This movie is probably the first movie which was accepted by the masses as an actual good movie based upon a comic book character. Unfortunately, it, and it’s direct sequel, were mired in backstage issues, including replacing the original director Donner near the end of the project with Lester.

As time wore on, it was learned that there was extensive material in making the first movie. We had the original Theatrical Cut. Later, we were given the Special Edition (Director’s Cut) of the film. Eventually, we got the Extended TV Edition, which was over three hours of footage. However, not all dialogue and footage that was known was put into the Extended TV footage. Between the other two footage, there was just a very small inkling of footage that wasn’t used.

This is not to say that the missing footage would’ve made the experience better. A case could be made that the missing dialogue probably should’ve been used, as each instance starts off their respective scene with a more concrete establishing comment to work off of. However, these comments obviously were not imperative or else the scene failed, but I feel that they do enhance the scenes in which they are a part of.

Before I get to the change list, I’d like to make a note regarding this movie. While it is beloved by many, and as I pointed out, was the first successful movie based upon a comic book character, the movie does not go without flaws. I’m not here to belittle this movie in any way, but when you view this movie on a microscopic scale multiple times like I did, you do get to see its flaws, including the many screen transitions that are rather abrupt and allowed to slide by because we fell in love with the movie and it’s story. Also, you see over and over again snippets where logic from the director wasn’t used very well when it came to background activity (possibly due to budget constraints). [The most outlandish example of this is the black guy in the black shirt and white guy in a white shirt walking directly behind both Otis and the Cops, regardless of viewpoint, when the cops were following Otis in the train station mall.] The additional incorporated snippets in no way corrects this. In fact, in some instance, it makes them stand out a bit more because of the original deficiencies.

The purpose of this edit is to incorporate all released footage and dialogue from the three known released versions:

Theatrical Cut (TC)
Special Edition/Director’s Cut (SE)
Extended TV Edition

I used the Extended TV Edition as the basis and incorporated all the other footage into it.

Change List:

Added Jor-El saying “You cannot ignore these facts” (TC) [albeit in a different area]
Added Krypton Council standing united to confront Jor-El (TC)
Added additional footage of Otis walking through train station mall (TC)
Added extended footage of Otis’ feet seen walking behind the train (TC)
Added additional footage of Otis walking amongst the train tracks (TC)
Added additional footage of girl looking to get cat out of tree (TC)
Added additional footage of seeing Superman’s face as he’s talking to Jor-El’s image (SE)
Added additional footage of news being shown on TV in store window (TC)
Added additional footage of Perry White picking up paper to look at headline (TC)
Added Lois Lane saying that Daily Planet is interested in land buying news to Native American (TC)
Added additional footage of gas station blowing up as Lois left (TC)
Added additional footage of dam beginning to burst (TC)

Runtime:

03:08:34 (Extended TV Edition)
03:09:13 (Ultimate Deluxe Edition)

Note: I do not know how to color correct/grade, so there may be some instances where colors come at you differently. Once (If) I get that skill, I might go back and do a v2 of this.

If you’d like a copy, please DM me directly.