Watch a deleted scene from Superman in which Lois shoots Clark Kent
Even to this day, the original Superman remains a bullet-proof classic. Here, we’ve bought you a rare deleted scene from the 1978 film in which Lois Lane shoots her incognito superhuman amour with a pistol. Why the editors decided it wasn’t worth keeping is unclear; all we know is that it’s rife with wonderfully hammy acting.
Superman was made at a time when there really wasn’t a market or industry for superhero movies. Sure there was that 1966 big-screen version of Batman, but that was basically it. Thankfully, in 1977, director Richard Donner got a phone call from a Hungarian producer called Alexander Salkind, who informed him that he’d managed to secure the filming rights to Superman and was planning on making an origin story and a sequel in one fell swoop. He offered Donner $ 1 million to sit in the director’s chair, a fee that would have gone to Steven Spielberg. Donner accepted.
Opening up about the film’s legacy in an interview with Empire before his death, Donner said: “It’s so hard to talk about it. Because it’s become so big. I never thought for a moment that it would when we were making it. We were just making a picture. A film on a subject that nobody was really paying much attention to.” With his film, Donner hoped to do justice to the original Superman comics, which had given him so much comfort in hard times. “I was brought up in the war years,” he continued. I remember my folks being so depressed about the war and what was going on. The world needed heroes. And Superman was a great hero. He really stuck with me and became a piece of hope.”
None of this is to say that making Superman was an easy undertaking. While Marlon Brando, who had signed on to play Lex Luther, was facing an obscenity lawsuit over Last Tango In Paris, original director Guy Hamilton was banned from shooting in England as he had violated his tax payments. Both were eventually replaced. Christopher Reeve, meanwhile, failed to impress Salkinds on his first audition, later landing the role of Superman after bulking up. Here, Reeve appears alongside Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane for a sadly-deleted scene in which she attempts to establish the true nature of Clark Kent by shooting him at point-blank range. Make sure you check it out if you haven’t already.
