10. Magical Ninja Ku-Klux Clan Man Gets Disappointing Come-Uppance - Superman
The original cut of Superman was silly in the all the right ways, but it was far from flawless as we have already discussed. One of the worst crimes committed in the film is the way in which it sets up a potentially awesome villain, only to them almost immediately wipe him out of existence. The bad looking character in the image above was included in the original DVD version of the film, in a sequence featuring the worryingly stubborn Kryptonian Council, who send him after Jor-El to investigate an energy spike coming from his quarters. Ultimately, the hooded fiend never makes it to Casa-El as the planet explodes while he is in transit, leading to a comical death scene that feels like a hugely disappointing pay-off for a set-up that suggested an awful lot more. What should have happened is the investigator should either have had a last-minute face-off with Jor-El or perhaps even have followed Kal-El to Earth somehow, and been a secondary antagonist, rather than the film suggesting that he was going to be hugely important to the narrative and then killing him off within minutes. But then, given how Brando staggers through his scenes without much vitality, the former was probably not an option, and the second would probably have over-stuffed the drama. Which is probably why the character has been wiped from existence entirely, aside from Deleted Scenes, and the few versions where his sequence survives...