be royally entertaining, which is really all it aims for." She also praised the performances of Reeve and Hackman and found the directing style between Donner and Lester to be indistinguishable. Similarly, David Denby, reviewing for the New York magazine, praised the film's light approach and Hackman's performance. Christopher John, reviewing the film in Ares Magazine, commented that "Superman II falls into the category of sequels containing such films as Jaws II – highly absorbing and entertaining, yet better films only if you never saw the original." British cinema magazine Total Film named Terence Stamp's version of General Zod No. 32 on their 'Top 50 Greatest Villains of All Time' list (beating out the No. 38 place of Lex Luthor) in 2007. Pop culture website IGN placed General Zod at No. 30 on their list of the 'Top 50 Comic Book Villains' while commenting "Stamp is Zod" (emphasis in original). Box office The film opened on 19 screens in Australia and grossed A$287,072 in its first four days. On its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, Superman II broke box office records with a first day gross of $4.3 million. The next day, it grossed $5.5 million, which at the time was the highest-single box office day, surpassing the record previously set by Star Wars (1977) with $4.5 million. It also recorded the highest-grossing weekend up to that time with $14.1 million, surpassing the record $11.9 million set by Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and the $13.1 million 4-day weekend set by Superman in its third weekend. The film remained number one for the next three weekends, outpacing Raiders of the Lost Ark, but Raiders eventually overtook it and returned to number one in its sixth week of release. In its first month of release, Superman II had grossed $75 million, and went on to gross $108.2 million in the United States and Canada (with the gross rental coming to $65 million), the third highest-grossing film of 1981. Internationally, it grossed $82.2 million for a worldwide total of $190.4 million. Awards and nominations Broadcast television versions As with the first film, Alexander and Ilya Salkind prepared a version for worldwide television release that re-inserted unused footage (in this case 24 minutes) into the film. It was through this extended version that viewers first caught a glimpse into the Superman II that might have happened had Richard Donner