One inch to the left, and the neck injury Christopher Reeve sustained when he fell off his horse in May 1995 would have killed him instantly. One inch to the right, and it would have been an embarrassing sprain, no more. The way his spinal cord was damaged, he was left with a tiny chance of ever moving another muscle from the neck down.
While this former Man of Steel, globally beloved as Superman, would fight with every nerve to beat that prognosis, denying it in tiny but meaningful ways, he would not succeed in walking again – let alone flying.
