The Donnerverse F.A.Q.

 

 

Why are the Superman costume and the Clark Kent clothes appearing and disappearing in a matter of mere seconds?

The Superman suits - as well as the Clark Kent clothes - are made of interwined clusters/agglomerates of Kryptonian microcrystals. These particles bond to compose malleable molecular structures that can adopt pre-programmed forms; besides, they are expandable and retractable.

 

This would explain why the Superman suit and the Clark Kent clothes just materialize and dematerialize at superspeed, in almost picosecond timeframes. It happens in all Donnerverse movies, especially Superman II.

 

Both the configurations are separate “layers”, and it is assumed that Kal-El must open his shirt in order to “trigger” the formation/expansion of the Superman suit. Maybe there are differentiated micro-crystals embedded into the internal tissue of the Clark Kent shirt that can emit specific energetic charge which start the whole process of “shaping” the entire costume out of the Superman shirt. Simultaneously, the Clark Kent clothes “retract”.

This will also explain why the Superman suit (including cape) is invulnerable to extreme and prohibitive temperatures, air friction, wear and tear. It must be noted that Kal-El can use his powers even while wearing his Clark Kent clothes, without damaging them the slightest.

 

In Superman II – The Donner Cut, you can see that Kal-El’s glasses are not normal, because he can use his Heat Vision through them without melting the lenses.

In Superman II, you can see Kal-El “phasing” from the Superman suit to the Clark Kent clothes after having being depowered by the Red Sun Chamber.

 

Can Superman always travel back in time?

No. It’s very difficult to him. Either Superman and Superman II – The Donner Cut show that he must push his powers to the limits and that could basically kill him along the run. You can see that he heavily struggles to maintain that kind of “tachyonic superspeed”, vastly faster than light.

 

Why and how did the Kryptonian Renegades talk English without even knowing Earth?

The Phantom Zone is not just a stranded place to confine Kryptonian criminals. It’s a dimensional pocket constantly intercrossing with our universe; a sort of “limbo” which trasgresses the common rules of the material dimension.

Inmates are deeply immersed into a “ghost-like” quantum state that affects their mind and consciousness, as like as their organisms.
As seen in Supergirl, Kara-El and Zaltar discovered that the internal landscape looked like a purple barren wasteland with no sun.

We must suppose that the “suffering images” of the Renegades and Supergirl depicted on the surface of the rhomb-shaped avatars of the Phantom Zone are just mental projections of their real counterparts confined/trapped in the internal landscape and (emotionally and mentally) struggling for true.

On the other way, the Phantom Zone has telepathical effects on its inmates. The Zone indeed absorbs radio transmissions and televised images from the “outer world” via the Avatar, and implants them into the inmates’ minds under the guise of dreams, hallucinations, delusions and illusions.

When the PZ Avatar of the Renegades was wandering in our solar system and orbiting inbetween Earth and Moon, the Zone was acquiring radio and TV transmissions - as well as random infos - and transferring them into the Renegades’ minds. Thus, they subconsciously learnt English.

When the Avatar crashed and they were released from the Phantom Zone, their cells had the chance to tap into the yellow sun radiation and thus increase the neural processing. Their brains elaborated the infos “snatched” by the Phantom Zone and that translated into a real ability to talk a simple and basic English.

We can assume the astronaut answered Ursa because he was able to read her lips – there’s no air or sound on the Moon.

Inbetween the Idaho battle and the White House defeat, they had the further possibility to read earthling books and improve their mastering of the language.

It should be noted that the Phantom Zone also affected their bioelectromagnetics, and they indeed acquired a seemingly “new” yellow sun-powered ability: the Telekinetic Beam. In truth, this is just a variant of the Telekinetic Vision Superman naturally displayed in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

This mirrors the Snyderverse (or the other way around), since it has been shown that the organisms which previously interacted with the Phantom Drive (Kal-El, the Kryptonians) have become susceptible to its energy in odd ways, like being strongly attracted by any Phantom Singularity and so involved in a kind of “marked biomagnetism” bond with it.

Can Superman mate with Lois Lane?

Technically not. With our without powers, their D.N.A. is different. Each of them belongs to a different “species”. So Superman stripping his own powers away via the Red Sun Chamber is ininfluent on his capacity to make sex with a woman or procreating.

Since both the versions of the movie Superman II are canon – The Donner Cut being the original iteration of the events occurring “before” the Lester Cut – we can safely assume the sex factor is irrelevant.

 

How did Clark and Lois manage to leave the Fortress of Solitude and reach a civilized place? How did Clark succeed in coming back to the Fortress without dying (no invulnerability, no resistance to lethal temperatures)?

We can only guess, but this is my theory.

After the events of SM:TM, where he dealt with Kryptonite for the very first time in his life, Superman realized that he could lose his powers for multiple reasons and he wasn’t invincible as he used to think.

So my guess is that in 1979-80 he created a failsafe tunnel or a complex of underground channels that connect the Fortress of Solitude with the nearest civilized place.

 

How did Supergirl manage to escape from the Phantom Zone, unlike the Renegades?

Zaltar was far more intelligent than the Renegades, and he was originally a scientist on Krypton. He knew about the Exit Warp, while the Renegades didn’t.

 

It should be noted that the Exit Warp can absorb energies from the external space, that’s why Supergirl received a new 'photonucleic boost' and recovered her powers once she stepped into the borderline territory at the top of the mountain.

 

Why has Superman got new powers in Superman IV?

In the 1984-1987 timeframe, Superman joined an intergalactic community and met new alien species as hinted in Supergirl. We don’t know what adventures he experienced. Aside from that, he showed signs of a power increase/boost of some type and even displayed the Telekinetic Vision, which seems a natural progression of his Telekinetic Aura.

As already evidenced in Superman and Superman II, the Telekinetic Aura can protect anyone or anything Superman carries on with him, as long as there’s physical contact and Superman is flying.

By the time 1987 rolled out, his strength and speed had exponentially grown to the maximum level, to the point he could move the Moon. We can assume that final effort almost depleted his yellow sun electromagnetic radiation stores and surely dissipated the “boost effect” for the many years to come.

 

Superman’s kill count in the saga?

Technically speaking, 1. Nuclear Man.

The Clark Kent split persona killed the Evil Superman split persona in Superman III, but at this point we don’t know if we could even consider the Clark Kent split persona as fully being 'Superman'. The fight just involved two separate entities of different quantical nature and maybe it’s not “murder” the way we humans intend it to be.

We don’t know if Superman mercilessly killed Zod, Ursa and Non. They were depowered and didn’t constitute a menace anymore.

As we said before, in 1979-80 Superman created a failsafe tunnel or a complex of underground channels that connect the Fortress of Solitude with the nearest civilized place.
This also means that there is a whole new “world” established under the Fortress. Maybe Zod and the other two Renegades did not end their fall into the freezing waters, but in some sort of armored crystal chambers that Superman had set for them. It was part of the detailed and careful plan that he devised in order to defeat them, along with a sly list of devices:

The S-Shield.

The Holographic System.
The Red Sun Chamber - “Inverted Polarity” mode.

  

Written by Tiziano Caliendo