Superman (1978) John Williams' score

Throughout June, TCM was playing various movies to celebrate the scores
of Hollywood's best-known composers. To honor John Williams, they chose
to play Superman. In the host's comments, it was new information to me
that Jerry Goldsmith had turned the movie down as he was scoring
something else, although you'd think the guy who scored Chinatown over a
weekend after the earlier composer was fired would been able to do it,
just by never sleeping for two months.

It's a great score, but it's always always always annoyed me that you
cannot hear the score properly over the opening titles because of all
the whooshing noises as each title flies by. I've always hated that.
Salkind hired the guy who had just received an Oscar for Jaws, so I
think the audience really wants to hear the music.

Yes, I know the main theme is derivative (of previous works of his own,
plus the usual romantic composers that movie music is supposed to sound
like), but the first four notes of that one major theme in the music
conveys such a sense of joy and optimism, it's just perfect.

One of the pieces I really like is "Welcome to Krypton" (I really have
no idea what it's called), slightly reminiscent of Aaron Copland and
early Charles Ives.

When I first saw the movie, I wasn't entirely happy with Christopher
Reeve's perforance as Adult Clark, but it's grown on me over the years.
The movie has too many farcical elements, but Reeve's scenes, even
in the slapstick moments affecting Clark, are relatively subtle compared
with Gene Hackman's scenes.

Marlon Brando? He got paid a fortune based on his reputation from the
1950s, but this isn't Terry Malloy and it sure as hell ain't Stanley
Kowalski. It's barely even Vito Corleone. I liked Brando better in the
voiceover scenes. He seemed to have made more of an effort. Did he care
about the quality of the movie?

By the mid '70s, wasn't it clear that Brando, based on his past
reputation alone, wasn't bringing in the kind of audience that justified
his salary? For gawd's sake, he also got a percentage of the gross
(which of course he had to sue Salkind for), as if his off-screen
presence meant something in 5/6 of the movie.

I read (no citation) that Marlon Brando contributed the idea of making
the "S" the family crest, instead of the symbol he used on his Superman
costume. Is this true? It made the Krypton scenes especially weird as
everybody ended up wearing a family crest on his uniform. Who walks about
like that?

Glenn Ford's scenes were terrific but all too brief. To give him more
time, we'd have needed less Brando. Or not hired Brando to begin with.

Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor isn't the way I ever pictured Lex Luthor but
he made it work. Of course it would have been better to create an all-new
character for the movie. Why was Valerie Perrine a henchwoman? Yes, she got
to distract Major Nelson in that one scene, but my goodness, Jeannie would
have smited him for putting hands upon Miss Perrine. It's more like, let's
cast her because we love her and give her something to do. Mostly, Hackman
just did reactions to her, not that she was doing much in those scenes.

Is Jackie Cooper's Perry White like anything in the comics? He's
supposed to have a temper but were all those stories of his past new
for the movie script? He was one of the top child stars of the 1930s,
The Champ, Peck's Bad Boy.

I like the movie. The sets were spectacular. The special effects looked
great. I never saw the wires.

But the Superman I grew up with in adaptations was more cynical, if not
the film noir elements of the first season of The Adventures of Superman
starring George Reeves. In the few radio serials I've heard, Bud Collyer
was terrific.