Anyway, your analogy is fascinating. The nuclear warheads represent the candles, right? Also, I’m pretty sure that a newspaper using a made-up quote as a headline is totally suable and I’m surprised Superman didn’t use his Super-Litigation powers to do anything here, or at least loudly object as Clark Kent. I know “loudly objecting” isn’t really something Reeve’s version of Clark does, but he does kind of WRITE FOR THE NEWSPAPER (although admittedly, this is the kind of thing that’s out of his hands). Does C.K. appear in the film, by the way?

Superman getting rid of all the nukes in the world with what you so-rightly call “a suspiciously huge net” reminds me of a humor column IGN used to have called “Use Your Delusion,” where it would pit Batman against seemingly-impossible-to-beat opponents and ask readers to send their solutions. There was one installment where IGN had Batman face the Sun and one of the submitted solutions was surprisingly similar to the safety net idea:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2005/06/22/use-your-delusion-batman-vs-the-sun

Speaking of the Sun, can I just point out too that it is ALSO the source of Superman’s power? I mean, yeah, he doesn’t automatically lose his powers if it’s blocked the way Nuclear Man or Hannah Barbera’s Birdman do, but that does get a mention, right?

This is the one Superman film starring Reeve that I haven’t seen, although I do own it and have it somewhere. I actually get a little bummed out sometimes when I read about it, because the premise of this film could have actually been taken in some really interesting directions. Superman deciding to rid the world of nukes, or even just pleading to the nations of the world to do so, is an unusually proactive and political move on his part, but not necessarily out of character. It raises all kinds of questions: should Superman use his powers on this kind of level? Is it the right thing to do? If there was/wasn’t a Superman, would the world “need” nukes? Even bringing back Luthor as someone who stands to profit from the selling of nuclear arms is a very interesting idea, as many people in the world DO make a lot of money from selling weapons of war, which brings up its own ethical questions.

Sounds like the film didn’t feel like exploring any of these issues too thoroughly, though. Sure, most of them don’t have easy answers and may be a little too complex for even a good version of this particular movie to deal with, but I can’t help but feel that film’s central ideas had a lot potential. “Superman ridding the world of nukes” did resurface later in both television (Superman tried to do it both legally and diplomatically in the first episode of Justice League) and in the comics (there’s this big story in the ’90s where some super-powerful superbad poses as Superman and rids the world of nukes… and tries to take it over, as well), but I’m not sure either delved too deeply into it.