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Date: 2019-05-31 12:26 am (UTC)--------
About eighteen months [after Star Wars], another “text in space” effect overlaid another John Williams score with another invitation to “join” the text of the story, though the producers of this second film had started work with no knowledge of the first. Superman: The Movie begins with a black-and-white curtain slowly drawing back, revealing a TV screen within the movie screen. Then the inner screen announces it is June 1938 and shows a boy reading a mocked-up version of Action Comics #1, which sets the scene for Superman by talking about-- how great newspapers were and how bad the Depression was?
“In the decade of the 1930s, even the great city of Metropolis was not spared the ravages of the worldwide depression. In the times of fear and confusion the job of informing the public was the responsibility of the Daily Planet, a great metropolitan newspaper, whose reputation for clarity and truth had become a symbol of hope for the entire community.”
The salute to old comics, TV, and movie serials makes sense, but some of these choices are frankly baffling. The original Action Comics #1 contains no narrative like this, and the film won’t get back to the Daily Planet until almost an hour into its runtime. The first frame of the actual Action Comics #1-- “As a distant planet was destroyed by old age, a scientist placed his infant son within a hastily designed space-ship, launching it toward Earth”-- would have been a much better lead-in to the scenes following the credits. Yet the actual cover of that comic book has been changed to show the spaceship, as if to compensate.
Furthermore, the movie’s plot relies on news helicopters, nuclear missiles, and other things that definitely weren’t around in “June 1938.”
But movie titles, as the earlier examples should’ve made clear by now, have their own logic, and what happens next makes up for a lot. As the horns start rising, the words “Alexander Saliskind Presents” appear on the night sky within the TV screen, and then begin streaking toward the viewer, a more exaggerated and animated version of the block letters featured on Superman comic books almost since their inception.
The inner screen fails utterly to contain them, and they continue past the edges of the film screen, reminding the viewer that TV, serials, and comic books are all well and good, but what they’re watching now is a MOTION PICTURE. More names follow, each streaking at us in electric blue while we travel through a field of stars.
After “A Richard Donner Film” parts to allow us through, the streaking effect reverses for the “S” insignia and the names that follow it. Whether the letters are moving toward us or away, though, the stars keep moving. Unlike the Star Wars intro, this sequence lets us relish the feeling of flying through the sky under our own power, instead of just observing it from a fixed point. We are Superman, and the world of the film is one in which all things are possible.
Like Dan Perri for Star Wars, Richard and Robert Greenberg had to invent their title effect out of whole cloth, with little communication with the director they were serving. “We had no idea how to do it! For about two weeks we kept trying to figure it out,” Richard admitted. “The streak was created by putting a negative and positive Kodalith together with a blue gel in between. The blue gel allowed enough light through to create that streak.” A rough draft of their labors appeared as a teaser trailer for the film, some months before it came out.
This work is even more remarkable because it was the Greenbergs’ first as a production studio. Their second piece [Alien] would go even further toward establishing their voice.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-31 03:48 pm (UTC)Hollywood used to play the full-length theme at the beginning of movies to get audiences revved up. Now they play them at the end when everyone's left the theater.
Wonder Woman had a great theme but they barely used it!
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Date: 2019-05-31 07:03 pm (UTC)https://youtu.be/hQzbDvcnK4Y
And a variation...
https://youtu.be/-XJ3HJXxDwc
Agreed on the Wonder Woman theme.
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Date: 2019-06-01 02:09 am (UTC)