With Lex Luthor and Lois Lane mostly absent from Superman III, Williams' themes for those character are gone as well. The loss of the love theme has a tremendous impact on this score, stricken from the end titles march arrangement and Moroder's replacement not inserted instead. (It's nowhere near as worthy, but without any romantic interlude to the main theme, this doesn't sound like a proper score for the concept.) Also jettisoned is the muscular Krypton theme, Thorne once again latching onto Williams' minor crystal motif instead. The main fanfare does appear in the bare minimum of places, with the exception of the obnoxious opening credits format chosen by Lester. It does figure in the latter half of "Main Title" with playful, bright exuberance, but it's cartoonish and stupid in such an environment. It's used in fragments in "Saving the Factory" until the major fanfare at the end, the tone of this cue meant to closely match action from previous films. The theme's rhythm builds suspense in "Clark Rescues Ricky" before a brief fanfare burst, though it takes until the middle of "The Final Victory," as Clark defeats his evil self, for the most noble performances of the fanfare to return, in this case finally joined by the idea's secondary phrases. Brief, upbeat snippets in "Superman Coming" yield to full statements in "Rockets/Video Games/Big Missile" that define its action, though Thorne meanders off-course into his own action material, losing the Williams style along the way. Snippets of the main theme recur in "Metal Vera," but the idea exits appropriately with the hero in "Thank You Superman." The "End Credits" cue reprises the march, but losing the love theme sequence makes the march more repetitive and tiresome. Clark's own theme only makes one unexpected entrance with exuberance in "Gus Flying With Superman," where Thorne nicely adapts it to serve as the soaring replacement of the love theme for the concept of flying. It's easily the highlight of the score. Thorne's overuse of the crystal theme starts with menacing tones in lower registers in "Vulcan" and creepy renditions that punctuate the scheming in "Kryptonite" and "Searching for Kryptonite." It becomes an evil action motif by "Tower of Pisa" and continues its representation of the evil Superman in "Superman and Lorelei on Statue," a touch of the villain material in Superman II also contributing in this cue. The crystal motif punctuates the atmospheric dread of the unpleasantly electronic "Drunken Superman" and offers a major brass statement at 1:42 into "The Two Faces of Superman" amongst shrill fright; it continues to define the dissonant noise that follows, Thorne carrying over similar techniques with the motif to "The Struggle Within."

Not much else remains in Superman III from the prior score, though the percussive rhythms that accompanied the gang of General Zod strike in "The Two Faces of Superman" for the self-battle, and such rhythms extend into "The Struggle Within." It's a token acknowledgement that the son of Jor-El is now the villain. Otherwise, the new themes in this score range from uninteresting to abysmal. Thorne's adaptation of the Moroder love theme is the best of the lot, but it's barely present in the score. It's a pretty theme though a little out of place in its pop-like romanticism. The idea opens "Lana and Clark in Cornfield" on strings and low flute, with a brief reprise of the same string romance in "Lana and Clark on Telephone." The final and best rendition of the new love theme comes as the melody shifts to solo horn in "Clarks Gives Lana Diamond Ring" over charming percussion and strings. On the flip side, Thorne's original themes for the computer and Pryor's character, Gus, are wretched in their structures, instrumentation, and tone. The computer theme is a bouncing, plucked, rhythmic ditty with floundering wind lines on top, becoming more electronically threatening (and insufferable) as the score progresses. It occupies all of "Gus on Computer After the Cents," opens "Pay Day for Gus," informs the rhythm of "Gus Finds a Way," and takes on a tribal, percussive personality in "Colombian Storm," building to an annoyingly long crescendo. The computer theme becomes louder and more menacing in "What Will It Do for Me?," with an awful, slashing end, and it embraces its victorious electronic mode in "Boxes in Canyon." The idea is oddly not present in "Computer" and "Computer Takes Over" late in the story, but Thorne does return to it with force in "The Computer Comes Alive," becoming a lumbering rhythm for an assimilated character in "Metal Vera" and "Computer Blows Up." Gus' theme often intermingles with the computer theme, but Gus receives the personality of a carnival-like and quirky waltz for comedic purposes. Debuting at 0:23 into "Pay Day for Gus," this silly idea is humorously teased in fragments until an oboe rendition in "Gus Finds a Way," is nearly suspenseful but still trilling at the end of "Montage," and quietly previews the computer theme in "What Will It Do for Me?" It closes out "Gus Fights Ross" with an irritating reprise of the initial quirky performance from "Pay Day for Gus" and becomes swamped during the action of "Computer Blows Up." It's no surprise that "Pay Day for Gus" represents the score's only rejected cue, as it's a truly terrible expression of juvenility. The waltz for the "Montage" cue is based on Gus' theme and is equally atrocious and out of place with the character of surrounding material.

Not all is lost in Thorne's score for Superman III, though, for it has a few highlights outside of the surprising Clark theme development in "Gus Flying With Superman." Also worthy of attention is a lovely adaptation of the classic "Earth Angel" song in the underscore of "School Gym/Earth Angel" (licensing reasons precluded the actual song from being included on the soundtrack despite its use at a school dance); this use pre-dated its more famous adaptation in Back to the Future. A longer highlight of Thorne's work for Superman III is his distinct, soaring motif for the hot air balloons in "Preparing Balloons," developed further in "Superman Coming" and a nice addition to the score. Otherwise, this entire soundtrack is a loss, Moroder's songs badly dated and inconsequential while Thorne's score abandons much of the gleaming luster that brought so much entertainment to the first two scores in the franchise. While Lester can likely be blamed for much of this debacle because of his insistence that the movies take the comedic route, Thorne's original material in Superman III is befitting of the most childish of comedies or animated genre, his occasional interpolations of Williams material now sounding out of place and forced because of this new direction. Expect a significant portion of his music to be dissonant and unnerving, his original action material in the final sequences particularly unbearable in its atonal layers. If you subtract the periodic references to Williams' themes, you would have little indication that this music belongs to a superhero film of any stature whatsoever. The LP release of the Superman III soundtrack featured about twenty minutes from the score and the five Moroder recordings, one of which an electronic version of Williams' main title march that is best left in the dustbins of history. This material was re-issued on a Japanese Warner Brothers CD pressing in 1990. The full score was finally released in 2008, when Film Score Monthly offered the first four Superman scores in complete form on a popular, limited set that included about 64 minutes from Superman III. Featured on a separate CD in that product are the Moroder tracks and a few alternate takes, though the label was unable to license a few other source tracks placed into the film. In 2018, La-La Land Records released the same presentation from Superman II and Superman III on its own product, again with the Moroder songs included. The sound quality is the same on both of these albums. Seek these products for the first two scores of the franchise, however, because Superman III, despite continuing Williams' themes and containing a few singular highlights, is a massive and wretched misfire that ushered Thorne out of the fortress.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download