RIchard Donner

The humor didn’t quite click for me, but I did enjoy other parts including Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, the John Williams score, and a well-presented Superman mythos including his first time-travel rebellion against the don’t-mess-with-history edict of Jor-El.

As for the actual time travel, I had always assumed that the Man of Steel time traveled as he always did, via high speed, but in the extended edition of the movie, Donner states: “And he stops the world. And now it’s actually going backwards. Which means, none of this actually happens.” Is that right? Does he reverse the spin of the Earth? CJ Moseley has more to say on the matter over at the Time Travel Nexus. —Michael Main

Michael Crichton’s book, on which this was based, was interminably slow, and so was the movie—and I’m not only talking about the battle scenes in 1357 France. The actual time-travel mechanism is cool, though. —Michael Main

Richard Donner, the original director of Superman II, was replaced partway through the production. Almost 30 years later, a DVD of the movie was put together including most of his footage and a time-travel ending that was pretty much identical to the end of Donner’s first Superman movie (and equally lame). —Michael Main