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.

Lois with a kid I’ll buy, but dagnappit, isn’t one freaking person just a little bit suspicious about Kent returning after an unexplained five year absence, the same day Superman does?

Yes, that caught my attention, too.

Also, 5 years have gone by, and Jimmy is still some awkward, goofy kid. Okay.

Plus, was I the only one to notice Superman is a jerk? He was purposely wooing Lois, a woman he knows is with another man! Superman is many things, but a cad? C’mon

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.

But this is a ship, not a meteor, so maybe it retained the heat of re-entry. But there’s still a problem: we hear it, and it causes the ground to rattle, long before it goes over Martha Kent’s house. That means it’s traveling slower than the speed of sound! So really, it did have plenty of time to cool off in the upper atmosphere.

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?

OK, first, why would NASA put press on the plane underneath a launching Shuttle?

Obviously this provides the best vantage point for that launch test, since it occurs so high in the atmosphere.

But you still can’t launch it that way. It would destroy the plane with its exhaust, even if it weren’t still attached when the engines ignite.

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?

Third, grabbing the wing of the plane was a dumb idea, and the movie got it right. It cannot support the weight of the plane, and it tore off.

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.

But worse, perhaps– why was his cape flapping? He wasn’t moving, so the cape shouldn’t be either.

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?

Superman, you should know better! Those bullets are still traveling very quickly, and when they ricochet off can still kill bystanders.

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.

His suit can stop bullets, but not a sharp rock?

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.

Well actually, he plops it [the globe] on a car, and he didn’t seem to check to make sure the car was empty.

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.

The Superman lore is that he gets his strength from our yellow Sun, though specifics differ over the years.

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?

Okay, so he used his flying ability to hold him up while he flings the island away. But then he falls gently back to Earth. It seems to me that if he uses his flying ability to do that, he would leave the Earth as well, not fall back.

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.

Like why did Lois ask the NASA rep on the plane why only one network was allowed to have cameras, and why did the rep blow her off? That seemed sinister, but nothing more was made about it.

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:

I never liked Christopher Reeve’s Superman. I think everyone said that because they felt sorry for him after his accident.

That’s an awfully long time to sit around saying they like it waiting for the accident that occurred in the ’90s.

Kevin said:

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”.

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:

FYI- The 1970’s Superman movie was not the ‘original’. Poor forgotten George Reeves.

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:

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.

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.

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 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:

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.

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:

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.

(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:

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.

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.

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.?

Yes, she had a really bad ride around the cabin at 4 g’s – she should be in critical care.

And by the way, a plane with a structural failure in its tail (a la the 777) would not enter a flat spin!

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?

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.

It is a direct sequel to the first two Superman movies. Singer disregarded the other two, for obvious reasons. =P

That’s not what I saw on the screen!

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.

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!

“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?”

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.

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.

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.

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.

What frame? Can you say monocoque?