I think people until recently never really questioned whether Zod was really dead because: 1) Having the villain die has always been the standard in Hollywood movies. It perfectly satisfies the American sense of justice: "Bad guy DIE!". Things are changing lately just because producers are always hoping for sequels. 2) The all scene has a cartoonish vibe. It would be like wondering if Wile E. Coyote died after falling into a canyon. Then Superman in "Man Of Steel" explicitly kills on screen Zod and the debate breaks out: "The real Superman wouldn't do something like that! How we miss Christopher Reeve!" "Look, his Superman killed Zod too!" "It's not true!" "Yes, it's true!"
How deep are these, err, cracks? mini-crevasses? supposed to be? Superman, I know you didn't expect guests in your Fortress, but couldn't you cover them?
Probably they have the same interior designer who worked on the Death Star. "Railings real ruin my vision".
By the way, Supes even tortures Zod (crushing his hand) before tossing him in the pit to his death. While smiling. A real hero!
When Krypton itself was destroyed people just tumbled to their deaths down long, deep chasms, some of which were likely already there and just lit afire or widened by the destruction of the planet. It's weird how a civilization that evolved on a planet with a crystalline structure never seemed to develop handrails or grips.
That's an interesting aspect I didn't know about, IE that the Salkinds got more money based on the amount of added footage. I will say when I saw all the added footage the one sequence I can't believe was never in the original theatrical version was the Superman walkthrough of the sewer with all of luthor's active traps such as the machine guns, attempting to encase Superman in ice, etc. I thought that was a great sequence that I would have loved to have seen in the theater the first time I was watching the film as a 15-year-old kid.
Does anybody know who created the crystal design/technology concept? Was that Donner's vision or was it a product of someone in the effects department? The concept is already present in the storyboards before Jor-El's costume design was finished. http://superman1978.com/STM_STORYBOARDS.php
I've never understood the "punched into a bottomless pit" thing that some people mention. I mean, his house is not that far above the water. They'd be fine. Until they froze to death.
It was the sound effect and the screaming that gave the idea of a "bottomless pit" "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaah...." And, by the way, he launched what was a normal human being against a wall for, what, 20 meters? Just that could kill someone.
Krypton blew up, "sometimes" because they tapped the core as a power source, which destabilized and planet and boom. Even though Jor-El figured out that simultaneously tapping his homeworld's core millions of times to power 100s of trillions of devices and vehicles, tapping earth's core just once, shouldn't be dangerous at all. The fortress may not be bottomless, but it goes down to the center of the planet, and the edge of the core is 2,900 kilometre straight down, half way to Australia. Do those shafts go all the way? "Probably not"? Or at least probably not as shafts that are people sized. They winnow over the course of 10s of hundreds of kilometres. Pipes? Nano tubing? Surely the hippies should be up in arms about this?
He did kill Zod, no matter how much others cry about Superman killing, he did, and had no problem tossing Zod to his death, which was the correct decision.
Agreed. Plus I have met Sarah Douglas and Jack O’Halloran. Lovely people. Shockingly Jack can speak. Offered my parents to stay at his home in Ireland if they ever visited there. Got the shocking realization that they are actors who played fictional characters. So whether those characters in a 40 year old movie are alive or dead is largely irrelevant....
Directed by Superman writer Tom Mankiewicz! I love Dragnet but when I met him I was so wrapped up in him being in Superman forgot about that.