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Richard Donner’s recut of Superman II reinstates Marlon Brando as Jor-El, restoring the Man of Steel’s original character arc and sacrifice.
Fifteen years before Zack Snyder’s Justice League, director Richard Donner was able to restore his original vision for Superman II, the sequel from which he was removed in 1977. Released in 2006, The Richard Donner Cut restored footage shot by the filmmaker before he was replaced by Richard Lester, adding a character whose inclusion mended the biggest flaw of the 1980 original.
Initially, Marlon Brando was to reprise his role as Jor-El from 1978’s Superman: The Movie, advising his son from beyond the grave as a supercomputer within the Fortress of Solitude. Although Donner filmed all of Jor-El’s scenes for the sequel, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind ultimately removed Brando, partly to avoid paying him 11.75 percent of Superman II‘s box-office earnings. Susannah York was instead brought in to reprise her role as Superman’s mother, Lara, but the new material truncated the moment Christopher Reeve’s Kal-El defied his Kryptonian parents and gave up his powers.
In the theatrical version, he goes to his mother having already decided to live an ordinary life as Clark Kent with Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane. Lara reluctantly states he must become an ordinary man to do this, and, with little hesitation, the Man of Steel steps into the crystal chamber that removes his powers. The brevity of their discussion paints both characters in a negative light; Lara barely attempts to reason with her son, while Superman readily abandons his responsibilities at the first opportunity.
However, The Donner Cut restores Brando’s Jor-El. Instead of his wife’s passive wariness, he is actively hostile when his son announces his love for Lois. Jor-El emphatically states that his son cannot invest his “time and emotion in one human being at the expense of the rest.” An argument ensues when Kal-El suggests he is willing to stop being humanity’s champion to be with Lois, culminating in his father declaring that he must forfeit his powers to do so.
Unlike Lester, Donner presents a genuine conflict between Superman’s sense of duty and his love for Lois, whose death he reversed by turning back time in the first movie. When Jor-El tells him that these two feelings are incompatible with one another, his frustration is understandable, having risked everything in saving the world only to “finally be denied the one thing in life” he really wants. Rather than effectively sleepwalking into the crystal chamber, Kal-El enters it at his father’s insistence. The decision is still ultimately his, but only after his options have been severely narrowed.
These additional layers to Superman’s journey only increase when he returns to the Fortress, desperate to restore his powers after Terence Stamp’s General Zod invades. The theatrical cut does not show exactly how this occurs; the sequence ending after Kal-El rediscovers the green crystal he used to first contact his father. Here, Lara’s insistence that there would be “no return” rings utterly false, as Superman is back to normal the next time he appears with no visible consequences.
The Donner Cut completes the sequence by having Jor-El merge with his son to restore his powers, sacrificing the remains of his consciousness. Instead of a quick fix, Kal-El must lose his father and mentor to become Superman once more, cementing the importance of his mission. Although this is likely undone when Superman reverses time again, it still requires enormous effort to correct his mistake, giving new value to the abilities he traded without fully considering the results.
All of this might have occurred in the original version had Lester shot similarly intense sequences between Superman and Lara. Doing so would have illustrated the divide Kal-El feels between his Kryptonian heritage and his adopted humanity, and why even a hero as selfless as he could make such a selfish choice. Thankfully, The Donner Cut provides this context, presenting a Superman with the complexity and truthfulness that made its 1978 predecessor a landmark in cinema.
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