SupermanSave

The film opens with a stylized prologue on the dying planet Krypton. Jor-El (Marlon Brando), an elder scientist on the Kryptonian high council, has determined through advanced geophysical study that the planet is days away from catastrophic core collapse. He presents his findings to the ruling council; they reject his conclusions and forbid him from publicizing the discovery. As a private contingency, Jor-El builds a small experimental rocket and places his infant son Kal-El inside it, programming the rocket with the location of a habitable planet (Earth) and a comprehensive Kryptonian knowledge archive embedded in crystalline data form. The rocket launches moments before Krypton's planetary destruction. The opening sequence ends with Krypton's exploding remains receding behind the rocket as it travels through interstellar space.

The rocket lands in a Kansas wheatfield in the late 1940s. The infant Kal-El is discovered by Jonathan and Martha Kent, an aging childless farming couple, who name him Clark and raise him as their son. The film's middle prologue chronicles Clark's adolescence in Smallville. Clark's superhuman abilities manifest gradually: he can run faster than the school bus, lift impossibly heavy farm equipment, and see through solid objects with concentrated effort. Jonathan Kent, sensing the mounting frustration of a son who cannot publicly demonstrate his powers, counsels Clark that there is a higher purpose to his being on Earth that has not yet been revealed. Jonathan dies of a heart attack in the wheatfield while talking to Clark, leaving the young man with unresolved questions about his own identity.

Clark, now a young man, departs Smallville for the Arctic. The crystalline data archive from the original rocket has been calling to him; he constructs a remote Fortress of Solitude from a kryptonite-tier crystal at the magnetic north pole, where his late father's holographic consciousness teaches him about Kryptonian science, philosophy, and the responsibilities of his powers. The training takes twelve years. Clark emerges from the Fortress at age twenty-eight, fully briefed on his cosmic identity, ready to assume his Earth-protective role. He travels to Metropolis, where he takes a junior reporter position at the Daily Planet newspaper using the alias Clark Kent and adopting a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, slouched posture, and overly polite demeanor as his civilian disguise.

Clark's first day at the Planet introduces the film's romantic and journalistic core. He meets Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), the paper's star reporter, and Jimmy Olsen, the eager photographer. Editor-in-chief Perry White assigns Clark to assist Lois on her current story. That evening, Lois experiences a near-fatal accident: her helicopter, attempting to land on the Daily Planet roof, fails mid-flight and dangles from the building's edge. Clark, in his civilian form, witnesses her predicament from the street, ducks into a phone booth to change into his now-iconic blue-and-red costume, flies up to catch her mid-fall, and gently returns her to the building. The sequence is the cinematic Superman's first public appearance and one of the most-quoted moments in 1970s Hollywood blockbuster history.

Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is the film's central villain. Operating from a hidden subterranean complex beneath Grand Central Station in Manhattan, Luthor is a billionaire criminal mastermind whose long-term plan involves real-estate speculation. He has acquired thousands of acres of cheap desert land in eastern California; he intends to detonate a stolen U.S. military nuclear missile along the San Andreas fault to destroy California west of the fault line, instantly making his desert holdings beachfront property worth hundreds of billions. His preparations include kidnapping the U.S. Defense Department's missile-control coordinator, hijacking two nuclear missiles by switching their targeting computers, and acquiring a small chunk of meteoric kryptonite that he believes can destroy Superman.

Superman's interventions during the film's middle act establish his global-protector role. He stops Air Force One from crashing after a lightning strike. He rescues a small child whose cat is stuck in a tree. He prevents a Manhattan bank robbery in a single low-altitude swoop. He retrieves a falling girl from a balcony above a crowded street. He gives Lois Lane an interview-flight across Manhattan during which they have a conversation that establishes the romantic-journalistic chemistry the franchise would build on for years. Lois files her story under the headline 'I Spent the Night with Superman.' Clark's secret identity remains intact even when he and Lois share extended screen time at the Daily Planet, with Lois never quite making the visual connection between her flying friend and her stuttering coworker.

Luthor's missile launch begins. The first missile heads east toward Hackensack, New Jersey, as a deliberate distraction. The second missile, carrying the actual San Andreas detonation, heads west. Luthor, having located Superman through his henchwoman Eve Teschmacher's tip-off, lures Superman to his Grand Central lair and exposes him to the kryptonite shard chain around his neck. Eve, having grown sympathetic to Superman during their first meeting, removes the kryptonite chain but only after extracting Superman's promise to redirect the eastbound missile first (her mother lives in Hackensack). Superman intercepts the eastbound missile and hurls it into space.

The westbound missile reaches the San Andreas fault and detonates. The earthquake's destruction is enormous: Hoover Dam collapses, several California cities partially sink, the Hollywood sign falls, and Lois Lane is trapped in her car as a fissure opens beneath the highway. She suffocates in the buried vehicle. Superman arrives at the wreckage too late to save her. Devastated, he flies into low-Earth orbit and circles the planet at superluminal speed, deliberately reversing Earth's rotation to roll back time itself. The act reverses the day's events; Lois is restored to life moments before her death; the earthquake's damage is undone; the missiles return to their pre-detonation positions. Luthor is captured and incarcerated. The film closes with Superman flying over Earth in a triumphant orbital sequence, smiling at the camera in the closing freeze-frame.

Superman (1978) grossed $300 million globally on a then-substantial $55 million budget, an enormous commercial success that established the modern superhero blockbuster as a viable Hollywood category. The picture earned three Academy Award nominations and a special Oscar for John Williams's iconic main-title score, which has since been widely cited as one of the greatest film themes ever written. Christopher Reeve's dual performance as Clark Kent and Superman, distinguishing the two characters through posture, voice, and energy without elaborate makeup or prosthetics, became the template for every subsequent Superman performance. Margot Kidder's Lois Lane, Marlon Brando's Jor-El, and Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor each established cinematic versions of their characters that subsequent adaptations have measured themselves against. Director Richard Donner's commitment to the film's tagline 'You'll believe a man can fly' was reflected in the production's use of pioneering wirework and front-projection special effects that visibly outclass any prior superhero adaptation.