Superman Fails

            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 24^th 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.

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