Fatality: Superman Finishing Move

It’s fun watching old movies from your childhood. The way you saw it as a kid is nothing like how you see it now. And that was definitely the case with Superman III and me.

This movie has so much unintentional comedy gold to be mined from it, but I’m only going to touch on one part that I found especially funny.

To recap: Superman III is the one with Richard Pryor as Gus the computer hacking genius, Clark rekindling a crush on Lana Lang in Smallville, and the epic battle between Clark Kent and the bizarro Superman personality that grew due to some badly cooked kryptonite.

We on the same page now? Okay, go time.

It’s that battle I mentioned last that I grabbed a lot of laughs from. And that’s the topic for a hilarious look into a much more innocent past.

So, Superman takes a turn for the worse when the synthetic kryptonite fails to kill him and instead turns him into a raging alcoholic with a really nasty temperament.

Personally, I found the sinister Superman pretty likable as the rage machine he became. I thought it was especially awesome when he was flying around the world, angry as fuck, breaking stuff to cause havoc.

Not to digress… fast forward to later on, when Superman finally faces the evil inside him and magically splits into two entities. We’re left with Superman and Clark Kent ready to rumble with each other, in some kind of junkyard.

The overall fight is pretty funny. Clark, of course, still has his Superman strength and all that, but decides to kick ass in glasses and a button down.

The part that really made me go wtf and laugh, however, was when the evil Superman was finally defeated. Clark didn’t crush him like a handful of Pringles. He didn’t fly at him like a locomotive and smash him into oblivion. And he sure as hell didn’t melt face with his laser eyes.

No. Clark Kent, in what I can only describe as some kind of a twisted foresight by the writers into any spousal abuse movie on the Lifetime channel in modern times, strangles his evil counterpart.

Yep. He chokes bizarro Superman until he disappears. Chokes him. And not even a badass kind of Jiu Jitsu choke either. I’m talking about an overly dramatic and totally pansy wringing of the neck.

I laughed so hard.

The man of steel, with all that superhuman strength, dispatches his opponent with the most anti climatic fatality writers could have come up with. And it’s only now that I can truly appreciate the hilarity in that, as an adult.

So remember folks: There’s a lot of comedy gold to be found in those old movies you remember from your childhood! Go rent one right now and see if you can’t find some funny shit you were totally oblivious to as a kid.

I personally recommend Willow, if you’re stumped on what to pick.