"Superman, The Movie": The 30th Anniversary

It's inconceivable that "Superman, The Movie" premiered in theaters 30 years ago this past Monday. This was to be the huge Christmas release of 1978, and I was SO THERE! At that time I wasn't attending opening night shows because I wanted to avoid the crowds. It wasn't until I went to see "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980 that I realized what i was missing. But I digress...

As the lights dimmed and the curtain parted at the Fox Colonie Theater in Albany, N.Y. I was suddenly bombarded by one of the most dazzling and stirring movie opening credit sequences of all time! For the next two hours I travelled from the Planet Krypton to a small farm town in the midwest to the busy streets of a major metropolitan city in a way I had never experienced before. It was real and down to Earth, yet fantastic and amazing. All with John Williams powerful score, Geoffrey Unsworth's rich and beautiful cinematography, and Richard Donner's pitch perfect direction.

As a tall, bespeckled Christopher Reeve came on screen, you witnessed him craft a wonderfully bumbling Clark Kent into a Man Of Steel whose presence was so uniquely confident and so very natural...the likes of which had never existed in the comics or on television before. Because, of course, this was THE MOVIE.

And THE MOVIE came with a price tag. Movie tickets specifically went up fifty cents with the release of this film. I remember that very specifically. Now we would have to pay a whole $4.00 to get in! OH MY GOD! It had been a $3.50 admission for a long time too.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to watch "Superman, The Movie" all this week, which is a crime. I do plan to watch it either tonight or this weekend in all it's glory...and remember what it was like the first time I saw it all those years ago.

And by the way, this was always my favorite action sequence.

And once again, when I watch it in my home theater, the volume will be pushed up (as the hair on my arms will raise) to fully envelope me in the sights and sounds of Superman to the rescue!!!