The original Superman movie (1978) was the most expensive film ever made to that point in time and had a five minute-long main title sequence. Five minutes is a long time. At least it is now.
I mean who has the time? Heck, some TV series don’t even have a title sequence and music, they're so afraid people will switch away. The most popular movie ever just shows you the title, a short crawl, and then on to spaceships and explosions. No more titles is the way things are going. No more, “It’s a story about a man named Brady….”
Like Fred Allen says to the audience as the titles in his picture “It’s In the Bag" roll, — “Who ARE these people? Who CARES?!”
The Superman movie, when it was released, was a big deal. But would today's audiences really stay in their seats for THIS?
It's the five minute opening title sequence. FIVE MINUTES. Sure, sure, it won a Clio Award just for the Robert Greenberg-designed slitscan motion control process.
Give it a whirl. Click the play button and force yourself to watch every name on there. Sure, these laser titles were a cool thing back then and were specially developed for the feature, but FIVE FRIKKIN' MINUTES of John Williams music telling you "this is exciting" while looking at name after name. "No, John, this isn't exciting. Get to the damn plot already." Try to force yourself to be in the 1978 mall multiplex movie theatre and watch. Pretend you are captive to them. It's a long time. And I bet today's moviegoers would walk out.
But to me it's still pretty and pretty exciting.
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