Continuity mistake: When Ricky is laying on the wheat field, the tractor's distance to him increases or decreases randomly.
Continuity mistake: Position of skis in Ross's penthouse changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: When Lana is fixing her car, the road is sunny. In the next aerial shot the car casts a huge dark shadow.
Continuity mistake: At the start of the film, the shape of the cake blob on the man's cap changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: When the roller-skater pushes the trolley, the amount of cars in the background changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: During the wheat field scene, Lana wipes her son's bloody bruise with her sweatshirt, but no bloodstains are visible in following shots.
Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the film, Superman exits the photo-booth and a kid points at him. A frame later his arm is down.
Continuity mistake: At the employment office the way papers are arranged on the counter changes from messy to tidy between shots. Also, the blue stamp behind the red one appears and disappears randomly.
Continuity mistake: Outside the bar, while the people are watching, Superman raises a glass and drinks a shot of whiskey. A frame later, inside the bar, he is already refilling his glass.
Continuity mistake: Superman saves a drowning man in a car on the middle of the street, but when he takes off he's in a children's playground (the DVD extras show the playground scene was deleted).
Continuity mistake: In the bowling alley, right before Clark sneezes, the alley on the left has all its bowls standing. Half a second later there are just 5 standing. No sound of them falling was heard in between these two shots.
Continuity mistake: When having a picnic in the wheat field, Clark and Lana's position to the tree and the car nearby changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: After the blind man walks through the painting, the shape of the broken part changes on the angle behind.
Continuity mistake: In the bowling alley, before Clark sneezes, his hands are covered in talcum powder. A second later he raises his hand to fit his glasses and it's clean.
Continuity mistake: Inside the bus to Smallvile, the landscape outside is always an empty and vast wheat field. However, from the shots outside, it swaps to a huge factory. This changes back and forth.
Continuity mistake: The driver's window in the cop car by the burning factory swaps from rolled up to halfway down between shots.
Continuity mistake: Vera stands to turn the TV off in the close shot and a second later, in the aerial shot, she repeats the movement.
Continuity mistake: The file footage of the torch shows it's burned around the rim. When the shot changes to fiction footage the burning is gone and the metal is spotless.
Continuity mistake: When Superman fixes the tower of Pisa, the Italian seller turns his head around. The movement cuts to show a new angle but the new movement is totally different to the previous one.
Continuity mistake: In the end, when Brad jumps on the bed, the wide shot shows him stepping on the right end of the mattress, but the close-up shows him stepping on the left end.
Answer: There were rumors that Hackman was angry with the Salkind Brothers (the producers) for firing director Richard Donner, though Hackman later disputed saying that. His explanation, though he may have been downplaying the real reason, was that he had a number of other movie projects at the time, and he also did not wish to continually play the same villain in an ongoing movie series.
raywest ★