Before his recent barnstorming comeback with X-Men: Days Of Future Past, director Bryan Singer was languishing in what insiders/film nerds call "Hollywood jail". To get sentenced to a term in this peninternary, a filmmaker needs to make a misstep so spectacular that nobody, but nobody, can even consider handing them the reigns to another film for a good few years. For Singer, this particular misstep was abandoning the X-Men movies that he had made his blockbuster name on to make a new Superman flick instead. Except it wasn't really a "new" Superman film, and more of a love letter to the first two seventies adaptations of the character, starring Christopher Reeve. Continuing from where Superman II had left of, Singer cast Brandon Routh in the unenviable position of playing the same character as Reeve without doing a mere impersonation, one of many confusing elements of a messy movie. It was supposed to be set a couple of years after a film made in 1980, yet was full of modern language, styles and technology. The story was unfocussed. Lois Lane had a kid with another man, moving on whilst Clark was in self-imposed space exile. The film was so maligned that it is rarely referred to by DC or their parent company Warner Bros, and certainly isn't as well-remembered or referenced in the comics are the original Reeve movies. Following Superman Returns the comics' Clark Kent moved even further away from the simple, idealistic character in that film and closer to the darker, conflicted version which became solidified in the canon with the recent Man of Steel movie.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
