Like Costner, Clark Kent's alter ego's cinematic adventures have certainly seen better days. Having arguably peaked with 1980's "Superman II", a film still notorious for its big comic-book-style downtown Kryptonian showdown. Kal-El has since found the silver screen to be lined with kryptonite, with three feature films all failing to hit the series' previous high water mark of critical and commercial praise. Seeking to capitalize in no small part from the successes of DC's "other" hot property Batman with Chris Nolan's "Dark Knight" films, as well as rival studio "Marvel's The Avengers", Warner Brothers signed screenwriter David Goyer to craft the story that would eventually become June 14's "Man of Steel", what hopes to be Superman's triumphant return to critical and box office accolades. A franchise long removed from its former heyday, and who could only look on as fellow, lesser-known superheroes took his old mantle. To call 2006's "Superman Returns" the "Waterworld" of the Man of Steel's filmography would not be too far of a single bound, even for Superman. Superman's thrilling exploits in "Returns" amounted to little more than dead-beat-fathering, eavesdropping, and a newly discovered power of super-sulking. All of which did not pack quite the same gut-wrenching nausea as witnessing a bearded Costner down his own excrement back in '95, however, watching "Superman Returns" certainly did leave one with the feeling of being sold a yellow snow cone. And it's not lemon. Although, if interviews and trailers are to be believed, the upcoming "Man of Steel" looks to be a story worthy of the myth of Superman. A tale of a man torn between two fathers. His birth father, Jor-El, sending him to Earth (in a line pulled directly from Grant Morrison's "All-Star Superman") "to give the people an ideal to strive towards", struggles with his adoptive father's (Jonathan "Pa" Kent) warning of "keeping secret" his incredible powers out of fear of what human discovery would mean. By resetting the alien Superman legend and grounding it into this poetic paternal conflict, by making relatable the superhuman, Goyer and company may have finally achieved the ever-elusive super feat where so many others have fallen short or missed the mark, to humanize a man of steel.