Somebody explain Superman 2 to me
 

Ok, I understand the concept of suspension for belief when it comes to movies like this. I can accept that Superman can make the earth spin backwards and go back in time (although him stoping 2 missles in that time I still can't figure out) My one problem comes in Superman 2. He reveals his identity to Lois and they get married, he loses his power and blah, blah, blah. He gets his powers back to stop Zod and crew and now Lois has no recolection of Clark being Superman. Was it the kiss that made her forget? I've never understood that part of the movie.

Superman I & II are arguably the two best superhero movies ever made.....but each film has an ending that makes little or no sense. The world spinning backwards I still don't understand to this day. Did he simply travel back in time? Did he reverse the effects of the earthquake? What happened to that 2nd missile? I don't think he stopped it cuz Lois still mentioned the gas station getting blowed up. Yet that crack in the ground didn't suck her car in like before. So what exactly did Superman do after traveling back?

With the 2nd flick, he gives her that magic kiss that conveniently makes her forget everything that transpired within the last few days(or weeks). But she'd suspected Superman and Clark were one and the same before the whole Niagara Falls incident anyway, so how will that change anything?

Add to all this the reports that Superman Returns will follow the first two films(at least in part) and I really don't know what to make of any of it.

Superman II is my favorite of Christopher Reeve's Supes films. Video & DVD Movie Guide ratings:
I 3½/5
II 4/5
III 2½/5
IV 2/5

The way I see it is that Superman himself went back in time just to save Lois, so for that short time there were two Supermans (or Supermen?), the 'real' one saving the world, and the time-traveller saving just Lois.

Nicely played! :thumbsup:

And, yes, the kiss made her forget...probably even her subconscious suspicions...

Interesting. I never thought of it that way. What would have happened to the original Superman? Since he never found the dead Lois, he would never travel back in time to save her. Hmmm. Paradoxical.

He probably traveled to an alternate 1985 in which Biff is rich and powerful, and married to Marty's mother.

The "SuperKiss" is actually from the comics, and is one of Superman's lesser-known powers.

I guess I can buy him having that power after watching him toss that "S" and create 3 holographic clones of himself a few minutes earlier.

Oh, forgot about that one. The movie does turn into quite a disaster there at the end.

Well, time travel to the past has never, ever, never, ever made sense to begin with. I loved how BACK TO THE FUTURE explained (logically) how forward time travel worked, but simply skipped over the principles of going backwards in time.

As for SUPERMAN...well, the ending was used to increase the dramatics after all that action, and it clearly wasn't thought out properly. I just prefer to forget it happened. Otherwise, Superman could cure all problems retroactively.

As for SUPERMAN II, again, it's a dramatic novelty. When I first saw it as a kid, I thought Lois was just "trying" to forget...in other words, pretending like nothing ever happened. But it's clear that the kiss was meant to induce amnesia.

In the upcoming Richard Donner cut of SUPERMAN II, they should have Zatanna do a mind wipe of Lois.

Never understood the level of regard for these movies. Hopefully the new one will treat audiences with a bit of respect and not just eye candy.

Flying around the sun at warp 9 would have made more sense.

And what the hell was the celophane "S" he rips off his chest and throws at Mongo?

Yeah, right...

I'm not sure if you are thinking this way, but as a kid I always thought Superman caused the earth to spin backwards and somehow that made time on the earth go backwards. It wasn't until someone on these boards mentioned it that I realized the earth spinning backwards was just an indicator that time was moving backwards from Superman's perspective. I guess the method of his time travel was just traveling really fast and he just happened to be going counter-rotational to the earth.

I never read the comics, but I did catch a few of the old TV series. It was always funny when they would throw in a 'new' superpower I had never heard of. In one episode he walked thru a solid wall without disturbing it, and I recall in another he had a super safe cracking ability. I'm sure with his super senses he could easily crack a safe, but I think in this episode he just used a special "safe cracking" beam and it dialed in the combination itself. It was probably just an excuse for the TV show to use some special effects.

Yes that's the way I think about that. Don't they show things on earth going backward? I haven't watched it in a while so I'm a little fuzzy.

Or it could be that we are thinking about the logic of time travel far more than the filmmakers did, and there is no correct answer.

There are a lot of questions in the first two movies:
1) Although Superman is the Man of Steel, wouldn't the train still have derailed when it rode over him? Doesn't a train fit onto a track?

2) What happened to Miss Teshmacher after she and Lex found the Fortress of Solitude.

3) When the evil trio hit that small midwestern town, why does that little farm boy have an English accent?

4) How did Lex build his underground lair? Wouldn't that have taken a lot of workers?

5) Why would Lex keep Otis? Couldn't a super genius find someone just as loyal, but with a little more brainpower?

6) How did a newly powerless Clark and Lois get back from the Fortress?

7) Why didn't the trio get all skeletal and appear in regular clothes when their powers were sapped, like Clark did?

8) Would Americans really have readily embraced a "new west coast" after the old one had been destroyed, killing millions of people?

9) Is the army really dumb enough to fall for the subterfuge of a beautiful woman in the road while transporting nuclear weapons?

10) Can't the President of the United States afford a better toupee?

William Shatner's far richer than any serving President would be and he apparently can't.

Good questions and they're both great films. As for 3+4, that raises more questions for me, i.e in 4 how can that lady breath in space? how did Richard Pryor survive that ski fall?

Or Superman's cape ripple in the "space wind"?

How about his "rebuilding-the-Great-Wall-of-China-vision"?

I don't have good answers for the rest, but for these two:

1). I think he puts half the track back in place and is just acting as support for other half. I'm assuming the one half of the track could keep the train from derailing, but I could be wrong.

4). It looks like something he found, wasn't it an abandoned subway? But yeah, putting in elevators and stuff probably would have been tough.

I love the family guy reference of that...
"what was that"
"yeah take that you jerk."
"That was a minor inconvenience."
"Yeah well that was the idea, slowed you down... so umm yeah, take that."
:lol:

The super kiss was Clark sucking the air out of Lois to a point were it damages her memory (loosing several days of memories).

Ok, I have no idea. Who really goes to a Superman movie and expects reality?