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Superman III (1983) - 17 corrections

starring Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-fi

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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When Superman is freezing the lake to extinguish the fire, he picks up the giant block of ice. As we see in a wide shot, it looks like no water was removed from the lake. Shouldn't the lake be empty now?, or at least a lot of water would be gone. [Superman doesnt try to freeze the whole lake. just the surface. You can even tell this by when he picks it up. It's a thin layer coming from the top. So he didn't take all that much. Just enough to take out the fires.]
Edit Corrected by envisaged0ne
When Evil Superman is flying towards the tanker it's real, but in the close up you can easily tell how fake it is. The producers probably wanted to avoid damaging the real tanker so they made a fake still model. [Watching that scene carefully, there is no obvious signs that it's fake. Looks real to me.]
Edit Corrected by envisaged0ne
Immediately after defeating his 'evil' self, Superman repaired the oil tanker, then flew off to Webster's, then straight off again to the grand canyon for the showdown with the big computer. When the computer starts going haywire, it turns off the lights in the subway train. For a moment before this you can see someone reading a newspaper with the headline: "Superman Super Again". There is no way enough time has passed for this news of Superman to make it to the front page of a newspaper, even if it's an afternoon edition that was rushed to the press. Besides, Superman has performed all of ONE superheroic act, namely fixing the oil tanker, and they are still miles out to sea. So as far as anyone in Metropolis is concerned, Superman is still 'evil'. [Since we have no way of knowing how much time has passed (it's a montage) we can't say there was no time to get a paper out. And superman being good again would definitely be worth a special edition.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com Time
When Gus Gorman is giving his 'speech' while wearing the pink tablecloth, part of his speech includes Gus reciting the Superman theme. Now considering that this film is supposed to be set in a world where Superman is an everyday part of life, this is completely out of place. [The sound Gus makes is indistinguishable. To me it just sounds like a generic, random 'heroic fanfare'. There is no way it can be definitely identified as the Superman Theme.]
Edit
Two former "Our Gang" members appear in the movie. Jackie Cooper (Perry White) appeared in 15 of the shorts in the early 1930s, and Annie Ross (Vera Webster) was in "Our Gang Follies of 1938" when she was known as Annabelle Logan. She was the little girl singing "Loch Lomond". [It's hardly unusual for actors and actresses to appear together in more than one thing. Without some greater significance, like a scene which they both appear in which makes an intentional nod to whatever their prior work was, this cannot be considered to be valid trivia.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
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. [This isn't even in the film.]
Edit
Robert Vaughn uses the super computer to try and kill superman whilst Richard Pryor looks on helplessly. But when Pryor first pitched the idea of the computer to Vaughn (along with the blueprints), he said that the computer would only do what HE told it to do. [He didn't mean it literally, like voice-print analysis or something. He knew that Vaughn's character knows nothing about computers, so Pryor would probably be the one entering the commands for him.]
Edit Corrected by Soylent Purple
When the power goes out all over Metropolis because of the Super Computer, Ricky and Lana are in the subway and panicking. Ricky cries out, "Why aren't the lights going on," but you never see his mouth move. [It may not have necessarily been Ricky crying out, it could have been someone else as the train was quite full of passengers.]
Edit
In the end when Clark is meeting Lana at the hotel in Metropolis and he is giving her the diamond ring he pressed himself from a piece of coal. Then Brad shows up in an attempt to get Lana. How do you expect a drunken security guard (who probably got fired later on) to find out where she is, afford a flying ticket and find the hotel where she is staying? [There are plenty of possible explanations to this, for instance: 1) Having a friend who worked as a P.I. tracking down Lana through passenger manifests and hotel registries. 2) Calling Lana's friends and/or relatives to see if she had told them where she would be for the next couple of days. 3) As for obtaining money for airfare: He could have pawned things, stolen money, hitchhiked, taken a train instead of flying, borrowed money from a friend. Endless number of options if he wanted it bad enough.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
When Superman is trapped inside the force-field/bubble fired by the Supercomputer, there is a gaping hole visible, so he shouldn't have any problems breathing whatsoever. Also there are very obvious wires visible suspending the force-field (easiest to see against the computer's structure). [There isn't a hole. It is a clear-plastic bubble, with a membrane/web in the inside. At one point there is a large gap in the web shape, leaving a clear section of bubble so you can see the Hero's face as he uses his laser vision.]
Edit Corrected by Soylent Purple
Towards the end of the movie, when Superman drops Gus off at the coal mine, Gus begins talking with the coal miners about him and Superman. He then rips open his shirt (as if he had a Superman costume on underneath). How did Gus know that Clark Kent tore his shirt like that in order to change into Superman? The only people who know this fact are the ones who have seen the transformation from Clark to Superman, i.e. the audience. [How else would he get his regular clothes off? Everyone knows Superman has a secret identity who lives amongst us ordinary mortals, and like everyone else Gus just guessed that now and again he has to get changed in a hurry.]
Edit
Lana is making arrangements for a flight to Metropolis and she rings up 'Smallville Airport'. Excuse me?. Since when does Smallville have an airport. The whole point is that its a nice little Kansas Farm Town. [Many tiny, tiny towns have an airport even if it only consists of a barn and a dirt runway. Smallville being a farming community would need someplace for cropdusters to take off and land.]
Edit Corrected by Myridon
When Gus is talking to Ross, Vera and Lorelei about how Superman saved the entire Columbia coffee bean plantation, Gus says to Vera, "You didn't see him flying out of the clouds?" Later in the movie when Ross, Vera and Lorelei are using balloons to get down the canyon to reach the supercomputer, Vera asks why he won't balloon down. Gus' response is, "I just don't believe a man can fly." [Gus was panicking because he didn't fancy floating down the grand canyon in a flimsy deck chair with a balloon attached. He means doesn't believe a normal mortal should try to fly. Of course he knows Superman can fly, he's lived in Metropolis so he's seen Superman more times than he's had hot dinners.]
Edit
When the acid was overheating at the chemical plant during the fire why couldn't Superman just cool it down with his super breath instead of risking an explosion by flying to the nearest lake? [The fire was happening in different sections of the plant and had to be put out at the same time or all of the people that were still at the plant, i.e. the guy who watched over the acid, the police and the firefighters would be killed. Remember explosions were happening, but at different areas at different times.]
Edit
When Superman is fighting against Gus Gorman's super computer, it encases Superman inside an air tight rubber-like bubble. Then Vera Webster mentions something about how long Superman can carry on without any air. Superman then starts to panic and knows he must get out. Then why doesn't he ever have any trouble when flying through outer space? There's no air at all there. [If you've seen Superman 2, you'd know that Kryptonians can breathe in space (the method's never explained, but evidence shows they can). The three criminals from Krypton spend an evening in space before arriving on Earth.]
Edit
In the scene where Clark Kent attends his High School reunion dance there is a big picture on the wall of him as a teenager. The picture is of a young Christopher Reeve who is not wearing his Clark Kent glasses and so looking exactly the same as Superman. Why did none of those present at the dance make the connection? [No one has any reason to make a connection. The only people who know that Superman even HAS a secret identity are the audience. The people within the film would probably assume that he was Superman all the time.]
Edit
When Superman is in Smallville for Ricky's birthday receiving the key for the city, Gus and Webster's sister show up in a jeep disguised as military people, Gus makes an over-the-top speech and gives Superman the artificial kryptonite. Luckily, it doesn´t kill him or affect him at once, but suppose that it did? What plan did they have to get away from the place after killing Superman right in front of half of Smallville? [I think it fair to assume that a criminal of Webster's intelligence would have an escape plan thought out. The fact that we don't see them use it does not mean that there isn't one.]
Edit