We are familiar with the star field that appears throughout Superman: The Movie in its opening credits and in some of the scenes set in outer space. Without it, that added sense of mystery and wonder would not be an important element to the film, and it wouldn’t give us a backdrop to those beautiful opening credits. From the start of the film, the star field would be a vital visual element to the overall story arc for the film.
But have you ever stopped to wonder in just how many films this particular star field appears? Let’s look very carefully.
Obviously, it appears multiple times throughout Superman – during the opening credits, at the start of the introduction to the planet Krypton, during Jor-El’s interactive lessons with his son Kal-El in the Fortress of Solitude, and during the film’s end credits.
We would again see this amazing star field in the opening credits and the end title credits for Richard Lester’s version of Superman II in 1980-81.
From there it would return for Superman III, but only in the extended TV cut. When the film was expanded for TV in 1985, an additional 17 minutes was restored to the film, mainly superfluous bits and pieces that added nothing to the overall story. The most significant addition to the TV cut was a new main credits sequence to remove the credits from its awkward placement under the opening slapstick scenes on the streets of Metropolis. The end credits music was borrowed and adapted for this new main credits sequence, bringing the film into the same vein as the first two films.
But that’s not all. In the opening months of 1979, Richard Greenberg and his company R. Greenberg and Associates were at work developing a series of preview trailers for a then-upcoming science fiction film with a bent on horror. It was set to premiere on May 25, 1979, two years to the day after the premiere of the original Star Wars. So if you went to see Superman, Time After Time, The Warriors, Norma Rae, The China Syndrome, Mad Max, Dawn of the Dead, Manhattan, or other movies of the time, you probably saw this trailer in the theaters…
It’s a shame that we didn’t get to see the Star field return in Superman IV. But it’s still one of the underrated elements that add to the mystery and wonder of the Superman franchise.
Update: Right after this blog went live, super fan Dan Kampling alerted me to another film that contains this same star field, one I hadn’t seen before until now… and that is David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. Toward the end of the film John Merrick desires nothing more than to sleep like a normal person and not be constrained by his disfigurement. As he drifts off to sleep, he hears soothing, comforting words, which play over a dreamlike journey through the stars. It is here that the star field from Superman appears once again.
That brings the total to five different films in which this same star field appears. Thanks, Dan!
Superman: The Blog 