Useless Movie Trivia For
Superman The Movie
Memorable Movie Quotes
Jor-El: Your name is Kal-El. You are the only survivor of the planet Krypton. Even though you've been raised as a human, you are not one of them. You have great powers, only some of which you have as yet discovered.
Young Clark Kent: All those things I can do. All those powers. And I couldn't even save him.
Perry White: Now look. The Post: "It Flies." The News: "Look, Ma, No Wires." The Times: "Blue Bomb Buzzes Metropolis." The Planet. We're sitting on top of the story of the century here! I want the name of this flying whatchamacallit to go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs, franks and beans, death and taxes, politics and corruption.
Jor-El: Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son.
Lex Luthor: There's a strong streak of good in you, Superman. But then nobody's perfect... almost nobody.
Perry White: Now listen to me, I tell you boys and girls - whichever one of you gets it out... is going to wind up with the single most important interview since... God talked to Moses!
Trivia
Steven Spielberg was offered the chance to direct this film, but the producers balked at the salary he asked for. They decided to wait until they saw how "this fish movie" (Jaws (1975)) that he had just completed did at the box office. The movie was a huge success, and Spielberg went on to other projects.
Guy Hamilton was originally hired to direct this movie, which was scheduled to shoot in Italy. When production was moved to England for monetary reasons, Hamilton backed out because of his status at the time as a tax exile, meaning he could only be in England for thirty days out of every year.
Patrick Wayne was offered to play Superman, but because of his father's (John Wayne) cancer, Wayne dropped out.
To obtain the musculature to convincingly play Superman, Christopher Reeve underwent a bodybuilding regime supervised by David Prowse, the man who played Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
As a nod to the original comics, Clark Kent is seen briefly considering a phone booth as a place to convert into his alter-ego for the first time, before deciding on another solution.
Gene Hackman initially balked at wearing a skull cap to portray the bald Lex Luthor, preferring instead to wear a series of increasingly silly wigs, designed to point out the obviousness of Luther's baldness. Hackman eventually relented, agreeing to wear the skull cap in one scene, his last in the picture. The wigs worn by Luther throughout the film are visible in his underground lair during the bathing sequence.
The movie's original ending had Superman saving California, restructuring the San Andreas fault and then throwing the second missile into space which cracked the Phantom Zone and releasing the three super-villains. Superman turning the world around was originally conceived as the ending of Superman II (1980) to make Lois forget Superman's secret identity.
The costumes worn by Jor-El and others on the planet Krypton were covered with front projection material to create the highly unusual photographic effect shown. The filmmakers came up with the idea while doing tests for the special effects sequences.
A man riding a motorcycle dragging a bag of dirt was used to make the effect of Clark running down the dirt road after jumping in front of the train.
To achieve the shot of young Clark Kent kicking a football into orbit, an air cannon was placed underground and the football fired from it.
The black and white photograph of a mustachioed man seen on the table in the background of Lois Lane's apartment when Clark Kent first visits is in fact a gatefold copy of the album "Traffic" (1968) open at a picture of Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi.
The movie was filming in New York City on the night of the notorious 1977 blackout.
It was Marlon Brando's idea to have Jor-El wear the same "S" symbol on his clothes that Kal-El would later wear as Superman.
Originally, the helicopter scene was simply going to have Superman save Lois from falling. Later, Richard Donner decided to have the helicopter drop and the modified scene was called The Double Jeopardy Scene.
Marlon Brando refused to memorize most of his lines in advance. In the scene where he puts infant Kal-El into the escape pod, he was actually reading his lines from the diaper of the baby.
The voice of the air traffic controller who is directing the helicopter to the roof of the Daily Planet belongs to Christopher Reeve.
Goofs
When Lois and Clark are leaving the Daily Planet and Clark gets struck in the door, the director of the film can be seen in the reflection of the glass.
When Superman lands on a street corner to drill himself down towards Luthor's hideaway, you can clearly see that the street is not concrete, but a pad that moves when he lands on it.
When Superman makes his first appearance by rescuing Lois Lane and the falling helicopter, it is during the night. The next morning in the Daily Planet, Perry White is showing his reporters the other newspapers with photographs of Superman. However, those photographs in the newspapers were obviously taken during daylight.
In some shots the Daily Planet building is the tallest one in its neighborhood. At other times - such as the scene with the helicopter - there are several taller buildings nearby.
When Superman first grabs the wing of Air Force One, his "S" is backwards, revealing a flipped shot.
As Superman and Lois Lane fly around "Metropolis", a full moon lies to the north of the Big Dipper, an astronomical impossibility.
During the library scene, Luthor guesses (correctly) that since Krypton exploded thirty years before, planetary debris would have drifted to Earth by the present day. The movie establishes repeatedly that Krypton was in a different galaxy from ours, which means that the time required to reach Earth - even if such debris were propelled at light speed - would be in the order of millions of years.
The two missiles were supposed to be 500 megatons, but the largest nuclear weapon the United States has ever produced had a yield of 25 megatons, and it was never put on a missile. Even the USSR's Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever built, had a theoretical yield of "only" 100 megatons.
Lois flies with Superman into a mass of altocumulus clouds, which are typically found at 8,000 - 20,000 feet and have a temperature of five degrees Farenheit. Lois would have frozen in a matter of minutes.
Box Office Info USA
Budget: $55,000,000
Opening Weekend: $7,465,343
Gross: $40,925,251
Rentals: $82,800,000
Filming Dates: March 1977 - October 1978
Filming Locations
Alberta, Canada
Gallup, New Mexico, USA
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California, USA
Grand Central Station, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Hoover Dam, Arizona-Nevada Border, USA
New York City, New York, USA
New York Daily News Building - 42nd Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Red Rock State Park, Church Rock, New Mexico, USA