"There are limits to fantasy in film-writing, and the only thing more ridiculous than Superman reversing the world's axis is that doing so reversed time in the process. This breaks nearly every basic rule of physics."
Not only that, but even if you suspend disbelief far enough to accept that Superman somehow reversed time, the sequence still doesn't make any sense whatsoever -- because if he reversed time to before Lois was killed in the earthquake, then he also reversed it to before he repaired the San Andreas fault. In the film as it stands, somehow the earthquake just never happens after Superman reverses time. It's an amazingly huge error in the internal logic of the film, which is why the whole sequence is ridiculous.
I just watched the whole movie (the first one) for the first time since I saw it in a theater during its initial release. Even though it's about eight million times better than the one with Henry Cavill (I didn't see the Brandon Routh movie), it's a huge mess in many ways. Here are some notes:
1) The tone shifts wildly throughout, to the point where it seem like at least two different movies -- very earnest for the whole first section, then broadly comic, then back to earnest and sentimental, then back to cartoonishly comic, and so on and so on.
2) Whopping continuity errors. Lex Luthor's hair style and color keeps changing; yes, in his last scene, he rips off a wig to reveal he's bald underneath, but since we don't know that's going to happen from the beginning, it's distracting to see his hair change so obviously, at least three or four times. Even less justified is the change in Jimmy Olsen's haircut -- longish in the first scenes, much shorter at the end in the scenes just before and during the earthquake.
3) I realize the first two movies were basically filmed at once, and there was always a plan for at least one sequel. Still, to introduce the three Kryptonian villains at the beginning of the first film and then never let us see them again after they're sent off into the void, without even so much as a "to be continued" at the end of the film, is weird.
4) The billing of the actors in that great main title sequence is very odd. Sure, I can understand why Brando comes first; but then Christopher Reeve is something like the fifth or sixth name to be listed, without even "and Christopher Reeve as Superman" or anything like that to make his name stand out. He's listed as if he's just a member of the supporting cast. Very odd, even accounting for agents' contract negotiations.
5) I think Kidder's performance is too aggressively quirky and has not aged well.
6) Some of the rear projection in the flying sequences is awful not only awful by today's standards, but also when compared to some other, older movies that did pretty much the same thing, like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
7) There are some "laughs" in the movie that aren't remotely funny any more and would probably not be included in a movie made today, like when we hear that little girl being slapped by her mother for "lying" about a man having flown down from the sky to rescue her cat from a tree.
