Jun 29 2006
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Superman Returns: the Bad Astronomy Review!
After much furious typing, and more furious copy editing, and even more furious spell checking, I have finally written up my Bad Astronomy review of "Superman Returns". This is my first movie review since that nutbag Tom Cruise thetaned his way through "War of the Worlds", and Superman was a lot more fun to review.
I actually liked it; it was fun, but the more I thought about it afterward the less I liked it. Too many plot inconsistencies, and I think in a lot of parts they just tried too hard. But it was still fun, and that’s sort of the minimum requirement for a movie. Anyway, I had a lot to say in the review, even when I wasn’t griping about comic book science. So give it a read!
Just not enthused about this one. I keep thinking “Lex Luthor again???”
Why they don’t unleash the creative team (Dini, Burnett, etc.) from the animated side on the movies I’ll never know.
I want a Superman movie with Darkseid and the legions of Apokalyps. I want Lobo, Toyman and Doomsday. I mean, geez, why not even a good old Superman staple like Brainiac? Why not a Supperman/Batman combo. Heck, just do a Justice League movie.
First poster is right. Let Paul Dini and his minions do the films. The plane ripping accidently is stolen right from the pilot episodes of the animated series. Also, in the series, Superman needs a spacesuit to fly in space. Lex Luthor is also surrounded by competent people such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Graves
You mention the first film in 1978. I HATED that one. HATED IT! Clark Kent is not supposed to be a buffoon. The whole time reversal thing at the end. Margot Kidder was utterly miscast as Lois Lane. And to be blunt, I never liked Christopher Reeve’s Superman. I think everyone said that because they felt sorry for him after his accident.
Just out on DVD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_The_Animated_Series
Best version since the old Max Fleischer toons.
Interesting review ….
IMHO , fantasy can take its liberties with science as long as fantasy does not replace science.
Superman(or any superhero for that matter ) is a manifestation of our desire to raise above and beyond our human frailty.
Accepting Superman can do super things (flying etc) why cant they get the rest of the science right?
It wouldn’t impact the enjoyment movie
Accepting Superman can do super “non science” things (flying etc) why cant they get the rest of the science right?
It wouldn’t impact the enjoyment movie
Excellent & thorough review Phil
Re:
‘(is there a name for something like this– I have to keep calling it the ball, which sounds silly).’
Might I suggest globe instead of ball? it is the Daily Planet after all
Christopher Reeve flying in a circle around the earth and reversing time is one of Superman’s regular gimmicks from the period in the comics, so he had to do it in the movie. He was a time travel Frequent Flyer. He doesn’t really stop the earth turning, it just looks like it. I think the idea is he’s going faster than light so his time vector is reversed (obviously this is Einstein’s fault), and he flies around the earth in a circle so he doesn’t get lost and he can count rotations to see how far in time he’s gone. Although I think in some versions there’s also a giant calendar set next to the moon with pages slipping off it for the days, so he can go by that. In Poul Anderson’s novel _There Will Be Time_, I think time travellers just set up a billboard in a convenient and discreet location…
The issues with muscle strength vs tensile strength have nagged at me for years. In Superman III there was that scene where he has to put out a raging fire. So he flies to a nearby lake, freezes the surface with his super-breath, then grabs onto the shoreline and lifts the icy crust straight up and carries it over to the fire, with no breakage/chippage along the way due to the crust’s own weight.
I used to notice the same sort of thing with the Six Million Dollar Man. Steve Austin would use his bionic arm to, for example, lift an Army tank off the ground. Too bad the living bone & muscle to which the bionic arm is attached issn’t strong enough to endure the weight of a tank.
A similar scene was in an episode of Knight Rider. The car, KITT, has a body made of a proprietary, super strong material. Some bad guys steal the formula for this material and use it to make the body for a super truck. To demonstrate, some guy takes a steel bar and whacks the truck’s bumper, breaking the steel like a toothpick. (That guy must’ve had one helluva arm.)
Great review Phil. One thing though..
Here’s what that “oh I beg to differ” statement was in reference too…Sorry, kind of new to this commenting thing.
Well, in the old comics (before the revisionist history of the 1990’s and the cartoons) Superman didn’t need a spacesuit at all when flying is space.
I liked the film, but I thought it was a tad too long, and moved slowly at parts. Also, considering the state of CGI nowadays (Gollum and Kong) they could have made the CGI version of Superman more “realistic”.
As a science geek I picked at the film, but I can also “suspend disbelief” and enjoy it as well. It’s just a movie.
Was Superman a d%$k in the new movie?
I’m heading back to see it tonight with some friends who missed the Tuesday night showings…yeah, I liked it that much, so what?
I’ll keep this in mind while watching and see what my new reaction is. However, I still think this one is easily in the league of the original, and better than Spider-man 2 and X-Men. Of course, it’ll have to be really good to top X2.
Speaking of which…why no Bad Movie Reviews of the X2 movies? Mutation and metal skeletons aren’t weird enough?
I was going to write my own review, but you pretty much summed it up. I think I’ll link over, if you don’t mind…
The Mach 1 shockwaves in vacuum conditions (not orbit!) are what bothered me the most.
FYI- The 1970’s Superman movie was not the ‘original’. Poor forgotten George Reeves.
You are Super too
Thomas, that is hysterical! I’ll have to find some use for that image…
I emailed this to Phil before remembering there was a comments section:
I just read (and enjoyed) your review of Superman Returns. I haven’t seen the movie, but there might be a slight quibble with one of your points.
The nose and belly of any commerical aircraft is very strong, they are designed to be able to land with collapsed nose gear and remain intact. Witness the “Gimli Glider”, a Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel over Canada some years ago and made an unpowered emergency landing. The backup systems weren’t powerful enough to lower and lock the nose gear, so the plane landed and slid down a runway until the plane stopped. The plane not only survived, but was later returned to service.
Not having seen the scene, I’m not sure how applicable this is, but from what you described, it seems at least plausible from the movie perspective.
Ok, I just saw S’man Returns. There are a few more things to comment on.
First, in Superman circa 1978, Clark Kent is a teenager during the ’50s. Therefore Kal-El landed on Earth in the late ’30s. Ma & Pa Kent weren’t exactly of military draft age when they found the little tyke, so Martha Kent, in Superman Returns, should be something like 100 years old. But- she only appears as old as Eva Marie Saint. Same sort of thing goes for Lois Lane. She’d be close to 60, yet the actor who played Lois in S’man Returns wasn’t even born when Superman ‘78 was released; she’s not even as old as Margot Kidder was in the ‘78 prequel.
In fact, Clark Kent must these days something like 70 years old. Admittedly, he might not age as humans do, since he’s a Kryptonian. But you’d think that such age & experience would’ve taught the guy a thing or two about the tribulations of life by now.
Also, since Lois Lane’s kid turns out to be Superman’s offspring, rather than her boyfriend’s, then in order for the kid to plausibly be mistaken for the boyfriend’s, Lois had to have started fooling around with the guy IMMEDIATELY after Superman left Earth. Doesn’t seem as if she was exactly pining away for the Man of Steel.
That aside, there’s more to mention about materials physics. The crystal island must not be too robust. When the little seaplane’s starboard wing clips one of the growing crystal extrusions, the crystal chips right off, with no damage to the wing. Airplane wings aren’t all that strong to begin with, so the shear strength of the island-matter doesn’t make it look like look like a good place to call home for all the displaced North-Americans/Africans.
And if Superman is rendered basically mortal by Green Kryptonite poisoning, then how is it he survives falling a few hundred feet off a cliff into the Atlantic? How is it that, when he’s in the emergency room, mortalised by that embedded chip of Kryptonite, the doctors can’t inject him with a hypodermic needle?
Good review, as usual, but there’s a couple of things I was expecting to be commented upon that weren’t. First, I really didn’t get the whole “new crystal island eats up America” thing. I thought they implied the new crystal is formed from water, which would mean the ocean levels would go down and MORE landmass would be above the water. Was it supposed to be converting landmass to crystal? Maybe the weight of the new island was deforming the crust? The only explanation they give is “two objects can’t occupy the same space”, which seems pretty lame as explanations go. The second thing was simple aerodynamics. When the sea plane is escaping the island near the end, they are on the verge of being airborne when they go off the cliff. It would only have taken a drop of a few feet for the plane to start flying, then, not the hair-raising plumet almost to the ocean surface. I know it was for dramatic effect, but it really bothered me since a plane just wouldn’t act that way. Don’t even get me started on the shuttle/plane sequence at the beginning. I know you probably didn’t want to beat it into the ground but there are at least twice as many nits to pick as the ones that were mentioned in the review.
Having said all that, the reversing time thing in the original bothered me more. I also wasn’t bothered so much by Superman’s attitude towards Lois (there’s a reason she never married the other guy, after all) and he did allow the boyfriend to be the one to save her at the end.
PS. I hope those other crystals stayed on the island and didn’t fall into the sea. That sure seemed like a dumb place to leave them, but then that character didn’t seem to have put much thought into it.
[…] I was going to review this movie, but Phil Plait (who will be at Dragon*Con this year! I’ll see you there, Phil!) did a great job and hit all of the high spots. […]
Two thoughts about your great review.
1) Re the kryptonite knife cutting through the suit. The comic books make reference to Superman’s body somehow having an aura around it that gives super strength to things like cloth – thus his suit has the same impenetrable qualities as his skin. If a kryptonite knife could cut him, it could also therefore cut the suit. Also, in some versions the suit is made from a blanket that came with the super tot. But that fails to explain the needle argument.
I hate myself for knowing this bit of trivia.
It is still a pretty bad science leap. My guess is they had to figure out some way to explain why he can fly through a ball of fire and not come out naked since the suit would burn away.
(2) I liked your point about Superman having to travel at or even beyond the speed of light. Wouldn’t relativity mean that Superman would return home only to find everyone aged greatly due like in the twin paradox if he was traveling that fast?
Did you see the Prandtl-Glauert singularity forming around Superman when he was breaking the sound barrier?
Hi Matthew,
Don’t feel so bad. I also am familiar with the story of Kal-El’s blanky being sewn by Ma Kent to make his super-suit.
Your question about travel at relativistic velocity is good. If Superman traveled for the last five years at less than, though perhaps infinitesimally close to, the speed of light, then it’s true that he would’ve aged more slowly as a function of his speed as a fraction of c. But since he was away for only five Earth years, everyone back on Earth would of course have aged only five years.
But getting back to Superman’s super-suit, I think I know how it is that the suit is as invulnerable as he is. It’s all a big tattoo applied as a Kryptonian baby christening ritual. He’s naked.
Oh, and something else, regarding super-breath.
Every once in a while Superman, or some other Kryptonian (General Zod, Ursa, Non), lets out a sustained, powerful, widely dispersed blow. Now, I can see any two of these, but not all three at once. Lung capacity by volume is what it is, no matter how super you happen to be.
Maybe in the movie, but definitely not in general. (Warning: this page may cause you to lose many, many hours of your life you will never get back.)
HAL9000 said:
OK…lets try that again…
HAL9000 said:
3rd times the charm…
HAL9000 said:
I give up…
I can’t post more than a few words…
“A better idea would have been to punch through the outer skin of the plane and grabbing the frame underneath.”
What frame? Can you say monocoque?
Noun: monocoque
1. Type of vehicle design in which the body and chassis are in one piece.
I can say it, but that doesn’t mean I know what it means. For just a split second, I thought it was a dirty word.
Sometimes you hear words or expressions that you never heard about and when you finally do, it turns out that you are the last person on earth to know about it.
Keep trying RAF.
Talk to me.
Okay, this is because I’m a huge comic-book geek, but…
As far as I could tell, given the bizarre nature of Superman’s powers, the movie was entirely physically accurate (with the possible exception of him hanging in high atmosphere).
Cape-flapping: In extreme high atmosphere, yes, the cape wouldn’t move as long as Clark stayed still. However, any motions on his part *would* make the cape flap, wouldn’t they?
As for the plane/shuttle scene: I’ll get to the part about him catching it in a moment. I thought the fact that they had not one but two separate failsafe systems - the lock release on the shuttle, the manual release on the jet itself, and the emergency override at Mission Control - was a very nice touch, and added much to the drama of the scene. The shuttle was supposed to detach at least thirty seconds before ignition - I suppose it would keep gliding for a bit while the jet got the heck out of the way - and if I noted correctly, the engines that fired were actual (detachable) boosters, not the main rocket.
As for the super-suit and the Kryptonite: I’ll get to that in a bit as well.
As for the Daily Planet globe: It looked to me like that car was empty, and I coulda sworn that Superman looked at it before he put the globe down. I’ll get to the tensile strength in a moment.
As for the falling guy: Again, I’ll get to him in a moment. Bear with me, please, this is going somewhere.
Yes, the idea was similar to that in the first movie, if somewhat more creative. I was really disappointed that we didn’t see Lex using any Kryptonian weapons or anything - heck, he found an ancient Kryp battlecruiser and declared war on Metropolis in the comics, they could’ve used those same designs and I would have loved to see them on the big screen.
As for throwing the island: Okay, NOW I’ll get to that and the others.
You have to understand that people have been nitpicking Superman picking up large objects (like buildings) for YEARS. They retconned his ability awhile ago.
Superman is strong and fast, yes. However, the writers decided awhile back that they didn’t want to stop him from picking up battleships without them snapping in half, so they changed the actual nature of his powers somewhat.
Kal-El uses tactile telekinesis. That’s right.
The energy he absorbs from Earth’s yellow sun allows him to:
a) create a superthin forcefield just outside his skin, which protects both him and his suit (Which has been retconned to be of normal Earth material; the original concept had it made from Kryptonian blankets in the rocket that brought him to Earth.), but not his cape - thus, his cape gets torn a LOT more than his clothing does. In comics, if Superman’s costume is getting torn, he’s in serious trouble. The forcefield is generally (selectively, so he can breathe and absorb sunlight) impervious to everything except for, you guessed it, Kryptonite radiation.
b) Fly, rather than just jump really far. Some bizarre use of his forcefield allows the Man of Steel to fly at extreme speeds.
c) Use his super-strength to pick up REALLY LARGE objects without breaking them; basically when he’s touching something, his forcefield (automatically) extends through it and helps to hold it together. Generally he doesn’t use this on anything larger than, say, a car, but he has used it in the past to pick up large ships without buckling them. This explains most of the oddities of the movie; when he grabbed the jet, even with the forcefield aiding it, the nose crumpled (and the actual body of the plain suffered a slight accordion effect - you could see a ripple travelling through the skin as he caught it). As for why the wing snapped? Maybe the strain was just too much, or maybe he was breaking it off so the plane would be easier to catch and he wouldn’t have to worry about the auxiliary fuel tanks in the wing exploding.
With the Daily Planet globe, the same thing applies; also, it appeared to be a metal framework with glass in between the metal, and judging by the screenshot on the Bad Astronomy Review, he looks like he’s holding it under metal bits (rather than glass). Score one for (comic-book) common sense!
As for Superman catching the falling man - again, it’s a bizarre use of his forcefield. As soon as he touches the guy, the telekinesis matches the guy’s kinetic energy with Superman’s (and absorbs the excess), allowing the faller to, well, not go splat.
With the crystal island , it appears to be a fairly extreme extension of the telekinesis. Instead of a scalpel holding up a water balloon, think of a flat plate balanced on top of a scalpel holding the balloon up - a nearly-impossible feat, but workable given comic-book physics and the bizarre nature of Superman’s powers.
The impact crater works the same way - as soon as Superman touches the ground, his forcefield automatically tries to spread out and absorb the the impact, leading to less physical damage to the Man of Steel.
As a final note, the fact that they had sun-lamps trained on Superman while he was in ICU was a very, very nice touch.
Just came back from seeing it myself, and then read the BA review.
On the whole, I totally agree with the bad science that Phil points out (while at the same time dismissing it because it is, after all, a comic book). Kevin Spacey makes a great Luthor, and if anything I wish they’d used more of him (with all due respect to the desire to see Darkseid and the like shown by some of the other posters, I personally think that showing how Supes can be threatened by a mere mortal makes him seem more “human” - as long as they have a good actor playing Luthor, he’s my choice to remain as the bad guy).
I note that they’re apparently sticking with the Golden Age Supes (I could be wrong, but I don’t believe the post-Crisis Superman still has the breath powers, and I think he does need to breathe at least once every hour or so now - and Lex is rich rather than a criminal genius in the modern version). One thing is tricky to place - is this movie supposed to be a sequel to the Christopher Reeve movies, or is it a completely new start?
In favour of the first theory is good old Lex Luthor (who, as Phil pointed out, hasn’t really even figured out a new plot). The problem is that this would mean that the Fortress of Solitude shouldn’t still exist (and worse, that Nuclear Man was canon). But it looks like we’re supposed to take for granted that Lois and Supes had a “thing”, and really the only source for that is the previous movies.
If you cut out the destruction of the fortress in Superman II, but leave in the “goodbye kiss”, then it kinda sorta works; Clark and Lois DID do the wild thing while he was powerless, even if she doesn’t remember it (and this points up the possibility that she honestly thought it WAS Richard’s child).
Anyway, it’s been far too long since we saw the Man of Steel in the cinema, and while I personally would rate this movie below both Spiderman II and the X-Men films, it’s still a pretty entertaining flick; I’ll be seeing the inevitable sequel.
The shuttle/plane thing was used in another movie: Moonraker. The villain, Drax, doesn’t fly it out of the atmosphere, though, just as far as his secret jungle rocket base, where it’s launched into orbit in the conventional manner.
This film featured a really bad space station, by the way. It was obvious that the designers had absolutely no conception of how centrifugal force works.
Getting strange error messages when I comment, BA, might want to look at that.
I have been getting those errors for a while. I’m just waiting for BA to make good on his promise about changing the comment section.
A preview button would be nice.
NelC said;
“This film featured a really bad space station, by the way. It was obvious that the designers had absolutely no conception of how centrifugal force works.”
People can have some very interesting notions of how things work. Speaking of centrifugal/centripetal force, I once was at an amusement park with friends, a married couple, and at one point we all boarded the Himalaya.
Mrs Friend says to me, “Ok, when we go around clockwise, we’ll be thrown to the outside, and when we reverse into counter-clockwise, we’ll get sucked toward the center. Right?”
I saw another bad physics moment in the movie - the run-away car. Her brakes don’t work, and so she speeds out of control at a high velocity with no sign of slowing down until Superman grabs the car.
My first thought when I watched this was, “Take you foot off the gas peddle!” But then later I saw her foot was not on it. So then I wondered why friction and continuously crashing through things was not slowing down her car. Bad physics!
Yes. As my own kid pointed out to me once, if you find the brakes don’t work… turn off the ignition!
Or, if you’re desperate, throw the gears into reverse. Yeah, it’ll wreck the gearbox, but better that than wrecking the car and the flesh inside.
The bullets lose their inertia when the ricochet out of superman because of his super-anti-inertial-powers.
When Supes’ spaceship came tumbling down to Earth, I had to wonder what his power levels were (i.e. how much yellow sun energy can he soak up through his ship) and how much out of control does the ship have to be for him to have crash landed. The question really is, was it just luck that he survived the crash?
The supersuit invulnerability thing is a constant point of contention with me. I’ve come to accept that it can never be explained realistically so I just ignore it.
About the listening from space – was he listening to radio only? I don’t remember. Because if he was just listening to radio with his supersenses that that would not be a gaff.
Call the Daily Planet ball a globe!
Safely catching people who are falling off buildings is something that superheroes always goof up on. Watching this in Batman or Superman the animated series is even worse, because often Supes will be traveling at super speed to snatch Lois from the jaws of death. Ouch!
My big problem was with Lex’s plan. I too enjoyed the fact that he still is going on with the real estate get-rich-quick scheme. However, what happens after he grows the new continent? He relies (and expects us to rely) on a throwaway line that he can defend it from the rest of the world with a Kryptonian arsenal. Huh? What? How? Please to explain.
Oh, another thing that bothered me was the CGI cape, and that Superman was, indeed, a voyeur, and very cavalier about bystanders.
To be fair to Superman, he’s not the only super hero with super clothing. The Fantastic Four have some of the superest clothes in all of comic-bookery.
“The bullets lose their inertia when the ricochet out of superman because of his super-anti-inertial-powers.”
That’s not what I saw on the screen!
My beef isn’t so much that Superman allowed the bullets to scatter indifferently. What ruins the scene’s credibility is that Luthor’s minion, after fruitless pelting Superman with a gattling-gun, figures that his .45 caliber sidearm is worth a try.
To gazza666:
It is a direct sequel to the first two Superman movies. Singer disregarded the other two, for obvious reasons. =P
Great review, Phil! You hit all the major points dead-on.
I would add only a few smaller quibbles. Particularly in the shuttle-plane scenes. First, when the shuttle detaches from the plane at last, why does everyone and everything inside the plane become weightless? It didn’t look to me like they were on a ballistic trajectory. Second, with all the battering around that Lois had while being flung around the interior, how come she didn’t end up with a broken neck, or at least broken arm, ribs, etc.? Along the same lines, I think a steel ship’s door falling on her would do more than knock her out - it would crush her skull.
I’m glad to see that someone pointed out the error of the seaplane plummeting for hundreds of feet to get flying speed. A few feet wouldn’t be enough, but it looked to me like they were pretty close to speed when they went off the edge, so a descent of a few tens of feet more should be enough. And by the way, a plane with a structural failure in its tail (a la the 777) would not enter a flat spin!
Supermen affects objects in contact with him. That’s why his clothes don’t burn up when he goes supersonic. I’m not sure naked-man would be a popular superhero.
Maybe he can control his muscles to direct the bullets, like a Jedi can direct the blasters shots with their lightsaber. Only he directs them into harmless places, because his religion doesn’t allow him to kill people. According to adherents.com, he’s a Methodist/Kryptonian Monotheist.
I don’t know. It’s like sound in space. It’s just cool, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I enjoyed the movie. I thought casting-wise, they did a great job on Kent/Superman. The actor bears a fair resemblance to Christopher Reeve, and managed to pull off the different mannerisms of each. Lois Lane was a different take. Kate Bosworth is somewhat prettier and not nearly as screechy as Margot Kidder.
A buddy of mine thinks they did something to “gay up” his outfit. I told him we have a man in a skin-tight body suit with his underwear over his pants, how do you “gay” that up?
Hey Phil, I thought you’d address more of the astronomy, from the opening credits. Superman’s “space ship” zooming around through nebulae, asteroid clouds, and near strange planets.
Yes, that caught my attention, too.
Also, 5 years have gone by, and Jimmy is still some awkward, goofy kid. Okay.
Actually, it’s one of his more human elements. It’s not like Superman went up to the first hot journalist and starting hitting on her - this is a woman with whom he had a prior relationship, one that technically didn’t end. At least for him. And though she moved on, you can see she is torn by her emotions, too. He’s wrestling with the surprise that she’s moved on and his own unresolved feelings, and trying to find out if she still loves him or not. That doesn’t make him a cad, it makes him stupid for leaving without saying goodbye or telling her why, and an idiot for expecting her to be waiting for him anyway.
Another astronomer tells me an entering meteor will have a hypersonic shock wave preceeding it. Wouldn’t this account for the noise and vibration prior to the meteor?
Obviously this provides the best vantage point for that launch test, since it occurs so high in the atmosphere.
What if it glides off the top as the plane flies out from under it prior to rocket ignition, like the Shuttle drop test photo you show? Couldn’t the plane get clear?
Uh, Phil, what supports the weight of the plane when it is flying? Isn’t it air pressure on the wings? (No quibbles over Bernoulli vs. Newton - both use air pressure on the wings.) I think what sheared the wings was the spinning motion adding stress. I think he was trying to slow the spin as much as slow the plane. Otherwise it makes it difficult to grab.
I interpreted that not as wind blowing the cape, but the cape drifting in free fall from the residual motion he imparted when he came to a stop, and the inertia in the cape. No?
Yes, it’s much more dramatic to have Superman put his chest in front of the superbullets. Sure he can take a pistol or rifle slug, but now we have a 50 cal. Given than none of the police were shredded when the cars were being shot up, obviously Superman knows that debris is harmless.
This is one of the confusing inconsistencies. It’s his strength that protects his chest from the bullets, so why does his suit not get holes, or incinerated in the gas fire? I’m leaning toward the telekinetic aura explanation, simply because it explains some of these physics violations consistently.
Check again. It appears to me he looks in the car. He needs to put it someplace, and the street is full of people and cars. Plus, you see how heavy it really is when it crushes the car.
Then somehow he flies down under the water and underground and gets in contact with the Kryptonite crystal blob and yet doesn’t lose his powers?
He uses his flying ability to provide a stable reaction platform from which to throw the island away, like standing on the ground provides us a stable platform to throw a ball. But when he did so, he exhausted himself and passed out, thus turning off his flying ability, and therefore falling.
Yes, poor Nikita reduced to a PR rep dealing with annoying journalists who ask stupid questions. I’m not sure what that scene was meant to convey. I think it was supposed to be Lois being pushy and asking stupid, meaningless questions, but instead it conveys a sense of evasion on the part of the PR person.
HAL9000 said:
That’s an awfully long time to sit around saying they like it waiting for the accident that occurred in the ’90s.
Kevin said:
It didn’t feel too long to me, though did take a bit to get moving at the beginning. Also, I noticed the CGI - it appeared they were CGI on his uniform/cape even when he was just standing in the scene. Maybe to reduce the effect of the transitions?
Zclone said:
George Reeves isn’t any more the original than Christopher Reeve - there were the comics and radio shows prior. However, this incarnation of Superman begins with Christopher Reeve in the movies, so for this incarnation, he is the original.
Mark Martin said:
The timeframe of the setting is a bit problematic. We’re told only 5 years have gone by, so we’re supposed to overlook the stylistic and technological changes in clothing/buildings/automobiles.
That bothered me, too. It would have been better if he’d been gone 10 years and the boy was 5 years old, or something. The only reason the boy had to be that old was so (a) they could show he was Superman’s son, and (b) they could give him the ability to interact with Superman meaningfully.
Toren said:
Because the crystal was the super technology of the Kryptonian aliens, so naturally there would be plenty of alien weapons and defenses.
My problem with Lex’s plan was why he had to place the new continent in the Altantic and overlapping the U.S. Why not some open expanse in the Pacific? Then he’d really nave new landmass to sell, and he’d have those rich Americans to sell to. Plus, he’d still have his alien supertech to protect him. There didn’t seem to be any reason, except to be evil.
Mark Martin said:
(a) That wasn’t a minion of Luthor, there was no connection.
(b) The difference was in the target. Sure, Superman’s chest can take bullets galore, but the pistol was aimed at his eye, which might be more vulnerable.
Christine P said:
To me, that’s exactly what it looked like. The airplane engines were off, the only thrust was from the rockets. When it separated, they stopped having upward accel, so entered a ballistic flight path. Ergo, weightlessness in the plane.
Yes, she had a really bad ride around the cabin at 4 g’s - she should be in critical care.
But it was no longer under thrust. I would expect the aerodynamics to keep it straight, but if it had any skewing from the separation, wouldn’t drag help the spin process?
The “catching the airplane by the nose” stunt appears to be lifted directly from the 1940’s animated Superman story “Japoteurs”. In that one, Japanese agents steal the latest and greatest super-bomber that the US has built, and when they realize they aren’t going to be able to get it to Japan, decide to crash it into the skyline. Superman saves the day by catching the plane by the nose. I’d be curious to know if this was an intentional homage to the animated series, or just a coincidence…