- How is Superman able to turn back time by flying around the world? How did he know he had this power and why did he never use it before?
If he could turn back time why didn't he just go back enough to stop Lex from launching the missiles in the first place?
nightwing is quite correct that Superman can't
reverse time, but I think the intention was to show Superman traveling backwards through time. Think about it, if Superman is traveling backwards through time, the Earth would appear (to him) to slow, stop, then reverse its rotation. Likewise, when he returned to the normal timestream (in the past, of course), the Earth would appear (again, to him) to slow, stop, and resume its proper rotation. Unfortunately, the film didn't provide an explanation for this, and the impression was that Superman reversed time. Imagine an earlier scene where Professor Potter or some geek at STAR Labs tells Superman, "I theorize that if you flew around the Earth counterclockwise at 732 jillion times the speed of light, you could break the time barrier and travel into the past!" Now, duly informed, the audience would know that Supes will get to try this before the credits roll.
Okay, that being said, the idea that Superman could
change what had already occurred is hooey! Lois was dead,
dead,
dead! So there!
Yeah, but they filmed it and there it is. Superman showed up before Lois took the fatal test drive. So how come the ground didn't open up and swallow the car
after Lois got out of it?! And why didn't earlier Superman (the one originally scheduled to appear in this time slot) show up a few minutes later?!? And if he didn't, how did he know to go do the break-the-time-barrier trick so that he could already be there rescuing Lois?!?! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Not only has Superman broken the time barrier, he's broken the very concept of causality!!! Effects are now independent of causes! Why, some of these words are actually appearing on my monitor before I touch the keyboard!
Thanks for shredding the fabric of time-and-space, Superman!Time travel is an intriguing concept, but it is rarely done well. The various
Star Trek series have abused the idea on a semi-regular basis. And they always ignore causality -- how/why did someone from a future (that will never happen) come back to prevent that future?
For some
good time-travel stories, try
Mixed Doubles by Daniel da Cruz,
After the Fact by Fred Saberhagen, and
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.
Superman comics, at least during the Silver/Bronze Age, usually tried to protect causality by saying "Thou shalt not change the past, no matter how hard thou tryest."
On another point, I never understood why the super-fight in Times Square (SII) involved manhole covers, buses, and lightpoles. Didn't these people realize that the hardest things they could hit with were there own fists? Sheesh!
Don't even get me started on "Why did Superman have to lose his powers to love Lois?" But Kal-El10 did have the right answer about how he got them back:
The green crystal, which in the 1st film was shown to be the main power for the Fortress wasn't in place when he used the machine to take his powers. Lois had dropped it aside earlier.
The bottom line is that the movies were a different interpretation of Superman than the 1970s comics. Too bad the filmmakers didn't consult with Julie, Nelson, Elliot, and Cary.