“The cutting between motion-controlled puppet and live-action blue-screen is seamless”

The film begins with what has made the Superman film series legendary:
the flying titles intro credits.

We see the Warner Bros. Shield with the famous eight note Super-tune mixed in the background- fade into the planet Earth. This is highly symbolic, to suggest the re-birth of an icon. Usually, these films begin against the back-ground of a star-field, but here we have the planet Earth during a time lapse. Essentially, this shot comprises of a matte painting
rendered by Peter Ellenshaw, that was shot across an anamorphic backing, with the starfield composited in optically. We then see titles rendered by Olsen, Lane and White, with the basic text provided by Peter Govey Opticals. These titles give off a glare of glitter- the animation is flawless, however they don’t seem at all suited for this type of film.
Where as the previous Superman films had the titles slowly and majestically rumbling on, these titles swoop on gliding past more freely than before.

The first shot we see post-credits, is a motion-control shot of the space-ship MIR. This is the first time in the series that motion control was utilized. The compositing here is excellent, and would look right at home in a STAR WARS film. There is also another anamorphic projected Earth shot behind the space-station. The addition of a wholey panning camera in these shots help increase the believability of a space enviroment, and the backgrounds are all flawlessly tracked. Space junk hits the MIR, and we see the cosmonaut tumbling away.

Unfortunately, the cosmonaut, who was filmed blue-screen too, was given zero-gravity ala wire effects, and it looks it. He looks far too jerky to be moving in a weightless enviroment. We then see on the horizon, a pale, somewhat laughable composite of Supes, complete with fluttering cape in space for the first time in the series. The random camera movements for these shots all have perfectly composited backgrounds.
We then see a long shot of Supes flying from the MIR to the boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere. The planet is the same as before- Ellenshaw matte painting- but here is the first time we’re introduced to the motion-controlled puppet, which blends seamlessly with the live-action Superman. By placing a puppet in front of a blue-screen, then having a motion-control unit track around it from every angle, and then have that data stored for the star backing, it appears that Superman flys like an X-wing. Whereas the other films had heavy, god-like capes, QFP has really fast fluttering ones that show how much more aerodynamic he is. Even on this, the longest of long shots, the cape is still clearly flapping.

Clark is in Smallville, back home, he visits the barn where he takes the last green crystal stick. The gleaming crystal , which was achieved as a physical prop in the original films, is even effects-animated here. Like nearly every QFP shot, even the most mundane of FX were completed by the VFX department. Clark hits the ball into space- a crisp, well composited scene.

We return to Metropolis, an epic wide-anle shot of Manhattan,shot by David B. Nowell and Michael Kelem. We are in the subway with Clark and Lois, the train is out of control and speeding up. We see Superman approaching the train, flying as another pale optical shot with unbalanced lighting that doesn’t gel with the background plate. He stops the train giving off effects-animation lightning, that is very typical of mid- eighties American FX houses- great animation.

Superman goes to the now green Fortress of Solitude- the only physical element here is Christopher Reeve- the shot is entirely a matte painting. Council members’ faces composited after. The rendering here is flat, and it feels like a matte painting due to the limited angles that can be achieved through filming a flat background.

We see Clark's apartment for the first time with Lois, Clark jumps off the building with Lois and turns into Superman. When they are first seen falling, the composites are fringed in blue, with elements disappearing occasionally. This continues, but the photography and execution of the background plates is supreme. These shots are here primarily to display the beauty of America, through an American POV. The other films had a British, Alien point of view, but Kelem and Nowell’s perspective on the landscapes of the US is describing the quality of the land as they see it. and they fly away. They fly by a train, over some horses, over some snow and lets Lois fall. Unlike the first film’s drop’s hyper-realism, where Lois plunged through the clouds, here Lois flys herself, in a cringeworthy moment that displays no realism, but has fantastic plate photography of Colorado. The plates are well lit and steady throughout.
And they return back to Metropolis. Too obvious Flourescent white wired swing-rig can be seen supporting the stuntmen as they fly through the window.

At the UN, hundreds of people follow Superman and the kid into the UN headquarters, the shot of Supes making his speech is largely a piece of matte art, that for once in the film remains seamless. The curtains and rows of people really do convince the audience.

With some model footage of missiles being launched, that doesn’t gel with the live-action because it was done in the UK before production, Superman grabs a few nuclear missiles. The launches just look like stolen stock footage. This is even more evident, as the missiles are painted mattes in space, and the scene of Supes netting the missiles looks like it belongs in STAR WARS. Regardless, they are well accomplished. The good thing here is when we see Superman twizzling the net around his head and throwing it into the sun. When he’s twizzling the net, we see him in a close-up with the rope trailing into the background, with the missiles accurately tracked in later. The impact on the sun looks cheaply like stock-footage.

A black box is put on the side of a missile and is launched, Superman diverts it into the Sun, and then we see the birth of Nuclear Man. The birth begins with exactly the same impact on the sun footage as before, but the birth scene animation looks like that of the plasma guns lightning in GHOSTBUSTERS. The Animated Nuclearman foetus gels exceedingly well with the live action blue-screen shots of NM, and for this, Mark Pillow was shot motion-control so the camera can crawl freely across his body as if he is in a real zero-G enviroment. The tracking, yet again, is excellent. The initial sequence that has him unravelling in space contains extensive animation and rotoscope work, though high in quality these don’t belong in a Superman film. The individually animated lightning coils are very stylised, but richly animated by Hollywood’s finest roto artists, including Jammie Friday who worked on TERMINATOR: 3-D and TITANIC.
Hallowing NM is a cloud of radioactive vapour that is animated with the type of consistency that a CG effect would give today.

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