One of the most anticipated documentary premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival is “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” which tracks the eponymous star’s rise to Hollywood icon and the near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Reeve’s children — Will, Matthew and Alexandra — appear as subjects in the movie and joined the PvNew Studio presented by Audible to discuss their father’s legacy.
Alexandra called the documentary a “beautiful gift” because it’s rare to “see your parent’s life told in its totality…to see a life well lived on screen and in its full complexity. We wanted people to see the highs and lows, the public facade and what’s happening at home.”
“It is a gift. We’re so lucky,” Matthew added. “We not only have his films to look at but a collection of home movies to dig up and go through and interviews on YouTube of him to pull up. Seeing things I hadn’t seen before didn’t change my perception of him but enhanced it…like some rare Australian interview done in 1977 that was uploaded and I didn’t know existed. It was pretty cool to see that and uncover a lot more material than we knew about.”
Reeve’s children were asked about their thoughts on their father’s appearance in last year’s Warner Bros. comic book tentpole “The Flash.” The studio controversially used CGI to recreate his likeness for a cameo in which his iteration of Superman is spotted by Ezra Miller’s Flash out in the multiverse. None of them ever watched “The Flash” and they did not have involvement in that cameo.
When asked what Christopher Reeve role was the most underestimated in the wake of his career being dominated by Superman, Will didn’t hesitate to give an answer.
“In our hometown in Bedford, New York…the local movie theater went through a rebrand a few years ago,” Will said. “The person in charge of that shift reached out to me and said they’d love to have me screen a film of my choice of my dad’s. I responded, ‘Sure, but not Superman. We’re going to do “Remains of the Day.”‘ He was so proud of his role in that movie. It’s not a big role. It’s an important role in the film. He got to show a completely different side of himself. I knew how proud he was of that. Not that he wasn’t proud of Superman…but if he were here he wouldn’t choose Superman, he’d choose ‘Remains of the Day.’ I don’t think about the Superman films as much as I do about the swings he got took beyond this larger-than-life role.”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” is seeking distribution out of the Sundance Film Festival.
