When Does the Film "Superman: The Movie" (1978) Take Place?
"Superman: The Movie" is a superhero film written by Mario Puzo with Tom Mankiewicz, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, and George MacDonald Fraser [adapting "Action Comics" #1 (1938) by Jerry Siegel as well as "Action Comics" #23 (1940) by Jerry Siegel and "Adventure Comics" #283 (1961) by Robert Bernstein] and released in a public theater December 10th, 1978, (Wide release was December 14th, 1978.)
It takes place on an alternate timeline of the fictional DC Films Universe in the year:
We know this because, partway through the film, Lex Luthor recites some facts from Lois Lane’s exclusive interview with Superman a.k.a. Kal-El. Among the facts Kal-El offers up to the public, Luthor says, "In the interview, he says that the Planet Krypton exploded in 1948."
1978 AD
We know this because, partway through the film, Lex Luthor recites some facts from Lois Lane’s exclusive interview with Superman a.k.a. Kal-El. Among the facts Kal-El offers up to the public, Luthor says, "In the interview, he says that the Planet Krypton exploded in 1948."
Kal-El is explicitly said to be in "your 18th year, as it is measured on Earth" by an artificial intelligence hologram of his father Jor-El at the end of the Smallville prologue. Then, as he educates Kal-El in an abstract sequence involving some kind of education, the same teaching hologram says, "By the time we return to the confines of your galaxy, 12 of your years will have passed." Though the sequence is confusing, the years are named clearly. That brings us to the present of the main action of the film.
18 + 12 = 30.
Kal-El is depicted as an older newborn or younger toddler in the Krypton prologue.
1948 + 30 = 1978
or, at most,
1948 + 32 = 1980.
It must be between 1978 AD and 1980 AD.
(The Jor-El hologram ALSO states "I will have been dead for many thousands of your years." presumably referring to the time since the destruction of Krypton. The only explanations for this would be a difference in aging for Kryptonians, a difference of aging for people living under a red sun, or time dilation due to gravity as described by Einstein in the Theory of Relativity. The film does not clarify this line either but it essentially contradicts the rest of the years named in the film and is needlessly complicated.)
Additionally, there are two extended prologues at the start of the film.
The first prologue happens on the fictional planet Krypton and takes place in 1948 AD, if Lex Luthor's reading of Lois Lane's interview with Superman is accurate. We know this because of the aforementioned Lex Luthor scene.
The second prologue takes place in Smallville, Kansas and spans 1951 AD, when toddler Kal-El arrives, to an unplaceable point when (renamed Clark Kent) he leaves home. Again, the key scene is the Lex Luthor scene after the interview has come out. Luthor continues, "Ridiculous little freak took 3 years in a rocket ship to get to Earth."
1948 + 3 = 1951.
It is a chronologically early film in the DC Films timeline (an earliest chronological film to feature Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman) and can be watched either at its timeline point, before "Justice League" (2017) as an extended flashback, before the film "The Flash" (2023) as an extended flashback, or entirely separately.
