Many or even most Superman fans seem to hold the opinion that the Richard Donner cut of Superman Two was what the movie was meant to be. I myself had high hopes for this movie before it was due for release.
I had watched the Richard Lester cut of the movie to the point of boredom that I could memorize every single scene to the last detail. The main problems I found with Richard Lester's edition was the story being Superman disappearing earlier in the film to fulfill his romance with Lois Lane and reappearing later on, finishing off general Zod and his trio gang and the movie more or less finished. At least the adventure part was over.
I found the Richard Donner cut to be even worse. The beginning has Clark Kent saving Lois in the most unusual way with her falling down the window, him rushing down the stairs, using his heat vision and super breath in front of the public and not getting noticed by even one person.
Superman does not even make his first public appearance until way into the movie at the Niagara Falls scene. Lex Luthor and Miss Tessmacher have a comical and less realistic trip to the Fortress of Solitude with Miss Tessmacher using a toilet in an apparently advanced Kryptonian origin building.
Most of the scene was poking fun at the realism of the fortress and the Kryptonian facility.
Other improved scenes were also added such as seeing Superman fly without his costume, convincing an audience that his outfit has nothing to do with his powers. The re-powering scene was corrected and the battle scene with Superman and the Kryptonian trio has some extra details. But the ending of it is the same as the original cut with Superman simply abandoning Lex Luthor at the fortress mysteriously.
The ending was even worse than the original cut with Superman reserving time in order to erase Lois Lane's memory of his secret identity. As everything reverses in time, general Zod's trio strangely don't come back to life. Even if Zod's trio was ignored, the whole time reverse thing is simply something that doesn't belong in a franchise like Superman.
It was too bad that Superman 1 had to have it in the first place, though some later fan editions may change that.
The Richard Donner cut was nothing but an overall disappointment with a few improvements in them. Viewing both movies I still prefer the Richard Lester cut over this and am holding on to my two disc Richard Lester DVD set till I can have a customly made fan edition of the movie with my preference of the scenes or bought another fan edition of the movie.
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