20. Reeves Didn’t Really Fly
Hard to imagine with so much money into the production that they couldn’t get a real flying man, but it’s true: the studio used fans to create the effect. By the time they made the ’78 movie, green screens were in play, but in Reeves’ time, they used a mechanical arm with a piece of plexiglass holding Reeves in a flying position. It was the background that moved, not Superman. Fan-generated wind added to the effect of flight. In scenes where he wasn’t only flying about, like landings, Reeves would bounce off a springboard to fly into a window or some such architecture. Then they would cut to him on his feet. Presto-chango: flight!
19. Kids Also Couldn’t Fly
As kids of the Mary Poppins generation would later learn about umbrellas, costumes alone do not the flying man maketh. Kids wearing Superman costumes in the ‘50s believed that the cape of their Superman costume could help them fly. Reeves, who’d asked marketers to remove the capes from store shelves, appeared on TV to plead with the kids. In 1955, he starred in a PSA, saying, “No one, but no one can do the things Superman does. And that goes especially for flying!” Decades later, history would repeat itself with kids trying to fly off roofs using an umbrella like Mary Poppins. Darwinism at work, maybe?