I remember seeing a commercial for "Superman: The Movie" while watching Saturday morning cartoons, back when it came out. My brother and I jumped out of our seats, and ran to tell my mother. I think we might have gone to see it, that same day.
Like many boys our age, we collected comic books. Every Sunday, our family would stop at a convenience store on the way back from church, where my brother and I would choose from the spinner rack. (I leaned towards Marvel, while he preferred DC.)
Watching the Superman movies with my kids when they were young, I was struck by the mythic aspects of the film - the weird, alien technology of Krypton, the echoes of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, the overt religious symbolism.
Back then, we never saw any conspicuous product placement on TV or in the movies, so I remember people chuckling when we spotted Ma Kent with a box of Cheerios. (There used to be a lot more audience engagement at the movies.)
We couldn't believe it when Lois Lane died, although even as a ten year-old, I knew that flying around the planet wouldn't make it rotate backwards, or reverse the flow of time. In retrospect, I suppose that it was only Superman who traveled back in time.
I think I started my lifelong obsession with remaining until the end of the closing credits with this film (I remember that they were particularly long, and that everybody else wanted to leave). That's how we got the heads up about "Superman II".
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