I've been reading comic books since I was about 10 years old, I went to "comic book college" aka The Joe Kubert School Of Cartoon And Graphic Art, and I've been working at a comic book store for over 4 years...but this is my first time watching Superman: The Movie.

All in all, I enjoyed this film. The antiquated special effects were cool and I don't deduct any points for how dated they are. The story was pretty good, though it would've been nice to see Superman fight someone. The whole spinning the world backwards to reverse time thing? Pretty lame. But still, this was a pretty fun watch.

One of my major complaints is how long the film takes to get going. I'll admit to fast-forwarding through the opening credits when I realized that I'd already been watching them for about 2 minutes with no sign of stopping. Then there's the unnecessarily long Krypton sequence which seemed to go on and on just because Warner Brothers had hired Marlon Brando to play a character who dies in the opening sequence and they wanted to get their money's worth out of him. Similarly, I could've done with about half as much of the Smallville/Fortress Of Solitude stuff.

As soon as Superman flies out of the Fortress and the film cuts to Metropolis, I was finally into the movie and ready to settle in for the ride. I loved Christopher Reeves' portrayal of Clark Kent as a complete bumbling klutz. I also liked the super-hectic Daily Planet and all of the characters therein. The Lex Luthor scenes felt like they were ripped straight from a deleted scene from the 1960's Batman TV show and I didn't feel that his character was ever fully fleshed out. We don't really ever find out why he's so evil or why he hates Superman so much. As a comic book fan, *I* know the answers to those questions, but they were never explored in the movie.

I'd been putting off watching Superman: The Movie for a LONG time because I expected to severely dislike it, but I'm glad to say that I rather enjoyed it. It's far from perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised.