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The Top 11 Dumbest Superman Moments

What I find stupid is in Smallville we have to sit through tons of more seasons of Clark-pining-for-a-chick-until-he-finally-hooks-up-with-her-crap!
 
He only scratched the surface of what's wrong with the whole spin-the-Earth-backwards thing. For one thing, if he's altered history so that he's now saving Lois, does that mean he's allowing all the death and destruction that he originally prevented? I mean, Lois died because he was busy elsewhere, doing things like preventing a town from being washed away by a dam burst and saving Jimmy Olsen from a lethal fall. But on the second iteration, he just saves Lois and hangs around with her for several minutes, even though Jimmy and a whole town are dying at that exact moment.

Although I guess that could be rationalized if you assume he merely overlapped his own time track rather than overwriting it -- that there were briefly two Supermen at the same time.

Clearly that's what he did because Jimmy runs up to him & Lois a few minutes later. Clearly Superman was able to save Jimmy. Yeah, it creates a paradox with 2 Supermans but...

...Christopher Reeve sure is awesome in this movie, isn't he?
 
I think the dumbest superman moment is "whiny emo supes" from returns going outside the movie franchise here, two words Pink. Kryptonite.
 
Superman flies ultra-fast West - time reverses.
Superman flies ultra-fast East - time restarts.
What happens when Superman flies ultra-fast North/South?
 
I'll go with instantaneously killing every last living creature on the planet by thinking, while obviously grief stricken out of his skull, that suddenly stopping the Earth's rotation and then spinning it in the complete opposite direction would somehow reverse time. Thank God they fixed it up in the movie with some fantasy la la land bullshit.
^ I think you have that confused with the dumbest audience member moments for thinking that's what was occurring. As opposed to Earth just appearing to reverse direction because, you know, he was traveling backwards in time. Which is why waterfalls swooshed upwards. Why Lois' car pulled itself out of the ground. And all the other identical visual shots during the scenes.

Once more, if Superman was simply going back in time, he:

a. would have met himself in the past.

b. he wouldn't need to turn the Earth back in the right direction to make time move forward again.

So in other words; it's not a dumbest audience member for thinking that's what was occurring, that's what actually occurring. That you ignore what's on screen and just rewrite what happened in your mind, does not change what's on screen.
 
Why would he have met himself? At which point was he in the same place twice?

He traveled back, stopped the second missile, then travelled back into the future to avoid having two of himselves (is that a word?) running around. If there's a problem in it, it's that he was able to travel back into the future the same way he traveled into the past; by presumably going faster than the speed of light. But that's a pretty damn common mistake. Even shows like Heroes made it when they supercharged Daphne's running speed. Likewise the paradox of him having stopped the second missile and thus not being angry enough to go back in time. But, yet again, that's a common mistake in most time travel stories shown on the big screen!

The fact that he just happened to fly in the direction the Earth appeared to be turning was a coincidence and, admittedly, a bad choice on the director's behalf. But that's all it was. He could have easily flown to the sun and back or any other number of methods. At no point whatsoever did the guy go flying around reversing everything that was happening. That's just stupid to assume, is not backed up by a single iota of evidence shown on screen (unless you're going to say he was under neath the waterfall and using his superbreath to blow it all uphill, and he was using his to-be-seen-in-a-future-movie's-rebuild-the-great-wall-TK-vision to pull Lois' car out of the ditch), and is just freakin' dumb to assume -- especially when you yourself admit how freakin' dumb it is. Occam's Razor: I'm sure you've heard of it.

Your refusal to accept what happened on the screen is fine and dandy. That doesn't make your wretched erroneous and foolish understanding of the scenes any less erroneous or foolish.
 
Why would he have met himself? At which point was he in the same place twice?

He went back into the past; there are now two of him.

He traveled back, stopped the second missile,

Huh? What? Where? When? He didn't touch any second missile.

then travelled back into the future to avoid having two of himselves (is that a word?) running around.

Uh, no. There would be two. One Superman who remembers Lois dying and going back into the past, and one Superman who went for the second missile and then went, "Huh? Where the hell did the second missile go?" And then he'd meet himself, the one who went back into the past and came back to the future. One Superman doesn't just disappear.

If there's a problem in it, it's that he was able to travel back into the future the same way he traveled into the past; by presumably going faster than the speed of light.

He wouldn't need to go faster than the speed of light to travel to the future, just go very fast close to the speed of light. Which again breaks with what was on screen; on screen, he went equally fast one way, as he went the other.

But that's a pretty damn common mistake. Even shows like Heroes made it when they supercharged Daphne's running speed.

No, they didn't.

Likewise the paradox of him having stopped the second missile and thus not being angry enough to go back in time. But, yet again, that's a common mistake in most time travel stories shown on the big screen!

If they're so common; name them.

The fact that he just happened to fly in the direction the Earth appeared to be turning was a coincidence and, admittedly, a bad choice on the director's behalf. But that's all it was. He could have easily flown to the sun and back or any other number of methods. At no point whatsoever did the guy go flying around reversing everything that was happening. That's just stupid to assume, is not backed up by a single iota of evidence shown on screen (unless you're going to say he was under neath the waterfall and using his superbreath to blow it all uphill, and he was using his to-be-seen-in-a-future-movie's-rebuild-the-great-wall-TK-vision to pull Lois' car out of the ditch), and is just freakin' dumb to assume -- especially when you yourself admit how freakin' dumb it is. Occam's Razor: I'm sure you've heard of it.

Your refusal to accept what happened on the screen is fine and dandy. That doesn't make your wretched erroneous and foolish understanding of the scenes any less erroneous or foolish.

I'm not assuming anything! THAT is what is ON screen. And the directors and writers have even SAID so in commentary and in interviews that Superman reversing the flow of time is exactly the way it was written and filmed. YOU are the one who as assuming things erroneously and directly contradicting what's on screen, not me. And that's all nice and dandy to assume that and treat what you see on screen that way FOR YOURSELF, however, to what's on screen that doesn't matter one bit.
 
he wouldn't need to turn the Earth back in the right direction to make time move forward again.

He overshot his temporal destination and had to go forward a little while to get where he wanted to be. ;)
 
he wouldn't need to turn the Earth back in the right direction to make time move forward again.
He overshot his temporal destination and had to go forward a little while to get where he wanted to be. ;)

Which means he would have had to use temporal dilation to get there, or in other words, just under the speed of light. While he went faster than the speed of light to go back in time. He should thus have been slower in the other direction, but he wasn't.

Face it: it was written, filmed and on screen as Superman reversing the flow of time, and resetting the flow of time.
 
he wouldn't need to turn the Earth back in the right direction to make time move forward again.
He overshot his temporal destination and had to go forward a little while to get where he wanted to be. ;)

Which means he would have had to use temporal dilation to get there, or in other words, just under the speed of light. While he went faster than the speed of light to go back in time. He should thus have been slower in the other direction, but he wasn't.

Face it: it was written, filmed and on screen as Superman reversing the flow of time, and resetting the flow of time.

Well, to be honest, could you visually tell the difference between "FTL" and "just under C."

;)

I like the idea someone postulated above that he simply just went back in time, stopped the other missile, and then went back forward in time to get Lois. So, for a time, there were two Supermen.

Perhaps one of them faded out of exsistance once the timelines converged.

But as The Nostalgia Critic points out, Superman obviously could've flown fast enough to stop both missiles if he can fly fast enough to orbit the earth several times a second. (In a scene we see him fly over some farmers and fly back by them less than a second later.)



So for a time there were two
 
^Let's put it this way. Early on in the movie, young Clark (who presumably hadn't developed his powers to their fullest yet) could keep up with a speeding train.

Smallville Clark is capable of running, not flying, to South America from Kansas and back in seconds.

Lois and Clark's Clark was able to fly to China, purchase food and be back in Metropolis before Lois noticed.

Comic book Clark is capable of keeping up with The Flash and arguably even beating him in a race.

The idea that he was weakened due to the Kryptonite exposure was nonsense, he was flying around in the desert. That's like giving Popeye an all you can eat Spinach buffet.
 
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