Long (5min 41sec) scene originally at the start of the film, showing Superman visiting the wreckage of Krypton and nearly getting killed. Hugely expensive in effects and cut entirely from the final film...

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/superman-returns-deleted-opening-scene-216110

Wonder what the film would have been like if they'd spent the money on something else!

It's interesting, but I can see why they cut it. The pacing is slower than the first Star Trek movie. I'm surprised the editing team didn't develop permanent narcolepsy.

I second Terry's comment. A minute or so into it, I decided to fast forward. I kept thinking that the 'good stuff' must be coming later. When I did reach the end, my only thought was, "That's it? They spent megabucks on *that*?" I, too, had thought of ST: TMP while I was watching it. A horrible waste of a special effects budget. I think that if they had trimmed it down to be a 30 second scene, it might have been worth keeping in the film. Might have been.

Joy,
Lynn

I agree that a shortened or better paced version of this might have been nice in the movie, but the main error in the movie plot still remained.

There was no logical reason for Superman to leave earth for five years. Especially since he didn't discuss it with Lois before hand.

Obviously he'd slept with the woman, so they had a strong relationship going, yet he just left without a word.

Unforgivable and unbelievable.

Tank (who blames Brian Singer for not having any real backroad in Superman lore and for forcing illogical plot points into the movie to support a storyline that didn't make sense)

I blame Singer mostly for wanting to continue the Donner version of Superman. I have always hated the "Crystal" version of Krypton among many of things I could complain about. Frankly, I would have liked to have seen a better use of Clark Kent.

Superman Returns was a disappointment. The very best part of the film was the dedication to Reeves and his wife. Classy.

Otherwise it was a very cold, distant film, with zero humor.

I just watched the whole clip. Boy was that depressing. But overall, Superman Returns was a giant fail.

Mr. Beeto has written a wonderful fanfic, "Family Reunion" , which gives a plausible reason for this and also clears up several other untied plot threads.

He gives a very plausible reason for Superman running out on Lois without saying a word to her.

I highly recommend this fanfic.

It's been ages since I've seen it, so I don't know if he explained why it took so long, but the deleted scene might explain a lot. It didn't look that big, no provisions for a 5-year trip, etc. What if the flight to Krypton took only a few hours but when he ran into trouble and smashed his ship up pretty badly, he had to limp back to Earth?

Also, it looks as if the ship had no radiation shielding at all.

And last but not least: IIRC, the content was made up of Kryptonite. And on Krypton, there was this huge, artificial S-emblem in the crust. What if the Kryptonians, in a fit of hubris, decided to use the terraform crystal to create the shield. Only, it had a side effect, causing the spreading of Kryptonite through the planets crust and core, swelling until the planet popped like a water melon hit by an asteroid. And the same thing would have happened to Earth had Superman not removed the continent?



Michael

I think the start of it is Clark coming out of some sort of suspended animation pod. Somewhere I have the SR script, which I thought might be useful for the SR / Supergirl crossover stories I've been posting elsewhere, if I can find it I'll confirm this.

I wish they would've bothered to tell us to make sure we'd seen Superman II before seeing Superman Returns so at least it would make slightly more sense. I came out of the theater going, "So wait -- they slept together? And how does she not remember this?" Here I thought having seen the first Superman movie and having a pretty decent knowledge of the comics would be enough; nope.

I like SR, although if I had my way, I'd make some changes to it. It's one of the only movies I own that I've considered actually doing that to -- making my own version of it for personal viewing. Cutting out a bunch of the Lex stuff and adding in a few of the deleted scenes off the DVD extras.

I know the SR tie-in novel goes into a lot more depth and makes many things more clear. Part of the film's problem was that they kind of left out some really important points and put into too much crystal-growing. Oh well. I hope the new Superman movie will kick some butt and make things all better.

Imho, having seen Superman II doesn't help, it just shifts the problems the movie has to other points, like the Lois and Clark being much too young for what's happening and Lex being not very movie-Lexy.

Superman Returns looks good, especially Superman. I don't even mind Superman being the real person and "Clark" the disguise. I find both takes on who is the disuguise intriguing and find it more disappointing to find what's essentially "Lois and Clark" stories in disguise in the Superman movie section of archives and vice versa.

But the movie didn't work for me in the story department. It neither works as a sequel to Superman II nor the Donner cut, nor is it capable of standing on it's own feet.

I was wondering about that too. That's what it looked like. The whole making a spaceship out of crystals was pretty unbelievable. Just my opinion, nothing for you to take personally.