Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello once again and welcome back to another episode of Movie Deputy Reviews where we are interrogating a movie about a hero today. Now, this might not be the hero that you expect, but he became a hero to many tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals, not just here in the United States, but around the world. This hero captivated an audience and changed lives in more ways than he ever could have imagined.
[00:00:34] Now, who is this hero that I'm referring to? I'm going to get to that here in just a second. But I want to say that this story, if this is one that you decide to see or you rented on instant video, or if this is one that you had a chance to see when it was still in the theaters, you're going to understand the movie that I'm talking about. And if you've already seen this, you know what I'm getting ready to reference. And if not, you're going to need to have the tissues ready because this one is emotional. It is a tear jerker. You are going to experience the highest of highs and you are going to bawl your eyes out and everything else in between.
[00:01:13] This incredible man changed our life in 1978, and our lives were changed again forever in 2004. Now, I'm going to give you a second to see if you can figure out who I'm talking about.
[00:01:29] I won't leave you waiting too long. Today we are talking about Superman. Now, Superman means different things to different people. To my generation, Christopher Reeve will always be our Superman. But to my son's generation, Henry Cavill is his Superman. So it is. Superman is just, it's, it has evolved through the time. But I, I think even with the more modern generations, if you ask them who Superman is, I would at least hope that they would at least mention Christopher Reeve somewhere in that conversation. But the movie that we're talking about today is the Christopher Reeve story. It is the biopic that came out, biopic documentary that came out about him earlier this year. And this one is, he said this one will take you through the gamut of emotions. He went from an absolute nobody, like an off, off, off, off, off off Broadway type person that went to Juilliard who met, that's where he met Robin Williams. And they were literally the best of friends.
[00:02:35] But this guy went from just being an absolute nobody that nobody had ever heard of to being the biggest star in the world. Now, Superman, that is a hard role to live up to. That is a hard character to live up to.
[00:02:52] It is just, I mean, he's supposed to Be faster than a speeding bullet. And he's supposed to be all these different things, but he had to be all that and more to live up to the expectations along that he falls in love and he has a couple of kids.
[00:03:10] Then he ends up moving to New York, and he falls in love again and gets married and has another kid, and he's living his life, and he's doing all of this incredible stuff.
[00:03:22] And then on May 27, 1995, one of his activities changes his life forever. He has spent his life on horseback, or not his entire life, but I mean his adult life. From a movie role that actually exposed that he was actually allergic to horses. Don't worry, no spoilers.
[00:03:40] That kind of ironic. But then his accident on May 27, 1995, which broke his neck, crushed his neck in a way that it was basically what we know today as an internal decapitation.
[00:03:57] And his surgery was the first of its kind to ever be done, to reattach the skull to the spine in that way. So that had never been done before.
[00:04:09] And even though he was a complete quadriplegic, he never gave up hope that he would walk again. And so he was involved with a lot of research and a lot of therapy.
[00:04:20] And as powerful and as popular as he was, all of the money from Superman eventually got to a point where it dried up.
[00:04:30] So how did he make this work? Well, him and Dana started the foundation. They started their foundations together, and they really changed the world for not only themselves, but for other people with disabilities, other people with spinal cord injuries, other people with brain injuries.
[00:04:50] He initially had seen himself as somebody aside from them. He didn't want to put himself in that category as the other disabled individuals because he had hope that he wouldn't always be disabled anymore. But eventually he came to grips with, basically, this is your life.
[00:05:09] But he never could quite grasp all of that. And eventually, before we lost him in 2004, he had regained some minimal movements, and he had regained things, but his foundations had gone so far to help other people even beyond that. And ultimately, this is that story. This is his story pre Superman. This is his story during Superman, and this is his story after Superman, before and after the accident. Now, his life, at one point was defined as before the accident and after the accident.
[00:05:47] Through people around him and through him growing within himself, his life became a continual timeline to where it was no longer life before and life after. It was just his life.
[00:06:00] And this is such a beautiful representation of that in so many ways. And like I said, don't worry I'm not spoiling anything here.
[00:06:08] I am going to get to the score, so don't worry. I'm going to get to the score. This one, I was really struggling on this one. Just because of some of the language that's used.
[00:06:18] I'm going to be giving this movie an innocent rating. But please, let me put this caveat in there. There are F bombs dropped, and I need to be. Let you be very much aware of that in case you are more sensitive to that. And then I also need to address that. This.
[00:06:38] Regardless of how you feel about Christopher Reeve or Superman, this movie, it really tries not to be political in a lot of ways, but when you are paying attention to who is being interviewed here and what is specifically they're bringing up about Chris's life and things that their interactions that they're touching on.
[00:07:04] How do I put this? It tends to lean one direction. It's really trying not to. It really tries to be bipartisan in its presentation, but no matter how hard it tries, it falls a little bit short on that. And as you know me, I call out stuff for that all the time, especially when it's. I mean, if it's bleeding one way, I give it credit for that. If it's leaning the other way, I save that, too.
[00:07:28] And really, it. This is not a political documentary, so don't. Don't confuse that at all. It's just they do insert little pieces of it. And some of the. Forgive me, but some of the way that this is done, I'm just having to pause here for a moment. And some of the way that it's done, it's almost integrated seamlessly. And in other parts, it just. It's just gonna drive your brain nuts because you're like, okay, but they missed out on such a big piece of information here. Now, I understand the studios that did this, and I mean understand where they're doing all of this, and they want to represent Christopher Reeve and his family in the most accurate and honest way possible. And considering all of that, I think it was done excellent.
[00:08:21] Excellent by far. I am actually giving Superman, the Christopher reeve story an 8 out of 10 on the Deputy scale. Now, you may be thinking, wait, what you're just talking about. Yeah, but like I said, it's true to him, it's true to his life, and I have to recognize her for that. I'm just giving you the heads up on what to expect.
[00:08:42] So, like I said, I'm giving this a bit of a guarded, innocent rating, like I said, because there is some language involved. And some of the things of that nature, it doesn't go into anything gory or anything graphic or anything that it shouldn't, but it's just some of the language. And like I said, as a whole, it was beautiful. It was. If you've ever been a fan of Superman, if you've ever been a fan of Christopher Reeve, experience this. I think there. I think everybody's going to get something out of this. And I hope that this at least helps somebody who maybe might, maybe might have been curious about this to begin with.
[00:09:22] And if not, I always welcome the feedback as well. So if you want the latest and greatest movie deputy content, you know which buttons to push. And as always, I'll be back soon. Bye.
