6 Movie Franchises That Were Saved By A Reboot (And 6 That Were Doomed)

11. Doomed: Superman

first class square poster
Warner Bros.

If Batman & Robin was so bad that it effectively neutered the Caped Crusader's big-screen prospects, then a decade earlier Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (a movie so cheap and cynically assembled that it needs to be seen to be believed), tied the Man of Steel's solo franchise to a stretcher and sent it on a Homer Simpson-esque fall down a cliff from which it almost never recovered.

Superman fled to his Fortress of Cinematic Solitude with his cape between his legs where he would remain for almost 20 years, enduring a number of failed attempts to reboot the character in the process, before Superman Returns finally managed to stick the landing and make it into theatres in 2006.

A solid enough if a little too nostalgic throwback to Richard Donner's classic original, Returns ended up failing to hit the box office heights that Warner Bros. expected from the character and it ended up being one-and-done for Brandon Routh's tenure as the Big Blue Boy Scout.

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