It's a stark reminder that until very recently, "Haha, are you gay?" was all the punchline that a joke needed, even if the joke was coming from the hero of a kid-friendly franchise. It's also weird because Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man isn't really known for his quips, and the ones that he does make in this film are stuff like "It's YOU who's out, Gobby. OUT OF YOUR MIND!" and this shit. It was a weird intersection of homophobia as a comedy staple and writers wanting to remain "comic-friendly" but still not being quite sure what that meant yet.

That this joke would sound insane coming out of Tom Holland's mouth is a pretty cool indicator of how far we've come. Luckily, the scripts for Spider-Man 2 and 3 would cut the lame jokes and play much more to Maguire's strength as Peter Parker, which was being a clumsy dude who convinces Kirsten Dunst to leave her fiance at the altar so he can be emotionally distant with her instead.

Related: 12 WTF Superhero Scenes That Will Melt Your Brain Into Mush

But there is one scene in Superman that feels out of place even in that context, and it's during Lois Lane's first flight. Superman meets her at her apartment (one with a rooftop garden that implies she must have been trafficking cocaine on the side). After some light chit-chat, he picks her up and takes her soaring around the city. She then composes an internal monologue that nearly ruins the scene's magic:

Imagine a 2019 superhero movie in which a character stops and, in a voiceover, says the following with 100 percent sincerity:

Can you read my mind? Do you know what it is that you do to me?

I don't know who you are. Just a friend from another star.

Here I am, like a kid out of school. Holding hands with a god. I'm a fool. Will you look at me?

Quivering. Like a little girl, shivering.

You can see right through me. Can you read my mind?

Can you picture the things I'm thinking of? Wondering why you are all the wonderful things you are.

You can fly. You belong in the sky. You and I could belong to each other.

If you need a friend, I'm the one to fly to. If you need to be loved, here I am.

Read my mind.

I know this is supposed to evoke a sort of fantastical whimsy, because 1) Lois Lane is flying, and that's neat, and 2) in 1978, it was still really powerful to see two people zooming around the sky, whereas in modern superhero films, "zooming" is about the only setting an Avenger has. But in a movie that so beautifully toes the line between sincerity and corniness in a way that modern superhero films seem afraid to, this scene crosses that line and then flies screaming over a cliff.

Related: The 5 Most Indefensible Sex Scenes In Superhero Movies

This is cinematic shorthand for "OH, THEY FUCKIN'," but we then see Vicki waking up fully clothed on her bed. As it turns out, surprise, Batman just took the film from her camera, as she had taken an unmasked picture of him earlier. Silly us, thinking that Batman could physically pull his wiener out of his suit when he couldn't even turn his head. But the alternative isn't any better. Batman knocked Vicki out somehow, either with some kind of spray or with a fist to the back of the skull. Is that ... better than the sex thing that the movie tricked us into thinking was happening?

Again, can you imagine that happening in, say, a 2019 MCU flick? Iron Man has to explain to Pepper Potts that to keep some secret, he had to beat her to sleep. It then makes no sense in Batman Returns when billionaire ninja Bruce Wayne hurts Catwoman and is like, "Oh, I'm sorry," when one movie prior, he couldn't figure out how to end a scene, so he just rendered a woman unconscious.

Related: 7 Deleted Scenes That Would've Ended Superhero Franchises

It's really just one baffling moment after another. A guy moves his plate from the counter so that he can keep eating as the trucker flies by him. Clark Kent says, "Gee, that's funny. I've never seen garbage eat garbage before." Good one, literal savior of the planet.

It's a reminder that filmmakers in that era were still fumbling blindly to strike the right tone for a superhero movie. So we got Superman's most exciting plot, followed by Looney Tunes hijinks and food humor that wouldn't even pass the cut in a Weird Al video.

Related: 5 Shockingly Racist Scenes In Famous Superhero Comics

In the film, Red Skull had been hired by the American military-industrial complex to take care of anyone who opposed them, which included John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. In one scene, Mr. Skull sits at a conference table with other evil types and bemoans that the assassination of King cost their organization $22 million to arrange, only to backfire by making him a martyr.

Yep, they rewrote actual history so that MLK was killed not because of his activism for racial and economic justice, but because he knew too much. So ... we all owe James Earl Ray an apology? Or did they pay him to do it? Or brainwash him? I'd keep running through all of the questions this raises, but I've already thought about this more than the screenwriters did.

It's the kind of thing you could get away with on a movie that was destined to make about $700,000 on a $10 million budget. Nearly three decades later, another movie featuring Captain America would open and exceed that film's total gross every ten minutes on its first day. So yeah, times have changed.

Daniel Dockery is probably listening to those Prince Batman songs right now, and he's probably talking about them on his Twitter.

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