Superman

Superman (1978)

30 corrected entries

(10 votes)

Corrected entry: In the interview with Lois Superman says he never lies. He also said he is 27 years old. In an earlier scene, Clark Kent left the confines of the earth with Jor-el at the fortress of solitude, as an 18 year old high school graduate. When he returned to earth, 12 earth years have passed. 18+12=30, not 27.

Correction: He does not say he's 27. He says he's "over 21." Lois even comments on it, realizing he doesn't want anyone to know how old he is.

Corrected entry: When there is a big explosion at a plant and Superman flies in to save the day, all he does to stop the explosions is pull down the toggle of a huge switch situated on the wall; if this is all that was needed to stop the explosions, then why didn't one of the workers do it, and save Superman the trouble of flying all the way out there to do something which one of the workers could have done easily.

Correction: The toggle was red-hot. Workers couldn't touch it.

Correction: Listen carefully just before Superman arrives. A worker can be heard saying they can't pull the lever because it's red-hot.

Corrected entry: During Kal-El's voyage to earth the narration states that he has all the knowledge of the "28 Known Galaxies" Given that Jor-El is supposedly from a more advanced race and that we currently know of thousands of galaxies perhaps he is a bit off. Must be the red sun.

Skullduggery

Correction: True, we know of several thousand galaxies, but how much knowledge do we have from uninhabited or presumably uninhabited galaxies? What Jor-El was most likely saying, is that the life pod contains information from the species of 28 galaxies, and that from the other galaxies no info was to be had, as they were unpopulated or the species living there had not evolved past the very basic stages. He worded it a bit awkwardly, but that's understandable.

Twotall

Correction: He flies during the storm to help AFO after getting struck by lightning.

Corrected entry: The burglar is heading upwards when he meets Superman on the side of the building. He's already got stolen jewellery on him when Superman hands him over to the nearest cop on the ground. Wouldn't he have been heading down the building if he'd already committed the burglary?

Phil Watts

Correction: The burglar was probably stealing from other places before he started to climb up this building and rob it.

Corrected entry: We see in Superman II, Superman IV and at the end of Superman I that Superman can leaves Earth's atmosphere, ie. he doesn't need air to breathe. So why does he act as if he is drowning in Lex Luthor's swimming pool?

Correction: He was exposed to kryptonite.

Hamax

Corrected entry: After flying with the movie's hero, Lois comes up with the name "Superman". But what else is the letter "S" for on our hero's outfit? This name was already given to our hero OR the suit or S sign should have been designed after Lois thought of the name.

Correction: This is explained in the comics. Superman's "S" is the symbol of the House of El. Lois thought it was an "S" and came up with Superman as a result.

Grumpy Scot

Lois does not notice nor mention the S on his chest (which, as you pointed out, is not an S at all). After Superman drops her off, she's talking out loud to herself and says "what a super man", which then gives her the idea to call him "Superman."

jshy7979

Correction: Lex is remote operating the car and probably rigged it with an explosive charge that he set off to make it crash.

Vader47000

Presumptions of what might have been done do not negate a mistake for how a special effect is made, especially since we do not know this is part of the plot to purposefully flip the car.

jerimiah

It is made very clear that Lex Luthor is operating the car from the remote control and also uses a device to flip the car. This was 100% part of his plan to stop the truck carrying the missile, made even more clear by the fact that Miss Tessmacher is pretending to be a car accident victim, and Lex himself is pretending to be a paramedic. So yes: the device that was used in real life can be seen, but within the world of the movie, it makes sense that we see the device because it's what Lex used.

jshy7979

Corrected entry: When young Clark Kent is being taken on a journey by his deceased father, the journey ends with Jor-El saying, "By the time we return to the confines of your galaxy, twelve of your years will have passed." If Clark was gone twelve years, how could he have managed to get a job at the Daily Planet? There would have been a background check to see which journalism school that Clark went to as well as college and also to see if he had other jobs, yet he simply gets the job without a problem. All of the people that Clark grew up with would probably be curious as to why they haven't seen or heard from him in a long time as well.

Correction: People fake their credentials to get jobs all the time. A background check not being thorough isn't a plot hole, it happens in the real world quite a bit. At the time the movie was made it wasn't unheard of for people to be hired on the spot without a background check. If he submitted a writing sample, or did some freelance work and submitted that for consideration he could very well have been hired right then and there without anyone checking his background. People in Smallville would probably wonder where Clark has been but that isn't a mistake either. People leave their home towns for better opportunities every day.

BaconIsMyBFF

Correction: Clark could have easily secured a newspaper job as a "stringer" (a part-time reporter and contributing writer) without extensive background checks or academic vetting, based simply on a few writing samples and his willingness to churn out quantities of filler material for about $7.00 per printed inch. Editor-in-Chief Perry White would have initially assigned Clark an in-office typing test and perhaps a couple of dull little human-interest stories, just to gauge Clark's writing and turnaround time. Perry White was impressed with Clark's overly-respectful demeanor, his writing style and his sheer speed. White even mentions these facts to Lois Lane: "Clark Kent may seem like just a mild-mannered reporter; but, listen, not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I've ever seen." Clark would have rapidly proven his worth as a full-time reporter with his detailed coverage of Superman. Also, Clark/Superman seems to possess some sort of hypnotic ability (as seen in the sequel, when he wipes Lois Lane's memory) ; so there's the possibility that Clark employed a few mind tricks to charm his way into the job.

Charles Austin Miller

Corrected entry: Superman takes Lois' car out of the ground by the bumper. With his strength it should have come away in his hands.

Correction: Superman can control his strength. With the line of thinking you propose, then every door he opens, the handle would come off.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Officer Mooney dashes into his precinct to report that Superman has hand delivered him a burglar - the officer tries to say 'In big red boots' - but actually says 'Big red ROOTS.' Incidentally where's the burglar? He wasn't there, or tied up outside with the villainous boat crew.

Correction: First off, it sounds to me like he says BOOTS. Either way, a foreign-accented character being unable to pronounce a word correctly is hardly a mistake within the film, more personal error. Secondly, there has been a MASSIVE time gap since Superman caught the burglar. He could easily have been booked in and be in a cell somewhere.

I definitely heard Officer Mooney say "big red roots."

Corrected entry: This is only a mistake if you watch the extended version: Superman walks through Lex's 'gauntlet of doom' where machine guns, flame throwers and sub zero blasts are used to try and deter him. The mistake is that Lex Luthor is controlling all this and he and Otis seem to expect it to work, and are surprised when Superman isn't harmed. Yet earlier Lex and Otis both established that "fire and bullets can't hurt this guy". Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz argue about this scene on the commentary.

Correction: The Gauntlet was never intended to stop Superman. Luthor was putting on a show so Superman would think Luthor was trying to stop him from getting to the lair. Superman then assumed he had gotten past all of Lex's defenses. Once Superman wasn't expecting anything, Luthor tricked him into opening the lead box with the Kryptonite.

Corrected entry: On Krypton, the rings circling and revolving around Zod and company go from revolving smoothly to slightly lopsided and back.

Movie Nut

Correction: They're meant to be some kind of prisoner restraint device. It's never explained how it works, but presumably, the rings emit some kind of force field. Varying the speed and direction of the rings' rotation would then be a way of keeping the prisoners from detecting a pattern and escaping.

Captain Defenestrator

Corrected entry: When there is a big explosion at a plant during the earthquake, and Superman flies in to save the day, all he does to stop the explosions is pull down the toggle of a huge switch situated on the wall; if this is all that was needed to stop the explosions, then why didn't one of the workers do it, and save Superman the trouble of flying all the way out there to do something which one of the workers could have done easily.

Correction: Because the workers may not have been trained or told what the switch would do. At the coal processing plane I work at, the only people that touch the electrical panels and equipment are electricians. And they don't work 24/7.

rswarrior

Corrected entry: After Clark and Lois leave the Daily Planet building after Clark's first day, one quick cut later, they are in Chinatown (I realize Metropolis isn't literally New York City, but since the movie makes no attempt to hide that the Metropolis scenes were filmed in NYC, it seems legit. Even if you discount that, Lois and Clark still managed to be in a very noticeably different part of Metropolis within seconds). (00:55:50)

Correction: You've supplied the needed correction in your submission. That certain landmarks indeed look like New York City, its not portrayed as NYC onscreen, its only ever referred to as Metropolis. Its not referred to as a suburb of NYC either, so unfortunately, whilst it looks like NYC, its Metropolis and if Chinatown is that close as portrayed onscreen, then thats how close it is in Metropolis.

GalahadFairlight

Corrected entry: When Johnathan Kent has a heart attack and falls to the ground, Clark's mother yells out "Johnathan!" There's a reaction shot of Clark inside the barn with the dog, then it cuts to a wide angle shot. Clark runs out of the barn, but the dog is now outside towards the back, running along the outside of the building to catch up with Clark. Not nearly enough time between the two shots for the dog to run all the way out the back of the barn and around the side.

BocaDavie

Correction: The dog runs out of the barn with Clark and is then offscreen for a full three seconds before the shot changes to the wide angle view with the dog along the *side* (not the back) of the barn. Considering it takes the dog less than three seconds to run the full length of the barn when he runs out with Clark, the fact that it ran less than half that distance in those offscreen seconds is not impossible.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: When the thief is climbing the building, you can see the panels that he is climbing on are not made of glass as the don't cast any reflection. It is just some kind of black plastic.

Correction: Not true. He is always on clear, reflective glass panels. There are whole vertical and horizontal rows of flat black panels, specifically a vertical column of them immediately to the left of the glass panel he is on in one shot, and these are all decorative features of the building he is climbing. They don't appear and disappear.

johnrosa

Corrected entry: This occurs just after Superman saves the town in the valley from being washed away by the flood from the broken dam. He stops and listens, and hears Lois. Just before the scene changes and he goes to rescue her, his lips move as though he is saying "Lois" but no audio is heard. No subtitle is on the DVD either.

Correction: So, he mouths her name when he hears her. Nothing wrong with that - people don't always speak out loud.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: When Superman saves the train from derailing during the earthquake, he places his body between the tracks, hold up one rail with his right hand, and uses his left arm and side as the other rail. But even Superman can't change physics. Train wheels have a flange that goes on the inside of the rail to keep it from slipping off the rail. (Go look at your model train set). Since Superman is indestructible, this flange would hit him and derail the train (Perhaps this is why he ducks his head).

StevenJ

Correction: And when he grabs the plane to help it fly, he would punch right through the skin. And, and, and... Every single thing he does in the movie is against the laws of our reality, but some leeway has to be given for movies like this.

Rlvlk

Corrected entry: When Lois Lane falls out of the helicopter we assume the building she is on is the Daily Planet since we have no indication she left, and Clark exits the same building. However, the building differs from the one pictured before the opening credits (they have different roof styles).

Correction: The building in the opening credits was from 1938. It is perfectly plausible that the offices of a major metropolitan newspaper changed in their design, or that they moved to a newer building, in the space of 40 years.

Factual error: When Clark speaks to Jor-El for the first time in the Fortress, Jor-El says "I will have been dead for many thousands of your years..." Fine in theory - Baby Kal-El travelled to Earth at above light speed so time passed differently for him. However, as such, wouldn't Jor-El have seen Earth as it was thousands of years ago? Which also makes there a problem with all the things Kal-El was taught during his voyage to Earth, as Jor-El references Einstein by name, for instance, and he would not have existed at the point when Jor-El sent him to Earth.

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Superman: I'm here to fight for truth, justice and the American way.

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Question: Why, in the 3 hour TV version of the movie, does Luthor waste time on that elaborate trap if he already knows, from reading Lois' interview, that bullets, fire, and cold won't stop Superman?

Rob245

Answer: He wanted to see for himself if the stories were true. Some reporters tend to exaggerate the facts and if he had any other weaknesses. He couldn't be sure the kryptonite would work.

While I don't exactly disagree that Lex wanted to see for himself how invincible Superman is, I don't think that's the main reason why he did it. The bullets and fire were simply a charade to make it look like this was his security system. Keep in mind, he wanted Superman to enter his lair because the real trap was the Kryptonite that he had in the lead box.

jshy7979

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