MovieChat Forums > Superman (1978) Discussion > Glaring and obvious plot holes

Glaring and obvious plot holes

posted 10 years ago by tgb-4
37 replies | jump to latest

1. would the government really transport nuclear weapons on flatbed trucks only covered by a tarp, most likely they would disassemble the weapons and ship them as parts on separate trucks taking different routes.

2. Even if they did ship them whole, and somehow someone changed the destination coordinates wouldn't they double check the coordinates once ready to launch.

3. Lets say Lex succeeded and managed to reprogram a nuke, and it caused a massive earthquake, western California WILL NOT Fall into the ocean, lex and superman should know this.

4. A nuclear explosion would make the area radioactive for decades, there are islands in the pacific still radioactive to this day due to the massive nuclear testing from the 1950s

[–] wallacesawyer 10 years ago

5. Spinning the earth backwards would not turn back time.

6. It's just unbelievable luck Lex knew kryptonite could hurt Superman, and that a particular meteorite was even from Krypton.

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[–] HellboundHero 10 years ago

Twasn't luck, it was skill.

[–] gallae 10 years ago

...he didn't spin the Earth backwards! If he had imagine the destruction he would have cause. Rather, he flew faster than the speed of light and time appeared to go backwards.

Nonetheless it still doesn't make sense. If he saved Lois, did he fail to save the others he saved the first time around?

Laura Ess

[–] wallacesawyer 10 years ago

...he didn't spin the Earth backwards! If he had imagine the destruction he would have cause. Rather, he flew faster than the speed of light and time appeared to go backwards.

No, the earth did turn.

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[–] gallae 10 years ago

Rather, it "looked" like it turned. If you look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjgsnWtBQm0 you can see Supes flying around the earth very very quickly. Assuming that he went faster than the speed of light (remember it's a comic) he'd be able to go back in time. But if he's travelling backwards in time what would the motion of things travelling forward look like? They'd look like their motion was in REVERSE. And that's what we see - boulders rolling back up a hill, water and debris from dams flying back into a solid dam, et cetera. The reverse looking motion of the earth would make it look like it's turning in reverse but it isn't - it's Supes moving into the past.

If we do a thought experiment we can see that he isn't "turning the earth backwards". Let's suppose that one day Supes got bored and decided to do exactly that - reverse the spin of the earth. What would happen? While things on the surface are held down via gravity, they also mass and momentum. When the the earth reversed spin (or even just stopped), we wouldn't see events reverse themselves. Instead everything loose would keep spinning around the centre of the earth! There'd be terrible storms and tress, loose rocks and humans would be thrown at incredible and devastating speeds forward. Buildings would fall over. There would be eruptions as the magma and underneath the surface would heat up due to friction! You can see all this at the end of the film "The man who could work miracles" - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh3xvqplJUk.

But we don't see any of that.

Laura Ess

[–] arkayenether 10 years ago

Your idea would make sense if Superman didn't also start flying in the opposite direction to get the planet to rotate in the proper direction. IE he was spinning the earth to reverse time

[–] HellboundHero 10 years ago

We know time travel is tied into moving faster than light, but who would even know how to control which direction in time you go? The Earth began spinning in the right direction again because Superman was moving forward rather than backwards through time.

[–] gallae 10 years ago

Not really a deal breaker. My points hold if he DID try and spin the earth in a reverse fashion, and you've not addressed that. How would spinning the earth reverse time? You're dissecting a movie-shorthand to show that. It's Supes who has to move faster than light, not the earth.

Laura Ess

[–] eddysl12 10 years ago

Yea, besides common sense just telling you it isn't possible, that's also why Joshua in the bible causing the earth to stop so he could finish his battle is complete nonsense. Not to mention there wouldn't be any gravity to hold things down.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] eddysl12 10 years ago

You are correct that spinning doesn't cause gravity, spinning comes mostly from the conservation of angular momentum.

I once got into a discussion about warp drive and me and another debater agreed in the end that it was a silly discussion because warp drive as depicted in Star Trek wasn't really based on any real science.

[–] costumrs 8 years ago

Not to mention there wouldn't be any gravity to hold things down

.

That really doesn't make sense. Gravity does not depend on, nor is it caused by, spinning. All Mass generates gravity. You do. Your cat does. It is an innate quality of mass.

[–] mrbnk (408) 4 years ago

While he was going back in time, wouldn't he crash into himself?

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] michaelward15 10 years ago

5. Spinning the earth backwards would not turn back time.

The earth spun backwards because time was flowing backwards. It's the same reason the tooth paste goes back into the tube in the Donner cut of Superman II. Superman didn't reverse time by putting the tooth paste back into the tube. The tooth paste flowed back into the tube because time was going backwards.

[–] 8 years ago

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[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 4 years ago

He did NOT SPIN THE EARTH BACKWARDS!!

He flew back in time!!!

[–] memayse1701 10 years ago

The Earth reversed its motion...then superman made it spin forward again...none of it makes sense.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] HellboundHero 10 years ago

Number 3 is just nitpicking. If you're going to say a nuclear explosion in the San Andreas Fault wouldn't cause the west coast to fall into the ocean, you might as well say a bite from an irradiated spider wouldn't give you superpowers, or that Batman's glider cape would kill him, or that you can't resurrect the dinosaurs by extracting dinosaur DNA from a mosquito preserved in amber and then fill in the blanks with frog DNA. Science FICTION falls apart when you scrutinize things too closely. It only has to have some ring of truth to it. A big enough explosion could trigger an earthquake and a big enough earthquake could affect the sea level, radiation can cause mutations and mutations play a role in the evolution of living things, gliders are real, just not in cape form, and dinosaurs could be resurrected if scientists could find a surviving DNA sample.

[–] michaelward15 10 years ago

You forgot Superman shouldn't be able to fly, and it would be impossible for him to be so nearly indestructible.

[–] ewaf58 10 years ago

Well it is a science fiction film so it can be forgiven.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

No. It's not science fiction, at all. Comic book films are mostly fantasy and superman most certainly are fantasy. Please don't confuse the two genres.

[–] BigScreenDom 9 years ago

Shut it troll - no one cares about your lame opinions

[–] Viltrumite 9 years ago

Not a plot hole, but I've always found it ridiculous how nonchalant people seem to be about about the presence of an alien on Earth. He might as well be a celebrity or something. It's like Teen Wolf, everyone's like "Whoa, that dude's a werewolf, but never mind the fact that this changes everything we know about science and what have you, he sure can play a mean game of basketball". At least that movie was played more for laughs, though.

[–] HellboundHero 9 years ago

Why is the alien aspect such a big thing when you consider all the things Superman can do? We already know alien life is plausible, but is science seriously considering the existence of flying, super strong men? Hell no. In this case, the superpowers overshadowed the alien aspect. The world could not possibly be any more shocked than they were at seeing what he could do.

[–] seeyouat_themovies 8 years ago

The premise of a flying man should have tipped you off that it's not based in reality.