10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Superman For Everyone

10. Smallville

Somebody save him! No, not him, he's Superman. Kid Superman. He doesn't have all his powers yet, but we're pretty sure Tom Welling's teenage Clark Kent can handle himself. Is the theme song talking about adolescent Lex Luthor? Because he isn't full supervillain, but he's got some nasty capabilities in there. Is the dude singing from the perspective of the female characters of the show? Because Chloe, the high school newspaper whizz, seems pretty capable. And Lana Lang...actually, she's okay too. Because she's going out with Clark. Man, the Dawson's Creek version of Superman's early years was really a mess of conflict-less characters and writers doing their level best to keep Clark Kent in high school, even when the show kept getting renewed.

To be fair, Smallville didn't start off half bad. It was melodramatic and very soap opera like, but, no more than your average superhero comic. It was kind of cool having Clark's development in the Kansas town he crash-landed in as a baby on the small screen, too, and we quite enjoyed all the nods to the comic books throughout. Then it went on too long, things got ridiculous, and they started to just do straight Superman: Lois Lane showed up, he moved to Metropolis, became a reporter for the Daily Planet, yadda yadda yadda. The Justice League even formed. That's why then got close to ruining Superman: for a while there it looked like that was the closest we'd get to a live-action Man Of Steel, JLA or any DC superhero story. And it was cheesy, low-budget and generally a bit !*$%.