The Reeve Era · Elseworlds
Superman III
A comedic turn pits Superman against a computer tycoon, and briefly against himself.
Nothing after the credits
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Superman III?
Yes, on a first watch. It is self-contained, and nothing in the main DC story depends on it. There is nothing after the credits to catch up on either. In chronological order, reaching it takes about 4h 30m of essential viewing across 2 titles. Show only the DC essentials.
Skippable, and it contains one sequence better than anything in the two films before it. Exposed to a flawed synthetic kryptonite, Superman becomes petty, drunk and cruel, and then splits into two: a stubbled, sullen Superman and Clark Kent, fighting each other in a junkyard. Reeve plays both and the scene is genuinely disturbing, which nothing around it is.
Everything else is a comedy vehicle. Richard Pryor was cast after a talk-show appearance and the film is reshaped around him as a bumbling computer programmer, with pratfalls, a ski-suit sequence off a skyscraper and a plot about coffee futures and weather satellites. Pryor is a great comic performer stranded in material that does not fit him.
Lois Lane appears in two scenes. The villain is a businessman with a sister and a psychic, played at sitcom pitch, and the climax involves a supercomputer in a cave converting a woman into a cyborg, which arrives from nowhere and is the only frightening image in the film.
Nothing requires it and Superman Returns openly ignores it. Watch the junkyard fight on its own.
DC guides
Where it sits in the DC order
- Release order
- #3 of 52
- Chronological order
- #3 of 52
- Released
- 17 June 1983
- In-universe era
- The Reeve Era
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order