Superman Returns: A Medical Review (Spoiler Alert)

July 2nd, 2006

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

No major plot spoilers, but still it’s best to be forewarned:

Spoiler Alert!

First off, I enjoyed the movie very much. I thought Brandon Routh did an excellent job as Superman and the rest of the cast were quite good as well (Jimmy’s bow tie/plaid shirt combinations were too much though; no man is that color blind). The airplane/shuttle rescue scene was probably the best pure superhero scene I’ve seen in a movie yet. My main complaint is the villain. I just don’t think the movie Lex or his real estate plots are villainous enough to make him the needed supervillain. Or to put it more bluntly, as my wife did, the movie “needs more punching scenes.”

A couple of medical scenes did catch my eye…

1. Inhalers
Jason was using his inhaler wrong. He should not hold it right up to his mouth, but instead should hold it about an inch in front of his mouth. Ideally, he would get a tube known as a spacer to attach to the end of the inhaler so he would always use it at the correct distance.

2. Superman In The Hospital
First, remember the ABCs.
A (Airway) – Did Superman have a good open airway? In the beginning of the scene, the EMTs were holding his head in the proper position, but by the end they weren’t. Placing an endotracheal tube (ETT) would have been a good idea.

B (Breathing) - Good.

C (Circulation) – Not as good. I noticed nobody was perfoming CPR, but then he is the “Man of Steel” so it’s likely no one would have had the strength required for a good chest compression. The nursung staff tried to place an IV but couldn’t get the needle through his skin. (This is where the endotracheal tube I mentioned earlier would have been nice because you can put several of the resuscitation medications down the tube. It’s not as good as an IV, but it’s better than no medicine.) But then the doctors comitted Comic Book Writer Medical Error #3: they shocked a flatline*. Sure, it looks dramatic, but it just doesn’t work.

Second, it’s not in the ABCs, but given that Superman just sustained a major trauma, they should have brought him in on a backboard and in a cervical collar.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that on the positive side, every medical provider in the ER was wearing eye protection.

*It sure looked like a flatline to me. However, later, when Lois visited him in the hospital, he was showing bradycardia (an abnormally slow heart rate) on the monitor, so maybe he just had a very very slow heart rate in the ER. In the case, the difference is moot because you don’t shock bradycardia either.

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12 Responses to “ Superman Returns: A Medical Review (Spoiler Alert) ”

  1. Josh
    July 2nd, 2006 at 8:58 pm

    My guess is his heart rate is always pretty low and he was probably flatlined when they brought him in.

  2. DrObviousSo
    July 2nd, 2006 at 9:55 pm

    But really, how many kids his age use their inhaler correctly?

  3. ohwilleke
    July 2nd, 2006 at 10:05 pm

    Other medical issues:

    (1) These people just have an immense tolerance for shock. Lois’s kid killed a guy, whom he had just been happily playing piano with and didn’t even seem shaken up. Lois nearly drowns, and has been conscious for just a few minutes, yet immediately dives back into cold ocean water, diving deep and rescues a 225 pound man.

    (2) I guess they have special rules for non-relative visitors of Superheroes in Metropolis. They probably don’t have HIPPA either.

    (3) Lois shows almost no signs of being a life long smoker. And, considering that her son has asthma or something like it and gillions of other meds, it is notable that she wasn’t able to quit.

    (4) Did you notice that Jimmy has a glass window explode in his face, yet never appeared with so much as a scratch or bandage in the following scenes?

    (5) Lesson From Scene 1: Don’t give Lex Luthor (or any ex-felon) your medical power of attorney.

  4. Scott
    July 2nd, 2006 at 10:43 pm
    Official Comment

    DrObviousSo:
    I think about six…in the nation. But for a mohter who are shown to be so worried about her child’s health, you think she’s make it a point to have him use the inhaler right (on the other hand, you’d also expect her to quit smoking).

    ohwilleke:
    Good points. The smoking/asthmatic kid caught my eye as well. And speaking of diving underwater, how about the pressure? Isn;t it one atmosphere of pressure per 25 feet, or something like that?

  5. Chris Arndt
    July 3rd, 2006 at 4:48 pm

    Frankly the airplane aftermath scene surprised me. Lois kept getting slammed, hit, crushed, thrown. yet when the plane was set down she was the very first to stand up. Shouldn’t she be dead?

    If not her brains scattered across the aisle, shouldn’t her blood be? I read Airframe. She was getting smacked for the most part between the Mesosphere and the ground.

    The way Superman kept getting thrown around on that Island I’d think he should be worse off as well.

  6. Really likes Batman Better
    July 4th, 2006 at 6:39 am

    How cool was it that the elderly woman that Lex as medical power of attorney over is played by Noel Neil of the TV series? I met her once – she is a lovely woman. And that Bartender? the original Jimmy Olsen!

  7. Blog@Newsarama » Meanwhile…
    July 4th, 2006 at 10:34 am

    [...] Polite Dissent (Scott) First off, I enjoyed the movie very much. I thought Brandon Routh did an excellent job as Superman and the rest of the cast were quite good as well (Jimmy’s bow tie/plaid shirt combinations were too much though; no man is that color blind). The airplane/shuttle rescue scene was probably the best pure superhero scene I’ve seen in a movie yet. My main complaint is the villain. I just don’t think the movie Lex or his real estate plots are villainous enough to make him the needed supervillain. Or to put it more bluntly, as my wife did, the movie “needs more punching scenes.” [...]

  8. The Mighty Monarch
    July 4th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    Mild Spoiler Warning

    How cool was the bank robber scene? The part with the bullet had to be the best, most evocative display of just how powerful Superman is, even better than the continent-launch.

  9. James Nicoll
    July 4th, 2006 at 8:04 pm

    “Frankly the airplane aftermath scene surprised me. Lois kept getting slammed, hit, crushed, thrown. yet when the plane was set down she was the very first to stand up. Shouldn’t she be dead?”

    That’s one reason why over on my LJ I speculated that when she leaned over in *that* scene to whisper to Superman, what she said was “My real name is Kara.”

    That makes the whole problem with who fathered the kid (or rather, if we’re supposed to accept that Supers knocked her up in the second movie and then _erased her memory_ with Kryptonian roofie powers, which seems a bit at odds with the justice part of his slogan) go away.

    Now, why hasn’t she revealed herself as Kryptonian? Because she’s shy and also it lets her play cruel mindgames on Kal, like pretending to be dead in the first film. Kryptonians love cruel mindgames, or at least the Silver Age ones did.

  10. Zach
    July 5th, 2006 at 11:07 pm

    Could they even get a semi-accurate read on his heartbeat, what with the whole invulnerability thing? I don’t know how the monitors work, but I kinda think that, if they couldn’t defibrulate him or poke him with needles, wouldn’t that totally screw with the machine as well?

  11. Ratbat
    July 6th, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    I think even if he’s invulnerable, they’d be able to get a bead on his heartbeat. It should still pump and push blood around his body and all the rest of it. I think they’d be able to detect it in many of the ways you can detect a non-superperson’s heartbeat.

    But then, I might know Superman, but not medicine!

  12. Jeremiah
    July 8th, 2006 at 5:09 pm

    Jimmy’s bow tie/plaid shirt combinations were too much though; no man is that color blind

    I beg to differ.

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