Just finished the Donner commentary on S II. Ironically, he compared the restaurant scene to the scene in "Bronco Billy" where the Sheriff humiliates Billy and Billy never goes back and confronts him at the end for revenge. Donner states that he never forgave Eastwood for not having Billy go back and get even.
I say "ironic" because I have also compared the two movies. Except I remember that Clint Eastwood said the studio put tremendous pressure on him to put in a scene at the end where he goes back and gets revenge and he would not do it because it would be petty revenge and people who wanted the character to do that simply did not understand the character that was Bronco Billy.
I remember a friend of mine in college hated the restaurant scene because as he put it, "The only believable motive for doing that was revenge and Superman's not about revenge".
I'm not going to say that, at that point, Donner doesn't understand Superman in those petty revenge scenes. I'm just going to snarkily imply it.