Christopher Reeve was the actor in the early Superman series, and after his death, the head of DC set his birthday as Superman's anniversary. In the hearts of DC fans, Reeve did not leave them, and on Reeve's 69th birthday, DC launched "Donner and Reeve". This documentary shows the birth of the early Superman series, and Richard Donner was the director of Superman at the time, and you can see the way DC Universe films were created in this work. "Donner and Rif" contains a lot of valuable material, and the actors and directors of the 78 version of "Superman" participated in the Dick Cavill variety show together, which are the "Easter eggs" of the documentary. Famous Hollywood host Dick also included manuscripts from the early Superman series, and Warner plans to publish some of these manuscripts in this documentary.
From the perspective of Hollywood development in the 21st century, Marvel's development pace is ahead of DC, because The Marvel partner company Disney has a more innovative idea and can provide more resources for the MCU superhero series. In fact, when the two comic book giants entered the film field, DC developed better in the early days, and marvel was still exploring the big screen world, DC had become the leader in the Hollywood universe film field with the early "Batman" and "Superman" series. Many fans miss the early DC superhero series, because the film industry was more brilliant at the time, and "Superman", directed by Donner and starring Reeve and Brando, became a representative work. Since it was still the era when literary films and suspense films were the mainstay, everyone's understanding of comic films was still at the level of animation, and the emergence of the "Superman" series changed everyone's view.
In the early days of the superhero series, when Hollywood works were promoted through a single channel, after a movie or film or television series was released, the audience usually learned about these news through newspapers, radios and magazines. Large, well-resourced companies like Warner, at best, allow actors and directors to promote new films through television interviews. The '78 version of Superman takes a pioneering approach — Donner takes the lead actors like Dress and Brando to the variety show, after all, reality TV audiences are a different group, and cosmic movies increase attention in this way. The variety show that Donner and Reeve participated in at that time was a reality show hosted by Dick. Reeve said on the show: "Originally, like my friends, I had a bias against the character of Clark Kent, and I thought it was a simple children's film character. ”
At that time, everyone did have a prejudice against the superhero series, and it should be known that "Superman" and "Batman" were still very well-known characters in the field of comics, such as "Aquaman", which was almost impossible to shoot in the 1970s and 1980s. Before Reeve starred in the "Superman" series, he only played a small role in "Death Submarine", when the main actors of the "Superman" series could only invite unknown small actors, indicating that the mass base of this series was not very good. Reeve admitted on Dick's show that he went to Warner with his friends to interview at the time, and that the top-ranked Kevin Klein, Steve Collins, and Williams all starred in Warner's literary films, and That Reeve auditioned low at the time before he starred in the cosmic film, details of which were explained in the documentary Donner & Reeve.
I think "Donner and Reeve" has a little advantage, the series does not fully tout the value of Superman, DC Studios also acknowledges their shortcomings - in the early Superman series, female characters were marginalized. In fact, in The Manuscripts that Dick included in the early Superman series, Donner had designed the image of female heroes and villains. It's just that hollywood audiences may not be able to accept the diversity of female characters at that time, and Warner was also a more traditional old-school film industry, so they cut out the female elements in the superhero series. Fortunately, Warner has made progress in equality, and the emergence of female heroes such as Wonder Woman and Joker Woman has also added a lot of color to dc universe movies.