Superman Saves the Day

So for anyone that actually followed the Superman movies very closely, you may notice a semi-continuity error. Specifically, if you watched the movies as they came out in theaters, Superman doesn't turn back time at the end of Superman II to erase Lois's memory, he does it at the end of Superman after Lois dies and he wants to bring her back to life.

Except, in truth, it was written that he did it at the end of Superman II to fix all of the things that Zod destroyed and, as a nice byproduct, Lois's memory of the fact that Clark Kent was Superman was erased in the process. However, in a bizarre production layout, the makers of the films shot Superman and Superman II simultaneously, and somewhere along the way somebody decided that the time travel thing would be a cooler ending for Superman than for its sequel. As a result the backwards planet spin was detached from the second movie and stuck on to the first one, and instead of Superman accidentally erasing Lois Lane's memory as a result of fixing other, bigger, problems, he makes a specific point of super-powering the memories out of her, which turned out to be unwittingly creepy.

In later released versions of the movies they fix the ending of the Superman II so that the time travel bit is applied correctly - most likely because it makes the end of Superman II a whole lot less date rape-ey - and it is one of these alternate cuts that was my first experience with Superman II, and it's what i've always considered to be the "right" version.

So yeah. That's a long way of explaining why Superman is thinking about erasing Lois Lane's memory instead of bringing her back to life, in case that threw you for a loop.