Question: When Superman went back in time to save Lois, doesn't that mean that the people that he had originally saved are now doomed to die?
Answer: There are generally two methods of time travel. Skip vs Slide. When you slide through time, you are in essence rewinding or fast forwarding a tape. Time will accelerate to the desired moment. This method, the traveler will witness the rewind and will only allow one of them to exist. When skipping, you are plucking yourself from the time stream and placing yourself in the desired moment. This method, travel is instantaneous and can allow for multiples of the traveler to exist at once. Superman rewound time. He used the slide method and went directly to Lois after doing so. This means those he previously saved...died after his reversal.
Or he could have used the skip method. Like you said, it enables a traveler to pluck themself from the time stream and placing them at the desired moment allowing for two Supermen to be able to prevent both missiles from reaching their destinations.
He couldn't have used the skip method if he rewound time.
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?
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.
Question: Maybe I haven't watched this film properly, but I never got why the Krypton Council don't believe Jor-el when he says Krypton is going to explode. Why would they question someone as powerful as him, someone who was shown to be in charge of the punishment of Zod and Co.?
Chosen answer: The Council believed that Jor-El was being an alarmist, that the changes in Krypton's core would only result in the planet's magnetic fields shifting rather than the beginnings of a chain reaction that would destroy the world.
Question: One thing I don't understand about the movie is why kryptonite is so harmful (almost making him drown in a pool), yet he was born there and he didn't die. Kryptonite did come from his home planet, Krypton, right? How come he didn't die when he was born?
Answer: When Krypton exploded, the resulting debris was chemically altered through nuclear fusion, converting it into kryptonite. Bits traveled through space, some eventually ending up on Earth, where it is now lethal to anyone who was from that planet.
Pieces of Krypton that exploded in the Red Sun were made radioactive, and the Red Sun is one of the weaknesses of the Kryptonians.
I thought the Red Sun was poisonous to Kryptonians and caused the remnants of the planet Krypton to become radioactive and also absorb some of the solar energy from the Red Sun. I was under that impression, maybe I'm mistaken.
Question: What did the man that Lois interviewed mean when he said that he hoped Custer paid for the land?
Answer: The Indian Chief sold the "worthless piece of desert" for a "stupid high price" to an unknown buyer, and the Indian Chief made an earnest sarcastic joke that he hopes it's Custer, as in George Armstrong Custer, who had been a Cavalry Commander during the Indian Wars.
Question: Why was Lois so uncomfortable when Clark said "Swell"? It's a word that was extremely popular in the 70s (the timeframe of this movie) and although not as common nowadays, it's still used to this day.
Answer: It's not that Lois was uncomfortable with the word, she said there are very few people left who feel comfortable saying swell these days. She is basically saying there's not a lot of people left who speak like they're still living in the 50's. Swell was more popular in the 40's and 50's as slang for "excellent." In the late 70's, it wasn't really a popular slang word, or had dissolved into meaning "fine" or "ok." Today the word is used more ironically "oh, you need me to pay because your forgot your wallet, swell." It would be similar to if someone said "neat-o" unironically and the reply was "who says neat-o these days?"
Question: How come Perry lets Lois call him Chief but won't let Jimmy do it?
Answer: Because Jimmy was a teenage freelance photographer, like Peter Parker. Everyone earned their right to call him, "Chief."
Question: Why didn't Superman spin the world (and time) backwards enough to prevent the nuke from exploding in the first place? Wouldn't that have saved a lot more lives?
Answer: Just to clarify: Superman didn't spin the Earth backwards. We just see the world turning backwards when he went back in time. Of course this doesn't answer your question and it shows how difficult it is to write a good time travel story that doesn't leave the audience thinking of better ways to solve problems.
Question: Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack. So why does he look at his arm in shock before he collapses? What does that tell him?
Question: Three part question: 1) How did Superman know spinning the Earth in the opposite direction would turn back time? 2) It has been said that Superman is able to stop both missiles when he travels back in time because there are now 2 Supermans. If this is so, what happens to the other Superman? 3) The entire reason Superman travels back in time is to save Lois. Saving her no longer gives him a reason to travel back in time, so shouldn't this have created a paradox?
Chosen answer: The first part of your question is based on an incorrect assumption. Superman did not cause the world to spin in reverse, thereby causing time to move backward. Superman flew incredibly fast so that HE would travel backward through time. He flew in a circle around the Earth, which would be the only way to go fast enough and yet still be close to Earth. We see him looking down, presumably to gauge the correct time to slow down. The the Earth spinning in reverse was simply part of the filmmakers' method for conveying that he was going backward through time.
Question: How did Lex Luthor find out that kryptonite makes Superman weak?
Answer: When Krypton exploded, fragments of the planet went into space. Luthor said it's reasonable to assume some of those particles drifted to Earth. He also thinks the fragments would have a very high specific radioactivity that would be lethal to anyone from Krypton. However, to me everything he says about the effect of kryptonite is a guess and there doesn't seem to be anything in film to suggest the fragments from Krypton would be radioactive or the radioactivity would affect Superman.
Question: I previously submitted this as a three-part question, but only the first part was answered, so I am re-submitting the last two parts. 1)It has been said that Superman is able to stop both missiles when he travels back in time because there are now two Supermans. If this is so, what happens to the other Superman? 2) The entire reason Superman travels back in time is to save Lois. Saving her no longer gives him a reason to travel back in time, so shouldn't this have created a paradox?
Question: Superman says to Lois in the interview that he never lies. Is the fact that he never lies something he has decided to do or is something that all the people from Krypton have the inability to do? If it is something that the people from Krypton have the inability to do, then how come at the beginning of the movie when Jor-el is telling the Krypton council that the planet is going to explode, no-one believes him?
Answer: Superman has chosen to use his powers on Earth for the good of mankind. It would seem that lying to them would be an unneccessary thing to do, so it appears to be a personal choice. Interesting trivia: the closest he comes to lying is when he tells Lex Luthor to get Zod and company into the molecule chamber in the second film. Listen closely, he only says that it is a molecule chamber that takes away their powers, he never actually says that being inside will make them lose them, only that he wants Luthor to get them to go into it.
That may be the closest "Superman" comes to lying, but Clark Kent does appear to lie. After the mugging scene in the first movie, Clark tells Lois the contents of her purse, and when asked how he knew (obviously from his X-ray vision), he says "wild guess" which was a lie.
Not only that but, he spent his whole life pretending to be ordinary so, in fact, he spent his whole life living a lie.
Question: This question is about all four Superman films and Supergirl. When Clark and Linda become Superman and Supergirl, their civilian clothes immediately disappear. Has anybody who worked on the movies ever given any insight to what happens to the clothes they wear before they switch to their suits?
Answer: I'm saying what happens to their clothes in the comics, is what happens to it in the movies. Special Effects were not as sophisticated as today's, so you never saw where the clothes went.
Answer: In the original comics, they folded their clothes into small pieces and put them in pouches concealed in their capes. There was no CGI back then.
This question is about what happens to their clothes in the movies, not the comics. Their clothes just vanish.
The point is that given that's what happens in the comics, that may well be what happens in the films too, just either not shown or else they do it at super-speed so we can't see it happen.
Question: Lois tells Clark just before the helicopter accident, that her sister has three kids, two cats, and one mortgage. She would go bananas in a week. Her only sister is Lucy, who we see in Supergirl, and she's in school. So who is she referring to?
Answer: You're thinking of today's Lucy Lane. When the character was first introduced she was a teenage girl. She has gone through several incarnations. Delinquent, punk rocker, snotty teen, college major and in the revised 1980's version she was an airline stewardess. On the Lois and Clark TV show she was a diner waitress, who falls for the bad boys. In the Smallville TV series, she was the bratty girl who causes trouble.
Question: What caused Krypton to explode?
Answer: That's the updated comic book version. In the movie and the original origin story their red sun was going super nova and caused Krypton's orbit to shift.
Jor-El's conversation with the Science Council in the movie is all about the planet's core.
You must be thinking of a different movie. There wasn't any mention of the core and when Jor-El says the planet will explode, the reply is the planet is just shifting orbit. Later, Jor-El tells 18 year old Clark they will enter the realm of the red Krypton sun, the cause of their destruction. The answer about Krypton's sun is correct.
I went and looked up the script and it DOES say orbit. OK, you're right.
Chosen answer: An atomic chain-reaction in the planet's core. The explosion also irradiated the fragments of the planet, which is why kryptonite is deadly to Superman.
Chosen answer: No. Because the version of him *before* he time-traveled is still out doing those things. The REAL question is, what happens to that Superman, seeing as Lois no longer dies and he has no reason to travel back in time.
JC Fernandez