I had always thought the whole Lex Luthor being captured and escaping ad infinitum was immoral anyhow.
Essentially when Luthor is incarcerated, any time he has been incarcerated, if Superman, the government, some other superhero who is able, doesn't kill him then and there they are indirectly responsible for the deaths of however many hundreds or thousands of people that Luthor's next doomsday device is going to eliminate.
I felt the same way about Batman. All of those dangerous psychopaths keep escaping from Arkam and killing people and all Batsy every really does is slap them on the wrist and deliver them back "home" to escape again later.
Apparently Super Heroes are only responsible for the deaths that they cause themselves, and on purpose. Killing Luthor is out of the question as immoral, however letting him live on, escape, kill people and entice a giant sun eating computer to come to earth, and the subsequent lives lost when Supes hurls it to earth and into a building is perfectly fine as Clark didn't purposefully kill any innocents.

The escape tunnel was never reported for one simple reason, Lex needed it to become A MAJOR SPOILER.
Leo Quintum!
http://neilshyminsky.blogspot.com/2008/09/leo-quintum-is-lex-luthor.html

You know that Parasite absorbs the powers of ANYONE he grabs hold on (even Superman). So the idea that he could fight Parasite in the open is ridiculous. It seems that in order to stop Parasite, he had to trap him in an inescapable situation. That being said, for Superman to freeze the inmates is a bit cold (no pun intended). But it also occurred in the comic.. I also think that Luthor showed his underground tunnel to Clark in the comic, but I don't remember.

But did that require the deaths of innocent and not-so-innocent people? Would Superman ever allow those deaths?
Of course not.

Superman was giving Lex one last chance to do the right thing. Besides, he also knew that Lex had help from someone and still needed to find out who/what was helping him.
That's the movie's logic, anyway.

It makes absolutely no sense that Superman would not tell anyone about Luthor's escape tunnel. It also doesn't make sense that Superman would let Luthor play out his plan. Luthor killed prison guards in his "super-powered" escape. Wouldn't it make sense for Superman to stop Luthor before he made a copy of the super serum, thus avoiding needless death and destrucion.

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And Luthor should be trusted?

From what I understand, he got 'poisoned' so even if the abundant energy was drained, he's still 'poisoned'
Also, luthor mentionned he wouldn't escape from the secret passage, and he was right

The fact that Clark never reported Lex's escape route never occured to me. I must be slipping.

No the damage was already done, his cells are all transitioning into energy. Even then your idea is for Superman to let Parasite drink his excess energy and then do what? Parasite then is pretty damn strong and the risk of him doing incredible damage goes up.

Parasite may have sucked up too much of Superman's energy and exploded. Or he could have become a huge and massive threat that even Superman could not defeat.
As for Metallo lifting weights, I'm pretty sure it was satirical because inmates are depicted as buff because they work out to pass the time.

what had me wondering was- if he is poisoned from an abundance of energy couldnt he have let parasite siphon some off to restore his balance?
That, and was it necessary for the writers to make a skeletonized Metallo weightlifting, if he's in a robot body?

what had me wondering was- if he is poisoned from an abundance of energy couldnt he have let parasite siphon some off to restore his balance?

That bothered me as well. Clark Kent took great pains to protect his secret identity rather than stepping forth to protect the guards and inmates.
The fact that he even put himself in the position of being close to the Parasite in the first place makes him indirectly responsible to the death and destruction caused by the Parasite.
And BTW, not bothering to report that Luthor had built an escape tunnel to the authorities is just another of the many wrong story lines in this movie.