Some movies just impact your life forever. You’re in the right place at the right time, and a certain movie just grabs hold and stays in your mind and heart and never lets you go. For me in my generation, there are two such movies. One is the original Star Wars, without all of the “Episode IV” retitling, CGI makeovers, Slim-Fast Jabba, and “Maclunkey!”

The other is Superman: The Movie.

I had not seen very much footage from the film back then prior to its release, maybe an announcement trailer or a TV spot at most, something to wet my whistle at that. Chances are, you did, too. Maybe this one…

Or maybe this one…

Or maybe you were like me, reading about the reports in DC Comics or Starlog or Fantastic Films and getting any scrap of information that you could. Imagine having to wait month after month just for a photograph or a line or a quote from someone about the film… and this was years before the advent of the Internet.

And then there was this little book…

I can’t tell you how many times I read that book over and over again to the point of my copy literally falling apart at the seams.

I was all of twelve years old and living in my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, when Superman came out. My parents took me to the newly opened Metrocenter Cinema 4 in west Jackson to see it. I still remember the other movies that were shown at that theater: Grease, Foul Play, and Oliver’s Story. But none of them mattered to us or the crowds of theater goers that night. Everyone waited for Superman. So much so that we got there for the 7:00 showing that night, and it was sold out, so we had to wait for the 10:00 p.m. showing instead. But we didn’t mind.

And then it hit.

The comic book opening shot, the credits swooshing by, the Superman shield appearing on screen bigger than life, and the John Williams music… no movie before then had ever done so much with its main title credits to hook the viewers in. And this was just the first five minutes of the film.

From that point on, I was all in.

It was a perfect blend of photography, visual effects, location shooting, set design, and acting. It didn’t matter that we had to wait an hour before we finally got to see Superman appear on screen and do his thing.

And what can we say about Christopher Reeve that hasn’t already been said? I’d grown up with the comic books, the Saturday morning Super Friends cartoon series, reruns of the George Reeves Adventures of Superman TV series on WAPT Channel 16, and the syndicated comic strip The World’s Greatest Superheroes (there definitely needs to be a compilation of this comic strip!). But nothing prepared me for how Reeve embodied the character, not with fake rubber muscles, but by working out and adding the muscles himself. I’d shown a picture of him to my seventh grade teacher Suzanne Davis and said, “When I grow up, I want to be like him.” Six foot four and full of muscles, to borrow from Men at Work. Other guys around me wanted to be like Burt Reynolds or Billy Joel or Terry Bradshaw. I wanted to be like Superman, like Christopher Reeve.

I would go back several times over the coming weeks to see Superman at the Metrocenter Cinema 4. Five times, I think. And then when it made second-run showings at other theaters such as the Meadowbrook Cinema 6. I still remember a brief skip in the film when Valerie Perrine said her line, “I know I’m going to get rapped in the mouth for this, but… so what?”

My mom tried to get me the movie poster from the theater manager at the Metrocenter Cinema 4, but he wouldn’t let her have it. It would be five years later when I would find it at a comic book convention in Memphis, Tennessee, and I paid all of twelve dollars for it. I would have it framed and mounted in a customized silver frame when I turned 28, and I had it for the next sixteen years until I had to sell my parents’ house in Clinton to pay for my mom’s nursing home and prescription bills, and I sold it to a consignment store owner so he would give it to his grandson. Sharing the love and the passion to future generations. I have a copy of it again in my office in my home in Alabama.

And how many copies of the film did I get over the years on home video? It was my first VHS tape that I bought at Camelot Music for 70 dollars. Chances are, you probably had that tape, too. Running 127 minutes long, with the film sped up, sloppy panning and scanning at times, missing footage, and abbreviated end credits all to fit the movie on one tape at the time. I had bought it four years before we got our first VCR, but I didn’t care.

I remember recording the audio of the film when it premiered on HBO in October 1980. It was 142 minutes long, and there were some minor skips in the film, but I didn’t care. Sometimes HBO would have their own pan-scan versions of films that were different from the VHS releases. The original Star Wars, Supergirl, St. Elmo’s Fire, Tootsie, and Victor Victoria were others that I remember. I would love to find copies of those HBO edits again.

It was my second laserdisc. The full widescreen version from the 1990s. What was my first? Superman III. I would later get the special edition DVD from 2001, the Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD set three times (and there’s a story behind it for another time), the Blu-ray anthology, the Warner Archive Blu-ray of the extended TV cut with the somewhat altered main title music, and the digital streaming version of the extended version with the corrected monaural audio track.

And it set off a chain reaction everywhere. Before long, other studios and producers said, “Get me one of those!” It would take ten years for Batman to come to the screen, thirteen years for the first Spider-Man film, and nearly thirty years for Iron Man to ignite the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whenever Kevin Feige gets with directors, writers, and cast members for a new Marvel movie, he encourages them to go back and watch Superman to see how they got it right.

Next year we will see a new remastered version of the Christopher Reeve Superman films in 4K in a new five-film collection from Warner Home Video. While the 2018 remaster wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I’m hopeful that they will do the films right in terms of color balance and sound, and that they will include all new extra features to go along with the existing legacy features in the same way that Paramount did with their release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture earlier this year. New interviews with surviving cast members and crew, more outtakes and deleted scenes and alternate takes and production footage – what we currently have is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If they give us that, I would be quite happy.

And the influence has carried on even within the Superman legend. The look of the Fortress of Solitude, Smallville, the short-lived Krypton series, even a couple of quick winks in the Super Friends animated series. The episode “Lex Luthor Strikes Back” is sort of a sequel to the film complete with his underground hideaway, a Lois Lane that resembles Margot Kidder, and the bumbling henchman Orville Gump that may or not be Otis’ brother or cousin. Check out these clips and see for yourself!

And who can’t forget when Richard Donner co-wrote several issues of Action Comics?

I’m 56 now, but whenever I put on one of my copies of Superman: The Movie on disc, I’m immediately reminded of the times when I was twelve years old, and life was simpler, and anything in life was possible. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’m thankful for everything.