Earlier in the film he had become so weakened from being on the island that Lex Luthors goons were easily able to beat him up. And when Luthor stabbed him with the Kryptonite shank he almost died. Yet after a brief recovery, he’s able to lift the whole damn island into space, even as Kryptonite spikes are growing literally inches from his face.
This scene was one of the big reasons I just couldn’t take this film seriously.
Don’t think about it too much.
Movie people, in general, rarely bother giving comic book source material any respect.
It’s rare to even have the actors or director read the comic book at all. In the Fantastic Four movie, the only cast member who was a fan was Michael Chiklis, and even then, I don’t think any of them read the comic after accepting the role.
Something like Spiderman or X-men is like a once-in-a-generation type film.
edit: the generally accepted answer is that there was a layer of earth between himself and the island, which is why when the crystals started poking through the bottom he got weaker.
It is also the first thing I’ve seen on screen that I couldn’t fanwank. It just seemed like he suddenly got all his power back and more for no reason. I mean, yes, the land around him didn’t seem to affect him as badly as pure-K. But it still limited him to human strength.
What, are his powers Green Lantern based, and he only thinks Kryptonite hurts him? Do we want an omnipotent superhero?
(Apparently not, since the sequel is to be a reboot.)
But this is lack of continuity with the film itself. They established that Superman could not lift the continent, and then they make him do it anyway.
Well…not for no reason, it’s been established for a few decades that his power comes from out yellow sun, hence the scene of him flying up above the clouds and soaking it all in…but yeah, his “solar battery” should have gone down to zero like five seconds after he started to lift the island…the only “fan-wankery” I could see working is that he dug far enough below the island that there was very little kryptonite…maybe?
Earth’s Gravity now 99.6% of what it was as a large chunk of the Earth is hurled into space.
We now have to track this continent sized piece of space rubble hoping it doesn’t come back and wipe us out again.
The Ocean level fell 6" and there were major tsunamis that devastated Metropolis and other parts of the world as the water rushed into this immense hole in the crust of the Earth.
Volcanos sprang up through the cracks in the crust first caused by the island, then by the sudden LACK of an island.
Steam from the combination of the water rushing in and hitting the volcanos, plus the smoke and ash from the volcanos caused several years of global cooling and massive crop failures.
But of course, it being a Movie Universe, none of this is mentioned in the sequel and people only shake their fist at Lex Luthor, who is perfectly free to continue his nefarious schemes.
Bolding mine.
This is how it was explained away to me, that the island wasn’t entirely composed of Kryptonite, after i brought this up immediately after viewing the film. It still didn’t make sense to me, but that apparently was a sufficient explanation for him.
This is another thing that bothered me about the movie. Assuming that this is an offshoot of the first two Christopher Reeve movies, Luthor would have been guilty of nuclear terrorism (for his scheme in the first film) and major acts of treason (for collaborating with Zod and his minions in the second film). Yet he gets out after only five years, because Superman wasn’t able to show up and testify at his parole hearing? WTF? He must have had a superlawyer, or the prosecution must have had some major shit on their case for him to just be able to walk like that. I know, I know, in a movie about a man who can fly you have suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but come on. The writers couldn’t think of a better way to have Luthor out and free?
Frankly, I ended up feeling kind of sorry for Luthor. I mean, he was up against a guy who pick up an entire *continent *and throw it into space! The poor bastard never had a chance.
The fact that the continent was made out of the only thing that could kill Superman was just icing on the cake
A kryptonite continent?
Man, am I glad that I never saw this movie.
It’s in one of the deleted scenes. After flying up to recharge, he zips around the Earth backwards so fast it rotates in the opposite direction. As physicists proved in the late seventies, a counter-rotating Earth not only makes toilets flush backwards, it also turns back time. By going back in time he was able to get back the 154 minutes he wasted in a theater.
For me, the idiotic thing about it was the presumption that all real estate was good real estate, and that Luthor would make a gold mine from owning this new continent. But who in the world would want to develop or build on it? No soil, no other natural resources, no bodies of water, just hard, jagged, inert masses of metal everywhere.
Now, real estate in the rest of the world would become instantly more valuable as the other continents condensed (or something; I zoned out periodically), but as for this new land mass Luthor has? Just one big floating rock of zilchola. And Luthor’s supposed to be smart, so he must’ve known what he would be getting when he started this chain reaction of events. What was his actual economic plan with this thing? It’s about as poorly realized a business model as the Underpants Gnomes.
Kryptonite negates Superman’s power.
But Superman, being the good American he is, can give a 110 percent. That leaves us with 10 percent. And 10 percent of Superman is still easily enough.
I thought the same thing. At the least the real estate scheme in the first movie, as contrived as it was, made sense in a certain diabolical, supply-and-demand “Goldfinger” kind of way - by getting rid of all that prime west coast real estate and putting the shoreline up against his land, his property would skyrocket in value (assuming that he was able to cover up the fact that he was responsible for sinking the west coast, of course).
I guess one could argue that he would have exploited the mineral content of this otherwise jagged, lifeless continent he created, but that’s assuming it would have contained much else besides Kryptonite. And even supposing that, do you think any government would have recognized or supported his property rights here?
When he flew above the clouds, he got out his cell phone and called Aslan, who granted him the grace of extra power just long enough to do it.
I actually thought of a solution they could have used. A lead suit or even box. Use some electronics so he can see, or leave them out so that Superman can’t just use it all the time.
And once you have the electronics, you have a sequel. He uses it, but Luthor makes him waste his power until he can’t get any extra. Hey, that’s awfully close to Kevin Smith’s script.
This part, at least, got addressed in passing:
LOIS: “And the rest of the world will just let you keep it? They’ll…”
LEX: “They’ll what? I’ll have advanced alien technology thousands of years beyond what anyone could throw at me. Bring it on!”
A wizard did it.
It was actually Diet Kryptonite. Most of the Superman stopping power of regular Kryptonite without all the systemic poisoning that goes along with it. It basically neutralized his powers and it was the fall/stabbing that did the damage.
If it merely neutralized his powers, such that he can then get hurt by falling or getting stabbed, he still shouldn’t be able to pick up an entire mountain and fly into outer space with it; regardless of whether the mountain is also poisoning him to death, it’s apparently failing to neutralize his “pick up a whole damn mountain and fly around” powers.