New Christopher Reeve documentary shows how he struggled with the consequences of his tragic accident

There's an iconic scene from 1978's Superman where Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve, spies Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. He finds a revolving door, reveals himself to be the Man of Steel, floats up and catches Lane as she falls.

“Easy, miss, I got you,” says Superman. Lane is still panicking. “You got me? Who got you?”

More from Variety

Superman smiles, says goodbye casually and flies off into the night with a perfect forelock. That's the image the world had of Reeve until 1995. And it's here that Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui's new documentary “Super/Man” takes up a very different version of the hero's journey.

After falling from a horse, Reeve is now paralyzed from the neck down. He can't move, he can't fly. His wife Dana cares for him and then tells how she looks for fresh towels from the dryer so she can get some of the warmth her husband can no longer give her. The couple's young son, Will, is celebrating his third birthday in his father's hospital.

Remarkably, less than a year later, Reeve was on stage at the Oscars to a standing ovation, teaching Will to ride a bike, exercising with him, and encouraging him from his motorized wheelchair. In a sense, Reeve became a superhero again.

The film by Bonhote and Ettedgui, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, makes it clear that Reeve's comeback came at a huge price. “His morning routine from waking up until he could roll out the door took about two hours,” Will Reeve says in an interview with diversity via Zoom with his siblings Matthew and Alexandra. “We all woke up every morning thinking anything could happen. But he woke up and immediately remembered that he couldn't move.”

Before his accident, Reeve wasn't unkind, but he did his own thing. (In the film, Matthew mentions that his father left for France to go skiing the day after he was born.) The actor had a cold poet father who disapproved of his films and, legend has it, bought him champagne because he mistakenly thought he had been cast in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman rather than the superhero role. Reeve showed his love for his children by skiing with them and skiing down the slope ahead of them. That changed after his accident.

“Our love language used to be activity,” says Alexandra. “Suddenly you're just spending time in your dad's office, looking into each other's eyes and talking for two hours.”

Neither Reeves' children nor the filmmakers hide the fact that Reeves' accident made him a better person.

“I think he was very aware of that irony and the legacy of 'Superman' when people saw his story and thought of him after the accident,” Alexandra says. “He talked about redefining hero status… it's a regular person surviving despite overwhelming odds.”

Reeve didn't just blossom; he became a human being. He and Dana founded a foundation that raised hundreds of millions for research. And he didn't do it alone – the documentary makes it clear that Reeve had financial resources that others lack, but emphasizes that it was his blended family of Dana, his ex-partner Gae and his three children that made life possible for him after the accident. (Dana died of cancer in 2006.)

“Early in his life, everything came easily to him,” says Bonhote. “Then, as Christopher said, 'The only minority you can be a part of immediately is disability.' I think that on another level, he really opened up to the world around him. It would be superficial to say, 'Oh, this is a story of triumph over adversity,' but it is a story of turning adversity into opportunity.”

Bonhote and Ettedgui, who worked together on the critically acclaimed 2018 film “McQueen,” were tuned into the world of the physically disabled when making “Rising Phoenix,” about the Paralympics. They wanted to make a film about the terrible obstacles that even a well-funded American legend faces when he is disabled himself.

“Christopher said the only minority that anyone can be a part of immediately is the disabled,” says Bonhote. “We're not trying to rewrite Superman, but to tell a story about how to tackle an issue that society has turned its back on.” A quarter of a century after Reeve's downfall, opportunities and acceptance for the disabled have increased exponentially. Still, much remains to be done. “I'm optimistic, but there's still a long, long way to go,” says Ettedgui.

The best of diversity

Subscribe to Variety's newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.