As we have reached the anniversary of the release of Superman III, one aspect of this underrated film that I find myself looking back on is the extended version of this film. And the one word that comes to mind is lagniappe. Some of you are probably wondering, what’s lagniappe? Let me explain.

According to the dictionary, lagniappe means “something given or obtained gratuitously by good measure.” In his 1883 book Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain described it as “a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word-‘lagniappe’…. It is Spanish-so they said.” It’s based on a word from Quechua, yapa, which means “something added.” It’s there that it evolved into the American Spanish word la napa. And if you have been to New Orleans as I have, or are at least familiar with the culture, it’s a melting pot of English, Spanish, French, and everything you could imagine.

So it’s something added, something thrown in, just because. And if you compare the theatrical version of Superman III to its extended TV cut, that’s just what the extra footage is, something thrown in just because the Salkinds felt like it. Their intentions were obvious: pad the film out, get more advertising dollars, get more money in their pockets, as they did with the first two Superman movies.

And here’s where it’s much different. As opposed to the first two movies, which had substantial amounts of footage that enhanced and advanced their respective stories, the added footage for Superman III is… well… just there, just because.

The first official broadcast of the extended TV cut occurred on September 5, 1985, when ITV in the United Kingdom aired a 142-minute version of the film. That meant 17 minutes of lagniappe added to the film. It would then air in the United States for the first time on April 20, 1986.

So does this added footage contribute anything significant? Let’s take it from start to finish.

First off is a new main title sequence for the broadcast. As opposed to the first two films, the opening credits to Superman III are awkwardly superimposed over a montage of comic moments depicting a day in the life of Metropolis, setting the tone for a lighter approach to Superman. For its broadcasts, the Salkinds created a new main title sequence to bring the film into alignment with the first two movies.

From there we see the first added scenes to the film, which consists of added bits of scenery to the unemployment office where Gus Gorman is attempting to get his weekly unemployment check.

From there is an added bit to the comical chaos in Metropolis, as some construction workers witness the flooding of a passerby’s car, only to unknowingly hoist the bank robber’s bag away.

Then we come to the first added scene involving Christopher Reeve, which finds Superman saving a little boy stuck in a tree.

An added bit of two computer operators running into each other.

Just before the start of the chemical fire sequence, there’s an added shot of Clark and Jimmy on the bus, as Jimmy notices the glare of the fire and comments, “What a beautiful sunset!”

Some added bits of the chemical plant fire, including one of the scientists jumping from a scaffold to his apparent death, and a couple of added bits of Superman observing the fire and helping some more of the trapped employees.

We get an added moment of Gus outside Ross Webster’s office and talking with the secretary and looking for any way out of facing the music.

As Ross and Vera continue their discussion about how Gus can gain access to the Vulcan satellite, we see Gus meeting Lorelei, and then Gus realizes that it’s not a matter of when but where he can get in unnoticed.

After Gus gets into the local Webscoe office in Smallville, he gets Brad Wilson, former high school football star turned nighttime security guard, drunk off his goard. Again, a few unnecessary lines to pad out the scene.

An added shot of Richard Pryor mugging for the camera as Gus can’t turn on the computer by himself. If Pryor didn’t already have more footage in Superman III than the top-billed Christopher Reeve, the TV cut adds even more Pryor footage.

A few added shots of various computers at work as Gus begins his attempts to reach the Vulcan weather satellite. Great comic music in this sequence from Ken Thorne.

In one scene extension, when the fellow at the ATM starts getting all of the extra money, the scene continues to play out with his excited reaction.

Several added bits of Gus telling Ross, Vera, and Lorelei about Superman’s exploits in Colombia, along with a newscaster’s confirmation that the Man of Steel has saved Colombia from certain disaster. There’s also some added snippets between Ross and Vera about kryptonite…

Once Gus prints out the formula for his kryptonite mix, we get a quick added shot of him asking a scientist to cook up his recipe.

At the celebratory reception for Superman in Smallville, we get a nice little moment where he receives a copy of a cookbook from the ladies’ auxiliary.

There’s an added bit of Gus in disguise as an Army general trying to convince the people of Smallville about the importance of American plastics.

Once Gus has given Superman the synthetic kryptonite, we have a quick shot of our hero wondering what is going on here.

As Vera reads about the United Nations censoring Superman, there’s an added bit of Lorelei commenting, “He used to be such a sweetie pie. What’s happened to him in the last couple of weeks?”

During the discussion of how Gus will control the oil tankers to stop sending their oil, there’s an added bit of Ross saying to Vera, “Tell him about the pumps. I know you love the part about the pumps.”

After Gus lays out scraps of paper as his blueprints, Lorelei correctly describes it as plans for a supercomputer. She then dumbs it down and asks, “A hairdryer? Is it a hairdryer?” She’s much smarter than she lets on.

Gus then tells Ross how he came up with the idea for the supercomputer. “I invented it in my own head. This is the super duper, mamma jammer of computers. IBM doesn’t have anything like this.”

Once the oil chaos begins, there’s an added shot of a couple of oil workers attempting to get oil from a frozen pump in the Arctic.

In the scene of Lorelei on top of the Statue of Liberty (just how did she get up there to begin with?), there’s an added bit of one of the policemen telling her not to jump.

As Lorelei tempts the evil Superman with her “ideas”, we have a quick exchange between them as he asks, “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

Just after the evil Superman returns and has his way with Lorelei, there’s an added shot of Vera stuffing cotton in her ears as she reads a computer manual.

A quick added bit of a helicopter carrying a Webscoe cargo container to the computer cavern.

A few added bits to the conversation between Lana and Brad, as she attempts to reach out to Clark for help but can’t reach him. She then realizes that she needs to take matters into her own hands.

Once the battle between Clark and the evil Superman has ended, and the real Superman has returned, ABC included an unusual borrowed shot of Superman in flight through the storms over Colombia so it could go into a commercial break at the end of the second hour of broadcast. I remember seeing the extended TV cut on Superstation TBS sometime afterwards, and that commercial transition was clearly not present—they kept the scene of his flight to the damaged oil tanker as seen in the theatrical version with no commercial break.

Some added bits and pieces of Ross, Vera, and Lorelei making their way down to the cavern where the supercomputer is housed, while Gus takes the hard way down on a donkey.

A couple of added shots of the computer screen. Yawn.

There’s a brief snippet of Lorelei’s reaction to Superman’s arrival at the Grand Canyon, and Vera telling her, “Cut the mush, he’s after our skin!”

As the supercomputer fires its kryptonite laser beam onto Superman, there’s an added extension of Gus grabbing a screwdriver before stopping it.

A small bit of Ross ordering Vera to open the doors but having to do it by hand…

Once Gus says, “It’s feeding itself… it wants to live!” we see an added shot of the supercomputer’s antennas firing up. This was added to the ABC broadcast to find an appropriate break for commercials, and duplicated from the theatrical version.

There’s a brief added moment to the chaos of the power outage, as a neurosurgery goes awry.

As Gus destroys the kryptonite laser, we hear an added bit of dialogue as he says, “I’m not going to let you destroy Superman!” This line is not present in the theatrical version.

A couple of added shots of the supercomputer’s explosion are included.

Once everything is back to normal, we have an added clip of the oil pumps starting up again.

The introduction of Clark arriving at Lana’s hotel room is different in the TV cut. It shows Clark coming out of the elevator and knocking on Lana’s door (which is different from the sound of the doorbell in the theatrical version). A hotel waiter notices how Clark knocks on the door and mimics him.

The final added shot for the TV cut is a brief snippet at the end of the hotel sequence, as we see Brad for the last time (thank goodness!).

But that’s not all of the deleted footage to account for. In one of the TV spots for the film, an unused alternate angle of Superman in flight is used. This was clearly filmed for the scene where Superman flies to save Ricky from the wheat thrasher. The clip is very brief, maybe a half-second at most, but again it shows Reeve’s ability to handle himself naturally in flight.

And in the theatrical trailer for the film, there is an alternate take of Robert Vaughn saying, “What will it do for me?” In the final take used for the film there is a pause in his voice when he says, “What will it do… for me?” But in the trailer his voice has a higher pitch when he says his line.

In addition, the ABC broadcast made a number of changes to the extended TV cut to bring it to the approved broadcast standards of the day. And this one is all over the place! So much so, that I’m going to save all of these changes for a separate blog. And I’m just going to sum it up in one word:

When the deluxe edition DVD of Superman III came out in November 2006, eleven of these deleted moments were included on the disc (and later for the Blu-ray and 4K releases), with six of them included on the streaming version. And all of the scenes were taken from the TV cut. This is the only Superman movie where the added scenes were featured in pan-scan format, while the others presented their cut scenes in widescreen format (even with the workprint scenes from Superman IV).

So why use the TV cut as the source of the additional scenes? This brings up an interesting question. Does a widescreen print of the TV cut exist? As we know, Warner Bros. has a widescreen print of the TV cut of Superman II, as well as a print of the complete cut of Superman IV, in its vaults, both of which I’ve known about since 2018. And if such a widescreen print exists, what condition is it in?

Which brings me back to my question from the beginning: are the added scenes from Superman III worth it? To be honest… overall, no. It’s nice having those few little added pieces of footage with Christopher Reeve in them, but even that doesn’t help the cause. The only significant clip is the revised main title credits, which gives the TV cut a proper feel and brings it into sync with the other films. The rest is lagniappe, stuff that was thrown in there to pad out the rest of the film, just like all of the unnecessary bits that were added to the TV cut of Superman II. This film could have been tightened by another ten minutes or so, and it still would have told a decent story without all of the unnecessary padding.

With 2025 around the corner, and work underway on bringing the Adventures of Superman to Blu-ray, and production on James Gunn’s new Superman film, maybe there’s a chance we’ll see the Warner Archive release the sequels on Blu-ray for all of the fans.