Superman Returns (And Then Fades Into Obscurity Again)

The successes of X-Men and Spider-Man had re-ignited the superhero genre and set the path for WB to restart the Batman and Superman film franchises, hopefully simultaneously, in order to prepare for a Wonder Woman and Justice League movie. In a particularly notorious move, WB hired the director of the first 2 X-Men movies, Bryan Singer, to write the story and direct the next Superman movie. Singer's story idea was seen as brilliant by most, make a sequel to Superman II while ignoring the existence of Superman III and IV. Something that WB, film critics, general audiences, and worst of all, Bryan Singer himself had all failed to realize was that Crisis on Infinite Earths had automatically deemed the version of Superman seen in the previous films as horribly out of character, extremely overpowered, and having very little to do with the Superman from the comics.

Singer, WB, critics, and the general audience didn't really care about how Crisis on Infinite Earths forever changed Superman because Superman II was going to be getting a sequel that wasn't going to be campy. Comic book fans, like myself, were incredibly worried that Bryan Singer's Superman was going to be less of a Superman movie and more of Singer just fapping to Richard Donner's cut of Superman II and poorly handling the Jesus metaphor of Superman that Donner loved. In the end, the comic book nerds were right. Critics either highly praised the movie for being the "true" Superman III or they panned the movie for having so little original ideas that it had to be a sequel to a 25 year old movie. Although the film was a financial success, most people felt the film was very boring, having very few action scenes, and most people despised the plot idea of Superman having an illegitimate son with Lois Lane.

Amazingly enough, the problem with Superman Returns is exactly the reason why comic book geeks were avoiding the movie: it followed the canon of the Richard Donner Superman religiously and incorporated absolutely no ideas from the comics. Although to most people it would seem arduous to name every single thing wrong with Superman Returns as far as comic book canon is concerned, I'm gonna do it anyway!

• Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, Kal-El thinks of Clark Kent as being his true persona and generally identifies more with being an Earthling rather than a Kryptonian.
• The depiction of Krypton continues to use Richard Donner's version, one that did not exist in the comics until the very recent Superman: Secret Origin limited series.
  
• Lois Lane is continued to be portrayed as a star reporter with extremely poor spelling, something that is traditionally never depicted in the comics except to be a reference to the movies.
• Lex Luthor is continued to be portrayed as a super genius with no money obsessed with the idea of getting rich off of real estate by destroying areas of the world to make the price of seemingly worthless areas of land skyrocket, a depiction of Lex Luthor only ever seen in Richard Donner's story. Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, Lex Luthor is depicted as the CEO of Lexcorp, essentially being the Metropolis version of Bruce Wayne, but a crooked businessman not afraid of striking deals with terrorists and making a profit off of people's misery. Luthor was even elected President of the United States at one point.
  
• Jonathan and Martha Kent are still depicted as being old enough to be Clark Kent's grandparents, rather than being in their 30s (or 20s according to Birthright), upon finding Kal-El in his spaceship. This has since been retconned by Secret Origin.
• Jonathan Kent died while Clark was in high school, something that was again, only depicted in Richard Donner's story. In the comics, Jonathan Kent only died recently, totally unrelated to Superman's origin story.
• In post-crisis continuity, Superman did not develop any superpowers until he was 17, something completely ignored by Singer. In the silver age, Kal-El had his full range of superpowers immediately upon landing on Earth.
• Superman's powers are far too strong, even compared to the silver age version of Superman that was capable of literally juggling planets. At the end of the movie, Superman is able to throw a continent MADE OF KRYPTONITE outside of Earth's orbit, all while having a knife made of kryptonite stuck in his torso.
• Kryptonite's effect on Superman is completely wrong, it's as if Singer remembered the existence of kryptonite at the last second. In all previous depcitions of Superman going back to 1938, kryptonite is lethal to Superman and has an effect on him that causes such weakness that he can barely walk and can be killed by an average person with their fists. Singer's interpretation causes no pain to Superman, kryptonite solely nullifies his superpowers very slowly. The effects are so slow that Superman can lift a continent made of kryptonite.
• Probably the most controversial decision of the movie, Superman has a child with Lois Lane. The very idea of Superman being able to have children with Lois Lane is preposterous, they're not even from the same planet, it is only a coincidence that Kryptonians resemble homo sapiens.

So with all these departures from Superman's character, it should have been fairly obvious that Superman Returns would flop, right? Well unfortunately, the only people who cared about the characters being portrayed correctly were comic book readers. The time-bomb was ticking and it finally exploded when people saw the acting in the movie. Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth were completely flat, Kevin Spacey was essentially just impersonating Gene Hackman, and James Marsden as Perry White's nephew seemed to be inserted just because Singer wanted to steal Cyclops away from the story of X-Men 3.

I can count at least 5 things wrong with this picture

Although financially a success, no sequel to Superman Returns has been made because quite frankly, it just sucks. It was recently announced that WB decided to give Christopher Nolan the rights to produce a new Superman movie that would reboot the franchise, similar to what he did with Batman Begins. It remains to be seen if the new Superman movie will feature any returning cast and whether or not it will be an origin story. Most people are hoping that it is NOT an origin story because most people are very well versed in Superman's origin story, or at least 1 version of it. If the movie does end up being an origin story, I believe it MUST follow the canon created by Secret Origin so that DC Comics does not create another version of Superman's origin in 5 years again.