YMMV / Superman II

• Adaptation Displacement:
  • Zod was a pretty minor element of Superman's rogues gallery when the movie came out, but since then, he's been promoted to a rather important element of it. Most versions of Zod are also visually based on Terence Stamp, and most fans would likely struggle to name a second Zod storyline.
  • Many modern DVD and Blu-Ray collections of the Superman films don't include the initial Richard Lester cut, preferring to include the Richard Donner cut instead. This may have led to some only watching the Donner cut with no awareness of the Lester cut.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • After losing his powers and getting sucker punched by a redneck trucker thug, a powerless Clark laments that he and Lois need to hire a bodyguard, causing Lois to remark "I don't want a bodyguard, I want the man I fell in love with." What exactly does that say about Lois? That she only loved the superhero with god like powers but not the Nice Guy behind them? Or alternatively, was she just trying to cheer Clark up by saying she loved him with or without his powers?
  • What side of the "Who is the real persona?" does this Superman fall on? Lois asks Superman if it's hard being Clark Kent, and he remarks that it's not hard at all and he even enjoys it despite the foolishness he must sometimes indulge in. Normally Reeve's Superman fell on the version from the Silver Age, but this evokes the Bronze Age interpretation that both identities are important to him. Tellingly, Clark's response to Lois' comment above is "I wish he were here." Has Clark started to consider Superman more "real" than Clark, or is he just realizing that his Kryptonian abilities are part of his whole being, and without them he's become a completely different person?^note During the Golden and Silver ages of comics, Superman is the real personality, and Clark is an act he puts on. Five or six years later, when Superman was "rebooted" in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths in The Man of Steel by John Byrne, this was reversed. Even before Crisis, the comics were beginning to play around a bit with "who is the real personality", making this one of the earlier signs of the coming changeover
• Ass Pull:
  • Superman's whole ability to give Lois Laser-Guided Amnesia with a kiss comes across this way, as there is nothing in the previous movie to suggest he has any such power, and seems made up mainly to "reset" his relationship with Lois as her knowing his identity would radically change how future movies would work. It also counts as a Voodoo Shark, as you have to wonder why he doesn't just give Luthor a Forceful Kiss to make him forget his evil plans (ok, Superman isn't gay, but it's hard to believe he'd refuse to kiss a man if doing so would save the world.)
    • The whole thing was spoofed in a Robot Chicken skit, wherein Supes does in fact kiss Lex and other villains to make them forget why they hated him.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: For Zod and his followers. It worked so well that the comics eventually changed their depictions of them to match. Zod was originally clean-shaven and dressed like The Generalissimo in the comics - imagine Superman fighting M. Bison. Nowadays, his Beard of Evil is indispensable and he tends to wear black like in the movie. In particular, his playable appearance in Injustice: Gods Among Us is basically a walking reference to this movie, down to reusing his lines.
• Awesome Music: Nothing beats John Williams' work on the first film, but composer Ken Thorne does a satisfying job adapting the music for the theatrical cut of II. The Main Title March in particular is much faster-paced and jazz-like.
• Better on DVD: The Richard Donner Cut removes a lot of the slapstick and out-of-nowhere powers for the Kryptonians that Richard Lester and the Salkinds added and fills in a couple of Plot Holes. While whether it's actually better is heavily debated by fans, it is the closest we have to Richard Donner's original vision for the movie.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The overlong scene of the villains using their super-breath to blow away the Metropolis civilians is meant to be both funny and horrifying, but even among the sight gags there's a very weird shot of a balding man wearing a red sparkly jacket being blown away on roller skates. It especially stands out in the Donner Cut, which otherwise removed the goofy slapstick moments from this scene.
• Broken Base:
  • Which version is better, the original Lester Cut or the 2006 Donner Cut? Fans of the Donner Cut love getting the restored footage, along with taking out infamous elements (the Cellophane S, most of the Lester-added comedy) resulting in a version that's more true to what Donner had envisioned. Fans of the Lester Cut see it as a more polished and coherent film, looking down at the Donner Cut for wonky effects and audio mixing, along with cutting out better-acted scenes filmed by Lester for the sake of purely sticking to what Donner had shot. This dichotomy has led to fans like Selutron to make their own Fan Edit for a "best of both worlds" version of Superman II, mixing elements from both cuts.
  • Superman's revenge on the trucker who beat him up while he was powerless is quite a controversial scene. Lots of people love it, while lots of others say it's completely out of character (even though the trucker had it coming). It arguably looks worse in the Donner cut where Superman changed time at the end, essentially undoing the first beating.
• Contested Sequel: It was fairly well received at the time, though many comment on the random powers displayed by both Superman and Zod's crew as well as the increased humor and slapstick compared to the more majestic and earnest first film. Cast and crew would differ on which film they preferred. It would be Vindicated by History as the next two movies had much worse receptions, and the Richard Donner cut would show a version slightly more in line with the tone of the first.
• Designated Hero: Superman for some viewers. He gives up powers that will save millions of lives to be with someone who is Too Dumb to Live, and after being re-powered and rendering Zod helpless, he brutally crushes his hand as payback before casually executing him by throwing him to his death in an icy crevasse, uses his regained powers to injure a human in an act of petty revenge (granted the guy was a Jerkass), and then gives Lois Laser-Guided Amnesia for his own convenience. What a hero! What makes it even worse is that according to the canon of Superman Returns, the Broad Strokes sequel, the big lesson Superman learned about responsibility, that necessitated this entire experience, didn't even stick. Not long afterwards, Supes abandoned his post again, this time for five years, on a fool's trip and told no one he was leaving - not even Lois - despite making a promise to the president of the United States not to do that. What a hero.
• Evil Is Cool: General Zod. Like Khan in Star Trek, he has cast a very long shadow over the franchise ever since, as a high-profile bad guy who is both intelligent and a physical match for Superman.
• Genius Bonus: Lex refers to Australia as "beachfront property". This is actually a pretty good description of Australia, as the continent is almost all desert, with only the coastal regions being livable for people.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the Richard Donner cut, the actions that Lois takes to prove Clark is Superman could be seen as insane — jumping out a window so that Superman will save her, pointing a gun (albeit loaded with blanks) to elicit a reaction from Clark (and throwing herself over Niagara Falls in the original Lester cut to make Clark out himself as Superman isn't much better), essentially actions that no sane or rational person would attempt (sadly Lois actually did do stuff like this in the older comics during her Stalker with a Crush days). This becomes tear-jerking, when Margot Kidder, the actress who portrayed Lois, would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a severe psychotic episode. Then it got even worse when her death was officially concluded to be a suicide.
  • The sight of a powerless Clark Kent being beaten up by a roughneck trucker and left barely able to move, along with a shot of him lying unconscious in the Donner cut, becomes harder to watch knowing what happened to Christopher Reeve later in life.
  • Just look at the poster. Three horrible criminals flying directly towards the World Trade Center? Ouch.
  • In-universe example, as Supes apparently didn't remember what happened when he went away for two weeks and promising never to leave again - and then goes on a pointless five year trip to Krypton to determine that the planet really did explode (what?) in Superman Returns.
  • Superman realized that having three superpowered villains fighting him in the middle of Metropolis might get a little out of hand, and decided to draw them back to the Fortress where no innocents would get hurt. In the Continuity Reboot Man of Steel, Superman's relative inexperience and General Zod's unhinged Roaring Rampage of Revenge end up causing massive destruction and loads of innocents getting hurt or killed in Metropolis (and Smallville), which serves as the catalyst for many citizens, including Bruce Wayne, to distrust and fear him in the next installment.
  • Man of Steel had gotten a great deal of flack for having Superman kill Zod at the end of their climactic battle, although as Designated Hero above details, he did the same thing in a much less dramatic way (MoS Superman literally had no other option and was disgusted with himself for doing it; Superman II Supes barely even dwells on it).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The trucker in the diner already made Superman bleed.
  • A lumber-bearing truck refused to give Clark a lift. Even Clark holds grudges.
  • A Michael J. Shannon played a President's aide in this film. Years later, a Michael C. Shannon played General Zod in Man of Steel.
  • This would mark the first time Lex Luthor was in the White House. It would be far from the last time, as in the mainline DC comics by the turn of the new millennium...
  • Gene Hackman would later play the President of the United States in the Clint Eastwood film Absolute Power (1997), with E.G. Marshall playing the man whose wife Hackman kills at the film's start. Marshall's character later murders Hackman's in revenge.
  • The whole kerfuffle behind the Donner Cut and the Executive Meddling Donner had to put up with, right down to being replaced by another director to make things more light and fun, calls to mind the Snyder Cut situation with Justice League (2017) decades later.
  • Since Annie Ross dubbed over most of Sarah Douglas' performance, you could say that Ross played The Dragon in both this film and Superman III.
  • Clark and Lois go undercover as a honeymoon couple to expose a racket. Years later in the comics, they would be married for real.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Even though the rude trucker was intentionally written to be an unlikable bully and the purpose of the diner fight was to show how Clark no longer has his powers, the fact that he beats up Clark makes him more loathsome than the three Kryptonians who want to take over the world and kill anyone who stands in their way. Fans of the Donner Cut are even willing to look the other way on Superman kicking his ass after hitting the Reset Button on everything that happened, as if the guy just deserved an asskicking on a cosmic level.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • All together, "Kneel Before Zod!"
  • The whole "plastic-wrap S" bit from the Lester cut, which was notably spoofed by Family Guy, and has received a few references in other DC media.
• Moral Event Horizon: In some cuts of the film, Zod has Non kill a boy trying to escape a small town to find help. The town is horrified, but Ursa practically savors the murder of a male. At that, you're just thirsty for the moment Superman makes them pay!
• Narm:
  • Christopher Reeve's facial expression as he delivered the line "No! Don't do it! The people!" (Notice how in the preceding shot he looked appropriately horrified at the sight of the bus being lifted, then it looks like he's trying not to laugh and smile as he delivers his lines, then in the third and fourth close up shots he's back to looking suitably horrified.)
  • The British boy going, "Please, Mr. General! Please let my daddy down!"
  • How does Lois discover Clark's secret identity? He tripped over a rug and landed in a burning fireplace. The man who can fly and withstand gunfire tripped over a rug. Lois suggested that maybe Clark subconsciously outed himself, but that just clashes with an earlier scene where she nearly killed herself to get Superman's attention. Averted in the Donner Cut, where Lois tricks Clark into outing himself while obfuscating insanity and shooting him with a gun loaded with blanks.
• Narm Charm: General Zod is made of this. He's a titanic ham with lots of dialogue that could have been very painful, but he tends to come off as genuinely deranged and dangerous rather than goofy considering he has the godlike power to back up his threats. It also helps that he can bounce back and forth between Large Ham and dangerously understated almost at will, as his introductory scene shows.
• Older Than They Think: As far back as the Golden Age Superman comics, Superman had psychic hypnotism powers that he occasionally used on Lois to erase (or prevent) her memories of his secret identity. The "kiss of amnesia" from the Lester Cut isn't anything new.
• One-Scene Wonder: The U.S. President only gets about a minute of screen time but is a very iconic character for being the (dignified and defiant) subject of the original Kneel Before Zod speech.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Despite its piecemeal nature (by unfortunate necessity), a good number of fans prefer the Donner Cut over the theatrical version, as it's closer in tone to the first film.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Before he became known as Uncle Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, Richard Griffiths played a bumbling terrorist who tries to blow up the Eiffel Tower.
  • An Uncredited laundry prison guard is played by Christopher Malcolm, who would later be best known for playing Justin in Absolutely Fabulous.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: No matter which version you watch The romantic subplot between Superman and Lois is the most questionable element among fans.
• Signature Scene: Superman's battle against General Zod, Ursa, and Non throughout Metropolis.It is one of the most praised scenes among critics and fans, being considered the first epic battle in the superhero film genre.
• Special Effects Failure: In the scene where soldiers try to kill Zod with a flamethrower, it is painfully obvious that the fire is animation (the Donner cut added in a more realistic flame effect).
• Vindicated by History: For a long time after its release, the film was considered by many fans and critics as an inferior sequel to the original. Today, the film's opinion among fans has greatly improved, especially considering how Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace were received with mostly negative reviews, and the mixed reception of Superman Returns and Man of Steel. Now, most seem to agree it's a great movie, with one of its defenders being none other than filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (and it also helps that the premise of the praised Spider-Man 2 bears a lot of resemblance to Superman II) . Now, whether the best version of the movie is Lester's or Donner's, that's another story...
• Visual Effects of Awesome: You will still believe a man can fly, as Superman II manages to remain on par with its predecessor in terms of effects, at a time when CGI did not yet exist. The final battle in Metropolis is the ultimate highlight, and even Richard Lester's recurring jokes do not diminish the spectacular-for-the-time flying scenes and destruction on display.

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