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MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

Grade the movie...


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But his time travel in the comics isn't a power per se. It's a side effect of his ability to travel at great speeds. Same as The Flash. It's not like they snap their fingers and appear in another time.
Nor did Superman do so in the 1978 film. His travel through time was also achieved by flying very fast, in circles around the Earth....the best way to go very, very fast without going far away in space.


Yes, I know. I'm on the same side of the argument.
 
Exactly. I mean, almost by the same logic every single one of us are time travelers since your proximity to mass and speed causes you to experience time at a different rate. "Time travel" is a side-effect of Superman going at super-speed, not an innate ability he has. We must also presume it's something that takes great strength and power to do, a "surge of adrenaline", if you will, that he can't just do willy nilly.

Well here's the thing - if you watch the 1978 "Superman reverses the rotation of Earth" Time Travel scenes - it does appear he is causing the Earth to rotate in retrograde - it shows him effectively stopping himself in space; then flying in the opposite direction around the Earth to stop the retrograde rotation. There's also intercut scenes that show events reversing themselves.

It thus appears he's not taking himself back in time - but indeed taking the entire planet Earth back in time somehow.:eek:
I think the key image in the scene is not him rotating around the earth and whether it is spinning forwards or backwards: the key image is his rage, and his intensity to do something he is forbidden to do. It would be ridiculous to take the lines of him spinning and the globe itself literally. He is turning back time and the images are a not-so-literal means of illustration.

Unfortunately, people have lost their sense of imagination and wonder and take everything they see on film so damn literally...

That would be - people don't have your rosy-coloured glassed and biased view of a very poor part of the movie.

The best you can do is come up with a clearly defective rationalisation - Supes, by flying around it, made the earth rotate backwards, then he changed its rotation again (this last part is what shows your time travel theory was not the intent of the film-makers).
A, yes - and declaring that using one's mind is not a quality - when it shows the glaring holes in your worshipped movie.
 
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The damning part of that scene, conceptually, is the moment he stops flying... and the world continues rotating backwards until he takes off again. This is all before he lands and tinkers in the past.
 
I call bullocks. Even when he reversed the rotation, I don't believe it's any more literal. It's just their way of illustrating through representation what he was doing.

By the same token


-I don't believe that there were white, statue-like versions of the crew, a human body, and a humpback whale during the time-travel scene in Star Trek 4.

- Or that the captain of the sailing ship, Vyvyan Ayrs, and Cavendish are the same person or even the same "soul" despite all being portrayed by the same actor in Cloud Atlas.

- that the little red lines scrawled on maps is a completely accurate depiction of Indiana Jones' travels in each of his films.

- that there really was a smokey room filled with TV's one of which turns on automatically to provide a newscast filled with important exposition in Tron Legacy

- That a clear whale sprung out of the Ocean in Life of Pi.

Yet, FYI, all these events "occur" in the films, and I don't think it should be a problem that the images should be taken literally just because they are on screen. Why has cinema become so dry that people can't learn to use a little imagination, and meet the film part of the way.





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The Life of Pi example doesn't really fit with what you're saying, as it's a story told within the movie. But I agree with what you mean.
 
If one is going to bring real world physics into discussions about Superman, then it's impossible for Superman to fly in the first place. An insistence that real world physics be followed means no Superman, period.

No Superman movie has ever been realistic when it comes to showing Superman fly. Even if it were possible to fly without the aid of machinery, there would have to be both conservation of momentum and energy, which has never been shown. To be realistic, when Superman changes trajectory during flight, he must pull or push some other masses outside himself, and such an effect could plausibly be harmful or even fatal to people around him.

The 1978 film suggested that Superman's powers arose because the galaxy he was from, not our own, had a different law of space and time. Each galaxy he passed through on his way to Earth had a different law of space and time, as was heard in one of Jor-El's lectures to the baby Kal-El (at the two minute mark of this video), right before he forbids him to interfere in human history.

That Superman's body, originating in another galaxy where the laws of physics are different, might produce effects contrary to our laws of nature, when accelerated to near or beyond the speed of light, would seem as plausible as any of the other things we routinely accept in science fiction, such as warp drives and transporters.

Anyway, it's rather amusing to read the claim that time travel doesn't work right in a movie about a virtually invulnerable man with X-ray vision who can fly, when all the other multiple and independent powers are accepted without objection.
 
Well, in his first take off, they showed the snow and some pebbles levitating from his fist. That would give the indication of push (kind of like how a tide sucks water away from the beach just before it pushes in). Ultimately, Superman is going to push with whatever sends him in the direction he wants to go; and that's most often his feat.

For a better example, I would look at Iron Man. Tony pushes from his hands and feet to fly. There may be minor thrust from his back and chest at times; but it is nothing compared to hands and feet.
 
Anyway, it's rather amusing to read the claim that time travel doesn't work right in a movie about a virtually invulnerable man with X-ray vision who can fly, when all the other multiple and independent powers are accepted without objection.

Exactly. Bloody joyless dorks who need everything explained...

Superman flew around the Earth and turned it backwards. That's what happened and I'd have it no other way.
 
Well, in his first take off, they showed the snow and some pebbles levitating from his fist.

They did, and the suggestiveness of it was a nice touch in Man of Steel. But I don't believe for one second that this effect was consistently represented in universe throughout the whole film.

Every time Superman banked and changed direction, was matter shown being pushed in the opposite direction, as if by telekinesis, to compensate and in the correct proportion to conserve momentum?*

No. And showing that in universe, in the background somewhere, is not necessary. Superman is fantasy, after all.

* - Perhaps the idea was that the compensation occurred deep inside Earth somewhere. For one thing, that would allow it to have no need to be shown explicitly, while also most of the time conveniently conforming to at least that level of realism.
 
If he's pushing on his feet, like Iron Man's boot jets, then matter wouldn't get flung to the side of him but from behind him.
 
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