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Author Topic: The 12-year gap and the 5-year gap  (Read 12292 times)
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Uncle Mxy
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« on: January 08, 2007, 12:06:06 PM »

[coagulating random thoughts into one thread]

Everything about Superman Returns makes sense -except- for the basic premise that he leaves the Earth for 5 years chasing Kryptonians.  If you don't buy that, everything falls apart.  I don't buy it.  But, note that a similar handwaving was used before, with the "same" Superman.  I didn't buy that gap, either, but I don''t feel as bad about it. 

In Superman I, Jor-El yanks young Clark away for 12 years to educate him some more. (I guess all that information shoved on him as a baby in the spaceship didn't "take".)  One Superman actor leaves and another enters.  No one pays attention to what sort of emotional torment dear old Martha must have gone through over his 12 year absence.  Sending part of his paycheck to her wouldn't begin to heal the emotional scars.  The gap does adequately explain why Clark Kent is naive even by Clark standards.  How would you behave if, for your entire adult life, your father was teaching you remedial cosmic education class?  Superman doesn't really become a "man" until age 30 or so when he defies his father (in either Superman I or the Donner cut of II).

The difference is that the 12-year chapter break in Superman I wasn't really dwelled upon by Donner, beyond the one "paycheck for mom" reference.  By contrast, the 5-year break became the titular conceit of Superman Returns.  I think Singer erred by not pulling a Darrin Stephens, focusing too much on filling Reeve's shoes and "the return".  You know Superman's back by the time the Williams music plays.  Now have him do something other than redo the "Superman I plot with bratty kid variation", pushing for that conscious "compare and contrast".  Of course, given the tortured production history of Superman Returns, I guess we're lucky it didn't have a gay R2-D2 and giant spider in it.

It's clear that the 12-year gap had storytelling potential that could have been exploited.  The (few) better parts of Superman III and Superman IV both go back to the farm.  Heck, III and Superman Returns have the "Superman goes back to the farm, then meets up with his sweetheart who now has a child" plot.  But that was hard to play out into a fuller story without the 12-year gap being problematic.  Imagine Lana asking Clark about what he did for all those years in III, or Clark trying to show more emotional resonance to his mom's death without some flashback (as  Reeve never interacted with Martha).

« Last Edit: January 08, 2007, 12:10:15 PM by Uncle Mxy » Logged
nightwing
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« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2007, 01:04:26 PM »

Quote
In Superman I, Jor-El yanks young Clark away for 12 years to educate him some more. (I guess all that information shoved on him as a baby in the spaceship didn't "take".)

Yes, this is a bit odd, isn't it?  You'd figure that those 2 1/2 years of "books on tape" during baby Kal's voyage might have taught him something, but apparently not.  Maybe Jor-El was planting some kind of subconcious "primer" knowledge that would be tapped into and activated in the later, Fortress-based instruction?  Of course another good question is what is baby Kal doing for food those two years, and who changes his diapers?

Quote
One Superman actor leaves and another enters.

Hmm...come to think of it, this seems to be the key to Superman's "makeovers."  Every time he disappears, he comes back as another actor.  And always looking younger!  (Am I the only one who thinks Chris Reeve looked younger than Jeff East?).

Quote
No one pays attention to what sort of emotional torment dear old Martha must have gone through over his 12 year absence.  Sending part of his paycheck to her wouldn't begin to heal the emotional scars.

You mean sending them once he gets to Metropolis?  Because during that 12-year absence, Clark has no job and so Martha gets squat.  No farm boy worth his salt would fail the family on THAT large a scale.  The jerk.

I remember when I saw the film at age 14 I was confused by the scene where Jor-El begins talking about Kal's education and we seque to space scenery.  I took it to mean that they were literally travelling in space during those 12 years.  The alternative is that Clark sat there in the lotus position for 12 years soaking up his learning in some sort of super-acid trip, which is twice as dumb.

And of course the real question is, how could he get 12 years of education and still be dumb enough to fall for Luthor's obvious traps, give up his powers for Lois, etc?  Doesn't say much for home schooling, does it?  Cheesy

For me, the biggest problem with the 5-year-gap is that it's physically impossible.  Even though baby Kal aged only 2 to 3 years on the trip from Krypton in Film 1, Jor-El says he's been dead for "thousands of your years," (a line that survives into SR) which suggests faster-than-light travel.  Now using that logic, Superman's round trip to Krypton might have taken 5 years of his own life, but for Earth-dwellers it would have taken twice as many "thousands of years" as his first trip.  Thus, when he returns to Earth, he should not find his friends 5 years older and Lois with a kid...he should find the Earth thousands of years beyond anything he remembers, with all of his friends long dead and no one around who remembers Superman as anything more than ancient myth.

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Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2007, 03:48:44 PM »

In the director's cut to Superman I, it's clear that Jor-El has a problem with hours -- 24 vs. 28 hours.  He might generally have problems with units of time.  It'd explain the "relativity gap" where Jor-El speaks of Einstein and "many thousands of your years ago".  Perhaps native Kryptonian time isn't measured in years at all, but in "seconds since Rao".  A line Zod said implied that Krypton may have had more than one sun, so solar rotation units may not have been in vogue.  It might not been exactly a 12-year gap after all, though Clark sure looked different afterwards, so it was something big.  Smiley

Given when that movie was made, a 12-year gap makes sense. Superman just misses the late 60s and most of the 70s, which goes along with how he is shown.  It would've been interesting to see if Superman had spoken of the American Way had he actually been around for Watergate.  Would Clark have been somewhat less uncool if he were around during a time where "swell" became less popular?  The bucolic rural town thing wouldn't work today.  Heck, it hasn't worked for awhile...  seeing Smallville and Superboy in the swinging sixties in the comics was just odd. 

Has he ever actually shown direct signs of super-brain power in any of the movies -- something not coupled closely with some other power)?  The closest I can think of is Superman III where he outwits the computer with a lame plot device, because we like our Superman not using his powers to defeat a menace.  (He could've compressed Richard Pryor into a wafer that fit in his cape and given the computer indigestion and I would've cheered, but that is a different story.)  All that info he was force-fed never came in handy.  He didn't even recite poetry.  I forgive him for falling for Luthor's first trap.  Superman hadn't ever been hurt, and probably didn't think he could be.  Jor-El never warned him about kryptonite.

I thought that East looked a little too close Reeve's age, but not -older-.  I assumed he was a failed attempt at finding Reeve, and only found out many years later that he was specifically cast as "young Clark".  It's funny that he's actually -in- Kansas these days. 



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Aldous
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« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2007, 03:38:08 AM »

Perhaps native Kryptonian time isn't measured in years at all, but in "seconds since Rao".  A line Zod said implied that Krypton may have had more than one sun, so solar rotation units may not have been in vogue.  It might not been exactly a 12-year gap after all, though Clark sure looked different afterwards, so it was something big.  Smiley

This doesn't wash. A year is a year. If you are speaking English, and you say "year", you mean the time taken for a planetary revolution around the sun. That's what a year is.

If speaking Kryptonian, and you mention a length of time that is not a planetary revolution around the sun, when translated into English it will not be "year" but something else (assuming the Kryptonian word itself is not quoted).
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Spaceman Spiff
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« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2007, 05:44:30 AM »

Quote from: nightwing
And of course the real question is, how could he get 12 years of education and still be dumb enough to fall for Luthor's obvious traps, give up his powers for Lois, etc?  Doesn't say much for home schooling, does it?  Cheesy
In defense of home schooling, I'd say the script doesn't say much for the education of the writer  -- whether it was received in public school, private school, or at home. Maybe he could have used twelve more years of study. Wink

I seriously doubt that The Daily Planet would hire a reporter without a journalism degree, so it appears that at the end of the twelve years, Jor gave Kal a forged college diploma.
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Aldous
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« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2007, 07:46:11 AM »

I hate the whole idea.

One of the major points of Superman's great story is that he lost his biological father when he was a baby. That's that. A big giant talking head doesn't come back to educate him for YEARS! (Give me a break.)

It's all GARBAGE!

The father that brought up and educated Superman is PA KENT.
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Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2007, 11:52:44 AM »

Much of the contentious quantification (e.g. "many thousands of your years" instead of "many, many of your years") in the Superman I/II script came at a later stage.  The only hard numbers I see in the (sometimes very painful to read)  pre-Donner script is the "28 hours, 24 as it is on Earth" exchange.  Somewhere along the way in the Donner days, a lot of quantification was added to the script (e.g. the 28 known galaxies, Krypton being from the Xeno galaxy), then was removed -- mostly. 

There was no 12-year gap, in particular.  I suspect that was added simply because of the need for a different actor to play "young Clark".  I doubt there'd have been a 12-year gap if they had a pre-pumped-up Christopher Reeve playing young Clark.  But, of course, they couldn't predict that Reeve would bulk up as much and be so physically different once Darth Vader got through with him. 
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Gangbuster
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« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2007, 01:42:49 PM »

If the Salkinds are to be believed, then part of the 12-year gap wasn't spent in the fortress, but at college...the Superboy TV show. He had to get a journalism degree from somewhere...
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