The SUPERMAN TV Tropes Page
This essay was originally posted to Twitter between April 18, 2021 and April 23, 2021. It was composed of 1,476 words across 32 tweets.
The following is a personal journey with Ken (that's me!) through the SUPERMAN TV Tropes page. I'll stick to the main page--not Trivia, Fridge, etc.--and comment on whatever I find noteworthy. This thread might be a little more loosey-goosey than usual.
"this film directly inspired the second run of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood through children trying a little too hard to imitate the Man of Steel,"
The time period is right, but the news item this refers to specified that the child was reacting to something he'd seen on TV.
It's possible that the news story got this detail wrong and meant the movie. But it was likely referring to the 1950s Adventures of Superman (which started rerunning around the same time that the 1960s Batman debuted) or Hanna-Barbera's Super Friends, which ran from 1973 to 1985.
"Kryptonian characters have a refined English accent with a veneer of antiquity, which seems to be the equivalent of the Kryptonian tongue for the viewer's convenience."
You might think so, until Zod and company show up on Earth and are understood just fine in the sequel.
"Although it is never made entirely clear in the film, the reason Zod rebelled was established in the DC continuity as being because of Jor-El's prediction that Krypton was doomed. Jor-El could not tolerate Zod's methods, and so foiled his plans..."
"The reason the Counsel did not listen to Jor-El is because his arguments were exactly the same as Zod's motive for trying to overthrow them."
Objection! Speculation! Though I'm not opposed to a little fan theorizing, this isn't rooted in anything in the actual movie.
"Clark's birth date is stated to be 1948, and Jor-El describes him as 'eighteen' when they first meet. That means that the teenage Clark segment takes place in 1966, but everyone acts and dresses more like it's the 1950s..."
"Sure, country towns are often a little behind, but Lana and her friends listening to 'Rock Around the Clock' by Bill Haley & His Comets is pretty odd, considering that song was over a decade old by 1966."
How often do you listen to songs that came out 10+ years ago?
"In the second episode of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon argues that it would have been more humane for Superman to let Lois fall to her death from the top of the Daily Planet building instead of breaking her body into three parts from the impact of hitting his arms of steel."
First off: stop watching this terrible show. Second off: this is only a good point if you assume that the physics of the SUPERMAN universe are the same as our universe, which they clearly are not. That said, I will do something on Superman's hidden secondary powers at some point.
"Crystal Spires and Togas: Planet Krypton is portrayed this way, as a homage to pulp science fiction."
John Barry (not the composer) did the production design on this movie. He started with the notion of what the entire planet might look like if it were the inside of a crystal.
Barry was also production designer on A Clockwork (Kubrick, 1971), and would have worked on Kubrick's abandoned Napoleon project. He did the production design on Star Wars (Lucas, 1977) and worked briefly as second unit director on The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980).
Sadly, Barry collapsed on the set of The Empire Strikes Back and passed away in the hospital several hours later. All four of the original SUPERMAN movies utilize his vision of Krypton as a crystalline planet, as well as TV's Smallville and Superman Returns (Singer, 2006).
"Dead Artists Are Better: Christopher Reeve's paralysis from a riding accident later in life has certainly helped raise popular opinion of this version of Superman to near-godlike levels. Not that he wasn't popular before...
"but suffering tragedy and becoming a living martyr sealed his place in pop culture heaven."
I'm not sure this is true. Reeve is fondly remembered as Superman because his portrayal, like Adam West as Batman, was simply the most prominent in our popular culture for a long time.
It takes a similarly prominent performance--like Michael Keaton as Batman, or Henry Cavill as Superman--to unseat that previous performance in the minds of the fans of these characters. Prior to Christopher Reeve, it would have been George Reeves of TV's Adventures of Superman.
"There was no way Lois could afford a fancy penthouse apartment on a reporter's salary."
SUPERMAN takes place in a fantasy world where journalists are paid what their work is worth.
"Superman... makes no attempt to check [Lois's] pulse, perform CPR, fly her to a hospital or do anything else to determine if she's alive or try to resuscitate her. He just assumes she's completely dead, becomes enraged and flies off."
He's Superman. He can HEAR that she's dead.
"This is your last chance, Superman. Why don't you do yourself a flavor and freeze?"
I love that whoever wrote this entry transcribed it as "flavor." I don't know why Hackman pronounced it this way, and, given that this is a deleted scene, I assume they didn't care to fix it.
"I Shall Return: General Zod says this verbatim as he and his compatriots float away, imprisoned within the Phantom Zone."
That's not what verbatim means.
"Otis, would you like to see a very, very long arm?"
Sometimes, I forget how funny this movie is.
"[The S logo being the seal of the House of El] went over so well that it was re-used in other adaptations (Lois & Clark...)"
If I recall correctly, Lois & Clark used the same explanation as the post-Crisis comics, where Clark and his parents come up with the S shield.
"Mondegreen: Some audience members thought Zod yelled, 'And one day, your ass!', not 'heirs'."
I have to admit, this is what I thought it was when I was a little kid. Complicated by my difficulty understanding Terence Stamp when he was yelling, and not knowing what an heir was.
"Moses in the Bulrushes: The iconic scene of Jor-El sending his son to Earth from the dying planet, faithfully carried over from the comics."
It's nice when people pick up on this, given that the movie runs with an overt Christ interpretation that the character has yet to shake.
"A Nuclear Error: When missiles are test launched, for some unknown reason the authorities put armed nuclear warheads aboard them."
I'm reminded of someone asking Orson Welles how anyone knew "Rosebud" was Kane's last word if he died alone. Welles: "Never speak of this again."
"Kirk Alyn (the first actor to portray Superman... in a 1948 serial) and Noel Neill (Alyn's co-star from the serials and the second actress to portray Lois Lane...) were young Lois Lane's parents on the train."
In case anyone thought gratuitous cameos started with Marvel movies.
"The first movie established Smallville as being in Kansas"
I'd have to check, but I don't believe the word "Kansas" appears a single time in this movie. It's distinctly middle America, and the Coplandesque score certainly suggests dust bowl country, but this is an inference.
"The film features the Phantom Zone, but makes it out to be a one-time prison for a specific set of three villains."
Granted, the visual they used was of Zod and Co. pounding on the barrier, demanding to be let out. But that doesn't mean that it's just the three of them there.
"'The Planet Krypton' sounds a lot like the Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey."
At the request of the producers, in fact. They didn't have a lot of original ideas, but they had a sense of what was good in popular culture, and they were willing to kitbash whatever they needed.
"Luthor's plan for California is similar in principle to Goldfinger's Fort Knox scheme: destroy (or in the case of Fort Knox, contaminate), then hold for ransom."
This is tangential, but SUPERMAN was almost helmed by Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton.
Which, no thank you.
"Watch carefully after Supes tells Lois that statistically, flying is the safest way to travel. When he turns around, he's grinning. Yes, the Big Blue Boy Scout is just an act, just as Clark's nebbishness is an act."
This is a stretch. Maybe he's just happy that she didn't die.
"As she is going through her High-Heel–Face Turn, the statue she is peeking out from behind is named 'progress.'"
That's pretty clever.
"The area (on Luthor's floor map) labelled 'Teschmacher Peaks' consists of two large, identical mountains side by side."
This, not so much.
What have we learned from our journey through the SUPERMAN TV Tropes page? (Not much!) Some tropers are good with the close observations. But maybe, just maybe, the TV Tropes anti-notability philosophy is allowing some tall tales to endure, and maybe starting some new ones.
Previous: Donner v. Lester
Next: The Last Days of Krypton
Back to contents.
Published 3/9/2024
"365 Days of SUPERMAN"
site and contents
© 2024 Ken Alleman.