The Films of 1983: Superman III

I wrote recently about the summer of 1983 -- the season of my “geek discontent -- in regards to Return of the Jedi.  Exhibit B in that geek discontent is Superman III, directed by Richard Lester and written by David and Leslie Newman.

You can read my reviews of Superman: The Movie and Superman II as preamble to this piece if you haven’t already done so already, but in short, I consider them two of the finest superhero films ever made, even in 2012.

In comparison to these films, Superman III is a colossal fall from grace, and a huge disappointment. 

With director Richard Donner completely out of the picture by now, it’s clear that a fundamental and vital respect for the Man of Steel is missing in action in this under-cooked sequel.  The series’ overarching symbolism (comparing the Kryptonian messiah to Jesus Christ) is gone, as is any sense of scope or majesty.  

Instead, Superman III lurches straight into comedy with lame physical gags and a dithering Richard Pryor in a starring role.

The third time is not the charm for the Superman series, and it has been called “the worst of the Superman visualizations” (Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend, Octavia Books, 1987, page 75).  

And while Sheila Benson at The Los Angeles Times appreciated the film’s sense of humor and noted that director Lester was “at the top of the physical sight gag form,” she also recognized that any sense of “innocence and invention” had been replaced with a “slight edge of nastiness.” (June 17, 1983).

My sense of Superman III, having watched it again recently for this review, is that the film’s humor -- while problematic -- isn’t the only significant hurdle for this sequel.  A much more rudimentary problem involves the nature of the screenplay.  It flat-out doesn’t make sense in terms of Superman’s history and decision-making process regarding a romantic relationship.  Furthermore, the script doesn’t make sense in terms of the capabilities of its central threat, a computer.

A “lighter” take on Superman might not necessarily be a bad thing in principle, but the vetting of that lighter material must be strong so that the “reality” of the character’s world remains intact even during jokes.  Superman III fails that test. 

And yet I do find some elements of the film quite laudable. Annette O’Toole is such a charming screen presence, and she’s great as Lana Lang in Superman III.  Additionally, there’s a compelling scene near the end of the film in which Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent, duke it out for psychological/physical dominance.  Christopher Reeve is terrific playing the dissolute Superman here, and he gives the film the punch it so sorely lacks at other junctures.

Writing for Time, Richard Corliss wrote: “Superman is a role that offers as many pitfalls as opportunities: surrender to parody and the part becomes as two-dimensional as newsprint; emphasize the stalwart heroism and the audience falls asleep. Reeve brings both a light touch and sufficient muscle to Superman. And when he goes bad, he is a sketch of vice triumphant, swaggering toward the vixen Lorelei for a sulfurous kiss.”

To a significant degree, Reeve and O’Toole rescue Superman III from being a total loss. Still, nearly thirty years later, the film still disappoints, especially in comparison with its two high-flying predecessors. Superman III is a low-brow, low-impact, scatter shot  “blockbuster.”

“Never underestimate the power of computers.” 

With Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) leaving the Daily Planet for a vacation, Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) returns to Smallville for a high school class reunion.  There, he catches up with his old flame, Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole) and her young son, who needs a father figure in his life.

While Clark plays family man and finds time, as Superman, to douse a chemical plant fire, a new evil rises in Metropolis.

An unemployed con-man, Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) learns that he has a facility with computer programming and goes to work for unscrupulous tycoon, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn).  When Webster finds Gus embezzling money from his corporation, he puts the genius to work on his tyrannical plans to control the global economy.  Using a U.S. satellite, Webster manipulates the weather to destroy Colombia’s coffee harvest.

Standing in Webster’s way is Superman, but Webster uses Gus to create a deadly variant of Kryptonite that transforms the Man of Steel into a drinking, whoring, carousing “normal guy.”  Superman eventually overcomes this deficit, and duels with his own id in the process. 

Once recovered and whole once more, Superman learns that Webster has built a super computer that can control the world.  With Gorman’s help, Superman fights to stop Webster and the computer.

You know a wise man once said, I think it was Attila the Hun, "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail."

In short order, Superman III dispatches with the Lois Lane/Clark Kent relationship.  Lois gets sent away on vacation, and appears only briefly at the beginning and end of the film.  I fully understand and appreciate the creative decision that a renewed focus on this romance was likely problematic, given how things turned in out in Superman II. 

That film had seen Lois discovering Superman’s secret identity, and the two embarking on a romantic relationship.  Clark even surrendered his Kryptonian heritage to be with her as a normal, mortal man.  But by film’s end, Clark came to understand that, in fact, by loving Lois he was actually jeopardizing her life and abdicating his responsibility to the planet Earth.  It was a sort of Last Temptation of Christ reckoning for the character.  At the end, he promised never to let the President (or us) down again in this regard.

So, certainly, Superman III had to make an important decision regarding Lois and Clark.  Was Clark just to pine away for her throughout the film?  She had lost her memory of their time together, so would some of the lost memory start to come back, to seep into her awareness?  These were questions the film might have answered, all while vetting a new story.

But instead, Superman III takes the easy way out and just sends Lois away -- as though punishing her for something -- and so Clark has a new romance…with Lana Lang.  I guess this qualifies as loving the one you’re with.

The problem, of course, is that Superman’s issue with romance was not purely about Lois Lane, or indeed, about any specific person he romances. 

It’s not about “her.”  It’s about him.

He can’t be Superman and have a “mortal” or “normal” love life.  That was the previous film’s point.  So why on Earth does Clark start romancing Lana Lang here?   If he were going to give romance a second try, wouldn’t it be with Lois, whom he genuinely loves?  Doesn’t he understand that he’s just going to get to the same point with Lana that he did with Lois, and have to make the same difficult choice?

Basically, to see Clark Kent/Superman engage in a romance with another character in Superman III makes no sense given the journey the audience has taken with the Man of Steel.  The last film showed Superman (and viewers) that love was not going to end well for the character.  That’s his cross to bear, I suppose you could say.  But here he is, trying again.  And insultingly, he’s not trying again with the woman he knows really loves him: Lois Lane.

It’s sort of a shitty thing to do, isn’t it?

Frankly, I don’t know that a “romance” needs even be featured as a primary aspect of the third film at all.  We know Lois and Clark work together and are in love.  There are plenty of Superman stories to tell outside the arena of romance.  This movie could have gone much like Superman: The Movie, with witty repartee and hints of deeper affection, all while Clark alone carried the burden of the truth.

Superman III seems to have no memory of the previous film, even though Lester directed (part of) it.

The year 1983 was also the year of the computer in blockbuster films.  A super-computer turns out to be the big threat in Superman III, and it was also the danger in War Games (1983), for instance.  But you get the distinct feeling watching Superman III that nobody really understands or cares how computers actually work. 

For one thing, in 1983, not all computers could communicate with one another directly as they do here, under Gorman’s guidance.  For another, there are instances in the film where people could rely on their judgment (or indeed, their eyes) rather than computer print-outs, but decide instead to blindly obey the machines.

In particular, all the oil tanker captains on the planet follow Webster’s instructions to remain in the middle of the ocean instead of bringing their supplies to port.  Only one captain chooses to disregard the instructions.  This sequence just doesn’t seem likely, given our understanding of human nature, and given the fact that oil tankers don’t possess infinite fuel, or infinite supplies.  Couldn’t a helicopter from the oil company just fly out to the middle of the ocean and deliver the message personally to high-tail it home? 

Similarly, Gus Gorman takes over a U.S. Government satellite that boasts the capability to control the weather, and nobody seems upset, alarmed or even particularly surprised that the government has developed a weapon that could, literally, destroy the Earth.  It’s just accepted as fact.

Oh yeah, you know that weather controlling satellite we have in orbit…let’s attack Colombia with it! 

If the U.S. did possess this awesome power in 1983, don’t you think the Soviet Union would have liked to know about it?  Or might even have had a weather control satellite of its very own as counter-balance? 

It’s just weird and very sloppy how Superman III raises the specter of a weather control weapon, and then acts like it’s no big deal at all that it exists and is used for evil.  It’s almost like the film’s writers feel like this is a technology we actually had in 1983.

The whole movie’s approach to computers is similar to the one we see in the opening credits sequence, wherein a street crossing/traffic signal comes to life, and the “no walk” and “walk” icons start battling each other.  This makes no sense whatsoever, isn’t particularly funny, and reveals that the movie is more interested in dumb easy laughs than in crafting a consistent and believable world. 

The presence of Richard Pryor in Superman III in such a prominent role adds to the problems about easy jokes.  There’s no doubt that Pryor was a great comedian.  But the problem is that in Superman III’s he starring in a PG-rated family film and thus can’t really deploy his edginess to comic effect.  Instead, Superman III gives Pryor dopey gags to execute, like skiing off a skyscraper while wearing a pink tablecloth as a cape, or pretending to be General Patton. 

Give him some credit though: Pryor swaggers through Superman III so confident that he’s funny that you nearly believe him.  Instead of actually being funny, he presents the aura of funny-ness (a corollary, I suppose of truthiness).   I don’t know how many comedians could -- with such weak material -- actually come as close to pulling it off as Pryor does in Superman III in a few notable instances. 

Funny or dire?

Funny or dire?

Still, Pryor’s presence sucks all the air out of the room, and all the menace out of the film.  There’s no feeling in Superman III that the Man of Steel is really in the fight of his life, or particularly challenged by anything.

When you couple the dumb slapstick humor with the fact that there’s no overarching idea or conflict in Superman III, the film’s narrative unravels.   It becomes a series of loosely connected incidents.  

Now we’re at Clark’s class reunion.  Now there’s a hurricane in Colombia.  Now there’s a chemical fire at a factory outside of Smallville.  Now there’s a sentient super-computer, and so on.

I should add, this kind of loosely-structured approach to narrative can work in a superhero film if there’s some ambitious, consistent overall vision for the world itself.  Look at Tim Burton’s  Batman (1989) by point of comparison.  In high school, one of my friends correctly pegged it as “pretty darn plot-less,”and yet the movie hangs together brilliantly because of the overarching vision of Gotham City and the thematic connection between Batman and The Joker.  It was “I Made You/You Made Me/Gotham made Both of Us,” essentially. And it worked like gangbusters.

Superman III possesses no such dramatic hook on which to rely, or build a compelling story.  It’s just a bunch of gags strung together, along with a nice but uninspiring romance between Clark and Lana.

It’s not a surprise, perhaps, that every now and then one gag works just fine in the film.  In Superman III, the gag that works involves Superman going “bad” for a time.  His blue suit gets dirty (or soiled), he grows stubble on that handsome face of his, and starts making global mischief.  Reeve is a delight in these scenes, giving us Superman…the horn dog alcoholic.  The idea is good, because it concerns Superman’s very character. 

What if Superman didn’t want to be, essentially, a messiah? What if he just was out to…feel good?  When you are the most powerful man on the planet, that becomes a problem, doesn’t it?

But again, scratch the surface a little, and even this idea doesn’t work all that well in terms of the overall plot specifics.  You tell me that Superman going bad wouldn’t be a global story of tremendous importance?  And that Lois Lane -- the one reporter who interviewed Superman -- wouldn’t race back from vacation to find out what was happening with him?  Again, it just doesn’t seem true to Superman’s world or history.

Still, even without super powers, we all have “sides” of ourselves that we must confront and vanquish.  I like the literal idea here, of Superman and Clark -- a split-personality -- physically duking it out for dominance.  It feels like an appropriately Superman-styled scene, even if it seems to need some more explicit connection to the narrative. 

All superheroes are in some sense men divided against themselves, but this idea doesn’t get any play in Superman III except after Superman’s bad Kryptonite trip.  If this idea had been a leitmotif throughout, perhaps it would have worked a lot better. Still, no need to deny it…it’s a high-point of Superman III.

Superman goes dark...

...and must confront himself.

The gravest problem with Superman III is that its makers mistake a comic-book world for a cartoon world.  You see that misunderstanding in the opening slapstick sequence, wherein we get a blind Mr. Magoo character, a man with an over-turned paint-can on his head, a mime, and even a pie in the face for one unlucky Metropolis denizen.  These aren’t comic-book ideas; they are cartoon ones. 

And if you reduce Superman’s world to a cartoon, then all of his travails and all of his struggles ultimately don’t matter.  A cartoon resolution will save the day, and in cartoons, anything can happen.  By contrast, comic-book stories involve history and continuity, and a strong sense of internal logic.  Those are all qualities missing from this film.

Blind men, mimes and the destruction of fine art: Comic book world or cartoon world?

A paint bucket on the head: Comic book world or cartoon world?

Stop and Go at war: Comic book world or cartoon world?

And a pie in the face: Comic book world or cartoon world?

The first two Superman films are almost like cinematic religious experiences in terms of symbolism and approach.  The third Superman film is like a bad Saturday morning cartoon with stupid pratfalls, dumb jokes, and gags that don’t work.

In the film, Robert Vaughn’s (dull) villain Ross Webster informs Gus Gorman that he would go down in history as “the Man who Killed Superman,” and that comment may be as close to any sense of reality or truth as this sequel ever gets.

You’ll believe a man can cry…

Cult Movie Review: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

If you’re a fan of Superman at the movies, you’ve probably played this parlor game before.  Which sequel to Superman: The Movie (1978) is worse: Superman III (1983) or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)?

There’s a case to be made for either of them, alas.

Superman III at least looks great in terms of special effects and camera-work, even if the tone is pure cartoon rather than authentic comic-book.

Oppositely, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace seems to have been assembled in a tearing hurry, with terrible special effects and an incoherent editing style.  Yet -- in many respects -- Sidney J. Furie’s The Quest for Peace attempts to re-capture the serious, heart-felt tone of the first two films in the series.

So, it’s probably a draw.  Is it better to watch a well-presented tonal disaster, or a terribly-visualized return to sincerity?

Pick your poison. 

Certainly, critics had very little encouraging to say about this fourth entry in the canon.  Films in Review’s Michael Scheinfeld called Superman IV “an embarrassment” (October 1987, page 494), and Anne Billson at Monthly Film Bulletin rightly opined that the film suffered from “a fatal lack of narrative structure, degenerating into a series of virtually disconnected sketches” (September 1987, page 283).  At The New York Times, Janet Maslin acknowledged the film’s general sloppiness and threadbare qualities, while simultaneously observing (hopefully...) that there was yet life left in the film series.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peaceis so ham-handedly edited and vetted that it is indeed difficult to pinpoint the good underneath the bad.  Yet it is there -- in small doses -- if you are willing to look closely. 

For instance, just as the original Donner film sought to speak trenchantly to its time (a corruption-weary, post-Watergate America), Superman IV attempts to forge meaning  by commenting on the unfortunate shift in the American media towards sensationalistic journalism, the global nuclear arms race, and even the rise in America of AIDS. 

All of these ideas are significant ones that speak directly to the Zeitgeist and social context of 1987, and yet they are not presented in a fashion that, finally, renders the film’s commentary particularly meaningful.  Superman IV had forty-five minutes cut from its running time for theatrical release, and that dramatic shortening of the material means that the moments of possible high-impact instead feel rushed and confusing.  We don’t see any one theme truly explored well.  Instead, everything feels like a first-draft sketch. Like a half-painted work of art.

The Quest for Peaceworks best today for the (final) lesson the story teaches Superman.  By film’s end, Kal-El has come to a powerful reckoning. He can guide humanity by example (by being a paragon of virtue), but he can’t actually take the reins away from man, and try to control the direction of life on Earth himself.  That’s the kernel of a great and important Superman story, but Quest for Peace is not the right vehicle to exploit that particular narrative.  It seems too cheap-jack, too disjointed, and too rambling to succeed, despite another great performance by Christopher Reeve as Superman.

Thus Superman IV is a lost opportunity.  The film that should have set the Superman film series back on course is instead the film that hammers the final nail in the movie franchise’s coffin.   Consequently, another film about the Man of Steel was not released until almost twenty-years after this disaster, 2006’s Superman Returns.

“Nobody wants war. I just want to keep the threat alive.”

It is a time of difficult change in Clark Kent’s (Christopher Reeve) life.  He sells the family farm in Smallville after the death of his mother, and retrieves a Kryptonian power module from the barn there.  And at the same time in Metropolis, the Daily Planet is purchased by media mogul and huckster David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker).

Meanwhile, a failed international summit pushes the United States and Soviet Union into growing their nuclear missile arsenals, an act of irresponsible brinksmanship that causes a worried boy, Jeremy (Damian McLawhorn) to write Superman a letter and ask him to save the planet.

Superman considers the request, and after consulting with a databank of Krypton’s Elders in his Fortress of Solitude, decides to act.  Superman speaks to the United Nations assembly and announces he will rid the Earth of all nuclear weapons.  He then proceeds to gather the weapons up and hurl them into the sun.

Unfortunately, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) has escaped from prison, and sees an opportunity.  He creates a villain called Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) who can both challenge Superman and re-ignite the arms race. 

Superman and Nuclear Man soon clash over Metropolis and around the world, but Nuclear Man grievously injures Superman with a scratch to the neck, a scratch that causes the Man of Steel to slowly waste away.  His hair whitened, his body weakened, he stands to die unless Lois, and the Kryptonian power module can revive him.

“I've always considered you the Dutch Elm disease in my family tree”. 

I have never been one of those reviewers who feel that special effects make or break a film.  With the right presentation, a film can overcome weak visual effects and still fly high.  However, in the case of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), weak special effects undeniably play a role in the film’s dramatic failure. 

As a property, the Superman mythos is very much bound to special effects, to critical visuals like flight, x-ray vision, heat-vision, freeze-breath and more.  To believe in Superman, we must believe, well, that a man can fly.  Donner understood this when he made the first Superman movie, but in large part the lesson appears to have been forgotten here.

Made on the cheap (its budget cut from 37 million to 17 million…), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace just never leaps over the crucial threshold of believability; not in a single bound, not ever.   The visual effects look so cheap and unconvincing that it is actually hard to pay attention to the plot.  There are moments in the sequel, for instance, when we see the two wires lifting Superman up off the ground, and then horrifyingly inept moments when he focuses his eyes to shoot heat beams…and nothing comes out.  It’s…inept on a level almost unimaginable , especially for what had been an A-level franchise just a few years earlier.

One of the film’s most cringe-inducing moments occurs at the Great Wall of China.  Nuclear Man blows up huge chunks of the wall, and bricks fly everywhere. Then Superman shows up and instead of using super-speed to re-assemble the wall, uses some kind of lame “brick-o-vision” to put it back together.  It’s just awful.  It relies on a power Superman doesn’t have; and it’s utterly ridiculous

It’s not just the special effects that are terrible in Superman IV, either.  Crucially, it’s the film’s editing too.  One horrible moment set on the moon (the same one that reveals the wires holding up Superman…) also reveals that the outer space backdrop is actually a black curtain.  These drapes are visible for long stretches of time, and thus totally destroy the illusion that this scene is set anywhere but a studio stage. 

Again, the level of sheer technical incompetence is breathtaking.

Glorious Brick-O-Vision (and his curl is on the wrong side.)

They forgot to add the special effects for his eye beams...

Look closely at the moon-drapes in the background.

In a similar vein, almost every battle sequence and every flight sequence in this sequel is edited in such a slipshod fashion that there’s no comprehensible sense of location, geography, or space.  Lois and Superman go flying together early in the film, and cross hugely different landscapes and terrains over a matter of mere seconds, sometimes literally shot-to-shot, frame-to-frame. One minute, they’re flying over Buffalo herds on the Great Plains, the next they are in San Francisco.

There’s absolutely no connecting or bridging material here to remotely suggest time and distance.   Our heroes would have to be flying not only fast, but at supersonic speeds to cross such a variety of terrain so quickly.  The same problem scuttles the film’s frequent outer space sequences.  We see Superman and Nuclear Man fly into space above Earth, but instead of being in Earth orbit, they are instantaneously thousands of miles away and our planet is only a small sphere.  It’s absolutely jarring.

From the mountains...

...To the prairies...

...To the oceans...

..And back to Metropolis.  All Ii six or seven shots.

Perhaps these moments would have been passable in a film that seemed to take its time in terms of the major plot points and key developments.  Instead, the movie just powers right through crucial events, like Superman’s life-threatening illness, and the result is that nothing at all in the film carries any sense of impact or weight.  Superman gets scratched, Superman gets sick, Superman uses his Kryptonian power crystal to get better.  End of story.

There’s no sense of the stakes here -- either emotional or global -- and no sense of why this story matters in Superman’s life.  Judging by the atrocious manner in which the film is cut, it seems that not enough footage was shot in the first place to make the film remotely coherent.  That may not be true -- because of the significant cuts in running time -- but that’s exactly how it plays.  Honestly, Superman IV looks like it was under-shot by about forty percent.  Transitions are largely missing, and the movie just bounces from one scene to the next with little rhyme or reason.

And this is a true shame, because the script, actually, isn’t entirely bad.  For instance, the Warfield character is very obviously a Rupert Murdoch parody, and a good one.  Murdoch, of course, is the media mogul behind Fox News, and he was already on ascent in the mid-1980s.  In fact, he had just purchased the New York Post in 1984.  We have now seen precisely what decades of misinformation, sensationalism and jaundiced coverage can do to a nation’s civil discourse, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace -- the canary in the coal mine, so-to-speak -- picked up on the negative impact of the trend relatively early, in 1987. 

At the same time, the film speaks to the arms race of the day, and the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik Summit.  It even handles the idea with a modicum of cleverness.  In two instances, we see heads of state on TV discussing the failed summit.  One is from Russia, one from America, but they use the exact same words to describe the failure to reach an agreement on missiles; a fact that reminds the audience of the common humanity lurking beneath differences of ideology.  Both sides want to protect themselves; both sides don’t want to back down first.  Somebody has to step up first and make a bold move.  That’s what Superman does here.  He leads by example.

The notion of the physically robust, athletic and beautiful Superman suddenly falling gravely and incurably ill and hiding alone in his home from the eyes of the world also seems to reference the AIDS plague.   But again, before any solid points can be made about the issue, the film jumps to the next scene. 

Despite such problems, I cannot bring myself to entirely dismiss or hate this Superman film.  There are moments worth remembering.  For instance, the script supplies Superman with a great speech about how he sees Earth.   He says “There will be peace when the people of the world, want it so badly, that their governments will have no choice but to give it to them. I just wish you could all see the Earth the way that I see it. Because when you really look at it, it's just one world.”  This is a great message, and one that is very believable considering Superman’s unique skill-set and viewpoint.

Even Lois Lane is re-established relatively well here. When she visits the sick Clark, for example, she seems to be talking directly to Superman, and Lois contextualizes beautifully her feelings about the Man of Steel: “I'd want to tell him that I cherished the time we spent together, and I never expected anything from him. Even if I only saw him for a few moments, it made me happy. And I'd want to tell him that I love him and that I'll always love him. And no matter what happens on this world, I know he tried his best to help us.”

If the rest of the film had lived up to these (brief) moments in terms of character and heart, I’d be writing a very, very different review today.  Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, while perhaps not the “Dutch Elm disease” of the franchise family tree, is nonetheless a grave disappointment and a deeply, tragically flawed film. 

Movie Trailer: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Monthly Wallpaper - April 2012: Marlon Brando

In celebration of his 88th birthday this month, Movie Dearest dedicates April's Calendar Wallpaper to one of the greatest actors of the silver screen, Marlon Brando.

Featuring his Academy Award-winning performances as Terry Malloy and Vito Corleone, as well as such other iconic roles as Mark Antony, Fletcher Christian, Jor-El, Stanley Kowalski and Sky Masterson, this tribute surely is an offer you can't refuse.

Just click on the picture above to enlarge it to its 1024 x 768 size, then right click your mouse and select "Set as Background", and you're all set. If you want, you can also save it to your computer and set it up from there, or modify the size in your own photo-editing program if needed.

Six Flags Great Adventure Trip Report

After a summer full of kiddie parks and beach boardwalks, it was nice to finally be able to hit up a genuine, full-fledged grown-up amusement park. So Monday, my previously mentioned good buddy Joey Carwash and I made the three hour journey into the wilds of New Jersey to visit Six Flags Great Adventure, one of the earlier Six Flags parks. Joey and I had actually both been to the park together back in 1994 on a college trip but either of us had much memory of the park. The park is pretty big, filled with first class rides and some standard carnival style rides. There are some kiddie rides sprinkled throughout.



The themeing in nice although a little random. There are nine sections (or lands) at Great Adventure which is actually three more than the Six Flags template necessitates. Some of the sections are rich in detail such as a Spanish/Mexican theme region called Plaza Del Carnaval and the standard wild, wild west territory called Frontier Adventures. Movietown is supposed to be a tribute to New Jersey's film making roots - but at this point is mostly just a tribute to Batman. Other sections of the park like Fantasy Forest and Boardwalk just blend in with the rest of the park.



Great Adventure is spacious and clean. However, there are large sections throughout the park where abandoned or repurposed structures take up space physically and visually. Near the front of the park sits many unused hanger style buildings that once supported the ride and theme of an airplane based flight simulator. Now the buildings sit there looking like exposed backstage areas of the park. The airfield theme is gone and the buildings look tacky and out of place. The same can be said for several large theatrical venues around the park that are still clearly visible but yet completely unused.



But let's talk about fun! The day we visited the forecast called for rain and thunderstorms throughout the day. When we arrived at the park around 10:30, it was raining pretty heavily. After a great breakfast at nearby Java Moon Cafe, the rain had downgraded to a light sprinkle. We figured the crowds would stay away and at the least we could hit all the big rides pretty quick. So, we paid the insane TWENTY BUCKS for parking (Six Flags should honestly be ashamed of themselves) and got a great parking spot in Daffy Duck section 2. As we entered the park, everything was running except for two of the bigger coasters (which later opened.) As expected, the park was near empty and we didn't wait at all for a single ride all day. Most of the rides were sitting in the station waiting for us. Score!



The main reason for making the trek up to New Jersey instead of just visiting the closer Six Flags park in Maryland was Great Adventure's newest ride: Green Lantern. Joey Carwash is a HUGE Green Lantern fan going back long before the movie ever came out. I was all for making a road trip just to go pay homage to one of my buddy's favorite childhood icons. After all, I just spent a week camping with Yogi Bear. Joey was super excited with all the little touches added to the ride area. There's a giant lantern in the plaza entrance before the ride. The queue area is lined with over sized comic strips telling the origin story of Green Lantern. You'd like to think the ride creators really were passionate about the Green Lantern character but it was more probably based on pushing the new movie.



The Green Lantern coaster is an awesome ride! Standing 15 stories high, the rides drops it's standing passengers 144 ft. at 63 MPH. There are 5 inversions along the track, although to me it felt like there were about 11. I've never been on a stand-up coaster before. As the train left the station I thought to myself, "This isn't any different than sitting down." Once we got to the top of the ride and I was standing 15 stories in the air...yeah, I could tell the difference. The first drop is super awesome followed by a very long ride of very intense twists and turns. When the ride was over I was filled with adrenaline. That was easily the biggest, baddest coaster I'd ever conquered. It felt great. Joey, of course, was an immediate fan and couldn't wait to ride again.



We next took on Rolling Thunder, the parks classic out-and-back woodie. This is a great ride, filled with ups and downs and not much else. A classic roller coaster experience from start to finish. Next to Rolling Thunder is El Toro, a beautiful looking dark wood coaster with a 176 ft. drop at 76 degrees, sending you into speeds of up to 70 MPH. This ride looked awesome but unfortunately I was unable to ride. The safety restraint was a single person lap bar that needed to come back very far. I had no problem getting the bar to click into lock, but they needed to have the bar go back fairly far and I wasn't able to quite make it. Joey felt uncomfortable in his seat, but he said it was one hell of a ride! I'm not sure why I'm able to stand 15 stories in the air, but I can't sit in a car for a wooden coaster. Oh well!



However, I was able to hop right onto Bizarro, a huge twisting mess of track with seven inversions. This was my first time on a floorless coaster, which isn't really scary as much as just an extra element of fun. It was another intense ride, filled with just about every surprise a roller coaster can throw at you. Good times! I had seen this ride's sister model at Six Flags New England on Bert The Conqueror a while ago and I had been eager to ride it ever since. Well worth the wait!



In the Movietown section of the park there are two Batman coasters. Batman The Ride is a suspended looping coaster. It's nice that Six Flags offers a test seat in front of their coasters for larger rides to see if the restraining system will work for them. At Batman there is also a sign to let riders know that people with a 52' or greater chest may not be able to ride. I take a 52' sports coat and darned if the little seat belt was only a fraction of an inch from being able to click into the shoulder harness. No big loss - I was already starting to feel a little queasy from all the tossing and turning of the day so I checked out a gift shop while Joey hopped on the ride. His report afterward was that the ride is way too brief.



Batman The Ride was built between the second and third Batman movie in the 90's. Across from it is the newer Dark Knight Coaster based on the current string of Batmam films. With The Dark Knight, Six Flags really makes a stab at trying to create a story-driven experience similar to a Disney Parks attraction. Guests enter a Gotham City subway station where TV's air the news while people wait for their train. While D.A. Harvey Dent is giving a press conference on the news, The Joker breaks in and causes havoc. Suddenly everyone is hurried out of the room into some dark corridors beneath Gotham where you board a Gotham City Subway Car. What follows is a Wild Mouse Coaster in the dark with several animated scenes and special effects set out along the track. Again, this was a short ride and the overall effect doesn't make much sense, but it was still a neat attempt to do something a little different. I'm sure it would have been a big hit with my kids!



My favorite ride in the park had to be Nitro...

Nitro has no gimmicks. You sit in a seat, in a train on a track, there are no loops. There is just one big awesome 215 ft. drop followed by 2 minutes of continually breathtaking drops. Nitro is just pure exhilarating fun without all the bumps, twists and stomach turning elements of many other coasters. Loved it! We rode it twice throughout the day and they were both awesome rides!

In addition to a Road Runner kiddie coaster, the park has three other smaller coasters. Runaway Mine Train is a classic Six Flags staple, Blackbeard's Lost Treasure Train is an odd family-style steel coaster with the longest ride train I've even seen. It's kinda fast and curvy and very low to the ground. Skull Mountain is a dark twisty steel coaster in a dark skull shaped mountain. The ride is anti-climatic considering the themeing and build up before the ride.

There's a unique attraction called Houdini's Great Escape which consists of two parts. The first part, which is basically a preshow, is styled after the preshow of Disney's Haunted Mansion. Guests stand in a dark room while some bells and whistles go off trying to build up your anticipation for something scary that never really happens. The effect may have worked better had the volume been turned up. Next guests are moved into a second room where they have a seat and eventually the room starts to spin around you while you stay perfectly seated. It's a modern update on the classic Haunted Swing style ride...still enjoyed at Dutch Wonderland's Wonder House. We also rode their very old Saw Mill Log Flume and Congo Rapids white water ride.

The rain held off for most of the day, and we only had a brief little downpour which didn't bother us as we were already under cover enjoying a hamburger and fries. By the end of the night, the remaining two coasters had finally opened.

Superman - Ultimate Flight is possibly the coolest of all the superhero themed rides at any of these Six Flags parks. For this ride gives you the sensation of flying like Superman. It's a roller coaster...a big roller coaster at that. The seats are suspended from the track without a floor underneath your feet. The real kicker is right before the ride starts the seats raise up at an angle so that you are facing the ground. You then leave the station and proceed up the chain lift looking straight down at the Earth you are no longer standing on. I have to admit when the seats first locked into their ride position - I freaked. I would have gotten off if given the chance but I wasn't given that opportunity and I'm glad I wasn't. When the train lets go of the chain you are treated to a 100 ft. drop - head first, you then zoom up from the ground and travel through over a track that takes you on an experience very similar to what Clark Kent must feel like flying through the skyscrapers of Metropolis. It is a truly awesome experience! I love when theme park attractions can really tap into the property they are based on. The red, white and yellow color scheme of the coaster is nice. The comic book graphics all over the queue and loading station are also a nice touch. But experiencing the feeling of flying like Superman - something everyone has dreamed about is a really cool feat to pull off. My only complaint with the presentation of the ride was the generic FM radio music blaring over the speakers throughout the attraction. The familiar orchestration of John Williams' Superman The Movie theme would have been the ultimate touch to top off this attraction.

We rode Superman late in the evening. After a day of nothing but pretty big coasters, I was feeling a bit beat up and woozy. I didn't want to be a party pooper so we took Green Lantern for another spin almost immediately after Superman. (We spent at least a good 20 minutes in the Superman gift shop.) That second ride on GL did it for me. I felt like crap after re-riding that super intense roller coaster. I could have easily thrown up if years of drinking hadn't conditioned me to better control such an urge.

After much deliberation, I decided to sit out the evening's final roller coaster, Kingda Ka. As the tallest coaster in the world and fastest in North America I really wanted to conquer this ride but my stomach and my heart were telling me it wasn't a good idea. I decided to finally play my "recently had a heart attack" card and grab a seat on a nearby bench and let Joey hit this one up alone. I really wanted to ride it...honestly! But I think I made the right decision. I was not feeling well at all. I even passed up the opportunity to drink a few beers earlier in the day! Joey said the ride was just about the most awesome he's ever been on and at 456 feet high and 128 MPH I'm sure it was. Next time I'm at a park I'm going to try and get on their big one first and work my way backwards.Six Flags Great Adventure is a good park with an impressive collection of first rate roller coasters. Nice touches: Six Flags licences the Warner Bros. stable of characters which include the Looney Tunes and DC Comic Book characters. The park put these cartoons to good use as park mascots. The Super Hero attractions are full of nerdy detail for fans of the properties. We even found a fake phone booth waiting for Clark Kent near a Super Hero merchandise store. The Looney Tunes are well represented with two sections of the park devoted to kiddie rides featuring Bugs and the gang. There's plenty of stuff to buy all over the park with Superman, Batman, Bugs and Daffy all over them. Neither of these sets of toons are high on my list of interests but Joey Carwash dropped over $100 on Green Lantern and Batman paraphernalia.

The park was clean, spacious and well maintained. Some of the non-Superhero roller coasters had their own theme music playing in the station which was nice. You can even tell that employees are told to interact nicely with guests, except for the security guard in the parking lot who told us, "You picked a crappy day to come to the park!" "Thank you sir!"

My complaints: 1) $20 bucks for parking is legally considered rape in most states. Not a pleasant way to start off a day. 2) Too much crappy FM music blasting throughout the park. If you're going to go to the trouble of visually themeing areas of the park, the music should support your theme. Hearing Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson doesn't drive home the illusion that I'm in Adventure Seaport. 3) Why is there a therapeutic massage parlor smack in the middle of the park? It looks like the kind of place you go for "special services" I'm not sure why that would be in a theme park next to a store that sells Bugs Bunny t-shirts. 4) Not a single XXXL shirt sold anywhere in the park. It's New Jersey, I've heard they do have fat people there! 5) Mr. Six (the dancing old guy from their commercials) is creepy and nobody really likes him. Be gone with him!

Can't wait to go back.