Question About SUPERMAN (1978)
 

OK, this has bugged me for a while: just what exactly was supposed to have happened at the end of Superman? Superman is upset about Lois Lane, so he... flies around the world really really fast, makes the earth spin backwards on it's axis (?) and somehow makes time go backwards? Huh?

Was there ever even an attempt to somehow put a scientific spin (no pun intended) on this idea? Does anyone have any quasi-plausible explanation on what the heck happened here?

There's no scientific basis behind this at all.

Nope - your assumptions are right. Superman reversed the Earth's spin - thus making time go backwards and not meant to be scientifically analyzed. ;)

Richard Donner talks about this briefly in the commentary.

Geofferson -- okey-doke, but what did Donner say??? How could he possibly throw something that implausible, that deus ex machina into the movie and not try to bolster his case in some way?

He just made a brief comment that we, the viewers, are to believe that reversing the earth's spin will reverse time as well. I think he also said something about since it's based on a comic book, that the viewers might be required to use their imagination.

I just wish he'd explain why Superman's cape flaps in space - where there is no air. ;)

Superman 4 confuses me even more, how does the woman breath when she's kidnapped into space?

If I am not mistaken, Superman was not supposed to end that way. It was supposed to be more of a serial ending with one of the nukes releasing Zod and crew. I believe the time shifting thing was supposed to happen in the 2nd movie, but I am not sure at this point...but I am not sure.

And if someone does provide an explanation, be sure to let me know why: (A) Once time is reversed Lois Lane's car no longer falls into a big crack in the Earth. And, (B) Why Superman doesn't run into the Superman of the past from seven minutes ago.

Yep. This was the original pitch. 1 was supposed to have a sort of cliffhanger ending and the saving Lois thing would happen in 2.

They also expect us to not think about the physical devastation that would be caused by reversing the Earth's spin. That's like in the story of the "sun standing still" (i.e. the Earth stops rotating) in the biblical story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.

Of course in the Joshua case we are supposed to believe it was a miracle, and not that the story was written by an ancient prescientific myth monger who had no conception of what the sun standing still in the sky would mean to the Earth.;)

It was just a way to make Superman seem more 'Super'. They gave him extra powers in part 2 as well. Teleporting and the seran-wrap logo thing. Never heard of those powers before or after. They had to save Lois in part one because it was a family film and needed a happy ending. Not very happy with a dead Lois is it? Yes, the changing the timeline was just a big plot hole they didn't bother with. On the same note, apparently Superman doesn't give a crap about the other 1000's of people that must have been hurt or died in the quake/nuke explosion. He could have went back a few more minutes and prevented the bomb from going off in the first place.

There's only one semi-valid way to rationalize the ending of Superman, and that still has its problems, just not as many.

I view it as not that Superman is causing the Earth to reverse its rotation. I see it as Superman flying faster than the speed of light, thereby travelling back in time himself. As he goes back in time, of course he sees things moving backward.

Why then is he orbiting the Earth, you ask? Two reasons:
1) If he just went off in a straight line, he'd be really far away (duh)
2) by observing the reversal of time on Earth, he can gage when to stop.

Problems with this theory:
1) Why does he have to kick start Earth back into its original rotation (Maybe he overshot his mark :D)?
2) The usual time-travel stuff about meeting yourself, etc.

[Jor-El]"It is forbidden for you to interfere in human history...it is forbidden...forbidden...forbidden[/Jor-El] :D

I think he was feeling guilty enough about the interference he had chosen to do, let alone do what you propose. Technically, he could pull the time-reverse trick anytime anything bad EVER happened, but his charter of non-interference precludes him from using his powers to that extreme. This time was an exception for a very personal (read: selfish) reason.

Isn't it interesting how when you see this movie as a kid, for some reason you fully accept what just happened. But now that I'm an adult and I think about it, I say to myself, "Yeah, you're right. That DOESN'T make any sense!" So maybe I need to reverse time and ask my younger self for the explanation.

I was ten yearls old when this film was released. A bit precocious, to be sure, but even to my less-than-jaded eyes, I could not fathom how Superman was supposed to be able to reverse time by making the Earth spin backwards. And I also thought of that whole "why didn't he just make it go back a few hours more and stop the bomb entirely" quandry. So Superman appeases his guilt at reversing the course of human events just because his girlfriend dies by casually shrugging off the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocents?

"Wow. You sure are a mean drunk, Superman."

I guess if it didn't work, Superman could always have hijacked the Starship Enterprise and warped around the sun.

Re: Question About SUPERMAN (1978)
 

OK, there's a guy FLYING, moving faster than the speed of light, actually reverses the Earth's rotation... and the fact that he makes time move backward causes you problems with believability?

This is the way I've always seen it too (even the "overshot his mark" part :) ).

i always kind of accepted it as metaphor.
in the third act of the movie he has to struggle to catch up with the hackensack missile.
it's only after he has held Lois's lifeless body that the rage and passion inside gives him the strength to defy the laws of time and space.
as a kid i was too much caught up in the emotion of hte events to say- hey wait- everyone knows you can't go back in time by reversing the earth...you need a machine for that.

because i have such a love for the film, i can use my imagination to look past what for some may be a major weak case of Deus Ex Machina.
he was traveling back in time, and then had to get himself in the right timeframe-to re enter the timeline.
the movie is above all fantasy and not science fiction.

A super-wizard did it!

I can see it now:

Star Trek 11: The Wrath of Kent

Re: Re: Question About SUPERMAN (1978)
 

:lol: That's true.

I remember watching Babe with my girlfriend at the time, and the animals did some little stunt that went perfectly and she says, "Yeah, right" :rolleyes: I say, "But the talking animals isn't a problem, huh?"

It's funny how we focus on certain things while forgiving much, much greater things.

Re: Re: Question About SUPERMAN (1978)
 

Ding-Ding-Ding, we have a winnah!!

It's a comic book! Implausible is normal there!

I always thought the "Teleporting Thing" was to indicate the effect of Supes, Zod and Co. moving at super speed. But then, there's no way to explain how Supes was still able to talk to Lois.