Notes/1980/Superman II
Analysis of "Superman II 2.46: The Blowdown"
Quotes below are from Danny Horn’s blog post, “Superman II 2.46: The Blowdown” on "Superheroes Every Day", published March 29, 2022.
Commentary and analysis below each quote are my own.
Preface
It’s the ultimate battle between good and evil, or if not quite that, then at least the ultimate battle between cheerful and cranky. I don’t know if anybody’s in the market for one of those, but here it is happening anyway.
I interpret this as blogger Danny opening with a warning to readers that he's about to unleash his cranky take on director Richard Lester's cheerful shenanigans in the much beloved sequel "Superman II", specifically for the scene where the supervillians blow the civilians of Metropolis. Why cranky? Well anyone who criticizes a scene because of its comedy must be motivated by crankiness. "Lighten up, it's just a movie" is the imagined response from readership.
Critique #1: The Scene Runs Too Long
blowing people down the street for far longer than you would ever expect
The scene is just too darn long.
Critique #2: The Scene’s Tone Undermines the Stakes
This celebration of exhalation is played almost entirely as comedy. The victims’ reactions are exaggerated and often inappropriate, even for movie New Yorkers. The crowd has been ridiculously blasé about the perils of remaining in the combat zone, continuing to gawk and goggle as the skyscrapers fall to pieces around them, but now — fully eight minutes after the start of hostilities on the street where they’re standing — residents are still eating ice cream, buying fried chicken and making personal phone calls. It is a triumph of shtick over sense, and it lasts approximately forever. I think this scene may be its own unique genre; I can’t think of a single thing in the history of cinema that’s even remotely like this.
Here, Danny zeroes in on the disconnect between what’s happening (a city under attack by godlike beings) and how it’s portrayed (as broad, absurd comedy). Words like “exaggerated,” “inappropriate,” and “triumph of shtick over sense” make it clear: the humor isn't just misplaced—it's actively damaging to the scene's credibility.
The line “even for movie New Yorkers” underlines how far outside genre norms the reactions fall. And “approximately forever” returns to the pacing critique, now compounded by tonal mismatch.
The comedy isn’t enhancing tension, it’s replacing it, and thereby hollowing out any real sense of danger or consequence.
Critique #3: The Scene Is Not Story-Driven
None of this is in the script, by the way
Danny is flagging that this isn’t a moment growing out of character or plot necessity—it’s Lester filling time, satisfying contractual obligations to be credited as director.
This scene exists not to serve the film’s internal logic but to satisfy external requirements and Lester’s own comedic sensibilities.
That’s why this scene goes on for two minutes, far beyond its useful lifespan. When you spend three days in enjoyable creative collaboration with a film crew and a set of lunatic stuntmen, coming up with as many variations on a theme as you can, you’re inclined to keep some shots just because they were fun to shoot, even if they’re not necessary or effective.
Danny focuses on creative indulgence: Lester had fun, the crew had fun, so the footage stayed in, regardless of whether it served the film.
So while we know about the screen-time quota required for directorial credit, Danny doesn't invoke that here. Instead, he frames it more as a temperamental lapse—Lester's joy in improvisation overtaking his discipline as a storyteller.
That framing makes the critique more personal: not just that the system required filler, but that Lester chose exuberance over editorial judgment. The problem isn't only structural—it's aesthetic. It's about a filmmaker having too much fun in the wrong scene.
Critique #4: The Scene’s Tone Is Incoherent and Undermines Believability
So there’s a mix of different tones in the sequence, which change from one shot to the next
the guy walking his dogs
people walking out of Kentucky Fried Chicken with their dinner, followed by the waitress trying to bring them their change
the guy making a phone call and saying, “What? What sound?” while trying to hang onto the phone booth
the wife losing her wig and shouting, “My hair!” while her previously toupeed husband cries, “Your hair, what about mine?”
the guy who stays on the phone after getting knocked over and blown down the street, continuing his conversation, and laughing hysterically as the world disintegrates around him.
guy in a shiny red sequined vest on roller skates, trying to keep his balance in the gale…
Danny is no longer just saying the scene is comedic—he’s showing that it's tonally unstable, veering wildly from moment to moment. The list of gags he presents isn’t just observational—it’s cumulative evidence that the scene lacks internal tonal logic. One shot plays for sitcom-style banter, another for absurd visual comedy, another for deadpan surrealism.
The quote “tones change from one shot to the next” is crucial. It implies not just inconsistency, but a collapse of emotional continuity. For a scene meant to represent the terror of a city under siege, these gags introduce a world where nothing has weight, and characters behave like cartoon extras, not humans.
So even if any one of these moments might be amusing in isolation, the pile-up becomes the point: they erode any sense that the world we’re watching is real or worth emotionally investing in.
Comedy is not the problem
So here I am, metaphorically trying to keep hold of my umbrella, struggling to stay upright long enough to explain why I don’t think this is entirely successful.
Because obviously I can’t just say that it doesn’t work because it’s comedy. I’m the first person in line to say that a sense of humor is absolutely essential to good filmmaking, and making a joke in the middle of a tense situation increases audience attachment to the characters. Having a mixture of styles is often good for a film, because it makes things less predictable and more interesting.
After presenting a mountain of evidence, Danny pauses to make a preemptive defense of comedy itself.
He knows the danger here: if the reader thinks he’s just a humorless nitpicker objecting to levity, the whole argument risks being dismissed. So he lays down a rhetorical flag: “I value comedy. I understand its place in film. This isn’t about disliking jokes—it’s about jokes that don’t belong here.”
The umbrella metaphor adds a self-deprecating touch, reinforcing that this isn’t an attack on fun but a struggle to articulate why this specific kind of fun breaks the film's emotional contract with the viewer. And the wind he's struggling against is the high regard fans have for Superman II.
It’s both necessary and a little risky—because softening the blow might undercut the clarity of his earlier critique. But it shows Danny's awareness of how strongly the film is defended—and how carefully one must argue against something widely loved without alienating the audience.
Verisimilitude
But I have to go back to Dick Donner’s watchword, verisimilitude — that the events of the film should feel like Superman exists in a real world, populated by real characters with some indication of an inner life.
Invoking Donner’s “verisimilitude” here certainly aligns with Danny’s argument, but it does raise the question: is it necessary at this point?
By this stage, Danny has already built a detailed, compelling case—through evidence, tone analysis, and character behavior—that the scene fails on its own terms. So invoking Donner could feel like shifting the terrain—framing the critique not purely on how this scene functions but on how it deviates from a previously established vision.
The move risks becoming a kind of appeal to authority—Donner as artistic benchmark—when the reader has already been shown that the sequence is tonally incoherent and emotionally void. It might feel like the critique needs to be validated by a higher principle, when in fact the scene has already disqualified itself by what it does on screen.
So yes, the Donner reference adds context, but it also complicates the rhetorical clarity. Danny’s evidence already speaks powerfully. Returning to Donner at this point might suggest a lack of confidence in the argument’s self-sufficiency—which isn't warranted.
Critique #5: The Scene Breaks Emotional Reality
Honestly, the thing that breaks it for me is the guy on the phone. He’s not only ignoring the dangerous situation that’s happening around him, he’s cackling maniacally in a way that would be insane under any circumstances.
This is the linchpin moment in Danny’s argument, where the critique crystallizes. The cackling man on the phone isn’t just another gag—it’s the scene’s tonal collapse made visible.
Danny zeroes in on it because it’s the moment that breaks any remaining illusion that these are real people in real danger. Amid collapsing buildings and chaos, we get not fear or confusion, but manic laughter. It's so divorced from human behavior that it punctures the scene’s emotional logic entirely.
It may be easy for audiences to overlook this in the sensory overload of the sequence. But Danny isolates it like a sharp cut through the noise: this isn’t just over-the-top—it’s incoherent. It confirms that the film has stopped treating its world seriously, and by extension, stopped inviting us to care.
Critique #6: Product Placement Inflates and Distorts the Scene
My guess is that they would have cut the first telephone booth bit, but it’s in the middle of the Kentucky Fried Chicken bit, which they liked, and besides, they couldn’t cut it on account of the product placement.
Danny’s speculation about the telephone gag being un-cuttable due to its placement within the KFC sequence hints at a deeper issue: commerce driving structure. That’s not just a problem of aesthetics—it’s a distortion of editorial judgment. What should be a tight, purposeful action beat becomes a bloated showcase for brands.
This ties into broader blog commentary about the sheer volume of product placement—Marlboro, Coca-Cola, JVC, KFC—all visibly, and sometimes absurdly, present during scenes of urban destruction. Instead of focusing tension or advancing story, the film is pausing for branded spectacle, making the scene feel even more artificial and ungrounded.
So not only does Lester’s indulgence inflate the runtime, but corporate interests help ensure the bloat stays in. It’s one more reason the scene drifts so far from the kind of focused, emotionally driven filmmaking we saw in Superman I.
Critique #7: The Abandonment of Superman’s Moral Frame
The real problem here is that this sequence undercuts the idea that any of these battle scenes actually matter. They’ve established that none of the combatants can ever be seriously hurt, because they’re superstrong and invulnerable, so the drama of the scene depends on the risk to the civilians. When Superman sees Non and Ursa pick up the bus, he cries, “No! Don’t do it! The people!” which explicitly tells us what we’re supposed to care about. But the cluelessness of the people in this sequence indicates that they’re not affected by the battle at all.
Danny hits the core of the narrative failure here: if the superpowered characters are invulnerable, then all dramatic tension must come from the threat to ordinary people. That’s what gives Superman’s struggle meaning—it’s not about his survival, it’s about his duty to protect others.
So when the civilians are portrayed as clueless, cartoonish, or indifferent—laughing, skating, answering phones—it doesn't just kill realism, it collapses the moral and emotional engine of the scene. Superman’s “The people!” plea becomes hollow when the people themselves seem oblivious, unserious, or invincible-by-comedy.
In a sense, Lester’s choices don’t just change the tone—they sabotage the central dramatic architecture of the story. Danny’s critique here isn’t just aesthetic—it’s structural. If the stakes don’t land, the entire sequence fails as storytelling.
“No! Don’t do it! The people!” isn’t just Superman pleading with the villains in the story—it feels like he’s yelling through the screen, at Lester himself, begging him not to forget what this world is supposed to mean.
As Jor-El so eloquently puts it:
They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son
And here Lester is undermining all of that. The scene isn’t just misjudged—it feels profoundly dissonant, like the film has betrayed its own heart. Superman remains earnest, selfless, and committed to the ideals he was sent to embody. But the film around him has drifted—into slapstick, spectacle, and detachment.
And that makes it feel tragic, not just flawed. Because the disconnect isn’t between characters—it’s between a hero and the world that’s supposed to deserve him. Superman is still trying to save them. But they’re too busy roller-skating, cackling, or clutching KFC takeout to notice. And the film treats that as entertainment.
It’s not just a tonal mismatch—it’s a thematic abandonment. And that’s why it stings. Because Donner has shown us what this story can be. And here, it’s let go of that greatness.
Metropolis bystander ADR line compilation
00:02 "Man, this is going to be good!" 00:04 "Wow, home run!" 00:06 "My baby!" 00:07 "Superman, help us!" 00:09 "The car! The paint work!" 00:12 "He's dead!" 00:13 "Superman is dead!" 00:14 "They've killed Superman!" 00:15 "Let's go get 'em!" 00:17 "Yeah, I know some judo, come on let's go!" 00:19 "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!" 00:23 "What sound?" 00:25 "You forgot your cha-- wooooo! cha-ha woo!" 00:29 "What? Wait a minute! What-what-what-whoa!" 00:31 "I got it. I'm-I'm holding it, I'm holding it!" 00:35 "My hair!!" 00:36 "Your hair? What about mine?" 00:38 "Yeah, yeah, I got your message. Go ahead. Yeah?" 00:42 "Yeah, yeah, that's terrific! Hahahaha! Ahahaha!" 00:49 "Don't leave us!" 00:50 "He chickened out. Ahhh, phony!"
Superman II: The Sequel That Almost Doesn’t Fail
Danny Horn’s blog post, “Superman II 2.51: Hated the First, Loved the Second,” highlights a recurring pattern among 1981 critics: enthusiastic praise for Superman II, but often at the expense of the original.
Time magazine’s Richard Schickel called it “that rarity of rarities—a sequel that readily surpasses the original.” Many critics agreed. Roger Ebert gave it four stars. The New York Times called it “royally entertaining.”
And ever since, many have remembered it as the superior sequel.
But what if, behind the charm and spectacle, something essential had been lost?
"How did Superman go from this..." [Clip 1: Helicopter rescue, crowd in awe, “Who’s got you?”]
"...to this?" [Clip 2: “Yeah, I know some judo!”]
[Smash to Title:] Superman II: The Sequel That Almost Doesn’t Fail
Part 1: The Great Question
Since 1981, I’ve been pondering the great question: why is Superman II such a flawed movie compared to Superman I?
Over the years, many theories have been offered—Donner versus Lester, tonal imbalance, too much comedy—but none have identified a clear unifying principle that explains everything.
Then I came across a blog post by Muppet Wiki co-founder Danny Horn, analyzing the infamous “blowdown” scene in Metropolis. He observed how the danger to bystanders is constantly undercut by comedy — ice cream gags, KFC customers losing their dinner, and a man refusing to hang up in hurricane-force wind.
Danny’s point was that because the Kryptonian combatants are invulnerable the drama’s focus needed to shift towards the danger to civilians — but the civilians are comedically oblivious so this erased any possibility of tension. This wasn’t a problem in director Richard Lester‘s earlier film The Three Musketeers because its combatants were mortal, and therefore background comedy did not undermine the tension.
But beyond the tension lost, it was Danny’s focus on the people of Metropolis which brought to mind something Jor-El said in the first film—a message for his son about the value of humanity.
"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."
That was the breakthrough. I could step above the gags—and above the lost tension—and finally see the root issue: Superman’s purpose had been undermined. And from that vantage point, everything snapped into place. The diner revenge. The sketch comedy bystanders. These weren’t disconnected flaws. They were symptoms of a film that no longer understood who Superman was, or why he mattered
Getting at this root changes everything. It frees us from the overly simplistic director-swap arguments. It gives us something we’ve never had before—a consistent lens to understand why some moments in Superman II still feel right… and others don’t.
Take Superman’s apology to the president. It’s sincere. Uninterrupted. No comic relief. Just accountability. And it works. The "blame Lester" argument doesn't work here because this scene was directed by Lester. But why does it work—when so much else doesn’t?
To answer that, we need to go back. To what Superman means. And why that meaning matters.
Part 2: The Meaning of Superman
The meaning of Superman is that he protects because humanity has value. This is the moral core passed down by Jonathan Kent and Jor-El.
When you undermine that value, you dilute the meaning of Superman himself.
Superman I upholds the value of humanity throughout. Superman II falters—flattening bystanders into punchlines, and using Superman’s power for personal retribution.
In trading moral clarity for audience gratification, the film forgets the lesson that gave Superman his meaning.
Part 3: Tug of War
Watching Superman II feels like watching Lois caught between Non and Ursa. One side pulls toward sincerity and purpose. The other toward punchlines and chaos. It's a tug-of-war between respecting the core and neglecting it.
And the result can be heartbreaking. Scenes that echo his purpose, that carry the emotional weight we remember from the first film. They’re there. But they’re scattered—isolated—and the deeper truth is, they only make the rest of the film feel more lost. That’s where the frustration comes from. Not that it’s all bad. But that it could have been great.
“Come in, Houston. Come in.”
Donner's moon scenes from Superman II work because they respect the lives being threatened. They uphold the seriousness of the danger, which in turn justifies Superman’s role as protector.
“No! Don’t do it—the people!”
"Don’t do it! The people!" isn’t just Superman pleading with the villains in the story. He’s yelling through the screen at director Richard Lester — begging him not to forget what this world is supposed to mean.
The bystanders in Superman II are essentially invincible-by-comedy. They have no story value beyond their one-dimensional sketch roles. No real harm can come to them—because their suffering would have no weight.
And that hollowness rebounds onto the hero. If the people he protects are treated as jokes, then what does his protection mean?
Superman is fighting for people the film itself doesn’t believe in — people too busy roller skating, cackling, or clutching KFC bags to take part in what has stopped being a story, and become a parade of sketches.
It’s not just a tonal mismatch — it’s a thematic abandonment.
The helicopter rescue in Superman I is a perfect counterpoint. It shows how Donner’s approach to tone, crowd behavior, and emotional stakes grounds the fantastic in a believable world. The crowd in that scene reacts with fear, awe, tension, and relief. They gasp. They point. They panic.
Even the pimp—while played for a quick laugh—fits within the emotional logic of the moment. He’s not there to undercut the stakes, but to accent them. A brief moment of levity in a tightly calibrated sequence. The humor works because the world around it feels real.
“Look, up there!” “The hell is that?” “Easy, miss. I’ve got you.” “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?!”
“Give me another plate of this garbage.” “Garbage? That’s my number one special, Rocky.” “All right, eh?”
The diner scene in Superman II is tonally and philosophically out of step with Superman’s ethos. It might be intended as crowd-pleasing payback, but it undercuts the grace and restraint that define Superman’s moral code.
Rocky poses no real threat. He’s a bully, not a villain. By retaliating after regaining his powers, Clark shifts from protector to petty avenger. It’s a rare moment where even Donner compromises the mythos he otherwise worked so carefully to uphold in the first film.
Brad is Superman I’s Rocky—but handled with restraint and purpose. He’s petty, antagonistic, and dismissive of Clark. Yet the film never indulges revenge.
Clark’s frustration is acknowledged. But Jonathan’s presence and values anchor the moment. Clark doesn’t act on that impulse. Instead, he internalizes it as part of his growth.
It’s a beautiful contrast to the diner revenge in Superman II. Where Superman I shows restraint guided by moral clarity, Superman II flips that lesson. Clark does act on the impulse—and the story treats it like a victory.
The Brad moment becomes a foreshadowing of a temptation resisted. Rocky is the version where that temptation wins.
“I’m, uh... terribly sorry about all the damage, sir.”
Conclusion: Scoring Touchdowns
“There’s one thing I do know, son—and that is, you are here for a reason. I don’t know whose reason, or whatever the reason is… maybe it’s because… I don’t know. But I do know one thing. It’s not to score touchdowns.”
In Superman II, every gag, every moment of petty revenge—each becomes a kind of metaphorical touchdown, even when they betray this foundational lesson: that power must be guided by restraint and purpose.
But there’s no denying that for many, those touchdowns do work. And that’s okay.
For some, they’re enough to make Superman II a fun and rewarding experience.
But for others, there’s a persistent unease that’s hard to shake. Not because we don’t enjoy fun—but because we felt something was missing. Something that mattered.
Something that Jonathan Kent tried to articulate. And something the film couldn’t quite hold onto.
Thanks for watching.