It’s fortunate for these Turkish filmmakers that Superman’s outfit is so simple and cheesy because they were able to perfectly duplicate it. Finally, they got something right.
Once the film cuts away from the opening title card that clearly reads “Supermen” not Superman, we’re taken into outer space–actually it’s just a black curtain background with a bunch of Lucky Charms cereal bits and Christmas ornaments floating about. This goes on for a solid two minutes to the tune of John Williams’s classic “Superman Theme”. No credits or anything. Just you, John, Lucky Charms and Christmas ornaments.
Living out in the middle of nowhere, our Turkish Clark Kent is given a green jewel by his foster parents. The young man, with his obnoxious looking Buster Keaton glasses, then sets off for the hills where he is drawn to a cave. Inside the cave, Clark tosses the jewel that explodes into a cloud of smoke, revealing, not a cool looking Jor-El played by Marlon Brando, but an old green looking Jor-El in a Superman costume. I’d be bummed if my pops turned out to be a green martian, but I guess we gotta just play the hand we’re dealt and get over it, right? Anyways, Jor-El jibbers at Clark in Turkish, probably telling him that he’s an eighteen year old Turkish Superman that needs to get his wimpy a*s out of his foster parents’ house and into the big city where he can write dirty stories for the local rag while defending the Earth from evil. That’s how the story goes anyways, right?
We then cut to Clark sitting at his office desk at The Daily Turkey or whatever paper he’s writing for. He receives some sort of distress call over the phone and then he’s off to kick somebody’s a*s as Superman. The rest of the film pretty much carries on in this fashion. Clark gets calls at the office and then he’s off again to whoop more booty.
I gotta note that this Superman seems to be a lot meaner than the one portrayed by Christopher Reeve. This Superman backhands and uppercuts people as if he were in a ragin’ bar brawl. He even winds up killing two people. One guy he forces to walk backwards off of a bridge, for which we are then shown a dummy falling hundreds of feet to the ground, and another guy, repelled by Superman’s strength, backs into a steel pipe, impaling himself. You can go ahead and say that these guys did this to themselves, but Christopher Reeve would never have let anything like that happen. But Turkish Superman does. Not only is he casual about letting villains perish, but he also has this creepy fixed expression on his face that hints at something dirty lurking behind those eyes. Turkish Superman looks like he’s up to no good. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw him down at the pound raping a Great Dane.
The biggest thing missing from this film that could’ve really taken it into prime train wreck territory is a cheesy evil villain. In this film, Turkish Superman just goes up against a bunch of sinister looking mob guys. That isn’t a whole lotta fun and I’m disappointed at the filmmakers for not being more creative. Add that to the long scenes of Turkish dialogue and we have a fairly boring film with several scenes, basically all of the Turkish Superman scenes, to liven things up.
