The return of the blue capped hero and something I forgot to mention in the first movie was the trial of three super villains.  These three have ran amuck on superman's birth planet and were sentenced to be imprisoned in a place called the Vortex.  This is important but I will come to that later.

 So as I said earlier; superman returns and that is actually quite funny, considering the name of the last film.  All is well until Lois is sent to cover story in France.  A group of terrorists have taken over the Eiffel Tower and have taken some hostages.  They say that if their demands aren’t met, that they will detonate their nuclear bomb.  So off superman goes to save the day.

He pushes the bomb that is in one of the elevators up into space.  The bomb explodes and isn’t thought of again.  In a strange coincidence; (yeah right!) the Vortex just happens to be passing and the electromagnetic wave causes it to crack and then explode and the three super villains are free.

So they fly to the nearest planet that just happens to be the moon and here is where they first come into contact with humans.  The woman (whose name escapes me) attacks a human wearing a space suite and tears off his badge.  The dumb one stops the spaceship leaving and Zod yanks the oxygen cable from another man.  They are amazed at their strength.  They hear a man calling on his radio to “Houston” and assume that this is the name of the nearest planet and decide to go check it out.

Louis and Clarke go to the Niagara falls and this is where she first realises that when superman is on the scene, that Clarke is no where to be seen and jumps into the river and expects Clarke to save her; he does but doesn’t make it so obvious.  Later in the day Clarke trips and his hand falls into the open fire that is in their room.  On inspecting Louis realises that he is in fact superman.  They visit superman’s home, which appeared in the first movie (some green crystal creates the thing) and superman introduces her to his now dead mother.  She tells him that if he wants to live the life of a human, that he would have to become one himself.  She shows him this glass chamber that appears and tells him to get into the glass chamber.  This has the rays of the Kryton sun and after a few moments he emerges out of the chamber a complete WUSS like the rest of us and the pair walk back a while and later get a ride back to town.

This is where they go into a diner and superman first experiences what it’s like to be vulnerable and get his butt handed to him on a plate.

Back to the three super villains.  They have decided to take over the world and at the same time or probably a bit earlier; Lex Luthor escapes out of prison and after going north, learns of the three super villains.  He realises that the alpha waves that he spotted on his new toy might be them and decides to go south and join up with them as some kind of ambassador.  When he meets up with them, they’re naturally not in the mood to listen to him and is about to hand him his butt on a plate, when he tells them of the son of Durrel (their jailor).  This of course gets their attention and they decide to try and find this son of Durrel (mainly to kick his butt).

Superman sees the devastation and decides to go back to his old home up north somewhere and when he gets there spots the green crystal.  (god knows what happens, but the next minute he’s superman again)  So the super villains decide to go find Louis and this is when the blue boy turns up and they have a good old fashioned fight.  After deciding to take Louis and a few others to superman’s home; they continue their fight and in the end, force superman back into the chamber.  As before the superman starts to grimace in agony but the red sun is outside and not within the chamber.

Superman grabs General Zod by the hand and crushes it and then proceeds to throw him down some deep hole in his house.  The other two are defeated by a punch and plain stupidity and off the go back to Metropolis.

This is perhaps one of a few movies that in my opinion include Spiderman 2, Empire Strikes Back, Godfather 2 and of course includes The Two Towers that are in fact better than the first movies and develop the story further.  This is rare in Hollywood; they tend to just cash in and it’s not uncommon for a sequel to be very poor compared to the original.