There’s so much to like in Superman II, and every time I rewatch it I’m reminded how much more it gives me than I expect from a sequel. The first film spent its time building Clark up, Krypton and Smallville and the Daily Planet and that night flight with Lois, and this one gets to just take all of that and throw three people at him who are every bit as strong as he is. Which is the thing I always come back to. Superman finally has a fight on his hands, a real one, and for most of the film he’s not sure he can win it.
I’ll say up front that I’m not a DC reader to any large extent, so I don’t know the whole mythology of the Superman universe, the history of Krypton’s criminals or how any of this plays out in the comics. But this struck me as true and good. It feels like it gets who Superman is, and the villains feel like they belong in his world rather than being bolted on for a sequel. It came out around the same time The Empire Strikes Back was busy showing everyone that a second film could knock its hero down hard and leave him there for a while, and this one does a version of the same thing, stripping Clark of everything and making him crawl back.
That spinning square in space
The whole sequence with the floating panel that is the Phantom Zone is just awesome. It’s set up right at the start, Zod and Ursa and Non on trial on Krypton, sentenced, and then this flat glassy square comes down over them, swallows them up and spins off into space with the three of them pressed inside it, faces stuck to the surface like they’re trapped behind a window that’s falling forever. I remember being a kid and finding that genuinely creepy, and honestly I still do. A prison that’s basically a piece of glass drifting through nothing, no bars, no guards, just you and whoever got sentenced with you, forever. It’s such a simple idea and it sticks with you.
And then Superman sets them free without even knowing it. Terrorists rig a hydrogen bomb in the Eiffel Tower, Superman pushes the lift up into space and lets it go off out there, and the blast cracks the Phantom Zone open. I love that it’s his own good deed that does it, Superman saving Paris and unknowingly letting loose the three people his father locked away. Then the film just leaves them up there on the moon for a bit, landing on some poor astronauts and finding out under a yellow sun what they can do, which is basically everything Superman can do but with no reason to hold back. Non can’t even talk and he’s still terrifying. Ursa is cold and mean in a way that’s a lot of fun to watch. And Zod is Zod, bored, arrogant, ordering everyone around like the whole planet already belongs to him.
Three of them and one of him
While all that’s brewing, Clark makes the worst decision of his life. Lois works out who he is at Niagara Falls, after he trips into a fireplace and pulls his hand out without a mark on it, and he takes her to the Fortress of Solitude and gives up his powers so he can be with her. Then a trucker beats him up in a diner and he’s sitting there bleeding, a normal man, just as the news comes on that Zod has taken the White House and the President is kneeling. It’s a horrible moment for him. He has to walk all the way back to the Fortress to fix it.
What I love about the fight that follows is that it’s even. I’ve moaned before that Superman is too powerful to be interesting, that nothing can actually touch him, and Superman II is the answer to that. Three Kryptonians who can give him a run for his money one at a time, and here they come all together. The fact that they fight on equal par with Superman is really good, because it changes everything about how he has to fight. Over Metropolis they throw a bus full of people at him, they blow on the crowd hard enough to send them flying, and every time he hits back they just get up. Superman can’t win by being stronger, so he starts thinking about the people in the street instead, and when he realises they’ll just keep hurting everyone to get at him, he flies off. That’s not him losing. It’s him working out that he needs a different plan, and to me it’s the most Superman thing in either film.
Lex being Lex
Lex is always a bit camp in these movies, and his whole reason for doing what he does is often just silly. In this one he breaks out of prison, finds the Fortress, learns all about Zod, and then goes straight to the villains to sell Superman out. And what does he want in return? Australia. That’s it, that’s the plan, betray the only man who can stop three alien tyrants so he can get a nice bit of land out of it. It’s the same real estate brain from the first film turned up even further, and while it’s funny, I always find it a bit of a weak spot next to Zod, who at least wants to rule the world. Even Ming the Merciless had bigger ambitions than a continent with good beaches, and Ming was camp on purpose.
The ending at the Fortress is still one of my favourite tricks in a superhero film though. Lex leads Zod there, Superman walks into the chamber like he’s giving up his powers again, and it turns out he’s reversed it, so the villains are the ones who get turned human. Zod’s hand gets crushed in Superman’s grip and he goes into the ice, Lois punches Ursa off a ledge, and Non just sort of stumbles away. It’s quick and kind of brutal and I love it every time, because it’s the one fight Superman wins by being cleverer instead of stronger. Then he kisses Lois to make her forget, goes back to that diner to deal with the trucker, and puts the flag back on top of the White House, and I’m grinning at all three of them.