When the Man of Steel fell to earth with a giant bump

As yet another attempt is made to resurrect the Big Red S, Tom Fordy looks back on why 2006's 'Superman Returns' flopped so spectacularly - and why it merits a second look

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Tomorrow, Superman will land in cinemas once again, this time played by actor David Corenswet as part of James Gunn's reshuffle of the DC Universe. It's been just three years since we last saw Henry Cavill don the cape - for a mid-credits appearance in Dwayne Johnson's dismal Black Adam - while we've had alternate versions of the character in TV's Arrowverse as well as fanboy-pleasing cameos in The Flash film. But there was a time, back before blockbuster cinema was fully at the mercy of superheroes, when Superman floated in limbo. After Christopher Reeve's final outing as the last son of Krypton in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), it took a now-unthinkable 19 years for Superman to return to the big screen in 2006's aptly named Superman Returns, a Bryan Singer-directed nostalgia-fest.

That film, starring an unknown actor named Brandon Routh as Superman/Clark Kent, is comfortably the finest in the franchise outside of Reeve's original Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980). It also boasts one of the greatest action set pieces in any of the films: Superman saving a shuttle-launching-airliner as he plummets into a baseball field.

Yet Superman Returns is largely overlooked, for being too quaint, perhaps, or drowned out by the racket of the subsequent Snyderverse (2013's reboot Man of Steel, then 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and 2017's Justice League). Maybe it's the association of Singer and Kevin Spacey (as baldy baddie Lex Luthor), whose reps are marked with allegations of sexual misconduct (all of which have been denied by both men, respectively). “For me it just didn’t come together,” says Ian Gordon, author of Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon. “I think most critics had that view.”