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I've never understood this idea of a deadly "bottomless pit" in the Fortress. There's water below, y'know.

 

There was no splash, crash, or thud, just the sound of their voices trailing off as they fell away into misty depths unknown.

More seriously, a foundation of any conceivable structure could have been created when the fortress was crystalized. The Kryptonian architecture we saw in the first film was big on (seemingly) bottomless pits, ya know.

 

For all of one second. (Ursa slightly longer than the boys.) From a fair height above the water level. How many seconds does someone have to fall for us to consider a pit bottomless?

...And secondly, if there really were a bottomless pit, that backs up the idea that they aren't killed. They're just still falling.

Edit: Just a note, even though I'm advocating at this moment for "They weren't killed", don't mistake it for me defending the movie on a bigger level. I love the first movie, but I find a huge amount of the second one to be quite terrible.

Which is even worse in the Donner Cut. In that one, Clark knocks him around after reversing time, so the dude hasn't even actually met Clark any more, let alone beat him up. From the perspective of the people there this stranger just comes in, insults him, and busts him into the pinball machine for no reason.

 

Disagree, for reasons stated, but don't call me out on the deleted scene. I didn't cite it (that was dupersuper), or rely on it -- never have, because it's not necessary to properly understand the intent of the Fortress scene.

 

Reusing the time-reversal ending was the biggest mistake of the Donner Cut. I mean, the idea was to approximate what S2 would've been like if Donner had finished it. Well, they'd already decided before Donner left that they'd use the time-reversal ending on the first movie and come up with something different for the second. After all, they filmed it for the first. So it made no sense to reuse the ending.

In my headcanon, the Donner Cut is the "real" version, but it ends just after Clark leaves Lois on the balcony, so the "second" time reversal and the trucker scene never happen. That means Lois still knows he's Superman in the third movie, but that actually makes it work better, since it explains her jealousy toward Lana at the end (given that she'd have no reason to be jealous over Clark Kent if she didn't know his real identity). And of course, I don't count The Quest for Peace at all.

 

Ya got me there.

Totally. The 1978 film is the masterpiece. The sequel was substantially inferior.

 

but then at the end we don't see Zod & Co again but Superman and Lois leave the Fortress when then explodes with the implication that others are still in there.

 

Yep [but not the exploding fortress part]. They are never to be seen again and never mentioned either. Ergo, they're finished.

 

That’s in the “Donner Cut,” which — while I like it very much — muddies the narrative in several ways in its concluding scenes.

You actually do have a better case for Zod, et al.’s deaths in the Donner Cut, for the very reason you cite — except that Superman then reverses time so none of it ever happens at all.

 

Hearing about reversing time it and the fortress it occurs to me that I never actually saw the Donner cut apparently.

 

You should. It’s not just a tweak here and there, it’s a fundamentally different movie in important ways. It has its problems, but in many respects it’s superior to the theatrical cut, IMO.

 

No, but they are best buds

 

Why is Santa skeptical that Christmas is in danger? If fiction has taught me anything, it's that Santa has faced dozens of threats to the success or survival of Christmas over the decades. Eventually he should've adopted a stance of permanent vigilance, ever alert to the next assault on seasonal cheer. There'd be a whole Elf.B.I. or Department of Ho-Ho-Ho Security working year-round to identify and head off anti-Yuletide terror plots.

 

True, but the point about them never being seen again holds in the theatrical cut.

 

You can make up any excuse or apology you want to, for Clark's execution of Kryptonian criminals in the comics. That is, however, exactly what he did:




Superman exposed Zod and his Kryptonian confederates to lethal levels of Kryptonite radiation after they destroyed all human life on a "pocket universe" version of Earth.

it was an execution, which he carried out with due consideration and while they were his captives.

If you want to split hairs, Zod may have died of asphyxiation at Quex-Ul's hands before the radiation did its work. Quex-Ul and Zaora unquestionably died of radiation poisoning to which Clark deliberately subjected them. Looks like it was rather slow and painful. Not like a movieland neck-snapping.

Returning them to the Phantom Zone was an alternative he considered but it wasn't possible. They were more powerful than he (the pocket universe was different) and he felt the need to be certain that they could never escape again.

 

It does. “Never seen again,” however, is not the same as, “Place they were last seen reduced to icy rubble.”

IIRC, in the Donner Cut, Luthor is also last seen in the Fortress before Supes brings it down; are we to assume he killed Lex, too? (I’m sure the “Kill ‘em all, Superman!” crowd would love to think so.)

 

I didn't say that they were necessarily killed, though. Did I? I only said it was a reasonable assumption, based on the contents of the film.

 

Um, okay, maybe you didn’t? Technically? (Though “Ergo, they’re finished” comes pretty close.) Not sure why you want to hedge the point now, though, when you’ve made your position completely crystalline.* Unless I’ve just been that persuasive?

* Fortress? Crystalline? Get it? On second thought, never mind.

 

Well, yeah. It's a reasonable conclusion that I happen to agree with. But there's plenty of wiggle room in their having simply fallen out of view to who-knows-where to permit the conclusion that something else happened to them, and I recognize that.

 

Everybody is assuming that they either fell into a bottomless pit or into icy waters. Why not a floor? They could have just fallen 15 to 20 feet and gotten out of there with some broken bones....maybe ended up cell mates with Luthor...who knows?