10 Movies Totally Ruined By Fan Service

5. Superman Returns

Nobody will come away from Bryan Singer's 2006 blockbuster Superman Returns disbelieving that the director is a huge fan of the 1978 Christopher Reeve-starring Superman, but his shameless reverence for that seminal superhero epic ultimately makes his own film feel like little more than a dew-eyed, big-budget fan fiction.

Though impressively mounted - especially during its terrific plane rescue sequence - Superman Returns ultimately feels like too much of a reprise of Superman '78, right down to rehashing Lex Luthor's (Kevin Spacey) unbearably goofy real estate scheme and following the basic spine narrative of that movie.

In many ways Returns is a prototypical example of the quasi-remake masquerading as a sequel that's so popular nowadays.

But it's so hopelessly infatuated with the Reeve version of this character, and so busy trying to replicate the style and tone of the late-70s that its more ambitious and daring elements - namely making Superman a deadbeat dad - end up clashing harshly.

Nobody was saying that Singer needed to make a grimdark, Man of Steel-esque Superman movie in order to succeed, but would it have killed him to, you know, actually come up with some more original material?

Fans of the '78 film felt it was a pale imitation of that, while younger audiences didn't connect with its quaint tone, resulting in box office disaster despite broadly positive reviews.