10 Movies That Didn't Know When To End

5. Superman Returns

Bryan Singer deserves praise for trying to do something different with the Superman legend - namely fashioning a gritty reboot in which Superman's main power is being a deadbeat dad - but the result was a distended, poorly paced effort that ran in an at a tiresome 154 minutes and didn't even deliver enough spectacular set-pieces to really explain that.

One of the talkiest superhero films ever made, it's all about a kid with abandonment issues, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) trying to figure out what's up with her Krypto baby daddy, and Kevin Spacey mugging to the camera as super-villain Lex Luthor. Though a lot of the core beats do work, the film is just too overstuffed; the personal story, though ambitious, drags on at the expense of the picture, and had this been toned the film could easily have come in at a far more reasonable 120-130 minutes.

Instead, Bryan Singer, hot off his success with the X-Men franchise, was indulged by Warner Bros. every step of the way, resulting in commercial disappointment at the box office.