I don’t know if everybody’s seen the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, so be warned, here be spoilers.
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In both the Richard Lester and the Donner cut, Superman and Lois go to the Fortress of Solitude and do the Kryptonian nasty. Superman then gives up his powers to devote himself to Lois. As they’re driving back to civilization, they stop at a diner and Supes/Clark gets his ass kicked by an asshole truck driver. At the end of the movie, he goes back to the diner and dishes out a little cold revenge. This happens in both versions.
Now here’s where the continuity breaks down for the Donner cut:
Superman flies around the world and reverses time like in the first movie so that the three Kryptonian baddies remain trapped in the Phantom Zone and none of the other events occur afterwards. The three baddies don’t wreak havoc, Superman and Lois don’t make love and Clark doesn’t have the fight in the diner. So, in the Donner cut, why would Clark go back to the diner to get his revenge on the trucker? The fight never happened because Lois and Clark weren’t there and the trucker wouldn’t have had any reason to remember Clark.
Hmm. That does explain the scene at the end of the movie that was released, where (after a kiss), Lois seems to have forgot what happened. In the released movie, that makes no sense, but if Superman had reversed time, that scene would be explained. Of course, the rest of the movie would make no sense and the use of the reverse-time bit (again!?) seems stupid beyond belief. Hell’s bells, anytime something happens that he doesn’t like, just spin the world backward and change it? Borrrrring.
It wasn’t mentioned in the commentary, but I would think if Donner had stayed on the ending would have been different. The reason it was used is likely because that was the only ending they had filmed.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but the “Donner Cut” is still subject to the fact that they were limited to film that had been shot and was still extant, so, as Cumberdale notes, that may have been all they had to work with.
To tell the truth, considering how it was cobbled together, and that they couldn’t do reshots or anything, I’m surprised there aren’t more apparent dislocations and continuity errors. The Donner version is well worth seeing, in any case.
No, the Paris scene was directed by Lester after Donner had been let go. Donner had filmed a completely different opening scene which jumps (heh) right in to the story. Also, the end scene at the diner could have been left off, IMO. The movie would have ended just fine without it.
I agree, though, this cut of the movie was absolutely fantastic. You should watch it because Warner Brothers negotiated with Marlon Brando’s estate for the right to use his footage that was shot for this film. It has a more emotional impact because of the scenes between Kal-El and Jor-El in the Fortress.
The fact that the trucker didn’t beat the hell out of Clark doesn’t negate the fact that the guy is an ass, who would have pulled his antics on some other guy who would have been defending his date. Clark, despite hitting the reset button, still knew that this bully had a dose of whoop ass due, and administered it.
The guy needed to be taught a lesson about kicking the ass of someone perceived to be weaker than himself.
Sounds reasonable. The trucker said, “Come and get it, Four Eyes,” and the owner said, “I just had this joint fixed. It cost me a fortune.” But they didn’t act as if they’d seen Clark before. With Rocky (the trucker) around, mayhem could have been a regular occurrence at that particular establishment.
Been too long since I’ve seen the Donner cut for me to address the Trucker scene(s), but as to Dex’s incredulity that they would use the same ending twice:
Donner was originally working on two movies at once: Superman and Superman II. Prior to going into post-production for the first film, he was about 80% finished with what would have been Superman II. The Salkinds then got cold feet and decided to put the sequel on hold to see if the first film would be a success. The “Spin the World Backward to Reverse Time” ending was intended to be the ending for Superman II. The first film was meant to have a cliffhanger ending- the nuclear missile that Superman pushes off into space collides with the Kryptonian prison plate releasing General Zod and company. The Salkinds no longer wanted a cliffhanger ending since they were going to wait out reception of the first movie before completing the second. It was because of this that they decided to use the already shot ending for what would have been Superman II.
Because Donner was still involved when this decision was made the Superman that we know is still officially the Richard Donner cut, but for Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut to truly make sense we would have to see what would have been the original Richard Donner cut of Superman. We can piece it together hypothetically because he uses his original cliffhanger ending for Superman as his opening scene for Superman II.
So, the “Spin the World Backward to Reverse Time” thing would have only been used once- and that would have been at the end of Superman II.
The Hackensack missile goes into space inadvertently freeing Zod, and I assume Superman is just a bit more successful at battling the California earthquake so as not to need to reverse time despite not being able to intercept the missile. Refresh my memory, isn’t Lois’ death the only thing he fails at when battling the earthquake? Her death is pretty much the whole reason for spinning time backward, right? My assumption is that the original plan didn’t involve Lois dying in the first place but that the missile still hit California, caused the earthquake, and Superman fixed the earthquake- all as seen in the version of the movie we know.
There’s any number of details I may be misremembering, so correct me if I’m wrong.
I think you’re right. I’m sure I remember Donner saying in the commentary on the first Superman movie that originally, Lois didn’t die. Since they were ordered to tack the time reversal ending on the first movie, they needed to have a reason for Superman to turn back time, so they had Lois die.