Goofs for
Superman Returns (2006) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The knot on Lex Luthor's necktie changes throughout his conversation with Lois on the boat.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Just before the various music credits roll by, a "Post Poduction Cordinator" is listed.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lois is with her son talking to Lex Luthor in the piano room on the boat, her engagement ring constantly changes fingers from ring finger to middle finger every time the scene goes from Lex to Lois.
  
  

• Continuity: When Lois and Perry are talking in his office, after she hands him a draft of her "Superman Returns" piece, in one shot Perry is reading the pages, and in an immediate reverse shot, he has them on his desk.
  
  
• Continuity: When Superman flies Lois back to the roof of The Daily Planet building, the camera is facing away from the building. They spiral up and over the wall, and land with Superman on the right and Lois on the left. The next shot is a reverse angle with the camera facing toward the building, but Superman and Lois have switched places.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the yacht is going down and the water is rising, as the room gets darker you can see the shadow of a man to the left of Lois.
  
  
• Continuity: When Clark returns to the Daily Planet and his talking to Jimmy, Perry White calls Jimmy into his office. Jimmy tells Clark he has to go but he'll be back to check on him in a sec. Jimmy turns towards Mr. White office to walk away. We then cut to a wider shot and Jimmy is facing Clark again and turns around again to walk away. Also, the extras in the background disappear and are doing different things in the two shots.
  
  
• Continuity: After Superman places the plane on the ground, the attendant's glasses keep shifting from being crooked to being straight and back again with each consecutive shot.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Perry White prepares two versions of the front page of The Daily Planet for Friday September 29th, 2006. The camera zooms in on the one with the banner headline "SUPERMAN IS DEAD" and we see that the date is "Friday September, 29th 2006". Note the misplaced comma.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Lois and Clark are leaving the Daily Planet through the revolving door, it can be seen to only have three sides, instead of four, so as to leave room for a steady-cam operator to go through.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Right after Richard White tells Jason to get in the seaplane and get buckled in, he repositions the unconscious Lois to take her in as well. As he does so, we see her swing her arm over his shoulders. DVD timestamp of 1:46:18.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: During the Daily Planet scene where Superman takes Lois flying, Brandon Routh's natural brown eyes are visible.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the plane is plummeting to earth, Lois Lane is forced to the ceiling of the plane, but her hair and name tag some how escaped that same force and dangle.
  
  
• Factual errors: Richard White's plane is a DeHavilland Beaver. It has a radial piston engine, and therefore would not have the three horizontal exhaust pipes shown on either side of the plane's cowling. Radial engines typically have one or two exhaust pipes on the bottom or side of the engine. The exhaust pipes shown are consistent with V-type in-line engines.
  
  
• Factual errors: The publishing date of "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman" is 14 February 2006. The events of the movie take place in September 2006 (evidenced by the date of the mock "Superman Is Dead" edition). Pulitzer prizes are awarded each year for outstanding achievements of the previous calendar year, so Lois Lane would not yet be eligible.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On the DVD release, after Lois returns from her flight with Superman and goes back to the office where Richard, Jason, Jimmy and Clark are eating, Richard asks her where she's been. The film then cuts to a close-up of a disheveled Lois. During this shot, several frames appear to have been removed, as Lois' placement in the frame shifts slightly.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the news the German text on screen "Fensterputzer halten an ihrem Lebemfest" (Window cleaners hold on for their lives) is wrong, should be "Fensterputzer halten an ihrem Leben fest".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the police are stopping in front of the bank to confront the robbers, you can clearly see a white curved line on the road to show the stunt driver where to swerve and stop.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Mrs Kent is listening to a radio. We see the dial. It shows QLD and NSW which are states of Australia and SM, CH, UW etc which are the call-signs of Sydney radio stations.
  
  
• Continuity: After Lex and Lois finish their conversation, Lex leaves the room to launch the crystal along with the kryptonite and he does not take the other crystals with him. The Crystals are still with Lois and Jason in the room and the two henchmen do not take the crystals with them after locking Lois and Jason in another room. A scene later the Crystals are right beside Lex.
  
  
• Continuity: In the model train scene (in the basement of the estate Luthor inherits), when the model ground splits open it for some reason has perfectly modeled sides to the crack. If this were a random breakage in the model you would expect the internal space to be hollow with just a wooden frame. When walking to play the piano with Jason, Brutus stops for a moment so we can see the back of his head, the scene changes to a shot of Lois then back to Brutus. From just under his cap you can see a bit of the tattoo on the back of his head, the shot before you couldn't.
  
  
• Continuity: When Superman is flying towards Luthor's new island, his x-ray vision shows the crack in the sea floor heading away from him along his flight path, towards the island. However, when he turns to face back towards Metropolis, the crack is now heading towards the city. The only place the cracks should be spreading in opposite directions is the island itself.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the last scene Superman flies away over a ferryboat toward a bridge, This scene is shot in reverse. You can see the ferry traveling backward sucking in its own wake (traffic may also be seen traveling backward).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the scene where Superman is following the initial fault line back to Metropolis, the "Metropolis Pier" sign is clearly mirror imaged, and reads backward.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Every time Richard White makes a radio call in his airplane, he uses the word "November." While it's true that all airplanes registered in the United States have an identification number beginning with the letter N (which IS November in the NATO alphabet), pilots making radio calls never say the N/November, as this would be redundant (since its on ALL American aircraft.)
  
  
• Continuity: After Superman "saves" Kitty from the near car collision, he picks her up from under her knees to fly her to a hospital. In the first cut, you can clearly see her skirt is up to her thigh (revealing the top of her stocking). In the immediate following cut, the skirt is down to her knee.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the new island emerges from the ocean, there should be a massive tidal wave hitting Metropolis as the water would be forced away from the point of the new land mass.
  
  
• Factual errors: Jimmy tells Clark that Luthor was freed from jail because the Court of Appeals called Superman as a witness and he didn't appear. The Court of Appeals NEVER calls witnesses. They take the facts in evidence from the previous trial, including all testimony and make their ruling based on that and that alone. No new evidence or testimony is allowed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the bank robbery scene the machine gunner is shown connecting the ammunition belt to the left side of the gun (which appears to the viewer's right). However, when he is firing on the police in the street, there are a few seconds of footage which are flipped, and the feed belt is to the viewer's left.
  
  
• Plot holes: Lois' attitude toward the identity of Jason's father seems inconsistent with what happened in 'Superman II', despite director Bryan Singer saying that this is a sequel to the first two films.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The wings of a commercial airplane are not designed to stand supersonic speed. Therefore when the shuttle engine started, the airplane would have been destroyed. When the shuttle started, the plane wouldn't immediately hit supersonic speeds. Additionally, with the two crafts connected as they were, it's possible they *never* would've hit supersonic speeds, just speeds far in excess of design specs.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Why is young Clark Kent wearing glasses? Shouldn't Clark only put on glasses when he discovers he must create a secret identity? Clark may have had bad eyes as a kid. His powers didn't manifest till around puberty. That's what that whole scene of him as a kid was about: he was beginning to develop powers, and he was amazed by the process.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Daily Planet office is completely repaired, only one day after Superman is in the hospital. Millions of dollars in damage were incurred, but were all gone before Superman even left the hospital. However, Superman's not the only superhero on the planet: Martian Manhunter, Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Firestorm pooled talents/resources and got it done.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: If Krypton was completely destroyed, how did Supes get one of the Kryptonian suits (like the elders') that he's wearing when he crashes in the field by his childhood home as well as what appears to be another star-shaped ship like the one he crashed to Earth in as an infant? He probably got it from the Fortress of Solitude, or he built one using tech from the Fortress.
  
  
• Continuity: When the commercial plane is falling to earth we see the passenger seats collapse into each other several times, clearly being ripped from their fixings. However when Superman enters the plane all the passengers are sitting in their seats which are amazingly attached to the floor again
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Jason and Brutus are playing piano, the key that they are playing "heart and soul" is in the key of C#. You can clearly see that they aren't playing any sharps or flats (the black keys on the keyboard).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Having just saved the airplane, which is lying on the baseball field, Superman is shown in a zoom-out shot still embracing the plane's nose, but he doesn't cast a shadow on the grass.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Superman hurls the continent into space, he is overcome by exhaustion and falls back to earth. But, he was traveling at the same speed as the continent. When he stopped flying from exhaustion, he should have continued moving with the continent. Either (1) both the continent and Superman should have fallen back to earth together, or (2) both should have continued into space together. (Note that this cannot be explained by any concept regarding Superman's powers. When he is falling, exhausted, he's not using his powers - that's why he's falling, not flying, and thus subject to the same laws of physics as the continent.)
  
  
• Plot holes: In the early Superman movies Clark Kent goes back to sell the ranch because his mother died. In this movie, his mother is clearly alive.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Despite Superman's strength, it would be impossible to hold or stop a plane just by its nose. Given all the weight of the plane and the structural design, when attempting the maneuver of switching it from vertical to horizontal position in order to place it on the ground, Superman would rip the nose off while the whole plane collapses into the ground
  
  

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