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When Christopher Reeve dropped out of Supergirl, the 1984 film had to get creative to connect to his iconic Superman.
The 1984 promotional campaign for Supergirl promised fans a continuation of the Superman film series, but the actual movie was missing a certain caped crusader. Late in production, Christopher Reeve dropped out of a story that was conceived as a chance for him to hand over the reins to Helen Slater’s Kara Zor-El. Forced to make a series entry without their iconic star, Supergirl explains away her cousin’s absence and instead emphasizes its series connections through ways both subtle and obvious.
Producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind had always intended to introduce Supergirl on the big screen alongside her male counterpart. The original version of Superman III even went so far as to retool Kara as Brainiac’s step-daughter and make her Superman’s new love interest. The American Film Institute reports that Warner Bros. nixed this, but the Salkinds still wanted to make Supergirl the future of the franchise. Superman was still slated to appear in the film as a magical prisoner Supergirl would have to rescue. Reeve at first signed on but ultimately decided not to do the project. He didn’t want to work for the Salkinds again, even if it was for his Somewhere In Time director Jeannot Swarzc.
Losing their big star threatened to torpedo the Salkinds’ whole film. So instead of excising all trace of Superman, they doubled down on it being the same universe. Kara Zor-El is still his first cousin living with her family in Argo City amid a dimensional crisis involving the Phantom Zone. This is all happening despite the first three Reeve films never mentioning the existence of a surviving Kryptonian city in a pocket dimension.
However, when Kara journeys to Earth, Superman is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the audience hears a radio broadcast state Superman has “embarked on a special peacekeeping mission in a galaxy, scientists estimate is several hundred trillions of light-years from our own.” Kal-El is now as far away as Kryptonian-ly possible from the events of the film. Kara is on her own.
Signs of her famous cousin are never far away, though. A poster of Reeve’s Superman in Kara’s dorm room leaves her in hushed awe when she sees it, or rather Linda Lee’s dorm room. Kara uses a forged reference letter from Clark Kent to set up her own bumbling human secret identity under that name. And despite never having met him, she wears the exact same design on her costume as him.
The cast is also stacked with Superman’s supporting cast. Maureen Teefy brings her Grease 2 spunk to this film as Lucy Lane. She’s not only Lois Lane’s sister, she’s also Kara’s teenage roommate who immediately discusses her famous unseen relative and her relationship with Clark. Lois apparently calls their principal all the time with complaints. Fans of 1978’s Superman might recall that she talked about how her sister was married with three kids and two cats and wonder how it lines up with Lucy’s depiction here. But it’s always possible that she might have an older sister as well.
Her boyfriend is the film’s biggest connection to the Reeve series. It’s Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen, once more played by Marc McClure. This makes him the only actor to appear in all five Donnerverse Superman films. And it’s not just a cameo. He appears throughout as Lucy’s boyfriend, just like in the comics. The couple even needs to be rescued by Supergirl in the end. Many find this high school romance unsavory on screen due to a common assumption that Olsen was aged up to his 20s in the Reeve films. However, Jimmy’s age is never stated in those films and McClure is four years younger than Teefy in real life. This universe’s Daily Planet may be as pre-disposed to hire child photographers as its comics counterpart.
Unfortunately for the Salkinds, the lack of an actual appearance by Superman was one of many reasons the film died at the box office. The Salkinds sold the rights after it failed Cannon films, who lured Reeve back for Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. However, there was no acknowledgment of anything in Supergirl except McClure’s Jimmy Olsen. It could be because Supergirl swore him to secrecy about her existence at the end of her movie, but it was probably because no one wanted to be associated with the film.
Still, for all its flaws, Supergirl should be commended for pioneering the kind of onscreen world-building that fuels most film franchises nowadays. In Superman’s absence, Supergirl not only fleshed out the world of the Reeve films but created one of the first onscreen shared universes that paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and others to follow.
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