Question: Why was Lex Luthor absent in this movie? Not only he didn't appear but wasn't even mentioned. Did Gene Hackman refuse to reprise the role in this movie?
Answer: There were rumors that Hackman was angry with the Salkind Brothers (the producers) for firing director Richard Donner, though Hackman later disputed saying that. His explanation, though he may have been downplaying the real reason, was that he had a number of other movie projects at the time, and he also did not wish to continually play the same villain in an ongoing movie series.
Question: Since kryptonite obviously doesn't come from Earth, how can Earth elements be used to create a synthetic version? Like in "Man of Steel", when Jonathan says that the Krypton key wasn't made from anything on the periodic table, so it couldn't be from Earth.
Chosen answer: Kryptonite is a compound created by irradiated fragments of Krypton rather than a pure element, Synthesizing it would then be a matter of analyzing the compound and finding Earth elements with similar properties. (Some, as you say, would be beyond the knowledge of human science, which is why Gus looked at his cigarette pack and decided to use tar in the place of the unknown elements).
Question: In the original Superman television series, Superman created a duplicate of himself so that he could be in two places at once. However, as one went to pull the bars out of the wall, he had to have the other help, as the strength of one was half that of the original. That said, how is it that both Clark and Evil Superman have the same strength of the whole being after being split?
Question: When Ross Webster is talking to his accountant Simpson, he wonders how $85,000 disappeared. Wouldn't Simpson be able to see all the payroll checks to see that Gus had two of them if he dug deeper in his investigation vs. both him and Ross seeing Gus pull up in a shiny new Lamborghini and outing himself as the thief? I realise Simpson isn't a fan of computers as this scene has established, but all he would have had to do was talk to the payroll clerk about the two checks that were presented to Gus when they were handed out, assuming no-one else had two checks with two vastly different amounts in them. (00:28:39 - 00:30:42)
Answer: It probably wasn't a check issued at the company. He could have transferred the money to a bank account.
Answer: The only reason that Gus was working with Ross, Vera and Lorelei was because he stole money from the company he worked at. To avoid going to prison, Gus was forced to do anything that they wanted. After realizing that his computer was designed to do anything it was ordered to, including killing Superman, Gus removed a small screw which shut down the power momentarily but, after the computer brought itself back online, Gus attempted to destroy it with an axe to save Superman. Superman saw this and realised he was wrong about Gus and after the computer was destroyed decided to help Gus find a job.
That makes sense, thank you! Been bugging me for years.
Jen Hen
You're welcome.