12) Strange surface- Villains come down through the clouds as two Zoptic shots separated by a dissolve. Villains land with excellent in camera wire hiding by Paynter. The location is actually Black Park, Buckinghamshire, England. Zod mocks Christ with a semi-submerged cat-walk. Ursa fries the snake with cell animation and on-set fire. The Snake was built by Stuart Freeborn back to back with his Tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back.

13) Meet the Sheriff - To establish the Houston locale, editor John Victor Smith skillfully used a plate shot of Gallup, New Mexico shot for the first film as a wide aerial shot for Lester's ficticious depiction of small town America. This is followed by a cut to the police car driving along the Houston dirt road - both shots are cunningly connected with a sound bridge of a car engine and country music. The dirt road was actually filmed on Chobham Common,Surrey, England. The shotgun was levitated by fishing wire invisible to the camera, and the beam of light was cel animated.

14) Trip North - Our two love birds fly north, a breath taking daylight Zoptic shot. No grain is noticable in this shot, as it was shot in the large, high resolution format of Vistavision as opposed to the standard 35mm plates shot for the original film. Additionally, the plates were shot at the regular 24 frames per second and not at slow speed to cheat how fast Superman flies. As a result, the shot is one of the few instances in Superman II when the flying scenes actually surpass and greatly improve those seen in the original film. Of course, less can be said for the following shot, as they approach the Fortess as horrible travelling matte models of Supes and Lois. They land in the Fortess with more of Paynter's clever lighting.

15) East Houston - Break away table for "let me know if this tickles". Break a way wall with excellent stunt work. Jody lifted via dirty traveling matte. Cel animated "force" beam natch.

16) Sky's the limit - Superman flies to St. Lucia via an inventive travelling matte which sort of works, but Supes looks real flat. He flies into the foreground courtesy of the optically enlarged travelling mattes. Landing with more in-camera wire hiding.

17) "Something more interesting"- Great on-set pyro work. Zod redirects flames via cel animation, less than impressive but understandably shoddy rendering due to deadline urgencies. The Houston scenes had to be shot as quickly as possible with as much time saving as possible- if a shot was challenging on set, there was no option but to put it on the back burner and improvise it later in post production. This also apllies to the optical bazooka missile seen later in the same scene.

18) It's a model, you know - Unknown to the audience and as mentioned before, Houston was constructed on Chobham Common, Surrey, England. Additionally unknown to the audience, half of Houston existed only as a miniature, as to cheat perspective and the unavailable luxury of lengthy construction time, the buildings furthest away from the camera were scale models that became smaller as they went off into the distance. Nice little model of the helicopter crashing into the barn.

19) "Are You Sure?.." More holographic footage of Susannah York. The Fortress background is matte painted, and York's initial walk from the crystal archive was achieved by filming the actress against a blue screen and matting her over the painting. York and Christopher Reeve filmed all of their dialogue scenes separately, so all of their screen time together during this scene was achieved either using bluescreen for long shots or pick ups for close ups. She also disappears via a simple dissolve.

20) The Transformation from Superhuman to mortal - This sequence had already been completed for Richard Donner's Superman II, but due to the politics behind the making of the sequel, it had to be reshot. As the time required to complete the effect was unavailable to Roy Field, he had no choice but to leave the sequences fate entirely to the improvisational skills of the editors and the
optical lab. Using frames from the discarded trial by fire sequence from the original film (reinserted into the recent Special Edition DVD), a close up of Christopher Reeve and some rudimentary animation, a last minute composite was achieved to simulate the Man-Of-Steel's regeneration. The sequence looks basic and incomplete. the only standout and even great special effect here is
the optical disolve of Superman turning into Clark- subtle and convincing - this aside, the entire sequence leaves alot to be desired- a great piece of deadline cheating, optical era improvisation, but as a film special effect it is unacceptable.

21) Destruction of Mount Rushmore - The miniature footage here was actually photographed when Richard Donner was still on board in 1977. However, to accomodate the new idea of having the three villains fly past and alter the monument with their heat vision (a revision made by the Newman writers), Lester decided to improvise with this already complete model work. In 1980, miniature dolls of the three villains were matted onto the shot, as were the new Kryptonian faces and laser beams. Again, the inanimate bluescreen dolls were quick to film without worrying about performance, and the shot could be left to the optical people in Hollywood. The villains fly across a lake as a Zoptic shot.

22) Crashing the White House - Great travelling matte work shows the villains smashing through the buildings skylight. (Un)believeably good physical effects and stunt work. No post-production here I'm afraid.

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