesn't exist.

APK: Batnipples, my friend. Remember the Batnipples. Don't deny them.

DJ: IT DOESN'T EXIST. No. NOOO!

APK: Well, that answers that. So. Superman III -- Ass, but not as ass as Schumacher.

DJ: My eyes! MY EYES!!!!!!!!