Although I'm sure you normally wouldn't take the following as an attack on you - in fact, even under these conditions I'm sure you won't - I'm still going to start my spiel off with a "don't take this personally" caveat simply because a lot of the issues you raise with Superman II are what I like so much about it.  "Really?", you might be thinking "I can't post that I'm less than crazy about cellophane superpowers and amnesia kisses and Chad just has to post how much he likes those very things?  What the hell did I do to him?"  Well, nothing and yes I do.

OK.  The superpowers which were too zany for even The Silver Age to contemplate (though, come to think of it, there was this...

)

but anyway...

with the sole exception (I think, I haven't seen the film in a while) of General Zod causing a Houston local to levitate by pointing his finger at him, all those weird powers were displayed at Superman's Fortress of Solitude.  As a kid, I couldn't figure out how Superman was able to communicate with his Mother through use of those crystals and even now, it kind of perplexes me.  Yeah, yeah, they anticipated his questions rather than responded to them directly, but still, it seemed as if there was some sort of two-way conversation going on there.  The point is, The Fortress was a weird place where weird things happened.  In a film which set out to force Superman to choose between being a normal human and an alien in every sense of the word, I like that just as the pendulum swung so far in one direction with Superman bleeding, suffering, shaking, etc, so too was it careful to suggest that Superman might just be so much more alien than he lets on.  For all of the extraordinary abilities Superman displayed in the comics (super ventriloquism, super sneezing, perfect recall of his childhood on Krypton, etc) it was reading offhand comments made by The Man of Might about how he didn't need to sleep or eat which weirded me out more than any of these amazing talents.  Super-ventriloquism is a power which might seem strange to some, but it's strange in a "I can wiggle my ears" kind of way.  "I don't have to eat or sleep.  Ever." is just off putting in a way.  "Man, what else does Superman never do?  Does he blink?  Does he breathe?"  I came to the conclusion that he probably does.  Not because he needs to, but because he doesn't want to unnerve us.  Flying, X-Ray vision, racing past the speed of light - none of that is alien, it's just incredible and wonderful.  Not blinking?  That's alien.

And this brings us to his exhibiting the ability to teleport, throw his emblem at people, emit beams from his fingers, and so forth in Superman II.   There is that whole "You may walk among them, but you can never truly be one of them" speech which takes on a much more profound meaning when you consider the possibility that Superman has only ever shown us a small percentage of his powers.  "Flying isn't going to freak people out, but since I don't want people to be scared of me, maybe I'd better keep that whole I can teleport and levitate people as well ability to myself".  There's a great tragedy to Superman - he lost his planet; he lost two sets of parents; he's going to have to one day lay down his life for Earth simply because no one else will be able to face the threat which will one day come to our planet - and just as his identity of Clark conveys one of the measures he takes from fully accepting his role as a tragic figure by trying to fit in, so too does all the other steps he takes to be normal stand out as a reflection of his desire to be just a normal guy in spite of having it all.  The fact that Superman loses his shot at being normal and happy is bad enough; the fact that he also has to resort to revealing such an alien side to himself right after trying unsuccessfully abandon that alien side is just kicking him when he's down.  Perhaps I'm reading too much into this scene, but it's hard not to wonder just what the film makers are trying to convey with those weird powers in the weird Fortress following scenes of such normal, mundane activity in normal, mundane places.  Plus, hey like I said, The Fortress was just a weird place in the Reeves films what with all those weird living memories lurking in every corner - having the visitors to The Fortress be affected by the weird ambiance which permeates that place just seems right.

The kiss.

OK, Superman erasing Lois' memory of their affair, of what's been going on in the world over the past couple of weeks (or whatever), with a kiss is a hell of a liberty he's taking, but I don't find it unsettling, or disturbing, or wrong or anything like that.  You know what I do find unsettling, disturbing, and wrong?  Their kiss.  Huh?  Didn't I just say...  No. I didn't.  The kiss I find disturbing isn't the Superman/Lois kiss in Superman II - it's the Superman/Lois kiss in Superman: The Movie.  You know, the one where Superman comes across Lois' dead body and kisses her passionately on the lips?  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?  Am I the only one who saw that?  Superman wants to change history and Jor-El pops up with "My son, you are forbidden from interfering with human history".  Superman wants to live a normal life and Lara intones "You can not be both human and alien, you must choose."  Where was Jor-El or Lara with "If you come across a dead body in a car, you are forbidden from putting your tongue in that person's mouth."

The thing about the amnesia kiss is, yeah OK, it's a silly power but it serves such an important purpose that I can let it slide.  Margot Kidder with her emotional unburdening of "Do you know what it's like to know I have to sit next to the man I love everyday and know that I can't have him because he belongs to the world?  Do you know what this weight is like?" followed by Superman deciding to put that burden on his shoulders and freeing her from it in spite of already carrying the responsibility for the entire planet on his back is so selflessly Superman.  "Yes, OK, but what right does someone have to erase another person's memories..."  You know what, no one has that right.  Except Superman.  Superman has that right because - and I'm being completely serious here - is perfect.  Although I don't like Alan Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow close out to the Bronze Age, he was spot on in that story when he had Lois watch Superman perform a super feat and momentarily consider the possibility that said feat wouldn't work.  "But then I remembered that Superman always considered every possibility and made sure never to make mistakes when it came to things like this".  I trust his judgement and Kidder plays the scene as if she's pleading with Superman to end her torment this very second because of the pain she's in.  And he does.  As for the kiss?  Sure he could have used some device in The Fortress I suppose or even gone back in time again, I suppose, but the kiss - especially as a good-bye kiss has such emotional resonance that I chalk it up to artistic licence.  Less believable than some other method, I suppose, but more emotionally effective than something pseudo-logical would have been and therefore, I like it.

Luthor's smarminess.

I love Gene Hackman as Luthor and have never understood criticism that he played the role too campy or over the top.  Anger and hate is unbecoming in Luthor, I believe.  See, anger rises its head when a person faces a barrier they can't get past or a problem they can't solve or simply when they accept that they've been outmaneuvered, out thought, or just bettered.  I don't see Luthor - the world's greatest scientist and therefore greatest egotist, ever accepting that he's been licked or outsmarted or topped.  This blind spot probably explains why he doesn't hesitate to go up against a man who can move at the speed of light, withstand 100 Atom bombs, compress the whole universe into a ball and carry it around with his Clark Kent disguise in his cape pouch, because hey, he's Lex Luthor - he's completely confident at all times, completely fearless, and therefore always the optimist.  He should have a happy-go-lucky attitude when it comes to life because if he hasn't succeeded in killing Superman by now, it's only because his brain is too busy solving a million other impossible riddles to resolve The Superman Problem at this second, but don't worry, he'll get to it.  Grant Morrison once noted that Superman would never stand with his chest puffed out, hands on his hips, muscles tensed specifically because he's Superman - Superman doesn't need to brace or steady himself - he can shrug off a barrage of bullets while reclining on a cloud just as easily as if he could in a traditional Superman pose.  So too does someone of Luthor's intellect never have to rant and rave, fists clenched, voice spewing rage at the Gods about his inability to kill Superman because as far as Luthor is concerned, he's a cat playing with a mouse - he's taking his time because he enjoys teasing his prey and he's incapable of failure, hence the way he breezes through life.

The bully and Superman's revenge.

Superman was the Champion of the Oppressed and created specifically to take on bullies.  That guy in the diner had it coming.  If not for what he did to Superman, then for the next little guy who had the misfortune of running into him.  And yes, I know that the movie doesn't present Superman as beating him up "for the next little guy" but is clearly doing this for his own satisfaction, but you know what?  Why doesn't Superman have the right to stand up for himself?  Had Superman tossed that guy around because he beat Jimmy Olsen, I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with it - but "Sure he beat a defenceless guy to a pulp, smashed his head into a jukebox, and left him with blood streaming down his face, but hey, since that defenceless guy was me, it would be wrong for me to do anything about it."  Oh, and what did Superman do for his revenge?  Make him sit on some pie?  Should I really be screaming at the screen "Superman you psychopath!  What's he going to eat for dessert now?!?"  So he spun him around on his chair really fast?  "How dare you spin him around!!!  What if he gets dizzy!!!"  You know what?  That scene rocks!

Oh, and The Metropolis fight scene?  You know what, you have a point about that one.  It was clear early on that Kryptonians going toe to toe with one another wouldn't really lead anywhere since they are Kryptonians, but remember how that whole scene started?

"General Zod, care to step outside?"

Worth it for that if nothing else.  Oh, and Zod not understanding why Superman cares about Earthlings until he considers the possibility that he regards them as pets perfectly underscores their differences.  
Anyhoo, that's all I've got to say about that.




For now.

No offense taken; to the contrary, your response is just the sort of thoughtful apologia that I like to see around here.


I suspect that the fundamental reason that the weird powers are in this movie is the same that they appeared in the early Silver Age: Wouldn't it be cool? We're not supposed to subject this fantasy story to a high degree of realistic scrutiny, any more than we're supposed to ask how the Millennium Falcon got from one planetary system to another in TESB without the benefit of lightspeed. Silver Age comic books were part of an episodic tradition in which each issue started from the same premises rather than building upon each other. Much of the time we'd do well to treat each issue as occurring in a separate parallel universe, so that appeals to what happened in a previous story will rarely be fruitful. That's not absolute, obviously. New characters and situations were repeated if they proved useful, but not out of a sense of obligation to continuity. The benefits (and drawbacks) of a stricter continuity seem more like a feature of the later Marvel Age of Comics.


There are two dimensions to the amnesia kiss:

(1) The implication that he could do it raises the question of why he didn't do it as soon as Lois discovered who he was. He was quite upset about that (Reeve did a great job showing this), and obviously the meta-reason is that if he had taken her memories then, there would have been no movie. But we can try to make an in-story rationalization. It's better for Lois if she doesn't know. But it's not better for Kal, because he's lonely, so in a moment of moral weakness, he takes her into his confidence. He is proud of who he is and wants to show off his secret lair to the woman who dotes on him. It boosts his ego because, though he is super on the outside, he is still "only human" on the inside, still the Cinderella kid who got left behind picking up pom-poms off the football field while the other kids went to the party.

(2) The fact that he would do the amnesia kiss. First of all, the Lois of these films is deeply flawed in a way that future film and TV versions are not. She's an addictive personality who lectures about the benefits of mega-Vitamin C while her cigarette's ashes fall into the orange juice she is squeezing. Part of being an intrepid female reporter in a man's world is that she's kind of insensitive. Superman may or may not regard humans as pets, but Lois definitely has a pet. She keeps Clark around because she enjoys being better than him, having him follow her around like a panting Labrador.

As a kid I didn't even understand why Kal's kiss was his way of helping Lois in her distress. I thought he was just protecting his own identity and restoring the status quo. But as you say, he did mean it as a kindness. The moral problem is that he took his girlfriend's moment of deep distress and, rather than letting her work through it in the normal human fashion, he erased it. By "saving" her, he stole her autonomy while preempting an opportunity for personal growth that frankly she desperately needs. Having a boyfriend that she actually needed would probably have been a novel experience for her.

A better version of this film would have opened with Lois and Kal already dating for a while and finding themselves at an impasse due to his super-powers. He would have gone into the red sun chamber on his own accord, not just because his mom told him to. Then, as I said before, we would have seen a lot more of Lois and Clark trying to make it as a normal couple, and it's still not working, because she finds that the thing that attracted her to him is now gone, and he's all "I did this for you!" resentful. This is a story that will fly, because it resonates with real-life relationships that face enduring internal threats far stronger than the bullying of an obnoxious trucker. Then after he gets his powers back and defeats the villains, Lois could say, "We tried it when you were super-powered, and we tried it when you were non-powered, and it didn't work either way. I respect you, but this relationship is just not meant to be." She would have grown and learned through the events of the movie. Then the next movie can flip the script and see what happens if Lois has powers too. She gains empathy into his life and, even when her powers fade, she's able to reconcile herself to a healthy relationship with Superman since she's seen life through his eyes for a while.

But I digress. The kiss. Lois is sad because it hits home that her new boyfriend has one of those jobs that takes him away from home at all hours, and she's says she's not ready for that kind of relationship. We believe her, because Lois has been shown to be very selfish. But you know what? There are many happy marriages involving doctors and firemen and high powered executives and long distance truckers and soldiers and other jobs that keep the husband and wife separated much more than they would wish. Maybe after she works her way through her grief, Lois would be a more mature person, a stronger, better Lois who can reconcile herself to the periods of separation because of the joys of the periods of togetherness. Or maybe, selfish as she is, she would be the one to dump him and hook up with a less challenging boyfriend, in order to play a game that she could "win." But by robbing her memories, Kal short-circuits all these human experiences. As Captain Kirk said in the otherwise terrible Star Trek V, he needs his pain. The griefs of his past defined him and made him the capable leader that he became.

You suggest that Superman is a paragon, the super-wise and super-moral Divine Person who could be trusted with the power to tinker with the minds of men against their wishes. That is a very Morrisonian "Supergod" conception of Superman, one which I plan to tackle in the near future when I review All-Star Superman. However, the Superman in this movie is not Morrisonian. As I said earlier, this film is at pains to show the "man" in Superman even before he enters the red sun chamber. So while there is a version of Superman who is wise enough to know when it's better to wipe our minds than to let us work through our suffering, this is not that version of Superman. This is the version of Superman who, in wiping Lois' mind, is making yet another well-intentioned mistake. See "the bully and Superman's revenge" below.

P.S. The kiss is even worse when we discover in Superman Returns that she's pregnant with his child! Talk about a situation that would generate anguish... But obviously we can't blame that situation on the writers of Superman II. It would have been nice for Lois in the latter film to say, "I don't even know how I got pregnant" though.


I don't have a problem with Luther being smug if he's smart. Like Doctor Doom, his hubris gets in the way of his genius; he will defeat himself if given enough rope. I just wish the dialogue made us think that he really was smart, rather than just being told how smart he is, or seeing some super-gadget that he built.



But it takes a smart writer to write a smart character. Quentin Quire seemed smart, because Grant Morrison is smart and wrote him smartly. But the Luthor in the movie seemed smug without seeming smart. If you want to see Lex Luthor done right, check out the amoral genius Topher Brink on Joss Whedon's brilliant satire Dollhouse (2009-10). He captures the combination of intellectual genius, cockiness, social awkwardness, and lack of integrity that Lex should have.




Have you seen the 1980 film My Bodyguard? Chris Makepeace is a bullied kid who hires towering Adam Baldwin (who played the fearsome Jayne on Firefly) to protect him from bully Matt Dillon. But Dillon just finds someone even bigger and stronger to back him up, so things escalate. The end of the film betrays its own premise, treating a cathartic fistfight as if it would have been the end of the matter, when really the next likely scene is for Dillon to show up the following day with a gun to get his revenge.

Similarly, the final diner scene in Superman II was not about truth, justice, and the American way. It was about vengeance and catharsis. (Some would say that is the American way, but I digress.) The bully did not learn any lesson beyond "Bring sufficient strength to bear before attacking." The kindergartner in us may laugh at the spinning chair and cheer to see the bully get pummeled in retaliation, but at its heart this scene is about a shamed person (Kal) finding a way to shame his assailant in return. This is like the scene in the original The Karate Kid when Daniel LaRuso, having been shamed at the beach by the karate hooligans from Cobra Kai, pulls a "water bucket dumped on your head" prank in retaliation. He shames them back. And how do they respond? They chase him down and pummel him mercilessly, of course. It takes Mr. Miyagi to teach Daniel not only how to defend himself but how to defuse potentially violent situations before they escalate, rather than contributing to the escalation. Mr. Miyagi is wise, but the Kal of this film is not.


See, that was a good line, because it was a callback to the first diner scene. On one level, it was the return of confident Kal. On another level, there's the implication that Kal is going to reclaim the honor which Trucker Dude stole, by beating the tar out of an unimpeachably bad guy. (They could have given Zod some moral credibility by having him experience some of Earth's mess and then deciding he could rule it better, but instead he's just a generic mustache twirler. Nevertheless, Terrence Stamp did a lot with the lines he was given. "Bow to Zod!")

I'm gonna cry shenanigans on that one.  Snyder was faithful to the look of certain Dave Gibbons panels; but, he was not faithful to Alan Moore's subtext.  There is some real bending of characterization and psychology at play there, twisting it to fit Snyder's vision, rather than what Moore presented on the page, especially within the broader context of the supplemental material at the end of each issue.  I also dispute the ending as I find just as many logic holes in it as critics of the original ending do for Moore's conclusion.


Mostly, I found it to be bland, artificial and boring, with some really poor quality acting, from certain corners (like a good portion of the cast. 

That's film just as bad as you get ... I watch it once back then and haven't seen this movie ever since then. It was beyond horrible and that's when Basketball Shaq O'Neal just started his career and according IMDb that's his 3rd film and it was made in the late 90's.

Where’s that terrible, Roger Corman produced Captain America movie from the early 90’s?

Where Cap steals some innocent old mans car and leaves him stranded on the highway? lol

I cannot find Metacritic scores for Condorman and Steel, which perhaps is why they were omitted.

Sad admission time: My parents were, and still are, both painfully cheap and woefully ignorant of pop culture (my mother far moreso than my father, who at least saw films like Star Wars and Animal House in the theater).

One year, for Halloween, my mother bought me a costume of a great new superhero and was thrilled and amazed because it was on clearance so, yes, I went trick-or-treating as Condorman.

I'll see myself out in shame now...