The first Christopher Reeve Superman was the first movie I ever remember seeing in a cinema, and a lot of it has still stood the test of time - Reeves has oceans of charm, and the special effects that send him soaring into the sky still look pretty good.
Some of it hasn't aged that well - there is a particularly 70s corniness it can't shake - but I have never bought the idea that it's ruined by the bit where Lois dies, and Superman turns the earth backwards by flying really fast, and turns back time.
Linear time doesn't work like that, say smartarses. That breaks almost everything we know about the laws of physics, they say.
But I never interpreted it that way - that he's turning the Earth around. Since the day I saw it, I didn't think he's turning back time and reversing anything. It's all from his perspective, and he's travelling back in time but going so fast he breaks the time barrier and going back to save his loved one.
This is something that is totally possible according to the sacred time travel texts of Back to the Future and Star Trek, and it was something Superman did a lot in the silver age - travelling to the 31st century every month to hang with the Legion of Super-Heroes.
It feels extremely silly to be so defensive about a movie that is almost 50 years old now, but I still see people complaining about how the gravitational forces of turning the planet around would be astronomical, and they probably would be.
But we're seeing those rocks fly up the clifftop because that's what Superman sees, not because time is actually turning backwards, and that's been a part of Superman lore forever.
But the part in the second movie where he pulls off the emblem on his uniform and it turns into a giant piece of indestructible cellophane? That really is just dumb.
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