The directors of the Christopher Reeve Superman documentary break down the late actor’s narration in the movie: “You always want the person to tell their own story”

New documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story chronicles the life of the legendary American actor, who will always be remembered for donning the Man of Steel’s red cape. We see his life both before and after a horse riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, with his friends, family, and collaborators telling his story.

One other voice we hear narrating Reeve’s story is the man himself, which may initially be surprising given that he died in 2004. However, his voice here isn’t created through AI or other technology, as it is in fact Reeve’s own using audio from his recordings for his two books ‘Still Me’ (1999) and ‘Nothing is Impossible’ (1990).

Hearing extracts from these books, hearing Reeve tell his own story, is incredibly emotional, as he recounts his experiences adjusting to life with quadriplegia. And for director duo Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgu, it was absolutely crucial to include in their documentary, to give Reeve his own voice in a film about him.

As Bonhôte says in an interview with GamesRadar+, it also helps “establish a conversation” between Reeve and the talking heads that appear in the documentary, that range from friend Glenn Close to the Superman actor’s children. Bonhôte explains: “I mean, you always want the person to tell their own story and if they can’t sit down for an interview, in this case Chris is gone, those audio books were the closest to the audience really hearing from the person himself.

“We tend to establish conversation between our characters, so between people we have actually filmed and interviewed, archive footage, and our main protagonist, who here is Chris. It’s very important we’ve got two or three people talking.”

(Image credit: Warner)

Continuing, the co-director is keen to emphasize that although we do hear from Reeve in the film, they would never say this documentary is telling his story “in his own words.” 

Bonhôte adds: “We never use a sort of voiceover so we wouldn’t call our films ‘in his own words’ or things like it. It’s never in your own words so we don’t bullshit the audience like that. But we love the fact that a lot of people are bringing their opinions and memories, then Chris can actually finish a sentence or start an argument.”

The way Reeve’s narration is weaved into the movie is masterful, doing so much more than letting us hear from the man himself. Even simply listening to his voice allows us to glimpse at some of the physical struggles he faced following his accident, with his speech often being broken up by breathlessness or the background humming of a machine.

As Bonhôte tells us, this was also why they wanted to include his narration: “While we love those audiobooks, you get a sense of the difficulty of talking, mixing up with the breathing, because you can only talk when your lungs are full and you let the air out, but then you have to let the machine fill up your lungs again. So, there’s always a moment of that. And I think that texture of him talking is very important for the audience to almost unconsciously get a sense of how even breathing and talking was such a struggle.”

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve story is out in US theaters now, before releasing in UK cinemas on November 1.

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