Rating: ***The final screening of the Hot Docs Festival was a very last minute addition, so last minute in was just announced mere days before the start of the festival. Yet somehow, the word got out and the ticket holders line outside the Isabel Badar theatre on the U of T campus was all the way down and around the block on Sunday evening.
Look Up In The Sky! is set up like an A & E Biography; a chronological recounting of the DC Comics character often considered the first superhero. The film was directed by renowned documentarian Kevin Burns and co-produced by Bryan Singer, the director of June's Superman Returns. Culled together from meticulous research into the Man of Steel's nearly 70 year history, Burns and Singer include footage from, quite literally, all of Superman's various media incarnations-from comics, movies, cartoons, TV series and musicals. Any one even remotely connected to Supes gets an interview as well. Actor Kevin Spacey, who plays Lex Luthor in the new film, narrates.
We start off in 1930s Cleveland, where two friends named Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel create a comic strip periodical called Science Fiction. In 1933, they author a story called “Reign of the Superman”, inspired by the Neitzschean notion of the superior man. This “Superman” has bald, telepathic and a villain. Almost overnight, Shuster and Seigel re-imagined the character as an alien refugee from a doomed planet, who comes to Earth and becomes a hero that protects the people. It took the pair five years to find any interest in publishing the adventures of a strongman in tights; but when National Allied Publicity took a chance on the character for the first issue of it's new book, Action Comics, it wasn't long before Superman had become icon.
The movie chronicles the various changes to the character and his mythology. After the comic premiere of Superman, it wasn't long before movie serials and radio adventures of the character were being made. Superman became a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and was a feature attraction at the 1940 World's Fair. In the 50s, George Reeves was the Man of Steel in a weekly TV series called The Adventures Of Superman, the film discusses Reeves role in shaping the archetypal Superman, and Reeves' mysterious suicide that ended the show's run.
Of course, much time was lent to the Richard Donner movie starring Christopher Reeve and all the difficulties in getting that it made. Burns' then focuses on the decreasing quality of the film's sequels, which coincided with a slump in comic sales. We see Superman return to the lime light as the comic book Lois and Clark get married and the TV Lois & Clark begin their weekly adventures.
The film wraps up with a surprisingly lengthy look at the WB series Smallville, and Superman's new resonance in a post-9/11 world. Which, of course, leads into a series of clips and discussion about the forthcoming release of Superman Returns.
Before seeing this movie I thought my knowledge of all things Superman was pretty good, but some of the things that Singer and Burns had dug up made me feel no better than a lay man. For example, it was the radio show that renamed the Daily Planet and Perry White, made Jimmy Olsen a member of the main cast and introduced the concept of kryptonite.
The crowd was in stitches over two, little seen, classic clips in particular. The first was a little seen pilot from the 60s called Superpup; which featured little people in puppet-like dog heads performing a Superman tale. So instead of Clark Kent-you get Bark Kent, and Lois Lane as a poodle. Superpup was made shortly after the death of George Reeves as a way to capitalize on the character's popularity with children; TV programmers wisely decided that this was not the best way to do that, and it's been rarely seen since.
Another favourite clip from the movie was footage of the ABC production of a Superman musical from 1975. Believe it or not, it was actually based on a Broadway play from the 60s, and while it was directed by Hal Prince, who won a Tony for Fiddler on the Roof, it closed after 128 shows. The musical was resurrected for TV in '75 and David Wilson was cast as Superman and Leslie Ann Warren played Lois. If you've ever seen musical spoofs on The Simpsons like “Kickin' It: the Story of the Betty Ford Center” or “Stop the Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off”, then you have some vague idea about how well this Superman musical was pulled off.
There are a lot of great interviews in the film; from the comic creators to art historians to cast members of the various Superman media and even observant fans like Mark Hammill and Gene Simmons. They all offer great insight and show a deep affection for the character, his story and his legacy. They offer great anecdotes about their experiences, but I think a couple stood out more than others.
One story from 1950's Lois Lane Noel Neill was about how she was never asked to take part in any of the Superman breakfast cereal commercials because advertisers thought it'd be inappropriate for Lois and Clark to be seen eating breakfast together. (You can see where they were going with that.) These same advertisers however had no problem with Clark and Jimmy eating breakfast together though. The audience drew their own conclusions from there.
The other interview that struck me was Jon Peters, the producer who has been trying to resurrect Superman's big screen adventures since the mid-90s. Peters has often be justly vilified for some of his ideas like changing the colour of Superman's costume to black and trying generally rearranging the Superman mythos to fit a more cynical, post-90s sensibility. Peters, in his interview, praised Singer for his traditionalist slant and more or less said that he was wrong about the direction he tried to take.
Whether you're a Superman fanatic, or an interested neophyte who only knows about Superman lore from a few scattered episodes of Superfriends, there's a lot for everyone to enjoy in Look Up In the Sky! It reminded me a lot of the Star Wars documentary Empire of Dreams. Although you may not see it for awhile (the Toronto audience was the first to get a look-see), I have a feeling that this is going to turn up as a special feature on some future Superman Returns DVD. This film has really wet my appetite for Superman again.
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