Kevin Klehr 🏳️🌈<p>WARNING: NERDY FILM BUFF POST AHEAD</p><p>Superman II (with Christopher Reeves in the title role) was a wonderful film to watch in the cinema when I was a teen. It contained a lot of comedy as this was an established way to present a superhero story to a sophisticated early 80s audience. In the 60s the producer of Batman defied the TV studio and turned his version into satire when he heard about university students rediscovering and laughing at the 1940s film serial series. Of course, now the trend for these films is to make them darker, or less sophisticated.</p><p>Americans had a shortened version of Superman II in their cinemas as long movies weren't in vogue at the time there. So, many comedic moments and lines were cut without affecting the plot. They never saw the montage of Japanese tourists taking photos at the start of the Niagara Falls scene, or a NASA employee turning to his colleagues asking "Which one of you guys has been using the hair dryer again?" when they lose their visual feed from the moon.</p><p>One of my husband's ABC bosses worked at Channel 10 and commented how beautiful the 70mm print looked when they transferred to video for broadcast - obviously pan and scanning for 4:3 and not letterboxing it. Channel 10 was the last to screen the original international version. The VHS rental release and later screenings on Channel 9 were the American version.<br> <br>The international version is only available because of the painstaking work of superfans who've collected TV broadcasts from other fans around the world. This version is available here - <a href="https://archive.org/details/vts-01-1-merge-2/VTS_01_1_Merge(2).mp4" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">archive.org/details/vts-01-1-m</span><span class="invisible">erge-2/VTS_01_1_Merge(2).mp4</span></a></p><p>I don't believe Warner Brothers has the international cut of this film or Superman: The Movie. I can't say for sure, but as they've never released these on VHS, DVD or BluRay, it's a fair assumption. Instead they continually promote the Richard Donner cut.</p><p>I'm also annoyed with Warner Bros for further cutting the versions they have. I recently updated my HD BluRay of Superman: The Movie with a 4K version. The dialogue between young Lois Lane and her mother when Lois spots teenage Clark Kent outrunning the train they are on, is gone. You see them briefly, but never hear them talk.</p><p>It's sad when studios do stuff like this instead of honouring a movie everyone fell in love with. The versions we are stuck with of these two films lack so much warmth and humour due to the speedy telling of the story. And newer audiences miss out on what all the fuss was about.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/superman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>superman</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/superman2" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>superman2</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/movies" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>movies</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/film" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>film</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/cinema" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cinema</span></a></p>