Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1983 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
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We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1983 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1983 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s June 17th, 1983, and we’re off to see Superman III!
Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to numerous episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast.
Superman III
Lets not beat around the bush: Superman III is a bad movie.
That being said, it’s not quite as bad as people have made it out to be over the years.
I haven’t watched this particular film in years because I just remember it being awful, and the ending, in particular, is horrible. I’m not sure how they thought painting an actor silver was going to be menacing enough, but it’s what the filmmakers opted to go with.
In case you don’t remember this one, it’s where Richard Pryor is a computer savant and after stealing a load of money from Lex Luthor wannabe boss, he is tasked with taking down Superman. Instead, he makes what boils down to Red Kryptonite and it turns Superman… well… not so much evil as just annoying? And then, somehow, he has to fight Clark Kent to find himself again and then take down the villains and their supercomputer.
We also get a lot more Lana Lang in this one as Margot Kidder appears in exactly two scenes as Lois Lane.
The film is full of silliness, needless humor, and so on, but at the end of the day, Christopher Reeves is just so good on this role it’s hard to not enjoy it at least a little bit.
I wouldn’t recommend you watch it just to watch it, but if you’ve enjoyed any of the other Reeves’ Superman outings, you need to at least check it out.
1983 Movie Reviews will return on June 24, 2023 with The Survivors, Porky’s II: The Next Day, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and Yellowbeard!
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