When Superman Returns came out in 2006 I went to see it with my wife and I was psyched. It was the first Superman movie in almost 20 years and the reviews were very favorable. When the John Williams theme kicked up as the audience flew through outer space I leaned over to my wife and warned her that I may geek out. And then the movie started. Within 2 minutes things started falling apart so here are the top five reasons why I didn't like Superman Returns....

1. Lex Luthor. The first Christopher Reeve Superman movie came out in 1978 with a rather lighthearted take on Lex Luthor. His plan would cause immense destruction but he surrounded himself with such insufficiently_thoughtful_persons that it was hard to take him serious. In 30 years the Lex Luthor character has come a long way but Bryan Singer decided to recapture the Richard Donner Lex Luthor. Actually it's worse than that. We discover in the first minute or so that Lex was having sexual relations with a geriatric to gain her inheritance so now he's just an undignified sleezeball.

2. The Action. The scene of Superman rescuing the jet was awesome (except for Lois Lane's stupidity) but that was the movies peak action wise. He takes some bullets to the chest from a massive chain gun in a nonsensical scene created for the trailer. He gets beaten up by Lex Luthor. He lifts Luthor's boat from the water. He lifts New Krypton but there is really no action set piece besides the rescue of the plane for audiences to cheer for.

3. Luthor's Plot. This is the worst. It's basically the same plot from the 1978 movie except on a grander scale and stupider. Luthor plans to create a massive new continent made of Kryptonian crystals which will then wipe out much of the rest of the planet killing millions... no BILLIONS. Despite killing about a quarter of the Earths population people will flock to his continent and no one can stop him because he will have advanced alien weaponry. So we see Luthor and his crew sitting on their bleak desolate continent as it expands looking bored as hell. Maybe they were even playing cards waiting for the alien weaponry to materialize. Was the hellish granite looking land going to transform into something habitable?

Let's say everything goes perfectly for Luthor. His rocky black nightmare turns into lush livable land. His island grows into a continent and aliens weapons spring from the Earth for Luthor alone. Superman sinks into the ocean dead from Kryptonite poisoning. North America is obliterated along with all his henchmen's friends and family. So what's the end game? The world is plunged into unprecedented economic collapse. Luthor HAS to claim responsibility since he's planning on declaring himself the owner of the continent. I assume there is still plenty of OTHER livable land on the rest of the Earth so people don't HAVE to move to Luthortopia. Could this handful of criminals hold off the entire world even with Kryptonian weapons? Could they stop the rest of the world's quest for revenge and what would Luthor get? Rich? Nothing makes the least bit of sense.

4. Richard White. Despite making over 400 million dollars worldwide Warner Brothers pulled the plug on the sequel issuing the cryptic comment that "It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned." I've never read an explanation of what that means but I suspect it's thanks to two characters, Richard White and Jason White. So Superman returns to find Lois Lane with a child and fiancé. Not just a fiancé but a guy who appears to be a really good dude who cares about Lois and his son Jason. Jason, of course, turns out to actually be Superman's son. This is just a total mess. Where do you take it from here? I assume the plan was to kill Richard in the sequel in a heroic death to clear the path for Superman but there is just no pretty way out of this situation and what in the world is Superman going to do with a son. It seemed like not only did the writers kill this movie they were already setting up the next movie to fail.

5. Superman lifts New Krypton. This is more the geek in me but this is so egregious I have to close with this one. Oh, the drama as Superman valiantly hoist New Krypton and flings it from Earth with his last ounce of strength. Wait a second. Just a moment ago Superman was rendered weaker than the average human thanks to the Kryptonite in the rocks. He literally had a shard of Kryptonite imbedded in his body but somehow was able to perform his greatest feat ever even as giant chunks of Kryptonite were about smacking him in the face. Then he crashes to Earth in an entirely undramatic death scene since every single person watching the movie new they were trying to create a new franchise. Horrible.

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