There's a reason why, despite decades of CGI advancements and new comic-book stories to adapt since, Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie is still largely considered to be the best Superman movie of all time. The beloved 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve's Superman, Margot Kidder's Lois Lane, Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor, and Marlon Brando's Jor-El has captured imaginations for over 40 years. It's the first superhero blockbuster, and the benchmark for comic book movies that have followed. Superman influenced generations of filmmakers, and it's been the touchstone for every TV show and movie about the Man of Steel ever since. And yet, none of them have equaled the uplifting, sheer magic of Superman: The Movie.
As DC Studios restructures its content plan for the next decade, Henry Cavill's Superman has lost any future chances of topping Donner's '78 masterpiece. However, a new challenger has arrived: James Gunn's Superman movie, Superman: Legacy, which has a July 2025 release date, will be the next Man of Steel adaptation to be in the running for the title of best live-action Superman film. With Superman: Legacy slated to be the very first movie in the new DCU's Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters, it's the perfect time to revisit the original movie that established Superman's live-action movie legacy in the first place.
Superman 1978 Defied The Odds To Get Made
True to its reputation of being the best Superman movie ever, the making of Superman: The Movie is also the stuff of legend. The late Richard Donner, hot off his first big movie hit, Superman II.
With bankable, big-name stars like Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman on board, Donner cast an unknown Christopher Reeve as Superman and hired Margot Kidder to play Lois Lane. Donner then commenced an arduous 19-month shoot across the U.S., Canada, Italy, and the U.K. where he shot two films back-to-back while the Salkinds breathed down his neck about the ballooning budget. Crucially, Donner's filmmaking team developed the revolutionary special effects that made Superman convincingly fly on-screen, which required over a year of Reeve enduring grueling wirework, rear projection, and stunts. Superman was so behind schedule it never had a test screening and was released on Christmas 1978.
Richard Donner Created The Blueprint For Superman Movies
Audiences and critics fell in love with Superman: The Movie. The film earned $300 million worldwide (equal to $1.9-billion today) and Superman holds a 94% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Incredibly, the Salkinds fired Richard Donner after Superman's release and hired Richard Lester who completed Superman II, even though Donner had already mostly concluded filming. Surprisingly, the sequel did well, but not nearly enough to dethrone the best Superman movie, which remained superior creatively, commercially, and in of sheer cultural impact.
What's worse is that, after Superman II, the sequels plummeted in quality, with the disastrous Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ending Christopher Reeve's tenure as the Man of Steel in 1987. The Salkinds tried to recapture Donner's glory with a 1984 movie about Supergirl and a 1990s TV series about Superboy, but they fell far from the mark. Instead, the original Superman's success was the model used to launch Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. The chemistry between Reeve and Kidder also inspired the romantic TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1994.
2001's Smallville, which ran for 10 seasons, was regarded as the TV successor of Superman: The Movie, with Reeve, Kidder, Terence Stamp, Annette O'Toole, and other actors from the films appearing on the show. Reeve memorably ed the Super baton to Smallville's Clark, Tom Welling, and the series also adopted much of Donner's film's iconography, including John Williams' classic Superman score. In 2006, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns was a direct sequel to Donner's movie that starred Brandon Routh continuing the role originated by Reeve.
In 2013, Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which starred Henry Cavill, became the new cinematic standard for Superman, yet many longtime fans felt that the heart and purity of Donner's films were disappointingly absent from the DC Extended Universe until Patty Jenkins' 2017 Superman & Lois on The CW, the more Richard Donner's Superman stands out as singularly special.
Donner's Movie Made Audiences Believe In Superman
When making the best Superman movie, Donner repeated a one-word mantra: "verisimilitude." For the director, it was vital that even the most fanciful aspects of Superman were grounded in a relatable realism. But the most important element that would make Superman work was that audiences had to believe that he could fly. "You'll believe a man can fly" was literally Superman: The Movie's marketing tagline, and, indeed, Donner's film was the first to believably show Superman flying on-screen, thanks to a combination of revolutionary special effects and Christopher Reeve's charming performance as Superman.
With the advent of modern CGI, Superman's flying scenes seem rudimentary today but it was achieved with the finest visual effects of the era, and Reeve taking flight as the Man of Steel is still believable and magical. But just as important as Superman flying and using his other amazing powers like his strength, X-Ray Vision, and Super Hearing, was that Superman felt like an honest-to-goodness hero. Tom Mankiewicz's witty and sly screenplay pitted the cynicism of the late 1970s against this cape-wearing do-gooder from another world. Yet when Superman tells Lois, "I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the American Way," Lois (and audiences) initially scoff but everyone also believes in his sincerity.
Christopher Reeve's Superman, who remains the best live-action Superman, isn't just powerful, but also smart, kind, approachable, and generous. As Lex Luthor later learns, Superman is also incorruptible and stands steadfastly against cruelty and evil. Donner grew up reading Superman comics and, when he took the directing job, he was outraged by Mario Puzo's campy script that derisively mocked the superhero and source material. Donner and Mankiewicz labored to restore Superman as a modern American myth about a god-like hero who grew up in Kansas and considers himself "a friend" to everyone in the world.
Superman: The Movie Doesn't Question Him Or His Place In The World
Richard Donner's take on the Man of Steel remains the best Superman movie simply because it didn't attempt to deconstruct the Man of Steel, and rather, it celebrated him for everything that he is. This is a key lesson that the DCU's new Superman and Justice League should take to heart. Donner and Reeve saw Superman's duality simply: Clark Kent poses as a bumbling goofball to deflect any possible suspicion that he could be the flying caped wonder despite their physical resemblance. Meanwhile, Superman enjoys being Clark Kent because it allows him to be part of the world while incognito and to be close to Lois. As Superman, Clark selflessly gives of himself to help others, from performing major rescues like saving an airliner from crashing or bringing a cat stuck in a tree back to its young owner.
Superman also foils crimes big and small, from bank robberies to Lex Luthor's attempt to detonate a nuclear missile on the San Andreas Fault. Helping people is what Superman does because the good deed is its own reward. Meanwhile, Superman's love story with Lois Lane is a timeless, unabashed fairytale romance. Modern audiences may reject Donner's quaint notions - but it's notable how other Superman movies and TV shows have attempted to explore and dissect the Kryptonian's psyche with mixed results.
plot of Superman & Lois more closely follows Richard Donner's classic model for Superman, which is one reason why The CW's series has won fans over - including James Gunn who has promised viewers more seasons of the beloved series.
Superman: The Movie Perfectly Captures The Essence Of Superman
Richard Donner's movie understands Superman in a way that palpably conveys the Man of Steel's essence and purity. This can be observed in how Donner and Tom Mankiewicz structured the best Superman movie with three acts: the bombastic and Shakespearan Krypton prologue, Clark's Norman Rockwell-like upbringing in Smallville, and the rest of the film set in Metropolis is witty and urbane while going all-in on the heroics. That is, until Superman reverses time in a god-like feat in order to save Lois' life - an iconic scene that was famously referenced by the Flash's time travel feat in Justice League. The end result is Superman presented as a proper, modern myth that offers a sly sophistication and romance for adults while thrilling children with Superman's impossible feats and dedication to seeing good triumph over evil.
Superman is not conflicted or tortured, he doesn't question his purpose or mission in Donner's film. Superman is exactly what Jor-El intended, the gift of his only son sent to Earth to be "the light that shows the way" and give humanity a symbol of hope they can aspire to. John Williams' Superman theme, one of the greatest movie scores ever composed.
Williams' music forever indelibly evokes Superman, in the purest, most heroic sense that Donner's movie and Christopher Reeve's Superman performance convey. Superman: The Movie has its flaws and it lacks the Man of Steel fighting villains - that came later in Superman II. Certainly, the frenetic action and spectacle of Zack Snyder's films far sur what Donner could film in-camera back in 1978. But even as evolving technology and visual effects are able to make Superman's powers and adventures more eye-popping, the films and TV series that followed Superman: The Movie still inevitably look to Donner for how Superman is and should be. 40+ years later, no one has depicted Superman quite as right as Richard Donner did back in 1978.
Superman: Legacy Needs To Learn From Richard Donner
While it would be a tall order, it's entirely possible for the DCU and James Gunn's Superman: Legacy to sur Richard Donner's Superman — but only if it learns from the best Superman movie — but this is a double-edged Kryptonite knife. On one hand, considering previous criticisms about the DCEU/Henry Cavill's Superman being too dark, revisiting Donner's Superman in of overall theme and tone may restore Superman's status as a box office legend. Thankfully, this actually lines up with what DC Studios' Peter Safran revealed about Superman: Legacy: “It focuses on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing... Superman represents truth, justice, and the American way. He is kind in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned.”
On the other hand, releasing a movie in 2025 in hopes of creating the best live-action Superman will entail much more creativity than just looking to what worked in the past. Studios have been rehashing Superman's origin story for over 45 years, while much of the comic book source material involving the Kryptonian — both in the DC universe and DC Comics' Elseworlds — have largely been ignored by onscreen adaptations. Thankfully, as long-time Superman fans themselves, Gunn and Safran know better than stage another origin story, as Superman: Legacy has been confirmed to skip past all that and dive straight into an established Clark Kent in Metropolis.
It's appropriate for the first official movie in the new DCU to look to Superman's roots in order to deliver the best possible version of the character. At the same time, the DCU's new Superman definitely needs to dig deeper into the comics if it intends to keep one of the most overused superheroes still relevant in 2025. Gunn and Safran pulling off such a delicate balancing act would not only provide a strong foundation on which the entire DCU can grow, it could finally allow devoted viewers to begin moving on from the trauma of losing Henry Cavill's Superman and most of the DCEU. Controversies aside, DC Studios has everything it needs to once again make audiences proud and excited about being Superman fans. Superman: Legacy may even prove to be better than Superman: The Movie. After all, anything is possible in the DCU reboot.
