In the year 1978, Superman made his
cinematic debut in the film Superman.
Shocking title choice aside, one of the final scenes of the film is Superman
reversing the rotation of the earth so he can catch both missiles that Lex
Luthor launched to destroy both American coasts. We all know this is impossible
but what exactly makes turning back the clock impossible. Well that’s why I’m
here! Using the powers of math and science to not to find the troll of a 24th
letter of the alphabet (X for those who are singing the song and got to about
F) or the pointless ‘how many apples does Johnny have?’ brain teaser but more
using math for the pressing issues Superman thrust upon us at the end of the
70’s. Let’s dive in!
The first issue that needs to be
addressed is how to turn back time: you can’t. It’s plain and simple; well at
least with Superman’s tactics. In the film, Superman flies around the earth
changing the earth’s rotation to turn back time. But the fact of the matter is
the rotation of the earth on its axis doesn’t affect the time. Don’t believe
me? Consider this: we live in Ohio and we consider night around when it gets
dark. But in Alaska, during the summer at least, they get close to twenty four
hours of sunlight. So the rotation of the earth can’t affect the time because
we subconsciously consider time by where the sun is in the sky. That was how we
told time in the early days. While that was all fine and dandy, the earth’s
rotation never affected the time. If
you really wanted to theoretically bring clocks back a bit, you would have to
push the earth clockwise to an earlier position in its orbit. But that doesn’t
mean that time travel is impossible.
Einstein’s theory of relativity stated if you got close
enough to the speed of light then time would pass much slower for you. That
being said Superman would have to approach the speed of light for him to “time
travel.” According to watchmojo.com, Superman is accredited with traveling at
Mach 4. Mach 4 is four times the speed of sound which averages out to about
1361.16 m/s. But I double checked. In the film his first circle completely
filmed took approximately one second to travel the circumference of the earth,
the distance of which is 24,901 miles! Superman traveled that in a second! But
this raises two problems: 1) Superman could have easily caught both of those
missiles with time to spare. If he can travel 24,901 miles in a second, then he
can easily travel the distance it would require him to catch both missiles
which is a little less than 3,000 miles. The second problem is that 24,901
miles in one second is impressive but still nowhere close to the 186,000 miles
per second required to reach light speed. And the speed of light rule only
applies if you are trying to go farther forward in time, not backwards. As we
know it now, we cannot go back in time because the events have already
happened.
Now you may be telling yourself, “He is a kryptonian so the
rules shouldn’t apply to him. The laws of physics don’t apply to Martian
Manhunter or Green Lantern and three of the Green Lanterns are human” I
acknowledge the fact that Green Lanterns are human so they can’t say they can
fly due to different gravity. But what makes Green Lanterns in the Green
Lantern Corps so different and able to bend the rules a little is that it is
alien technology. Much like the tesseract from the Avengers, we can’t really
argue with its logic because we don’t have one; which is a shame because having
a functional Green Lantern ring would be awesome. But if you are on earth with nothing from
another planet besides yourself, you need to follow our laws of physics.
Another argument that you can make is that it’s just a campy
movie from the late 70’s. You don’t need to follow logic. And in that you would
also have a point. There was a different era of comic book films that preceded
the era that we are in today. Comic book films now are much more origin stories
and/or character studies that not only focus on the mask (or lack of glasses)
but the problems that hero is facing in their regular life making them more
human therefore more relatable. But in the 30’s when superhero comic books were
first introduce. They had a much different purpose: they were originally
supposed to be icons with few or no flaws all kids aspired to be. Captain
America was originally made with the purpose of being propaganda. Comic books
started to become less campy when Marvel started incorporating moral and social
issues at the time into their writing. For example: X-men dealt with
discrimination, Iron man with alcoholism and the rise of technology etc. But
the end of the campy superhero movies really came with the Batman movies from
1989 to 1997. Tim Burton’s Batman movies were still slightly campy but they had
a much darker tone than the Superman films. As they should, Batman is
Superman’s contrast. But what really ended that campy superhero movie era was Batman and Robin; which to this day is
considered one of the worst films of all time. But the movies that made
superheroes cool again were: X-men and Batman begins because they took
themselves seriously.
But going back to Superman in the 70’s when he turned back
time to save Lois Lane. Even if it did work in the movie, think about the moral
implications this had on the viewers of the film. It is basically saying that
Superman CAN save anyone and do anything. He basically resurrected a life and
let’s kids know that Superman can save those who died in tragic accidents when
the fact of the matter is he can’t. It also contradicts the theme his father’s death
due to a heart attack in the film that there are some things that Superman
can’t do and he has to accept that. One of the lines from the movie is, “All
the things I can do. All those powers, and I couldn’t even save him”
In conclusion all superheroes at their core are essentially
vigilantes; hypocritically breaking the law to stop someone else from breaking
the law. Although other heroes break laws like breaking and entering,
harassment, disturbing the peace, tampering with evidence and a lot of property
damage; the big laws Superman breaks are the laws of physics.
Comment below with questions or suggestions for movie reviews or more posts like this one!
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