# Superman Returns - I Enjoyed It **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 19, 2011, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017 "2011-06-19T07:07:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Iggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Iggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/41 "2011-06-23T00:07:26Z")
Not only was this movie intolerably boring, it is also completely non-memorable in any way. I saw in in the theater, and somehow got a copy of the DVD, so I’ve seen it at least twice, and I can barely recall anything about the plot, or characters, or any scenes. I suppose I remember some of the airplane gag. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/42 "2011-06-23T00:34:07Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > Finding out many years later that you have a child does not make one a dead-beat dad. Ah, but the _reason_ he only found out many years later is because it was physically impossible for Lois to contact him. He played the role of Mr. Reliable, until he knocked her up and then vanished for five years. He may not have done it on purpose, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that a woman would be more comfortable risking getting pregnant when her boyfriend is _always_ around when you need him, than if she’d known he was going to disappear shortly after. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/43 "2011-06-23T01:42:16Z")
Superman has for a long time had a forcefield that allows him to move objects without breaking them. The idea that the plane wouldn’t have stopped does not fit with any earlier portrayal of the character. It’s not like Spider-Man–in Superman, the physics of superheroism has never killed anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/44 "2011-06-23T01:48:03Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Ah, but the _reason_ he only found out many years later is because it was physically impossible for Lois to contact him. He played the role of Mr. Reliable, until he knocked her up and then vanished for five years. He may not have done it on purpose, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that a woman would be more comfortable risking getting pregnant when her boyfriend is _always_ around when you need him, than if she’d known he was going to disappear shortly after. It’s a sci-fi film. He was in the ruins of his destroyed planet in another galaxy trying to find some sense of his own identity. Give him a break! He didn’t even think pregnancy was biologically possible. He’s an alien. You’re holding him to a standard of omniscience beyond even Superman, let alone you or I. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/45 "2011-06-23T12:05:39Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > It’s a sci-fi film. He was in the ruins of his destroyed planet in another galaxy trying to find some sense of his own identity. Give him a break! > > He didn’t even think pregnancy was biologically possible. He’s an alien. > > You’re holding him to a standard of omniscience beyond even Superman, let alone you or I. I’m sorry, but because it was a “sci-fi” film, the idea that there might be a biological barrier to pregnancy would never have occurred to any character, and as they are fictional they should have known that sex=pregnancy almost every time. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/46 "2011-06-23T12:56:27Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > He didn’t even think pregnancy was biologically possible. He’s an alien. > > You’re holding him to a standard of omniscience beyond even Superman, let alone you or I. You don’t need to be omniscient to consider it a _possibility_ that the alien species that happens to look exactly like yours _might_ be biologically compatible. And given that possibility, it would be unreasonable to not err on the side of caution. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/47 "2011-06-23T16:08:03Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > You don’t need to be omniscient to consider it a _possibility_ that the alien species that happens to look exactly like yours _might_ be biologically compatible. And given that possibility, it would be unreasonable to not err on the side of caution. You’re taking this far too seriously! It’s just a comic book superhero who was in another galaxy at the time. Real life need not apply. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Shark\_Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Shark\_Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shark_Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/48 "2011-06-23T16:49:10Z")
Maybe he thought his super kiss would give her ovaries amnesia. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/49 "2011-06-23T17:10:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I always had the impression that, as of the time when Supes first showed up, Lane was already the Planet’s top reporter. Me too, in general. This is a reboot where AFAIR there’s nothing indicating that, but it is also a reboot that tries to fit into canon, so I agree with you guys that she should be mid-thirties. I just didn’t notice her as being not in her thirties. This might also be due to me watching this as a superhero film, where the women are never over forty unless they’re evil and have striking Nazoid haircuts or are motherly figures with grey hair and, if we had smellovision, an aroma of baking bread. > [@Grumman](#): > > Ah, but the _reason_ he only found out many years later is because it was physically impossible for Lois to contact him. He played the role of Mr. Reliable, until he knocked her up and then vanished for five years. He may not have done it on purpose, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that a woman would be more comfortable risking getting pregnant when her boyfriend is _always_ around when you need him, than if she’d known he was going to disappear shortly after. But he didn’t know she was pregnant. Accidents happen. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/50 "2011-06-23T17:19:33Z")
If we’re meant to be asking why Superman didn’t know he was interfertile with humans, then we also ought to be asking why Superman would find a human woman sexually attractive in the first place. You’d think she’d smell wrong, or something. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/51 "2011-06-23T17:29:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If we’re meant to be asking why Superman didn’t know he was interfertile with humans, then we also ought to be asking why Superman would find a human woman sexually attractive in the first place. You’d think she’d smell wrong, or something. Well . . . a gay guy raised in a “boy, you’d better be straight” family environment may convince himself that he likes girls because he believes that he’s “supposed to”. Superman was raised as a human and was socialized as a human. Makes sense he would want to fit in . . . provided he _can_ fit in. HORRAY! First post of Page 2! ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/52 "2011-06-23T18:45:06Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > Well . . . a gay guy raised in a “boy, you’d better be straight” family environment may convince himself that he likes girls because he believes that he’s “supposed to”. > > Superman was raised as a human and was socialized as a human. Makes sense he would want to fit in . . . provided he _can_ fit in. > > HORRAY! First post of Page 2! Or, more like cultural conditioning. He couldn’t know what \*should \*be attractive to a Kryptonian male humanoid, just as people who are not Scots can’t tell which sheep are ugly. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/53 "2011-06-23T19:11:23Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Yeah, there’s that. Snyder’s film may or may not be good, but it certainly will be violent. I thought the same thing about Singer. Since he did the X-Men movies I was expecting Superman to be much more actiony. My only two problems about the movie: 1. They cut out him going to Kryptonite, 2. At the end he gets stabbed by a kryptonite shard and it nearly kills him. Then it gets pulled out and immediately he goes and lifts an entire island of kryptonite, with a bunch of big chunks feet or inches from his face, and lifts it up into space. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/54 "2011-06-23T19:35:15Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > He didn’t even think pregnancy was biologically possible. He’s an alien. > > You don’t need to be omniscient to consider it a possibility that the alien species that happens to look exactly like yours might be biologically compatible. Especially if you’re an alien with, y’know, x-ray vision. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/55 "2011-06-23T19:41:10Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Especially if you’re an alien with, y’know, x-ray vision. You think he’s constantly checking out people’s innards with his x-ray vision? Why? I don’t think Kal-El even checks out women’s nudity under their clothes with their x-ray vision constantly, or at all. Maybe he did at 16, but after a while he’d have gotten inured to it. And if he left very early in Lois’s pregnancy, which seems likely, he’d have no reason to wonder. Again, I think Superman is a jackass in this movie. My wife loves it, but even she complained on our first viewing together that it was irritating that he never once apologized to his elderly widowed mother for the long absence; not to mention the height of his dickishness in making a pass at a basically-married woman with a small child she was raising with a much better father than he was capable of being. But he’s not a deadbeat dad, because he’s not omniscient. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/56 "2011-06-23T19:45:53Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > You think he’s constantly checking out people’s innards with his x-ray vision? Why? No, I meant he could check out the egg inside her after bedding her, before leaving the planet. (If, like Grumman said, Superman could easily consider it a possibility, then it’s maybe just as easy for him to see how that possibility is coming along.) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/57 "2011-06-23T19:47:48Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > No, I meant he could check out the egg inside her after bedding her, before leaving the planet. (If, like Grumman said, Superman could easily consider it a possibility, then it’s maybe just as easy for him to see how that possibility is coming along.) Still doesn’t make him a deadbeat dad. Superman does enough dickish things in this movie; no need to add more. What the movie really needed was the Justice League existing in the background, so that Batman could give him a verbal smackdown. No, make that Wonder Woman. Batman has no credibility when it comes to relationships or respecting people’s privacy. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/58 "2011-06-23T20:06:28Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > You think he’s constantly checking out people’s innards with his x-ray vision? Why? Argh. You made me think of Grounded, you bastard. You will pay for this. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/59 "2011-06-23T20:23:39Z")
> [@](#): > > You think he’s constantly checking out people’s innards with his x-ray vision? Why? In the first movie, when he sees Lois smoking (shortly after he meets her), he tells her that’ll give her cancer, and then takes a look and says he doesn’t see any tumors yet. I can imagine him continuing to take an interest in her health and that of other folks close to him. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017/60 "2011-06-23T20:30:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In the first movie, when he sees Lois smoking (shortly after he meets her), he tells her that’ll give her cancer, and then takes a look and says he doesn’t see any tumors yet. I can imagine him continuing to take an interest in her health and that of other folks close to him. Don’t bother me with facts. I kept a regiment of monkeys for emergencies. > [@Tengu](#): > > Argh. You made me think of Grounded. I don’t know what that is. ETA: I just realized you’re talking about the J. Michael Stra–oh, hell, I’m not going to try to spell it – storyline. I enjoyed the Polite Dissent reaming of Kal’s actions (read: JMS’s writing) of same, even though I enjoyed the basic story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superman-returns-i-enjoyed-it/586017.md?page=4)