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: The end credits list a "Post Poduction Cordinator" just before the music credits.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lois is talking to Lex Luthor in the piano room on the boat, her engagement ring constantly moves from her ring finger to her middle finger between shots.
  
  

• Continuity: Lois and Perry talk in his office. She hands him a draft of her "Superman Returns" piece. In one shot Perry is reading the pages. In the next shot, they are 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.
  
  
• Continuity: Clark returns to the Daily Planet and talks 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 toward Mr. White's office to walk away. In the next shot, Jimmy faces Clark again, then turns around again to walk away. Between shots, the extras in the background disappear.
  
  
• Continuity: After Superman places the plane on the ground, the flight attendant's glasses go from crooked to straight and back between shots.
  
  
• 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 leave the Daily Planet, the revolving door has 3 sides, leaving room for a steady-cam operator to go through.
  
  
• 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 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: Lois Lane would not yet be eligible for a Pulitzer prize. They are awarded each year for outstanding achievements in the previous calendar year. "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman" was published February 14, 2006. The movie takes place in September 2006 (evidenced by the date of the mock "Superman Is Dead" edition).
  
  
• 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: During the news reports, the German banner "Fensterputzer halten an ihrem Lebemfest" (Window cleaners hold on for their lives) is wrong. It 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: When Mrs. Kent listens to a radio, the dial shows QLD and NSW, which are Australian states. It also shows SM, CH, and UW, 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. He doesn't take the other crystals with him. The crystals are in the room with Lois and Jason, and the two henchmen don't take the crystals with them after locking Lois and Jason in another room. In the next scene, the crystals are beside Lex.
  
  
• Continuity: In the model train scene, the model ground that splits open is perfectly modeled to the sides of the crack. With random breakage, you would expect the internal space to be hollow, with a wooden frame.
  
  
• Continuity: When Superman flies 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. When he turns back towards Metropolis, the crack is running towards the city. The only place where 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. The scene was clearly shot in reverse; the boat is traveling backward, sucking in its own wake.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Superman follows the initial fault line back to Metropolis, the "Metropolis Pier" sign is reversed.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Every time Richard White makes a radio call in his airplane, he starts with "November." All airplanes registered in the United States have an identification number that starts with N, which is November in the NATO alphabet. However, domestic pilots making radio calls never say the N because it's redundant.
  
  
• 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, her skirt is up to her thigh, revealing the top of her stocking. In the next shot, her skirt is down to her knee.
  
  
• Factual errors: A massive tidal wave should have hit Metropolis when the island emerged from the ocean. Water is forced away from the point of the new land mass.
  
  
• Factual errors: Jimmy tells Clark that Luthor was freed from jail because Superman didn't appear when the Court of Appeals called him as a witness. Court of Appeals rulings are based on the facts in evidence from the previous trial, and nothing else. No new evidence or testimony is allowed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the bank robbery, the machine gunner connects the ammunition belt to the left side of the gun (to the viewer's right). When he fires on the police in the street, a few seconds of footage 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: When the shuttle engine started, the airplane should have been destroyed. The wings of a commercial airplane are not designed to stand supersonic speed. However, the plane wouldn't immediately hit supersonic speeds. Plus, 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: Young Clark Kent wears glasses because of bad eyesight. His powers first appeared around puberty. The point of the childhood sequence was to show his amazement with his new powers.
  
  
• 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 falls to earth, the passenger seats are ripped from their fixings, and collapse into each other several times. When Superman enters the plane, all the passengers are sitting in their seats, which are attached to the floor again.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Jason and Brutus play "Heart and Soul" in the key of C-sharp, but they aren't playing any sharps or flats (the black keys).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After saving the airplane, which is lying on the baseball field, Superman is still embracing the plane's nose, but he doesn't cast a shadow on the grass.
  
  
• Factual errors: Despite Superman's strength, it would be impossible to hold or stop a plane solely by its nose. Considering the plane's weight and structural design, Superman would rip its nose off when he moved it from vertical to horizontal.
  
  
• Continuity: 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 he does that, she swings her arm over his shoulders.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Superman takes Lois flying, Brandon Routh's natural brown eyes are visible.
  
  
• Continuity: Brutus stops for a moment while walking to play the piano with Jason, so we can see the back of his head. You can see a bit of the tattoo on the back of his head, but you couldn't see any of it before.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: 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. However, director Bryan Singer said this film takes place in a vague time in the Superman film series and ignores the events of "Superman III" (when Lana Lang tells Clark that Mrs. Kent had passed away) and "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", so it is possible for Martha Kent to be alive in this movie if this film ignores the continuity of the two mentioned sequels.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Lois rattles off basic facts about Superman to Richard in his office - she mistakenly says that his weight is "125 pounds" - when she meant to say "225 pounds".
  
  
• Continuity: When Superman is being shot with a chain gun, the bullets don't even left their marks on his costume, but when he is in the emergency room, and the doctors are trying to revive him, they easily rip the costume off his body.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Lois visits Superman at the hospital and closes the door to his room, reflections of the camera operator are visible in the window glass of the door.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the opening credits, we see the destruction of Krypton followed by what would appear to be the journey from Krypton to Earth which is a significant distance (possibly hundreds or thousands of light-years). However, the opening credits state Superman disappeared after astronomers discovered the remains of his home planet. This would be impossible since the light from Krypton's destruction (the supernova of it's sun) would take hundreds if not thousands of years to reach Earth and all the current characters would have died by that time.
  
  
• Factual errors: The EMP burst that triggers the docking malfunction of the NASA shuttle to the plane shuts down all technology, including engines, phones, etc. However, the microphone of the guide is still functioning perfectly.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: SPOILER: As the yacht sinks and the room gets darker, you can see the shadow of a man to Lois's left.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: After Clark Kent walks to the Daily Planet elevators to change into Superman, the framed newspaper behind him has a photo of Superman and the headline reads WHERE HAS HE GONE? Look closely and you will see that the date is Friday, March 3rd, 2000 and the paper says that Superman vanished earlier that year. In the film, it is repeatedly said by several characters, including Martha Kent, that Clark/Superman has been gone for five years. When Superman comes back to Earth, however, it is the year 2006. This is later confirmed when Perry White is deciding the alternate front page headlines following Superman's coma (Superman is Dead and Superman Lives, respectively). The date on the papers read that it is September 2006.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: The time line of the movie does not match. When Lex Luthor holds up the newspaper showing Superman's return after the plane rescue, the date of the newspaper reads Thursday, September 28, 2006. The next day, when the TV sets of The Daily Planet show clips of Superman's rescues and stopped thefts since his return from space, there is footage of Superman stopping a robbery at a store and the date on the footage reads July 25th. About two days later, when Perry White has the two Superman headlines to decide from after Superman has lapsed into a coma, the newspaper date reads Friday, September 29, 2006.
  
  

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